Readers, with no events to attend or sports practices keeping us busy, family dinners have become a major thing in our house. I’m not talking Downton Abbey-style gowns and dinner jackets here, but our nightly meal has certainly become much more of an event than it was during pre-quarantine times.
As someone who loves to cook and spend time in the kitchen, I’ve appreciated the nudge to slow down while preparing and enjoying our meals. My cookbooks are getting lots of love lately as we revisit favorite recipes and find new ones to try.
I’m also finding fresh inspiration in one of my favorite literary genres: food memoir. Food is full of stories, from the family history behind a handed-down dish to juicy kitchen drama at a high-end restaurant to a culture’s roots and traditions.
Even if you don’t love to cook, perhaps you love to eat, and most certainly you enjoy a great story, well-told. Today’s list contains food memoirs from chefs, home-cooks, and food critics.
Perhaps one of these titles will inspire you to cook up a feast—or savor some delicious takeout. Much like your favorite meal, these food memoirs are sure to entertain, inspire, and comfort.
Some links (including all Amazon links) are affiliate links. More details here.
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow
The Sweet Life In Paris: Delicious Adventures In The World’s Most Perplexing City
From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home
Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India
My Life in France
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Kitchen Confidential
Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat
Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris
The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart
My Berlin Kitchen
The Language of Baklava: A Memoir
Yes, Chef: A Memoir
The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir
A Homemade Life
Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness
Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
What favorite food memoirs would you add to this list?
119 comments
A lot of these books sound really interesting! I didn’t even know food memoirs were a thing. I’m not a big fan of cooking but I do love trying new foods.
The Cooking Gene by Michael W Twitty is beautifully written. I highly recommend it to anyone.
Dinner: A Love Story would be one of my picks. It’s probably shelved with cookbooks, but the essays before the recipes makes the whole thing read more like a memoir. The author had two kids in less than two years, and I read it for the first time when my two-under-two set were still really little, and I completely related to everything she said about how two babies totally upends your coooking and eating routines. I loved it, and have made her pizza crust recipe nearly every Saturday night for 6 or 7 years.
Ah! My favourite niche non-fiction genre: the food memoir! There are so many on here that I’ve read and enjoyed – plus a few new discoveries. A couple that I’ve loved are ‘Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone’ edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, ‘The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School’ by Kathleen Flinn, ‘A Half Baked Idea: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu’ by Olivia Potts, ‘Adventures of a Terribly Greedy Girl: A memoir of food, family, film and fashion’ by Kay Plunkett-Hogge. There are so many more – both to read and discover. A great list!
One of my favorite genres. My TBR pile for my summer vacation just got a little bigger.
Julia and Julie, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti, The Pleasure of Cooking for One, My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story.
While not a memoir, but fiction, my favorite Ruth Reichl book is “Delicious”. I reread this often and I love it anew each time!
I loved this novel, too!
Yes! It was my selection for our book club, ages ago.
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butterini
I also really enjoyed The Sharper your Knife the Less You Cry and Pancakes in Paris!
Love, love, love The Sharper the Knife!
I just read The Sharper Your Knife on your recommendation and LOVED it! Thanks so much!
Oooh, one my favorite genres – thanks for some new titles to add to my TBR! A few others: Delancey by Molly Wizenberg; Love in a Tuscan Kitchen by Sheryl Ness; Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser; We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time by José Andrés; Love, Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi; The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacqués Pepin. I could keep going but I’ll stop! Wait, one more, My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes that Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl. Looking forward to seeing more recommendations!
I loved “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser. She also wrote one about her year working as a chef at a French chateau called “The Cook and the Gardener”, which is a memoir/cookbook mashup. Other cookbooks that are part memoirs that I love are “How to Celebrate Everything” and “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea”.
Also loved Amanda Hesser’s Cook and Gardener – reread it with the seasons and cook from it often!
I love Ruth Reichl books!
A brand new food memoir is Almost Home by Fanny Singer about growing up with her mother, a chef and restaurant owner in Berkeley.
Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist!
Bread and Wine is my recommendation as well! I love that book.
Yes, I LOVE this one!
Yes! Bread and Wine is my favorite too! I have two quotes from this book painted on canvas hanging in my dining room. And the bacon wrapped dates recipe is a go to appetizer.
I love this one, too!
The Feast Nearby is my favorite. It is the book that enticed me to read food memoirs. Now, I’m hooked! I’ve read most of the above, but can’t wait to try a few I haven’t.
