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27 New Recommended Food Books, from Cookbooks to Memoirs
Margaret Eby is a writer, editor, and recipe developer who splits her time between Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Check out her picks, and be sure to add the books that pique your interest to your Want to Read shelf!
As a food writer and editor, recipe cross-tester and developer, and the kind of friend who starts asking about your dinner plans before lunch, you might think that by the time it comes to settling down with a book after hours, I might be tired of reading about food. The truth is that I can’t get enough books about food in my life.
That doesn’t just mean cookbooks—though I have been known to fall asleep while leafing through a particularly lovely volume. The world of food books is a vast one, from novels set amid the tumultuous service of high-end restaurants like Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter to memoirs that weave in simple recipes and preparations like Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking to cookbooks that are really more manifestos and explainers on how to approach food, like Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat.
It seems cliché to say, but it’s true that food is one of the few great unifiers that we have as a human population. Every single person interacts with food in some way every single day. When the subject of food books comes up, it’s often in the realm of the instructional or the rarefied, but my favorite kind of books focus on what my friend Chef Ari Miller calls “relational cuisine,” the way that food connects us inextricably to other people.
At a restaurant, your food is made by other skilled hands, and at home, the produce you buy was grown, packaged, shipped, and sold by a chain of people. The stories behind how food gets from its origins to your plate, and the vast number of influences behind every single element of it, are endless, and some of the best food books go on deep dives on how the sausage gets made, both literally and figuratively. Adam Chandler’s Drive-Thru Dreams is one of those, an exploration of the origins of fast food chains in America, and Nik Sharma’s The Flavor Equation is another, a look at the chemical and biological processes that make food function the way it does.
We live in a time of unbelievable riches when it comes to food books, so narrowing them down to a handful of excellent examples is a challenge. But here are the books from the past five years that I find myself coming back to, recommending, and dwelling on, the stories that have shaped the way I’ve thought about food in the past half decade or so.
You might be most familiar with Ruby Tandoh as a contestant on The Great British Bake-Off, but in the years since she appeared on the show in 2013, Tandoh has become one of the most thoughtful food writers in the U.K. Her purview is how we think about nourishing ourselves and our bodies, and how to appreciate and celebrate food rather than worrying about its calorie content. Eat Up Is a beautiful memoir-manifesto about food and feelings.
A searing memoir about opening—and then having to close—an acclaimed restaurant while still in his 20s, Onwuachi’s book looks at the interconnected forces of race and class in the restaurant industry, marrying his keen observations of restaurant life with his lifelong enchantment with cooking.
James Beard is one of the most famous names in the cooking world, but less well-known is the story of his personal life. In this biography, John Birdsall tells the story of Beard as not just a culinary giant but a queer man forced to conceal his homosexuality from the world. It’s a riveting, finely wrought biography that reinjects humanity into a larger-than-life cultural figure.
A pastry chef who helped shape some of the South’s banner restaurants, Donovan records her time in the back of kitchens fighting to get the same recognition that her male counterparts so easily attain. In Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, Donovan reclaims her narrative with flair, producing a memoir that is heartfelt and passionate.
This is one of the books that I send anyone whose interest in food has been piqued, a kind of modern, conversational culinary textbook. Nosrat, a former cook at Alice Waters’s famed Bay area restaurant Chez Panisse, walks you through the four titular elements with care and warmth, attempting to impart the knowledge that she built over years on the line. It’s an essential book for anyone who wants to learn the building blocks of a dish, to move beyond following recipes into building their own flavors.
A lively compilation of essays, conversations, interviews, and reporting, Women on Food is a look at gender in the world of fine dining and in home cooking. It’s an anthology that explores the way that cooking has been categorized as women’s work, while fine dining is still the purview of male chefs, and how that has changed—or not—in the past two decades.
Ruth Reichl was The New York Times restaurant critic for 12 years, and her memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, is what I always point to when people ask what it’s like to review restaurants. This entry is about her decade as the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, which shuttered in 2009 to the dismay of its devoted fans, and an intriguing look at the way the world of food media has shifted since the late ’90s.
Dirt: Adventures, with Family, in the Kitchens of Lyon, Looking for the Origins of French Cooking
by Bill Buford
by Bill Buford
Investigative journalist Bill Buford has written about catfish noodlers and soccer hooligans, but some of his most searing writing has been about learning the ins and outs of a professional kitchen. In Dirt, Buford uproots his family to move to France for five years in order to learn the French way of cooking, from apprenticing at a bakery to attending culinary school.
The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained in More Than 100 Essential Recipes
by Nik Sharma
by Nik Sharma
A molecular biologist turned cookbook writer and food blogger, Nik Sharma explains the science behind flavor. It has many excellent recipes, but it’s not exactly a cookbook, nor is it a textbook, but a warm, friendly explanation of what chemical and biological reactions go into every bite.
Ever wonder how fast food took over the highways of America? In Adam Chandler’s fascinating exploration of the chains that dole out millions of meals to Americans every day. It’s a fun pop history book, taking on chains from White Castle to Wendy’s.
