The James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for its 2016 food media awards last week, so it’s a great time to make a cup of tea and cozy up to some excellent food writing.
Food
Posted inCommentary, Nonfiction, Reading List
Six James Beard Finalists You Might Have Missed: A Reading List
The James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for its 2016 food media awards last week, so it’s a great time to make a cup of tea and cozy up to some excellent food writing.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Guatemalan Chef Who Became a Hiroshima Comfort Food Star
Matt Goulding follows the origin story of okonomiyaki, the harmoniously messy pancake that has become a staple of post-war Hiroshima cuisine.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Aristocratic Chef: An Interview with Daniel Le Bailly de La Falaise
Daniel Le Bailly de La Falaise on private caterings for celebrities, the sexuality of a peach, and how the simplicity of food is the ultimate luxury.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
On Ugly Food
At Serious Eats, Kat Kinsman analyzes America’s obsession with culinary appearances and makes the case for learning to measure food by other, non-visual standards.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Mid-Century Visions of Modern Food
One of the most dizzying of these effects is the dominance of circles. Ringed or round connoted nature tamed. The vegetables that survived the cleansing were united by two qualities. They were round and cute: button mushrooms, olives, cherry tomatoes, pearl onions, peas, invincible iceberg. (Celery, long and tubular, made it through, too, I think […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Secret Life of Cheese
Mark Hay, writing in Roads & Kingdoms, travels to Sardinia to experience the (literal) underbelly of cheese, in an attempt to understand how rotten and fermented milk — that is, cheese — has become such a staple food for so many people.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Secretive Life of a Michelin Inspector
Sam Kashner delves into the mysterious world of Michelin stars in the new issue of Vanity Fair, talking to top chefs about what it takes to gain—and keep—the restaurant world’s highest honor. Although restaurant critics are often recognized, Michelin inspectors remain virtually unknown. Kashner spoke on the phone with one inspector (even he wasn’t allowed to know […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Gelatin Was a Status Symbol
Gelatin dishes as we know them date all the way back to medieval Europe. From that period up until the mid-nineteenth century, jellied dishes were foods of the elite, served as elaborate molded centerpieces on the tables of nobility. The reason was simple: the process of rendering collagen from animal bones and then clarifying it […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Bordeaux Consumption in the U.S. Has Been Declining Since the ’80s
Yet, while the trajectory of Petrus [a major Bordeaux wine estate] has been ever upward (and its price as well), the consumption of Bordeaux in the United States has been declining since hitting its peak in market share in the mid-’80s. Even the boozy precincts of France have become less boozy—about their wine, at least. […]