Give a Girl A Knife: A memoir
by Amy Thielen
Thank you for this list. I love this genre , have read most , discovered new ones and more again from the comment section. Am currently reading Dirt by Bill Burford.
Yay for food memoirs! Love, love some on this list, and the others are being added to my to-read pile post-haste!
David Lebovitz’s Drinking French is my new favorite. It shares his experience of the French café culture that he loves, combining stories of his trips to various spirit makers to learn their histories with delicious cocktail and other café drink recipes. In addition, during recent weeks, David has been sharing his time on Instagram demonstrating the recipes and interviewing the spirit makers live. A real bonus!
I adore David Lebovitz and didn’t know he had a new one! Thanks for sharing it here.
I suggest More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin; Voracious by Cara Nicoletti; Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee. I have read most of the ones you list, but not all and I am also a big fan of food memoirs.
I love Shauna Niequist’s Bread and Wine! Her style of writing and recipes are incredible. This book makes me want to sit at her table and just soak up her wisdom with a plate of Blueberry crisp and a glass of wine.
This is one of my favorite genres! I actually did a roundup post on it a few years ago, which I’ll link to below if anyone is interested.
Some recent favorites or new releases that I want to read soon include Always Home (written by the daughter of Alice Waters), Let Them Eat Pancakes, Everything Is Under Control. I also enjoyed Shauna Niequist’s Bread and Wine, though that has a definite religious slant to it.
So excited to add some of these titles to my list! I had heard of or already read many of them, but I’m really excited about the others!
https://www.toloveandtolearn.com/2018/03/07/14-books-for-the-foodie/
I love this genre and had read many of the books, but found some I haven’t. One to add from my list is Iliana Regan’s Burn the Place. The more modern version of Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter.
There are a lot of good fiction books set around food. How about that list next?
Additional books that could be added to the list are:
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes – This book includes recipes.
Let Them Eat Cake and Bon Appetit by Sandra Byrd – fun afternoon reads
The Baker’s Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan – novel set during WWII
I read another book where a NY journalist went to live in Paris and she made note and map of the patisseries around where she lived. She included the addresses and her favorite pastries at each. I can’t remember the title and I can’t find the book on my bookshelf. I must have loaned it out some time ago.
I read this book, too. It’s called “Paris My Sweet” by Amy Thomas. So mouth-watering!
I love this genre! One that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Kitchen Yarns by Ann Good. Another favorite is Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flynn.
I’ve heard great things about the MFK Fischer books. I need to look into them. Does anyone here enjoy them?
They are delightful.
I love Peter Mayle’s books – besides A Year in Provence, He’s written a memoir of traveling to food festivals throughout France and a book on bread baking.
For mostly fiction, I love A Literary Feast, Which contains short fiction and memoirs.
I read Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums – and it was phenomenal!!
Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher is a must for wine lovers.
My favorites listed above are Yes, Chef; Kitchen Confidential; and My Paris Life.
I want to read more by Anthony Gourds in, and I have Ruth Reichl in my Kindle sue.
Books, wine, and food–my favorites!
Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher is a must for wine lovers.
My favorites listed above are Yes, Chef; Kitchen Confidential; and The Sweet Life in Paris.
I want to read more by Anthony Gourds in, and I have Ruth Reichl in my Kindle sue.
Books, wine, and food–my favorites!
I’m not so interested in food and recipes as I am in good, enjoyable writing and a sense of place (read: France). Which of these 20 would you say fits the bill? I have enjoyed My Life in France, Julie and Julia, The Sweet Life in Paris, and savored every well-written word of Animal, Vegetable and Miracle, but did not relish Garlic and Sapphires or The Sharper Your Knife, they both fell flat for me. One set of books I would add to this list is from the delicious Elizabeth Bard, with her Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence. I went out and bought them after reading from the library.
Yes! I second Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence. Love this list!
I bought both of the Elizabeth Bard books, too. I’m not normally a rereader, but her books are exceptions.
Mastering the Art of French Eating would be a great one for you! Ann Mah is a great writer and I really enjoyed how she took me all over France in that book. Try it, you’ll like it!
I LOVED the Tembe Locke book! So beautifully written as both a memoir and a recipe book.
Me too! I just read it last week, and found it very thoughtful and hopeful, despite how sad the story is.
One of my favorite food memoirs is Anya von Bremzen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking.
Yes! It’s one of the very best! It’s subtitle: A Memoir of Food and Longing — says it all.
