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Stories from the Kitchen
Stories from the Kitchen is a one-of-a-kind anthology of classic tales showcasing the culinary arts from across the centuries and around the world.
Here is a mouthwatering smorgasbord of stories with food in the starring role, by a range of masters of fiction—from Dickens and Chekhov to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Shirley Jackson to Jim Crace and Amy Tan. These richly varied selections offer tastes as decadent as caviar and as humble as cherry pie. They dazzle with the sumptuous extravagance of Isak Dinesen’s “Babette’s Feast” and console with a prisoner’s tender final meal in Günter Grass’s The Flounder. Choice tidbits from famous novels make an the triumphant boeuf en daube served in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Marcel Proust’s rhapsodic memories of the family's cook preparing asparagus in Remembrance of Things Past, Émile Zola’s outrageously sensual “cheese symphony” scene from The Belly of Paris . Here, too, are over-the-top amuse-bouches by Gerald Durrell, Nora Ephron, and T. C. Boyle; a touching short story about food and love by M. F. K. Fisher; and a delightful account of the perfect meal by eighteenth-century epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”
From a barrel of oysters endowed with powers of seduction to a dish of stewed tripe liberally spiced with vengeance, the fictional confections assembled here will tantalize, entice, and satisfy literary gourmands everywhere.
Here is a mouthwatering smorgasbord of stories with food in the starring role, by a range of masters of fiction—from Dickens and Chekhov to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Shirley Jackson to Jim Crace and Amy Tan. These richly varied selections offer tastes as decadent as caviar and as humble as cherry pie. They dazzle with the sumptuous extravagance of Isak Dinesen’s “Babette’s Feast” and console with a prisoner’s tender final meal in Günter Grass’s The Flounder. Choice tidbits from famous novels make an the triumphant boeuf en daube served in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Marcel Proust’s rhapsodic memories of the family's cook preparing asparagus in Remembrance of Things Past, Émile Zola’s outrageously sensual “cheese symphony” scene from The Belly of Paris . Here, too, are over-the-top amuse-bouches by Gerald Durrell, Nora Ephron, and T. C. Boyle; a touching short story about food and love by M. F. K. Fisher; and a delightful account of the perfect meal by eighteenth-century epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”
From a barrel of oysters endowed with powers of seduction to a dish of stewed tripe liberally spiced with vengeance, the fictional confections assembled here will tantalize, entice, and satisfy literary gourmands everywhere.
410 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2015
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453 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 2, 2016
Loved this anthology. As always, short stories can guide me to authors I've never read or even heard of. This was a wonderful edition put out by Everyman's Pocket Classics, so it's also a joy to hold in your hands and turn the pages. Now I'm off to order an edition of the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, after reading "Murder in the Kitchen" included in this book.
June 18, 2024
It’s anthology so obviously there will be a few I wouldn’t like. But overall, i absolutely loved this book. There were some stories I liked and others that I loved. The idea of reading stories about food was delectable. Also, I picked the book for its cover. All these colours are such feast to the eyes in themselves.
January 7, 2016
http://octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.gr...
This time last year, I was reading a lot about food. My publisher Summersdale proposed I put together a collection of food excerpts and references from classic and contemporary literature – novels, poems and plays – along with recipes inspired by them. The book, A Literary Feast, was published in summer 2015. A couple of months later, I received a gift in the post from Everyman’s Pocket Classics, who had published a similar book called Storiesfrom the Kitchen edited by Diana Secker Tesdell. I was intrigued to find out how it compared.
The two books complement one another well, as while the main ingredients in A Literary Feast are finely sliced pieces with trivia and recipes, Stories from the Kitchen is made with meaty chunks of literature – a longer meal rather than a collection of mezes. It focuses exclusively on novels from the last few hundred years, and shows how writers use food and meals to explore different themes. Everyman’s budget presumably allowed them to pay for longer excerpts from contemporary (in copyright) works, and among those contemporary excerpts were some of my favourite pieces.
In my book I’d quoted a loveable nugget of Nora Ephron on potatoes and love from her autobiographical novel, Heartburn – ‘Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue’. The effect of the longer excerpt in Stories from the Kitchen is surprisingly different; the way she talks about making complicated potatoes for first dates makes her sound like hard work. But the first piece I really loved was ‘A Bunch of Broccoli on the Third Shelf’, which begins with the narrator's husband pulling a forgotten piece of broccoli from the fridge, because Nina, who’s come to America from Russia, is obsessed with shopping for vegetables. I’d never heard of Lara Vapnyar, but her story was a delight and made me want to read more of her work.
