Culinary Biography

Five years ago, Lonnae O’Neal grabbed some seeds for her backyard garden, including seeds for Bibb lettuce. She had no idea how deeply she’d wind up digging, or how far she would travel. Lonnae’s fourth great-grandmother, Keziah, was enslaved by the Kentucky Bibb family, including John Bigger Bibb, who developed the Bibb lettuce strain, which remains a culinary darling more than 150 years later.

This is the story of a man, a cow, and a question: What am I eating? After realizing he knows more about the television on his wall than the food on his plate, award-winning TV producer and amateur chef Jared Stone buys 420 pounds of beef directly from a rancher and embarks on a hilarious and inspiring culinary adventure. With the help of an incredibly supportive wife and a cadre of highly amused friends, Jared offers a glimpse at one man's family as they try to learn about their food and ask themselves what's really for dinner.

The author of The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South tells his own story this time. Of growing up in a house wrecked by violence and a South haunted by racism. And of how his search for home led him to find escape and belonging through food. Until he realizes that gathering at table is just one small step toward reckoning.

Camas Davis was at an unhappy crossroads. A longtime magazine writer and editor in the food world, she'd returned to her home state of Oregon with her boyfriend from New York City to take an appealing job at a Portland lifestyle magazine. But neither job nor boyfriend delivered on her dreams, and in the span of a year, Davis was unemployed and on her own. Disillusioned by the years she’d spent mediating the lives of others for a living, she had no idea what to do next. She did know one thing: She no longer wanted to write about the real thing; she wanted to be the real thing.

Fans of Augusten Burroughs and Jo Ann Beard will enjoy this kaleidoscopic, universal memoir in which Elissa Altman explores the tradition, religion, family expectations, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her Queens, New York, childhood. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1970s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities. It is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite and in honor to your past.

Last Call at Coogan’s by Jon Michaud tells the story of this beloved saloon, from the challenging years of the late 80's and early 90's, when Washington Heights suffered from the highest crime rate in the city, to the 2010’s, when gentrification pushed out longtime residents and nearly closed Coogan's itself; only a massive community mobilization led by superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda and local politicians kept the doors open.

Issu d'une famille pauvre, avec un père violent, Anthony se retrouve très jeune à la rue. Pour autant, il refuse de tomber dans la victimisation et reste persuadé que n'importe qui peut réussir en respectant des valeurs essentielles : travail, passion, ambition, détermination, résilience. En quelques années seulement, il devient multimillionnaire, investisseur dans plus de 40 start-up et fondateur de Feed., une marque de nutrition pour tous les moments de la journée, valorisée à des dizaines de millions d'euros.

Feasting her way through an Italian honeymoon, Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. Who really invented the noodle? she wondered, like many before her. But also: How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe - and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations?

When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain’s life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s long-time assistant and confidante, interviewed nearly a hundred of the people who shared Tony’s orbit.

Peter Gethers wants to give his aging mother a very personal and perhaps final gift: a spectacular feast featuring all her favorite dishes. The problem is, although he was raised to love food and wine he doesn't really know how to cook. So he embarks upon an often hilarious and always touching culinary journey that will ultimately allow him to bring his mother's friends and loved ones to the table one last time.

Aujourd'hui, chaque entreprise peut faire le choix de l'hospitalité. Ce recueil de leçons sur le service et le leadership, apprises au cours d'une carrière dans l'hôtellerie, célèbre le seul principe qui ne sera jamais démodé : le désir humain d'être pris en charge. Dans cet aperçu des coulisses du monde de la restauration, L'hospitalité déraisonnable nous montre comment trouver de la magie dans ce que nous faisons - pour nous-mêmes, pour les personnes avec lesquelles nous travaillons et pour celles que nous écoutons.

Chefs at top restaurants face competing pressures to deliver complex and creative dishes, and navigate market forces to run a profitable business in an industry with exceptionally high costs and low profit margins. Creating a distinctive and original culinary style allows them to stand out in the market, but making the familiar food that many customers want ensures that they can stay in business.

During a 30-year boom period in France between the end of World War II and the 1974 oil crisis, Paris was not only the world's most delicious, stylish, and exciting tourist destination; it was also the world capital of gastronomic genius and innovation. The Gourmands' Way explores the lives and writings of six Americans who chronicled the food and wine of this era, paying particular attention to their individual struggles as writers, to their life circumstances, and to their particular genius at sharing awareness of French food with mainstream American audiences.

When they first meet, John, a dashing European, a Latvian refugee, a physics PhD, is hoping to settle down. Michaele, a fast-talking American college student, is hungry for an independent life as a writer and historian. When they meet again some years later, Michaele is ready. Or so she thinks. And opposites attract, right?

Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head on. Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish.

Building Tiff’s Treats has been a love story unlike any other for these husband-and-wife entrepreneurs who began a two-person operation from their college apartment and grew it into a business that employs thousands and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Their highly anticipated debut book, It’s Not Just Cookies: Stories & Recipes from the Tiff’s Treats Kitchen, invites listeners to experience just how Tiffany standing Leon up on a date led to the pair creating an on-demand, baked-to-order, warm cookie delivery brand - the first of its kind.

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easily with food - he didn't have to think, he just ate. But food doesn't exist in a vacuum; there's the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount's chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell and, consequently, his taste buds. So while he's always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount's signature style.

In Italy, five-star restaurants and celebrity chefs may seem, on the surface, a part of the landscape. In reality, the restaurant industry is as tough, cutthroat, and unforgiving as anywhere else in the world - sometimes even colluding with the shady world of organized crime. The powerful voice of Leonardo Lucarelli takes us through the underbelly of Italy's restaurant world.

Everyone has an opinion about Pino Luongo. To Tony Bourdain, he was the notorious Pino Noir, the shadowy kingpin of a restaurant empire. To Manhattanites, he was either the savior or the scourge of the city's dining scene. To the many fans of his cookbooks, he was the herald of Tuscan cuisine. In Dirty Dishes, Luongo emerges to tell his side of the story. And its quite a story: After an idyllic (and well-fed) childhood in Tuscany, Luongo came to New York as an actor, and, after quickly washing out, fell into the restaurant business....

No Lucks Given, by Chef Brother Luck, is a powerful reflection on the most vital parts of the human experience: identity, community, and work. Packed with pain, passion, honor, and hope, No Lucks Given is an encouragement to everyone who has ever doubted themselves or God, whether they grew up on the streets or not—life is hard, but there is hope.