Omigosh this list is amazing. I read while simultaneously searched my local library online catalogue to place holds on all the titles that jumped out to me. Looks like it is going to be a tasty summer!
Bread and Wine by Shauna Neiquest. One of my all time favorite reads. It made me want to gather friends around our table and cook delicious meals as we share life together. Recipes included!
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese
Seconding this! This book is the antidote to the folks who read Animal Vegetable Miracle and get grand plans that they too shall grow all their own food and butcher their own meat. I was literally laughing out loud at the turkey and goat bits in Jennifer’s book.
The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater is a wonderful memoir of food and his life within a year. His food is wonderful but his writing is exquisite, volume one is my favourite. Also The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater is his celebration of Christmas starting some months early in preparation for the event. Beautiful reading, this is my bedtime reading every winter.
Oh yes Nigel Slater! Also re read Christmas Chronicles every year – beautiful book physically too, with gorgeous photos. His memoir Toast – a story of one boy’s hunger is wonderful too – was made into a lovely movie a few years ago. Another British wonder is Nigella Lawson – her books are mainly recipes but with lovely contextual asides and warm witty family anecdotes. I have all her books and she’s been beside me as I learned to cook over 20 years.
I’m so glad you suggested Nigel Slater’s writings; I love his Kitchen Chronicles and have read the first two multiple times! His Seville orange marmalade recipe IS THE BEST!
Thanks for a great list! I love cooking and just wrote a blog post featuring some of these, including Save Me the Plums & The Sweet Life in Paris! Now, the question is, which of these on your list to read first?
I would add Michael Ruhlman. Soul of a Chef got me started in this genre. Enjoyed a couple of his other books, too and the rest are on my TBR.
Thanks for the list! Adding a few that I haven’t read to my TBR!
I love Ruth Reichl’s books. I am sad that I never had a chance to read Gourmet Magazine when she was still the editor (and it still existed). I read two at the start of the pandemic and they were both great reads. The way that she writes has my mouth watering (and I am NOT an adventurous eater in real life), she just describes food SO well.
I’m excited to check out more books in this genre!
I, too, am a big Ruth Reichl fan. Her Tender At the Bone is a classic! The first chapter really sucks you in.
Possibly my favorite genre! I’ve read about half the books on this list and Kitchen Confidential was one of my favorites because I actually listened to it on audiobook, which was narrated by Anthony Bourdain. Another favorite that isn’t on the list is Spiced: A Pastry Chef’s True Stories of Trials by Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes on in the Kitchen by Dalia Jurgensen. That title is a huge mouthful!
I’m a huge fan of audiobooks because I can often do other things while I listen. My favorite thing is listening to books about food while I cook! Recently listened to Ruth Reichl’s Delicious! and that was such a fun one.
Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach. Love it!
What a fabulous list! I’ve read four of these listed and just added several to my WTR list. Memoirs are one of my favorite genres, and in the subcategory of food- a double win.
Two older books, but still well worth reading: Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes (turned into the 2003 movie starring Diane Lane), and a year in Provence, by Peter Mayle.
I love food memoirs & have a number of them on this list, and have had a couple others on my TBR list. Now I have more to add! Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is one of my absolute favorite books of all time. I also enjoy the writings of MK Fisher, especially when she writes about France.
GIVE A GIRL A KNIFE by Amy Thielen is super fascinating. It talks about her and her husband’s early years working in restaurants in NYC and then traveling around North America to eventually moving back to Northern Minnesota. She used to have a Food Network show called Heartland Table.
I have Thielen’s memoir on my shelves waiting to be read. I actually got it signed at an event she had in NE Mpls. Her cookbook The New Midwestern Table is a favorite of mine!
I am trying to figure out how to read all of these food memoirs without going broke.
Me too! 🙂
Love this list! I would add Kitchen Yarns by Ann Hood – excellent risotto recipe! Lucy Knisley’s Relish is a great memoir graphic novel style
Library? My library has most of them.
What a great list! One of my favorites was Bill Buford’s first book, Heat.
How about Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen and Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr.
I would add On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis. It is memoir of a young American couple who moved to Normandy France, bought and restored an old monastery to create a home and a cooking school. It is the story of learning French ways in the kitchen and in life, of rearing young children in a different culture, of making friends and finding one’s way. Recipes intersperse this lovely story.
I love On Rue Tatin – time for me to read it again
Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist is one of my favorite books. Remembering meals throughout her life that have made an impact on her. Really thought provoking!
I can’t express how much I loved this book!
Thank you for this list! I see some old favorites along with several new to me titles that look interesting.
