The Best Culinary Biographies & Memoirs 2024

1. Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - Medium Raw marks the return of the inimitable Anthony Bourdain, author of the blockbuster bestseller Kitchen Confidential and three-time Emmy Award-nominated host of No Reservations on TV's Travel Channel. Bourdain calls his book, A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, and he is at his entertaining best as he takes aim at some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, Alice Waters, the Top Chef winners and losers, and many more. If Hunter S. Thompson had written a book about the restaurant business, it could have been Medium Raw.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

2. Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

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Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

3. Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - The New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard bearer Alice Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of what is arguably America's most influential restaurant. When Alice Waters opened the doors of her little French restaurant in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape--Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naivet and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers. In Coming to My Senses Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded. Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman's evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

4. Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald Newsday The Huffington Post Financial Times GQ Slate Men s Journal Washington Examiner Publishers Weekly Kirkus Reviews National Post The Toronto Star BookPage Bookreporter Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton s idyllic past and her own future family the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. Features a new essay by Gabrielle Hamilton at the back of the book Look for special features inside.Join the Circle for author chats and more.

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

5. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine. Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, Don't Eat Before Reading This. Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same take-no-prisoners attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

6. My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Los Angeles Times - NPR - Men's Journal - BookPage - Booklist - Publishers Weekly In the fall of 2009, the food world was rocked when Gourmet magazine was abruptly shuttered by its parent company. No one was more stunned by this unexpected turn of events than its beloved editor in chief, Ruth Reichl, who suddenly faced an uncertain professional future. As she struggled to process what had seemed unthinkable, Reichl turned to the one place that had always provided sanctuary. I did what I always do when I'm confused, lonely, or frightened, she writes. I disappeared into the kitchen. My Kitchen Year follows the change of seasons--and Reichl's emotions--as she slowly heals through the simple pleasures of cooking. While working 24/7, Reichl would throw quick meals together for her family and friends. Now she has the time to rediscover what cooking meant to her. Imagine kale, leaves dark and inviting, saut ed with chiles and garlic; summer peaches baked into a simple cobbler; fresh oysters chilling in a box of snow; plump chickens and earthy mushrooms, fricasseed with cream. Over the course of this challenging year, each dish Reichl prepares becomes a kind of stepping stone to finding joy again in ordinary things. The 136 recipes collected here represent a life's passion for food: a blistering ma po tofu that shakes Reichl out of the blues; a decadent grilled cheese sandwich that accompanies a rare sighting in the woods around her home; a rhubarb sundae that signals the arrival of spring. Here, too, is Reichl's enlivening dialogue with her Twitter followers, who become her culinary supporters and lively confidants. Part cookbook, part memoir, part paean to the household gods, My Kitchen Year may be Ruth Reichl's most stirring book yet--one that reveals a refreshingly vulnerable side of the world's most famous food editor as she shares treasured recipes to be returned to again and again and again. Praise for My Kitchen Year Ruth is one of our greatest storytellers today, which you will feel from the moment you open this book and begin to read: No one writes as warmly and engagingly about the all-important intersection of food, life, love, and loss. This book is a lyrical and deeply intimate journey told through recipes, as only Ruth can do.--Alice Waters What will send this book to the top of bestseller lists is the lovely way Reichl describes how dishes come together, like the Greek chicken soup with lemon and egg known as avgolemono, and her talent for assembling a collection of recipes her legions of former Gourmet fans will want to make themselves.--The Washington Post The recipes make for lovely reading, full of Reichl's elemental wisdom. . . . In the best way possible, My Kitchen Year is cozy, the reading equivalent of curling up next to a fire with a glass of red wine and perhaps the scent of bread in the oven wafting over.--Vogue If anyone can convince us that a dessert, plus two more fabulous dishes, can turn a crummy day around, it's culinary writer Ruth Reichl, who knows firsthand just how powerful food can be.--O: The Oprah Magazine The voice is pure Reichl in a way that makes the reader yearn for a house in the country with a pantry full of staples. . . . And as she finds solace through cooking, we find comfort too.--Eater (Fall 2015's Best Cookbooks)

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

7. Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in the Company of Cats, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - The world knows Julia Child as the charismatic woman who brought French cuisine to America and became a TV sensation, but there's one aspect of her life that's not so familiar. Soon after the Childs arrived in Paris in 1948, a French cat appeared on their doorstep, and Julia recalled, Our domestic circle was completed. Minette captured Julia's heart, igniting a lifelong passion for cats equaled only by her love of food and her husband, Paul. All the cherished feline companions who shared Julia's life--in Paris, Provence, and finally California--reminded her of that magical time in Paris when her life changed forever. From Julia's and Paul's letters and original interviews with those who knew her best, Patricia Barey and Therese Burson have gathered fresh stories and images that offer a delightfully intimate view of a beloved icon. Praise for Julia's Cats A cat-centric biography of Julia Child? Why not? The back book jacket quotes Child herself as saying, 'Really, the more I cook, the more I like to cook. To think that it has taken me 40 yrs. to find my true creative hobby and passion (cat and husb. excepted).' This book ably braids these three strands of Child's life. The many feline fanciers out there will surely enjoy the photographs of the cats, many taken by her husband, Paul Child. --Chicago Tribune It's clear that all the cats that passed through her life gave her joy and comfort, probably in ways that food and even Paul could not. Having that perspective of this grande dame makes her seem all the more human and wonderfully admirable to me. --Epicurious This compact, entertaining read is filled with personal photos and letters that document the role cats played in Julia's life as she moved from Paris to Provence, Cambridge to California. --Shelf Awareness

Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in the Company of Cats, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

8. The Book of Eating: Adventures in Professional Gluttony, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

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The Book of Eating: Adventures in Professional Gluttony, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

9. My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes), Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

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My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes), Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

10. Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Trailblazing food writer and beloved restaurant critic Ruth Reichl took the job (and the risk) of a lifetime when she entered the high-stakes world of magazine publishing. Now, for the first time, she chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet. A must for any food lover . . . Reichl is a warm, intimate writer. She peels back the curtain to a glamorous time of magazine-making. You'll tear through this memoir.--Refinery29 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Real Simple - Good Housekeeping - Town & Country When Cond Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone's boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl's leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media--the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down. Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams--even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be. Praise for Save Me the Plums Poignant and hilarious . . . simply delicious . . . Each serving of magazine folklore is worth savoring. In fact, Reichl's story is juicier than a Peter Luger porterhouse. Dig in.--The New York Times Book Review In this smart, touching, and dishy memoir . . . Ruth Reichl recalls her years at the helm of Gourmet magazine with clear eyes, a sense of humor, and some very appealing recipes.--Town & Country If you haven't picked up food writing queen Ruth Reichl's new book, Save Me the Plums, I highly recommend you fix that problem. . . . Reichl is in top form and ready to dish, with every chapter seeming like a dedicated behind-the-scenes documentary on its own.--Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle

Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, Pre-Owned (Paperback)