Amy Tan’s ‘Best Quality’ was another wonderful and moving story about the narrator’s relationship with her mother, who cooks crabs for Chinese New Year; the character delineations are brilliant and the story twists unpredictably. And I found T.C. Boyle’s piece about a restaurateur and a reviewer, ‘Sorry Fugu’, thoroughly entertaining. Others will undoubtedly have different tastes, but for me it was less the classic pieces from Proust or Zola, Dickens or MFK Fisher, and more the modern pieces that captivated. Some of the very long excerpts made me wonder if I really wanted to read so much of a novel if I wasn’t reading the whole thing, but an exception was the thirty-odd-page dinner party in To The Lighthouse, which worked brilliantly as a stand-alone piece in the Memorable Meals section – not so much about the food but the relationships between those sitting around the table.
If I had to pick a favourite excerpt – well, call me biased but I’d say Gerald Durrell’s very funny ‘Owls and Aristocracy’ from Birds, Beasts and Relatives, set in Corfu, hit all the right notes. He’s invited to dine in winter – when ‘Everything was redolent with the smoke of olive-wood fires’ – at the home of the Countess Mavrodaki for the purposes of collecting a barn owl. His brother, Lawrence Durrell, is very jealous of the invitation. Gerald dresses up for the occasion in a crisp white shirt and new sandals, only to fall off his donkey into a muddy ditch on the way. But it doesn’t matter because the Countess is a surprisingly eccentric character. The feast is gargantuan, starting with a soup and ‘fingernail-sized croutons floating like crisp little rafts on an amber sea’; proceeding through fish and snipe, to the wild boar with ‘piles of the lovely little golden wild mushrooms… tiny marrows stuffed with sour cream and capers’. Every course has so many delicious accompaniments… Durrell surreptitiously undoes the top three buttons of his shorts.
This time last year, I was reading a lot about food. My publisher Summersdale proposed I put together a collection of food excerpts and references from classic and contemporary literature – novels, poems and plays – along with recipes inspired by them. The book, A Literary Feast, was published in summer 2015. A couple of months later, I received a gift in the post from Everyman’s Pocket Classics, who had published a similar book called Storiesfrom the Kitchen edited by Diana Secker Tesdell. I was intrigued to find out how it compared.
The two books complement one another well, as while the main ingredients in A Literary Feast are finely sliced pieces with trivia and recipes, Stories from the Kitchen is made with meaty chunks of literature – a longer meal rather than a collection of mezes. It focuses exclusively on novels from the last few hundred years, and shows how writers use food and meals to explore different themes. Everyman’s budget presumably allowed them to pay for longer excerpts from contemporary (in copyright) works, and among those contemporary excerpts were some of my favourite pieces.
In my book I’d quoted a loveable nugget of Nora Ephron on potatoes and love from her autobiographical novel, Heartburn – ‘Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue’. The effect of the longer excerpt in Stories from the Kitchen is surprisingly different; the way she talks about making complicated potatoes for first dates makes her sound like hard work. But the first piece I really loved was ‘A Bunch of Broccoli on the Third Shelf’, which begins with the narrator's husband pulling a forgotten piece of broccoli from the fridge, because Nina, who’s come to America from Russia, is obsessed with shopping for vegetables. I’d never heard of Lara Vapnyar, but her story was a delight and made me want to read more of her work.
Amy Tan’s ‘Best Quality’ was another wonderful and moving story about the narrator’s relationship with her mother, who cooks crabs for Chinese New Year; the character delineations are brilliant and the story twists unpredictably. And I found T.C. Boyle’s piece about a restaurateur and a reviewer, ‘Sorry Fugu’, thoroughly entertaining. Others will undoubtedly have different tastes, but for me it was less the classic pieces from Proust or Zola, Dickens or MFK Fisher, and more the modern pieces that captivated. Some of the very long excerpts made me wonder if I really wanted to read so much of a novel if I wasn’t reading the whole thing, but an exception was the thirty-odd-page dinner party in To The Lighthouse, which worked brilliantly as a stand-alone piece in the Memorable Meals section – not so much about the food but the relationships between those sitting around the table.