All of Ruth Reichl’s books are fantastic. “My Kitchen Year” is filled with gorgeous pictures and recipes.
In the vein of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is “Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food” by Megan Kimble. Very interesting about how our food is processed. Spoiler alert: in one chapter, Megan decides to process her own meat, from the live animal to her table.
I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the title of the second book you mention sounded fascinating…until I saw your alert. I may be too squeamish to read it, but good to know of it, thanks!
If you want something substantially less graphic, try Make the Bread Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese! She decided to try and make everything by scratch, then calculate whether the storebought version or homemade version was cheaper, tasted better, and whether from scratch was worth the effort. She has a really funny bit about it being a rite of passage for food writers nowadays to stare down their future chicken dinner and take it’s own life to meditate on the responsibility of being a meat eater…and she just kinda butchers a chicken and thinks “yep, nothing profound here, I am eating a bird like I ate thousands of birds before.” Really funny! And the recipes in it are great!
This is one of my favorite genres. I’ve read several of these, but I see quite a few I need to get to. Not exactly food memoir, but I think Peter Mayle’s books about living in Provence are excellent. His descriptions of food and wine there always makes me hungry.
What a great subject – especially when we are all cooking more than before. My favorites are: Laurie Colwin’s “Home in the Kitchen”, “The Pleasures of Cooking for One” by Judith Jones with recipes that can always be expanded and “Potluck at Midnight Farm” by Tamara Weiss – full of fun and recipes.
Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard is my absolute favourite food memoir. And it has a sequel… Picnic in Provence.
Have any of you read The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon? I bought it upon several friends’ recommendations, but I haven’t read it yet.
My Nepenthe by Romney Steele – she put out an updated anniversary edition this last year.
Love this list! Food memoirs are one of my favorite things to read. They’re older books, but I recommend anything by M.F.K. Fisher–everything she writes is about eating and cooking and all our hungers. The Gastronomical Me charts her development as an eater and as a cook, and is so good. The Art of Eating collects a number of books of hers in one volume. Every time I read her I want to share good food with people I love.
This is from a review of The Gastronomical Me: “Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love.” ―Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books
The preface to The Gastronomical Me is one of the prettiest pieces of writing I have ever read. (Well, the whole small book is one of the prettiest pieces of writing I’ve ever read.) So good.
I’ve only read a few M.F.K. Fisher essays and I’ve been meaning to read one of her longer works for years! Thanks for sharing this rec.
I loved A Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo. She’s an American woman who married a Lebanese man and moved to the Middle East with him. They live in Iraq and travel around other parts of the Middle East, and she describes the culture around food so vividly you can practically smell it. The tone suits 2020 well too, because she’s describing all this uncertainty with the war, but all that high emotion and drama is juxtaposed with the the everyday activity of needing to eat.
Oh, Anne, you did it again…expanded my TBR yet again! This is definitely one of my favorite genres! I’ve read several of these (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one of my favorite books of all time and one of my very rare rereads), but now, thanks to this, I have my work cut out for me. Thanks, Anne!!
Any and all Ruth Reichl and Laurie Colwin books. Molly o’Neill’s Mostly True, Lucy Knisley’s graphic book French Milk, Born Round by Frank Bruni are all wonderful.
The Measure of My Powers by Jackie Kai Ellis is an absolute favorite of mine. Also, Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent. While it’s not quite ‘memoir’, it’s a touching non-fiction read that revolves around food, cooking and connection.
LOVED Dinner with Edward…listened to the audio twice
This is my favorite genre and I have been looking for more to add to my list. Thanks everyone! I have read many of these, but now have many more to read. I couple others I’ve enjoyed are My Life From Scratch by Gesine Bullock-Prado and 52 Loaves by William Alexander.
So many books, so little time! I second (third?) the recs for “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser and also for A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun. Kitchen Confidential and My Life in France are two of my favorite books of all time. As a chef now food blogger who moved to Paris last year, I feel like I need to write a memoir–so many of these wonderful books are about France, and Paris. I’m a big David Lebovitz fan as well and got to go to his book signing for Drinking French before the lockdowns hit. Awesome guy, and I highly recommend all his books.
This has been my favorite genre! I have read all of Ruth Reichl books and most on this list and have just purchased others on this list for a summer read so thank you. I would recommend 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert, Clementine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain, Shucked: Like on a New England Oyster Farm and loved The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin
I am reading My Life In France right now for a Vicarious Travel book task. It is wonderful!
