Memoir
Three Many Cooks
Three Many Cooks ladles out the highs and lows, the kitchen disasters and culinary triumphs, the bitter fights and lasting love. Of course, these stories would not be complete without a selection of treasured recipes that nurtured relationships, ended feuds, and expanded repertoires, recipes that evoke forgiveness, memory, passion, and perseverance.
Read it hereThe Call of the Farm
Rochelle Bilow, a classically trained cook and aspiring food writer, was nursing a broken heart and frustrated with her yet-to-take-off career when she set out to write a short profile of a small, sustainable CSA farm in central New York.
Read it hereBurnt Toast Makes You Sing Good
Kathleen Flinn explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home.
Read it hereDelancey
In this funny, frank, and tender new memoir, the author of the New York Times bestseller A Homemade Life and the blog Orangette recounts how opening a restaurant sparked the first crisis of her young marriage.
Read it hereSous Chef
In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen.
Read it hereNo Experience Necessary
No Experience Necessary is Chef Norman Van Aken’s joyride of a memoir. In it he spans twenty-plus years and nearly as many jobs—including the fateful job advertisement in the local paper for a short-order cook with “no experience necessary.”
Read it hereRecipes for Disaster
Told with heart, humor and honesty; this memoir goes beyond culinary catastrophe and heartwarmingly unveils the lengths we go to in order to please our family, friends, and ourselves—and proves that it’s not the food that counts, but the memories.
Read it hereIvan Ramen
The end-all-be-all guide to ramen from Ivan Orkin, the iconoclastic New York-born owner of Tokyo’s top ramen shop.
Read it hereOne Soufflé at a Time
In One Soufflé at a Time, Willan tells her story and the story of the food-world greats—including Julia Child, James Beard, Simone Beck, Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney, and others—who changed how the world eats and who made cooking fun.
Read it hereMastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations.
Read it hereFiori di Zucca
Mixing inspiring recipes and stories from her family’s incredible history, this evocative and unforgettable book from Valentina Harris spans the culinary regions of Italy, France, Belgium, England, Russia, China, Turkey and the US.
Read it hereNine Lives
A rising young chef lays bare his gripping story of culinary triumphs, consuming drug additions, and his continuing quest to stay on top while staying sober.
Read it hereHow to Cook Like a Man
He didn’t have much cooking experience but Chef Alice Waters had been his preschool teacher so he cracked one of her Chez Panisse cookbooks and cooked his way through it.
Read it here