Something I’ve never fully understood about cooking shows, and this happens on just about all of them, is when they interview a cook or chef and they launch into the same old thing, “Well cooking was always very important in my culture/home/family.” Of course it is! Good food is one thing we all want to share no matter where you’re from, who you are, or what your age might be (My personal favorite is the children who cook and say, “My parents introduced me to food at a very young age…” Yeah, I sure hope so).
Having said that, I still feel it’s important to express that cooking and good food always brought my family together. My grandmother would create delicious meals just about every time we would get together, which was often. But the one occasion that will always stick out in my memory is, as you might have guessed, Thanksgiving. I loved every part of it, from grandma’s delicious turkey and sides and dessert that she spent all day and a good chunk of the day before preparing, to grandpa’s masterful carving of said turkey.
“Carving a turkey is a lot like parallel parking, it’s much easier to do when no one is watching” – a sweet and patient man’s polite way of telling his grandson to buzz off and leave the kitchen for a while.
As much as we loved every last bit of this meal, the star was always grandma’s signature stuffing, or dressing as she called it. I’m still uncertain if that’s a regional or generational difference. I looked it up and the distinction seems to be whether it was cooked inside or outside of the bird. Since a good deal of stuffing had to be cooked externally in order to satisfy everyone’s craving for it, I suppose dressing is accurate. It was honestly one of my and my wife’s proudest culinary achievements when we (almost) perfectly recreated it for the first Thanksgiving we ever hosted in our house, a labor of love that starts the day before.
The love of experiencing good food is nearly universal. In fact, many people have recorded their experiences in books, and they’re not all cookbooks. Here are a few recent food related memoirs I have read and would recommend to anyone interested in the subject. All of the memoirs I discuss here are in the Commerce Township Library’s collection. Follow the links to check availability.
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci, 2021
This was the first one I ever read. I was led to it from the author’s TV show, “Searching for Italy.” The book is a joyful and humorous expression of what food can mean to an individual and to a family.
Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.
Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
Written with Stanley's signature wry humor, Taste is for fans of Bill Buford, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Ruth Reichl--and anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.
What I Ate in One Year (And Related Thoughts) also by Stanly Tucci, 2024
This is a sort of food diary that records a year’s worth of food experiences, as the title suggests. I found it to be a bit more sarcastic and snarky than Tucci’s first memoir, but it’s still definitely an enjoyable read.
"Sharing food is one of the purest human acts."
Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci's life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.
Now, in What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating--in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.
Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable to the comfortingly domestic and to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialised in this diary are a prism for him to reflect on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks--and mourns--the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and steels himself for what is to come.
Whether it's duck a l'orange eaten with fellow actors and cooked by singing Carmelite nuns, steaks barbequed at a gathering with friends, or meatballs made by his mother and son and shared at the table with three generations of his family, these meals give shape and add emotional richness to his days.
What I Ate in One Year is a funny, poignant, heartfelt, and deeply satisfying serving of memories and meals and an irresistible celebration of the profound role that food plays in all our lives.
Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker, 2017
I enjoyed this one. It demystifies the training and basic roles of a sommelier, a trained wine professional often found in upscale restaurants. It strips away the mystique of expensive and hard to find wines, and even makes the case for the more commonly found and commonly enjoyed varieties. The science behind taste was a particularly interesting part of a fascinating and well written book.
Professional journalist and amateur drinker Bianca Bosker didn't know much about wine--until she discovered an alternate universe where taste reigns supreme, a world of elite sommeliers who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of flavor. Astounded by their fervor and seemingly superhuman sensory powers, she set out to uncover what drove their obsession, and whether she, too, could become a "cork dork."
With boundless curiosity, humor, and a healthy dose of skepticism, Bosker takes the reader inside underground tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, California mass-market wine factories, and even a neuroscientist's fMRI machine as she attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what's the big deal about wine? What she learns will change the way you drink wine--and, perhaps, the way you live--forever.
Here are a few that I have either just started, or are on my “to read” list:
Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi, 2019
Having been raised partly in the Bronx and partly in Nigeria, Onwuachi opened his first catering company with $20,000 he made selling candy on the subway, then went on to become a Top Chef star and a Forbes and Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree who has cooked twice at the White House. He's now executive chef at Kith and Kin in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, though, the world of classy eats isn't always easy on people of color. With author/journalist Stein (e.g., the U.S. editor of Where Chefs Eat), Onwuachi shares his highs and lows; recipes, too.
Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly by Hannah Selinger, 2025
As Hannah Selinger will tell you, to be a good restaurant employee is to be invisible. At the height of her career as a server and then sommelier at some of New York's most famed dining institutions, Selinger was the hand that folded your napkin while you were in the bathroom, the employee silently slipping into the night through a side door after serving meals worth more than her rent.
During her tenure, Selinger rubbed shoulders with David Chang, Bobby Flay, Johnny Iuzzini, and countless other food celebrities of the early 2000's. Her position allowed her access to a life she never expected; the lavish parties, the tasting courses, the wildly expensive wines - the rare world we see romanticized in countless movies and television shows. But the thing about being invisible is that people forget you're there, and most act differently when they think no one is looking.
In Cellar Rat, Selinger chronicles her rise and fall in the restaurant business, beginning with the gritty hometown pub where she fell in love with the industry and ending with her final post serving celebrities at the Hamptons classic Nick & Toni's. In between, readers will join Selinger on her emotional journey as she learns the joys of fine fine dining, the allure and danger of power, and what it takes to walk away from a career you love when it no longer serves you.
Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’ by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, 2022
From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen--or just to gawk--at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolini helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.
Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we'd never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O'Keefe's casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern to Nolita's Le CouCou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.
From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at Larousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at LeCouCou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don't), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that's somewhere between a George Orwell "down and out in...." dungeon and a sleek showman's smoke-and-mirrors palace.
-S.M.