ADVENTURES IN FOOD:
Culinary Memoirs for Every Palate

Matthew Amster-Burton
Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise as Adventurous Eater. HM, 2009.
A restaurant food critic & stay-at-home dad helps his young daughter discover the joy of real (not processed) food.

Anthony Bourdain
A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal. Bloomsbury, 2001.
Combining his love for food with his passion for world travel, the host of TV’s No Reservations sets out to find the ultimate meal. By the same author: The Nasty Bits (2006).

Chef's Story: 27 Chefs Talk about What Got Them into the Kitchen. ECCO, 2007.
Twenty-seven celebrity chefs, including Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay, and Jacques Pépin,  describe their entries into the culinary world.

Gillian Clark
Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef's Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal .
T. Dunne, c2007.
With a wealth of experience and wisdom, and a healthy dash of humor, Clark shares her rise from a beginner to a top chef.

Marlena De Blasi
A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance.  Algonquin, 2002.
A transplanted American learns the hard way about the peculiarities of the food and flavor of Venetian culture. By the same author: A Thousand Days in Tuscany (2004).

Paula Deen
Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’. S&S, 2007.
Food Network’s Queen of Southern cuisine shares her rags-to-riches story in her trademark fried chicken ‘n’ biscuits style.  

Fuchsia Dunlop
Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. Norton, 2008.

Linda Ellerbee
Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table. GPPS, 2005.
A culinary and travel memoir in which the author remembers the people she met in numerous other cultures, describes the foods she ate

Jeannette Ferrary
Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer. Daniel & Company, 2004.
Ferrary traces her life from its Brooklyn beginnings, when she couldn't cook and couldn't care less, to writing for the New York Times food section and rubbing shoulders with culinary heroes like Julia Child.

Gael Greene
Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess . Warner, 2006.
Greene traces her experimentation with the sensual nature of both food and sex before and throughout the course of her career as a restaurant critic for New York magazine, during which she met such culinary giants as Julia Child and Craig Claiborne,

Moira Hodgson
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food. Talese, 2008.
Hodgson, food writer and restaurant critic for the New York Observer, serves up a delightful memoir of meals and wild adventures around the world.

Cheryl Jamison & Bill Jamison
Around the World in 80 Dinners. Morrow, 2008.
Bali…Brazil…Australia…Thailand…A pair of award-winning cookbook writers hit the road for a three-month gastronomic trek of ten countries.

David Lebovitz
The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious--and Perplexing--City Broadway, 2009.
Pastry chef and cookbook author Lebovitz moves to the City of Light (and cheese and chocolate) and discovers just what a different world he has adopted. Does he have what it takes to become un vrai parisien?

Ellie Mathews
The Ungarnished Truth: A Cooking Contest Memoir. Berkley, 2008.
How the life of an amateur cook is dramatically changed when she unexpectedly won the Grand Prize at the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

Jacques Pepin
The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen. HM, 2003.
The legendary chef, author (over 21 cookbooks)  and culinary instructor recounts his boyhood in war-torn France, ascension up the French culinary ladder, and his subsequent embracing of American cuisine.

Jay Raynor
The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner. Holt, 2008
Raynor, novelist and restaurant critic for the London Observer, sinks his teeth into the quest of visiting the best eateries in the world in search of what he describes as the world's perfect meal.

Ruth Reichl
Garlic and Sapphires : The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise. Penguin Press, 2005.
The editor-in-chief of Gourmet 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. By the same author: Comfort Me with Apples (RH, 2001).

David Sax
Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect pastrami, Crusty Rye, & the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen. HM, 2009.
A life-long deli devotee goes on a world-wide journey to find those dwindling but authentic Jewish delicatessens and locates them in some places he never dreamed possible.

David Shalleck
Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France’s Cote d’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella. Broadway, 2007.
For American chef David Shalleck, it was a challenge he could not refuse: become the chef on board a private yacht for five months sailing the Mediterranean, and not serve the same dish twice, using exclusively the local ingredients found in each port of call.

David Shalleck
Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France’s Cote d’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella. Broadway, 2007.
For American chef David Shalleck, it was a challenge he could not refuse: become the chef on board a private yacht for five months sailing the Mediterranean, and not serve the same dish twice, using exclusively the local ingredients found in each port of call.

Bob Spitz
The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe.  Norton, 2008.
With his life and career in mid-life crisis, author Spitz travels to some of Europe's foremost cooking schools, where he experienced comic misadventures in the face of temperamental chefs, colorful local personalities, and memorable recipes.

Robb Walsh
Sex, Death, & Oysters: A Half-shell Lover's World Tour.  Counterpoint, 2009.
From Galveston to France, Walsh sets out on a therapeutic, cross-country journey to discover the history, lore and truth about one of the world’s most popular and profitable aphrodisiacs.