If I had to pick a favourite excerpt – well, call me biased but I’d say Gerald Durrell’s very funny ‘Owls and Aristocracy’ from Birds, Beasts and Relatives, set in Corfu, hit all the right notes. He’s invited to dine in winter – when ‘Everything was redolent with the smoke of olive-wood fires’ – at the home of the Countess Mavrodaki for the purposes of collecting a barn owl. His brother, Lawrence Durrell, is very jealous of the invitation. Gerald dresses up for the occasion in a crisp white shirt and new sandals, only to fall off his donkey into a muddy ditch on the way. But it doesn’t matter because the Countess is a surprisingly eccentric character. The feast is gargantuan, starting with a soup and ‘fingernail-sized croutons floating like crisp little rafts on an amber sea’; proceeding through fish and snipe, to the wild boar with ‘piles of the lovely little golden wild mushrooms… tiny marrows stuffed with sour cream and capers’. Every course has so many delicious accompaniments… Durrell surreptitiously undoes the top three buttons of his shorts.
December 19, 2020
If you want to read a book that will make you incredibly hungry, get this collection. Normally I find Everyman short story collections a bit hit or miss (it's inevitable with a collection containing multiple different authors), and there were definitely a few here that didn't really work for me at all, but most of the stories here really entertained me! And some were complete standouts, so much so that I'm now looking into the collections (or novels) the stories/excerpts came from.
Favourites were:
Tea by Saki.
Potatoes and Love by Nora Ephron.
The Joy of Cooking by Elissa Schappell (my absolute favourite!).
Best Quality by Amy Tan.
Sorry Fugu by T.C. Boyle.
Lillian by Erica Bauermeister.
So glad I finally got to this collection as I've had it on my shelf for years. I don't know why but the subject matter never felt like it was calling to me but hey, maybe I'm more into food-related writing than I previously thought!
Favourites were:
Tea by Saki.
Potatoes and Love by Nora Ephron.
The Joy of Cooking by Elissa Schappell (my absolute favourite!).
Best Quality by Amy Tan.
Sorry Fugu by T.C. Boyle.
Lillian by Erica Bauermeister.
So glad I finally got to this collection as I've had it on my shelf for years. I don't know why but the subject matter never felt like it was calling to me but hey, maybe I'm more into food-related writing than I previously thought!
February 12, 2017
This was a really delightful book. With short story collections not all authors are to your liking but then you also have the opportunity of finding new authors and reconnecting with loved ones. Starting the collection with Charles Dickens did not hurt as I find his writing so enjoyable, writing of the seductive powers of oysters was truly delicious. And then there are Chekhov, Singer, Jackson, Tan, Dinasen, Grass, Woolf, and my favourite, Gerald Durrell. For those who love food as their main character in life and books, do pick this up. I loved it. It's going on my bookshelf as a keeper.
January 23, 2019
I thought I was full when I started. Halfway through, I became ravenous. At the end, I am back to satiety but there’s always going to be another meal, another day. I look forward to reading more from some of the authors featured in this gem of a collection.
I don’t happen to be the type of person who usually goes for collections of stories. They always seemed to me to be amuse-bouche to be frivolously tossed back before the main event (being novels; novellas might be entrees). I therefore find myself delightfully proven very much wrong in this instance.
The stories have either been carefully selected in their entirety, or edits of length have been cautiously made where a passage from a novel is excerpted. Each story was therefore such a treat to read, that going through the collection was a veritable feast for the senses.
Of course, like particular dishes that stand out for their popular appeal around the dining table during a meal, there are quite a few brilliant nibbles here. They include:
“A Kitchen Allegory” by MFK Fisher. On my LIFE, this was my favourite of the lot. Mrs Quayle’s hunger to cook (ironically, she lacks a hunger to actually indulge) for her child and grandchild is juxtaposed with her hunger for love and companionship. I have never read a better story about cooking for one.
“Like Mother Used to Make” by Shirley Jackson. I loved the detail with which David Turner, “who did everything in small quick movements”, is described in his adoration of the perfect New York flat he set out to achieve. The mundanely heart-breaking manner in which he is turned out of his hard-earned sanctuary brilliantly captures the capacity of society to tyrannise the individual outsider. So relatable to my own situations where I had felt it physically impossible to say no given the social context.
