When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, with no inclination to be anyone's boss. Yet Reichl had read Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? Complete with recipes, this is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world worried about losing her soul, and coming to terms with being in charge...

BONUS: This edition contains a Comfort Me with Apples discussion guide and an excerpt from Ruth Reichl's Delicious!
In this delightful sequel to her bestseller Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl returns with more tales of love, life, and marvelous meals. Comfort Me with Apples picks up Reichl’s story in 1978, when she puts down her chef’s toque and embarks on a career as a restaurant critic. Her pursuit of good...

The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough
Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and always hungry. His relationship with eating was difficult and his struggle with it began early. When named the restaurant critic for The New York Times in 2004, he knew he would be performing one of the most watched tasks in the epicurean universe....

The editor-in-chief of "Gourmet," a former restaurant critic at the The New York times, recounts her visits to some of the world's most acclaimed restaurants, both as herself and as an anonymous diner in disguise, to offer insight into the differences in her dining experiences.

"When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, she vowed always to support him, to work with him to make their hopes and dreams real. She evinced enthusiasm about Brandon's enthusiasms: building a violin, building a boat, and opening an ice cream store--none of which came to pass. So when Brandon started making plans to open a pizza restaurant, Molly felt sure that the restaurant would join the list of Brandon's abandoned projects. When she finally...

Chronicles the mother-daughter relationship of culinary author Ruth Reichl, now editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, and her late mother, Miriam. Miriam Brudno, who bowed to societal and familial pressure to become a wife and a mother over pursuing a fulfilling career, cheered her daughter on and pointed out that Ruth had an obligation, both to herself and to her mother, to use her life well.

Before James Oseland was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the California suburbs. Diving headfirst into the churning mayhem of punk, he renamed himself Jimmy Neurosis and journeyed into a vibrant underground world of visionary musicians and artists. With humor and verve, Oseland brings to life the effervescent cocktail of music, art, drugs, and sexual adventure that characterized the end of the seventies. Through his...

The stunning and long-awaited memoir from the beloved founder of the James Beard Award-winning website Leite's Culinaria--a candid, courageous, and at times laugh-out-loud funny story of family, food, mental illness, and sexual identity.

"A food critic chronicles four years spent traveling with renowned chef Rene Redzepi in search of the most tantalizing flavors the world has to offer. Hungry is a book about not only the hunger for food, but for risk, for reinvention, for creative breakthroughs, and for connection. Feeling stuck in his work and home life, writer Jeff Gordinier happened into a fateful meeting with Danish chef Rene Redzepi, whose restaurant, Noma, has been called the...

THE GRIT AND GLORY OF RESTAURANT LIFE, AS TOLD BY A SURVIVOR OF KITCHENS ACROSS AMERICA. Cooking Dirty is a rollicking account of life "on the line" in the restaurants, far from culinary school, cable TV, and the Michelin Guide-where most of us eat out most of the time. It takes the kitchen memoir to a rough and reckless place. From his first job scraping trays at a pizzeria at age fifteen, Jason Sheehan worked on the line at all kinds of restaurants:...