Yes, Midnight Chicken includes recipes, but it’s really more of a manifesto about the happiness that comes from cooking than a cookbook. Risbridger writes about moments in the kitchen as worth savoring, rather than simply steps along the way to a meal.
Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World
by Jeff Gordinier
by Jeff Gordinier
In Hungry, food writer and critic Jeff Gordinier chronicles four years spent traveling, cooking, and talking about food with the world-renowned chef of Noma, Rene Redzepi. It’s a contemplation not just about cooking, but also about human ingenuity and the hunt for a life full of creativity and discovery.
Tipton-Martin’s cookbook is what it sounds like: a celebration of 200 years of African American ingenuity and grace in the kitchen. It’s not a historical cookbook, though—Tipton-Martin lifts up Black American cuisine in all its variety.
Bryant Terry, the author of Vegetable Kingdom and a well-established social justice advocate in the food world, brings together a huge number of cooks, chefs, writers, and artists across the African diaspora in Black Food. It’s a beautiful collection of recipes, essays, and illustrations, all bringing different perspectives to the idea of what Black food means.
Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
by Jonathan Kauffman
by Jonathan Kauffman
Ever wonder how tofu went from a staple of East Asian cooking to a fixture in grocery stores? Hippie Food is a chronicle of how counterculture communities made certain dishes and ingredients more mainstream.
After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico, chef and activist José Andrés brought a small team to the island with the goal of feeding as many people as he could. This book is the story of how a network of community kitchens ended up dishing out 100,000 hot meals a day, confronting the systemic failures that led to such an undertaking being necessary in the first place.
Southern food historian John T. Edge takes a look at how the cuisine of the modern South—from homemade biscuits to Kentucky Fried Chicken—came to define the region. A rollicking, absorbing history of many classic Southern dishes and the personalities that marketed them to the rest of the country.
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
by Michael W. Twitty
by Michael W. Twitty
This James Beard award-winning book looks at Southern cuisine from the Old South and its roots in enslaved people, from West Africa and their descendants. Michael W. Twitty traces his own family history along the way, interweaving his personal perspective with deep research.
In this combination memoir and odyssey, chef Edward Lee sets out to understand the roots of American cuisine through its immigrant communities. For those who love Anthony Bourdain, Lee’s book is a must-read.
Catering is an undersung, under-respected corner of the food world, but as brothers, chefs, and cowriters Matt Lee and Ted Lee explain, it’s a fascinating enterprise. Named after the large metal contraption that keeps food warm, Hot Box is a deeply entertaining and fascinating look at what happens in catering kitchens. You'll never look at passed appetizers the same way again.
The singer and songwriter from Japanese Breakfast wrote this beautiful memoir about losing her mother. It’s also an exploration of her connection to her Korean roots and the way that seemingly mundane moments, like shopping in H Mart, are a prism for a whole chain of life experiences.
Actor Stanley Tucci has had a lifelong obsession with food, as any follower of his TV show knows. In Taste, Tucci intertwines his life behind the camera with his life in and out of kitchens, an exploration of two passions that have driven him.
Lara Lee’s gorgeous Indonesian cookbook Coconut & Sambal is one I have fallen asleep leafing through multiple times, dreaming about what delicious things I can make for the next day’s dinner. It’s a useful book, but it’s also a tender letter to her roots and a vivid introduction to Indonesian cooking for the uninitiated.
An exploration of the Sri Lankan diaspora through dishes, Shanmugalingam is another cookbook that I leave out on my coffee table just to leaf through and be inspired. It’s a joy to read and cook from, and a portal in Shanmugalingam’s experience as a Sri Lankan in London.
A posthumous memoir by the late, much beloved food traveler and chef Anthony Bourdain, pieced together by his longtime assistant and collaborator Laurie Woolever, this is a must have for any fan of Bourdain. It’s partially his own words and partially supporting essays by Bourdain’s friends and colleagues—a beautiful remembrance of a life animated by profound curiosity.
In this combination collection of essays and recipes, Kate Lebo devotes a chapter to each of 26 fruits, examining their qualities and using them as a lens to explore larger food and gardening culture.
If you’ve ever wondered how your groceries get from their origins to the shelves of your local supermarket, Lorr’s book is a must read. It looks into the systems that deliver goods to consumers and where and how they came to be, bringing much-needed transparency to an intentionally opaque industry.
Have a tasty food book to recommend? Share it with your fellow readers in the comments below!
And be sure to check out more recent articles.
And be sure to check out more recent articles.
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Kelly
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Dec 13, 2022 12:57AM
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle! Also The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, blanking on the author but it’s all about ElBulli.
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This is a fab list, thank you. I've ordered 6 from your list!
Diverse and interesting titles. One of the better curated lists I've seen as of late.
Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda HesserHidden Kitchens, Stories, Recipes and More from NPR’s The Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson
Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More by Fatima Ali
MFK Fischer -- pretty much anything she penned is a worthy addition
Sue wrote: "So many cookery books in a time of poverty!"People aren't allowed to learn how to make the most of the ingredients they have then?
Sue wrote: "So many cookery books in a time of poverty!"What do you mean?