“Short Friday” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Mythic, immersive and focused, the reader is thrown into the deep end of the protagonists’ perspectives that their faith yields nothing but certainty. Food is also posited as a necessary indulgence. A pious life does not necessarily mean asceticism. Even where characters repent of “frivolity” during sex, you get the sense that their restraint does not translate to a diminished life.
And of course: “Lilian” by Erica Bauermeister. Her writing is simple, refined and beautiful. It is a quietly breathtaking yet surprisingly meditative passage on literary escape, alongside the power of food on memory, emotions and human connection. I have nothing but admiration for Erica.
The wonderfully famous passages of Isak Dinesan’s “Babette’s Feast” and Emilie Zola’s pungent “cheese symphony” are also on display here, and I am very pleased to have finally read them.
I don’t happen to be the type of person who usually goes for collections of stories. They always seemed to me to be amuse-bouche to be frivolously tossed back before the main event (being novels; novellas might be entrees). I therefore find myself delightfully proven very much wrong in this instance.
The stories have either been carefully selected in their entirety, or edits of length have been cautiously made where a passage from a novel is excerpted. Each story was therefore such a treat to read, that going through the collection was a veritable feast for the senses.
Of course, like particular dishes that stand out for their popular appeal around the dining table during a meal, there are quite a few brilliant nibbles here. They include:
“A Kitchen Allegory” by MFK Fisher. On my LIFE, this was my favourite of the lot. Mrs Quayle’s hunger to cook (ironically, she lacks a hunger to actually indulge) for her child and grandchild is juxtaposed with her hunger for love and companionship. I have never read a better story about cooking for one.
“Like Mother Used to Make” by Shirley Jackson. I loved the detail with which David Turner, “who did everything in small quick movements”, is described in his adoration of the perfect New York flat he set out to achieve. The mundanely heart-breaking manner in which he is turned out of his hard-earned sanctuary brilliantly captures the capacity of society to tyrannise the individual outsider. So relatable to my own situations where I had felt it physically impossible to say no given the social context.
“Short Friday” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Mythic, immersive and focused, the reader is thrown into the deep end of the protagonists’ perspectives that their faith yields nothing but certainty. Food is also posited as a necessary indulgence. A pious life does not necessarily mean asceticism. Even where characters repent of “frivolity” during sex, you get the sense that their restraint does not translate to a diminished life.
And of course: “Lilian” by Erica Bauermeister. Her writing is simple, refined and beautiful. It is a quietly breathtaking yet surprisingly meditative passage on literary escape, alongside the power of food on memory, emotions and human connection. I have nothing but admiration for Erica.
The wonderfully famous passages of Isak Dinesan’s “Babette’s Feast” and Emilie Zola’s pungent “cheese symphony” are also on display here, and I am very pleased to have finally read them.
August 28, 2017
I had so much trouble finishing this collection. It's been a while since I've read a collection of short stories, so I wasn't sure if it's that I had been out of practice (if there's such a thing). It could also be that, given my line of work, I don't read or write a lot of flowery prose anymore and therefore have little tolerance for that kind of writing. This was kind of a scary realization given that I had long considered 18th and 19th century British literature to be among my favorite genres, but perhaps not anymore? The only story I truly enjoyed was Amy Tan's story about a lobster-filled New Year's celebration. Vivid, succinct language. I'll be sure to thank my boss and editor for this change in reading taste.
June 9, 2019
Enjoyed this selection immensely. Sometimes the Everyman theme based anthologies (at least the poetry collections) feel a little haphazard and lazily edited --- as if someone did a google search and collected whatever popped up and called it a day.
This collection is thoughtful and cohesive. While the stories vary in tone, period, and quality - each story made sense thematically and demonstrated the vast array of mostly fictional writing on food and our relationship to it.
The editor broke the stories out into 3 sections (Food and Love, Memorable Meals, and Culinary Alchemy) which was a lovely and thoughtful flourish. A beautiful gift for the food lover/reader in your life. The dust jacket is beautiful and the book is clothbound in bright and perfect shade of yellow and a lovely yellow ribbon for the bookmark.
This collection is thoughtful and cohesive. While the stories vary in tone, period, and quality - each story made sense thematically and demonstrated the vast array of mostly fictional writing on food and our relationship to it.
