Showing titles in Culinary

How does a nice Italian boy from Queens turn his passion for food and wine into a nationwide empire? In his intrepid, irreverent, and terrifically entertaining memoir, Restaurant Man, Joe Bastianich charts his remarkable culinary journey from his parents’ neighborhood eatery to becoming one of the country’s most successful restaurateurs, along with his superstar chef partners: his mother, Lidia Bastianich, and Mario Batali.

After 25 years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', Chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the 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, as shocking as they are funny.

When it opened a decade ago, the acclaimed Los Angeles speakeasy The Varnish - owned, designed, and managed by award-winning cocktail aficionado Eric Alperin - quickly became the stylish standard bearer for modern bars. Unvarnished is a candid, voice-driven, no-holds-barred look at the workings of a bar, and the foundation of The Varnish’s success: attention to hospitality and an abiding belief in the nobility of service.

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.

Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery.

From the humble hotplate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Hilarious, personal, and full of Colwin’s hard-won expertise, Home Cooking will speak to the heart of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover.

"I'll never forget that night. It was like a romance novel, an old Broadway musical, and a John Wayne western rolled into one. Out for a quick drink with friends, I wasn't looking to meet anyone, let alone a tall, rugged cowboy who lived on a cattle ranch miles away from my cultured, corporate hometown. But before I knew it, I'd been struck with a lightning bolt... and I was completely powerless to stop it."

In this dual memoir, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano take turns telling how they went from tentative business partners to dear friends while turning a dilapidated formerly segregated Greyhound bus station into The Grey, now one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Recounting the trying process of building their restaurant business, they examine their most painful and joyous times, revealing how they came to understand their differences, recognize their biases, and continuously challenge themselves and each other to be better.

In this entertaining, informative, and thoroughly unconventional wine guide, award-winning sommelier, winemaker, and wine educator André Mack presents listeners with the 99 bottles that have most impacted his life. Instead of just pairing wines with foods, Mack pairs practical information with personal stories, offering up recommendations alongside reflections on being one of the only African-Americans to ever work at the top level of the American wine industry. The 99 bottles range from highly accessible commercial wines to the most rarefied Bordeaux....

Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary women, all immigrants, who left an indelible mark on the way Americans eat today. Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.

Forever a girl obsessed with all things French, sweet freak Amy Thomas landed a gig as rich as the purest dark chocolate: leave Manhattan for Paris to write ad copy for Louis Vuitton. Working on the Champs-Élysées, strolling the charming streets, and exploring the best patisseries and boulangeries, Amy marveled at the magnificence of the City of Light. But does falling in love with one city mean turning your back on another? As much as Amy adored Paris, there was part of her that felt like a humble chocolate chip cookie....

Eddie Huang is the 30-year-old proprietor of Baohaus - the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night - and one of the food world’s brightest and most controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own. Funny, raw, and moving, and told in an irrepressibly alive and original voice, Fresh Off the Boat recasts the immigrant’s story for the 21st century.

Before Chef Aaron Sanchez rose to fame on shows like MasterChef and Chopped, he was a restless Mexican-American son, raised by a fiercely determined and talented woman who was a successful chef and restaurateur in her own right. In this memoir, Sanchez delves into his formative years with remarkable candor, injecting his story with adrenaline and revealing how he fell in love with cooking and started a career in the fast-paced culinary world.

From awkward schoolgirl to caterer to the stars, Mary Giuliani weaves together a collection of hilarious memories, from professional growing pains to her long journey to motherhood, never losing her sense of humor and her love for everyone's favorite party food, pigs in a blanket.

By the time he was 27 years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened - and closed - one of the most talked-about restaurants in America. He had launched his own catering company with $20,000 that he made from selling candy on the subway, yet he’d been told he would never make it on television because his cooking wasn’t “Southern” enough. In this inspiring memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age.

In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes.

Tom Colicchio cooked his first recipe at 13 years old—a stuffed eggplant from an issue of Cuisine magazine that he picked up out of boredom—and it changed his life. Now for the first time ever, Tom recounts the extraordinary personal journey that brought him from his working-class Italian background in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to the award-winning kitchens of New York City’s best restaurants, to the set of Top Chef and the stage of the Emmy Awards.

Restaurant kitchens have long been dominated by men, but, as of late, there has been an explosion of interest in the many women chefs who are revolutionizing the culinary game. And, alongside that interest, an accompanying appetite for smart, well-crafted culinary memoirs by female trailblazers in food. Nearly 70 years earlier, there was Alice.

Here is the delicious life of one of the most beloved figures in 20th-century American culture. With a swooping voice, an incredible sense of humor, and a passion for good food, Julia Child ushered in the nation's culinary renaissance.

Toronto restaurateur Jen Agg, the woman behind the popular The Black Hoof, Cocktail Bar, Rhum Corner, and Agrikol restaurants, is known for her frank, crystal-sharp, and often hilarious observations and ideas on the restaurant industry and the world around her. I Hear She's a Real B*tch, her first book, is caustic yet intimate and wryly observant - an unforgettable glimpse into the life of one of the most interesting, smart, trail-blazing voices of this moment.