First of all, thank you Anne so much. I needed this post right now. This is my favorite genre and just about every other book (in between MMD Book Club) I read is now a chef memoir or a book written about culinary travel. I have read many on Anne’s list, but started a new list because of all the great suggestions! Thank you one and all!
Here are two that I don’t think were in the comments:
1. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time By Moira Hodgson – The author grew up as a child of a foreign diplomat and lived all over the world. You can’t believe her life is real. It’s a page-turner.
2. Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy by Michael Tucker – Do you remember LA Law? Michael Tucker and his wife Jill Eikenberry bought a home in Italy and all of the details about their life in Italy and Italian cooking are divine!
Can we just talk about your comment “bookstore devoted exclusively to cookbooks and cooking”….why aren’t there more bookstores like this!
Maman’s Homesick Pie:a Persian heart in an American Kitchen by Donia Bijan is really well done! A memoir of growing up in Iran pre-Revolution, exile, life in SF and France. Moving tribute to her mother.
I’m amazed at how many of these memoirs intertwine grief and tragedy!
This is one of my favorite genres! Thanks for this list – I’ve read a handful – Animal,Vegetable, Miracle and Blood Bones & Butter are two of my favs – always recommending them. I can’t wait to read more from this list! Also on my list to read is (new I think) the memoir Rebel Chef – by Dominique Crenn. Thank you!! Also, a bookststore dedicated to cookbooks and books about cooking- heaven!!
Food memoirs is one of my favorite genres. I’ve read a few of these, will happily try some of the others. I loved “The Best Cook In the World,” by Rick Bragg, about his mother’s Southern cooking in good times but mostly hard times (combined with Bragg’s hilarious and occasionally very sad family stories). Also, “Miriam’s Kitchen,” by Elizabeth Ehrlich, was very interesting and emotional for me. It’s the story of a young secular Jewish woman who enriches her faith and understanding of her culture as she cooks with her mother-in-law Miriam, a Holocaust survivor.
Still one of my favorites ‘Cooking for Mr Latte’ Amanda Hesser
Lunch in Paris and Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard
We read Chef Greg Atkinson’s At the Kitchen Table for our Preheated Baking Podcast book club in Episode 121: Hope Into Spring with Hot Cross Buns. Great story about building community and cooking your own food.
Here are 3 foodie reads that are worth the time and calories:
My Life from Scratch by Gesine Bullock-Prado, Kitchen Gypsy by Joanne Weir, and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. Both Weir and Nosrat began their culinary careers at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse.
Elizabeth Luard hasn’t been mentioned – perhaps less known in the US (tho her praise is on the front cover of Ruth Reich’s To the Bone). Wonderful writer- lived in various parts of Europe bringing up four children – often alone as her husband traveled (prominent British journalists both of them). Very un squeamish, willing to learn from all around her – whether able to speak their language or not – often very funny, atmospheric, warm stories: Squirrel Pie, Flavours of Andalusia, A Cooks Year in a Welsh Farmhouse – my favourite. Luard is also a talented artist and these grace the pages of many of her books – the three mentioned. She also has a book of beautiful strip cartoon recipes coming out soon (ish?) She showed some at a book event – gorgeous!
Thank you so much for introducing me to Molly Wizenberg!
Has anyone read M.F.K. Fisher? Her books (too many to list here) about food are delightful. The book “A Life in Letters” of her Correspondence 1929-1991 is also a good read.
I really enjoyed the fun, dark novel “Recipe for a Perfect Wife” by Karma Brown, complete with recipes, where a present-day wife discovers a cookbook and eventually the secrets of the 1950s housewife who once lived in her home.
Missing from this wonderful list is Give a Girl a Knife, by Amy Thielen who writes masterfully about her strong midwestern roots, her life and times cooking in NY, and her decision to come home again.
Midnight Chicken hasn’t been mentioned. I’m in love with this author. It is very moving and has the most gorgeous cover and illustrations.
I’ve read many of these, but what an awesome list! I’ve just added a few from here to my TBR–thank you!!
Great list! Anything by Ruth Reichl for sure and The Cooking Gene is a gem. I loved The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg.
Coming into this discussion on 6/16/23 since it was mentioned in today’s Links I Love:
Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl
My Cooking Year, Ruth Reichl
Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl
Not a memoir, but if you are a fan of Julia Child: Dearie, The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, Bob Spitz is a must read. The only book in the last 10 years I have re-read. It is delightful.
What a great list! Lots on here that I hadn’t heard of and added to my TBR.