The editor broke the stories out into 3 sections (Food and Love, Memorable Meals, and Culinary Alchemy) which was a lovely and thoughtful flourish. A beautiful gift for the food lover/reader in your life. The dust jacket is beautiful and the book is clothbound in bright and perfect shade of yellow and a lovely yellow ribbon for the bookmark.
January 15, 2018
A strange collection of stories that only sometimes celebrate the world of food. Some are on-point. Some see food only as a partial element of a larger story we don't see, and thus, become tedious. Strangely, the book reads like the editor wanted to make an anthology of work that spoke to the intersection of food and turmoil -- many of the stories focus on dark, interpersonal struggles -- but was re-framed to be slightly more general, and thus, fails both.
Almost all is French/European perspectives, and though there are many women, Ms. Tan is the only person of colour. Her excerpt becomes a welcome change, but also highlights the lack of cultural food diversity preceding it.
Almost all is French/European perspectives, and though there are many women, Ms. Tan is the only person of colour. Her excerpt becomes a welcome change, but also highlights the lack of cultural food diversity preceding it.
January 4, 2019
This is a book that demands to be read slowly, as food prepared with much thought and affection demand to be savoured and not gobbled.
Stories from the kitchen gave me the impetus to whip up something and invite the entire village over. Just because food is as much about storytelling as it is about feeing those whom you love.
And another plus point, I’ve found at least a dozen more authors whose books I want to read.
This is definitely one for the bookshelf!
Stories from the kitchen gave me the impetus to whip up something and invite the entire village over. Just because food is as much about storytelling as it is about feeing those whom you love.
And another plus point, I’ve found at least a dozen more authors whose books I want to read.
This is definitely one for the bookshelf!
September 24, 2022
Overall a lovely collection of short stories, loosely bound by food as a commonality. I enjoyed most of them, maybe 3 I didn’t care for. I skipped Virginia Woolf because her writing is enigmatic in a way I don’t care to resolve. Other stories left me satisfied and ponderous.
This would be a great book to bring on vacation or read during commute. There’s a range of time from about 1700’s to current era.
This would be a great book to bring on vacation or read during commute. There’s a range of time from about 1700’s to current era.
November 30, 2020
A curious and playful collection, whetting one's appetite for the short story form. Studded with delightful anecdotes, exquisite phrases, glimpses of the human condition. My copy is now filled with marginalia, and I'm thrilled to have been introduced to the remarkably witty pen of Saki!
January 16, 2018
A delightful collection of stories that whets your appetite and lifts your mood.
October 14, 2022
So many excellent authors
February 16, 2023
Was cool
July 20, 2023
Very nice collection of stories related to food and the kitchen.
Read
June 19, 2025I wanted to love this - because, cooking and food, but some of the old writers' style were too heavy going for my desires so I think I abandoned it some time ago 🤷🏻♀️
December 23, 2016
This is a wonderful collection of stories and excerpts from longer works, all relating to food, cooking, and/or eating (one story is even related to reading novels + eating/cooking, which is a great combination). I enjoyed the mix of contemporary and classic selections. There is also a good mix of styles and lengths. The very long excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, however, is a misstep. For those unfamiliar with the novel, diving in with a long passage from the middle is confusing and unsatisfying. Those who have read the novel will prefer to see the scene in the context of the larger work. I don’t think it works well as an excerpt, and it really bogs down this collection. Other than that, though, I like this and think it would make a great gift. It’s an attractive hardcover with a built-in ribbon bookmark.
July 24, 2016
I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. Some of them were a bit hit and miss, but many of them were very enjoyable, quite surprisingly so in some cases. One of the things that I love about this set of books is that when reading them I often come across writers that I haven't read, and occasionally that I haven't heard of, before, and so I now have a few ideas for what I might want to read in the future based on which stories I particularly liked. Aesthetically, as an object, the book is quite beautiful, which probably contributed to my enjoyment of it, and I will probably continue to add to my collection of Everyman short story editions in the future.
October 16, 2016
This is a book for connoisseurs in the kitchen, for food lovers, for people who believe in the magic powers of food in their lives. The book is a wonderful collection of short stories about food. Like all collections of short stories, you will prefer some too others. They are all worth reading. This book is a keeper
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews