Friday Food Writers: Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron’s writing on food—well, Norah Ephron’s writing on anything, really, but since this is Friday Food Writers…—is hilarious. I’m not sure if it’s the slight touch of neurotic energy or the manic pacing or the sense that if you went to a dinner party at her house the best place to be would be [...]
Friday Food Writers: Frank O'Hara (redux)
Frank O’Hara made an appearance in Friday Food Writers last June, but somehow today as I sit at my desk and spring is busting out all over New York and people are grabbing sandwiches and iced coffee and lemonade and cookies and all manner of things to eat outside in the sunshine, I can’t think [...]
Friday Food Writers, Snow Edition: Wallace Stevens
It’s snowing again here in New York and though I’ve certainly been thinking about food—what should we bake, what soup should we eat when we come in from sledding, what chocolate should we melt for hot cocoa and will The Cheese-Hater eat a squishy marshmallow—mostly, I’m thinking about snow. I love snow, and while I [...]
Friday Food Writers: John McPhee
Long before there was Kitchen Confidential, or Bill Buford in the kitchen at Babbo, or me in the kitchen at applewood, for that matter, there was John McPhee’s brilliant essay about a restaurant’s owner-chefs and its kitchen, “Brigade de Cuisine.” Looking back, this may be the essay that, when I I first read it some [...]
Friday Food Writers: Raymond Chandler
I know. Raymond Chandler? The closest I usually come to connecting him with food is the term “hard-boiled,” and in his context it never has to do with eggs. However, I am in the throes of a Chandler obsession thanks to a very good Christmas gift. When I’m not working or trying to convince The [...]
Friday Food Writers: Derek Walcott
As some of you may know, when I’m not writing prose about food and other topics or trying to convince The Cheese-Hater to taste a piece of cheddar, I write poems. I went to graduate school what now seems like a thousand years ago at Boston University, where I studied with Derek Walcott. And though [...]
Brillat-Savarin, Guiltless Gourmet
My latest Paper Palate column is out, in print and online, in Bookforum. It’s about Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (okay, I confess: when I used him for a Friday Food writers a while back it was kind of cheating since I was actually dipping into The Physiology of Taste for the column. But it’s so good!). [...]
Friday Food Writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’m in a sort of zany mood, so I’m looking beyond the usual suspects for today’s post. And who zanier, really, than Fitzgerald (at least in his Zelda/speakeasies/jazz age moments)? The below is taken from The Crack-Up, one of my absolute favorite books. First published in 1945, it’s a collection of fragments and miscellany and [...]
Friday Food Writers: Brillat-Savarin
An oldie but goodie today on the occasion of a new edition of Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin‘s The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, translated by M.F. K. Fisher and with a new introduction by Bill Buford, from Everyman’s Library. This book has never been out of print since it was first published in 1825, [...]
Friday Food Writers: Pablo Neruda
Aaaannnnddd…..I’m back! I’m finding it hard to keep up with the blog in these weird transitional days between summer and autumn. I have a lot of work to do and The Cheese-Hater hasn’t started school yet, which makes blogging challenging. Still, the light on the trees in the park across from my house has that [...]
