Food Writing

Food writing is writing that focuses on the topic of food, both widely and narrowly defined, and includes work by food critics and food historians.

Most Read This Week Tagged "Food Writing"

Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations

What I Ate in One Year (And Related Thoughts)

A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City

Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'

All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly

The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat

Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees

If You Can't Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury

What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork

A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts

More most read this week tagged "food writing"...

Lists

Lithuanian Traditional Foods by B. Imbrasiene

The Food and Cooking of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by Silvena Johan Lauta

The Best of Lithuanian Cooking by Milda Brighton

Best Lithuanian (and other Baltic states) Cookbooks in English

24 books — 2 voters

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

The Cooking Of Southwest France by Paula Wolfert

Patricia Wells at Home in Provence by Patricia Wells

Best French Cookbooks

73 books — 4 voters

A Simple Filipino Cookbook by Pinoy Cookbooks

Best Filipino Cookbooks

15 books — 4 voters

There’s Always Room at the Table by Kaleb Wyse

Cookbooks of 2025 (NON-FICTION)

74 books — 3 voters

From My Mexican Kitchen by Diana Kennedy

The Mexican Home Kitchen by Mely Martinez

The Essential Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy

Best Mexican Cookbooks

55 books — 15 voters

Mooncakes and Milk Bread by Kristina Cho

2022 James Beard Award Winners

13 books — 2 voters

Related Genres

Nonfiction
Food and Drink

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“ Jane Grigson joined the Observer magazine in the summer of 1968. Her first column was about strawberries. She wrote a recipe for strawberry barquettes-- small pastry boats filled with fruit and lacquered with redcurrant jam so that they looked like jewels. There was another for strawberry brulée in a sweet sablé shell, and coeur à la crème-- a cream pudding set in a heart-shaped mould and encircled with fruit. 'In Venice, in the season of Alpine strawberries...' she wrote, and it didn't really m Jane Grigson joined the Observer magazine in the summer of 1968. Her first column was about strawberries. She wrote a recipe for strawberry barquettes-- small pastry boats filled with fruit and lacquered with redcurrant jam so that they looked like jewels. There was another for strawberry brulée in a sweet sablé shell, and coeur à la crème-- a cream pudding set in a heart-shaped mould and encircled with fruit. 'In Venice, in the season of Alpine strawberries...' she wrote, and it didn't really matter what she said next, because you were already in. In most recipes, the introduction serves the recipes. Jane's was the other way around. She wrote about the hybridized origins of modern strawberries in French market gardens, and how they feature in the mythology of the fertility goddess Frigg. After a few lines on the demanding anatomy of strawberry plants, she devoured into Jane Austen, talking about the agro-cosplay fruit-picking of the Regency ball-gown set. She refused to be complacent, especially about the things her readers already thought they knew. 'Strawberries, sugar and cream. The combination allows no improvement, you think?' Well, you're wrong. None of this would've counted for much if the recipes weren't great, but they really were. One week she'd give you smart alternatives to traditional Christmas cake-- rounds of meringue stacked with coffee cream, or Grasmere shortcake with preserved ginger. Another week it'd be the unimpeachable precision of carrot salad, celery soup or a recipe for ice cream flavored with cooked, puréed apples. The cooking was pantheistic and it dealt with everything from kippers to apples, parsley, prunes and fennel with the same care, even love. We get smug these days about how broad our tastes are, and to an extent we're right. But a newspaper now would never run a double-page spread of recipes for tripe. The magic of Jane Grigson is that though she was a smart cook, she was really a skilled purveyor of daydreams-- even if those daydreams were granular and exactingly researched. 'I sometimes think that the charm of a country's cookery lies not so much in its classic dishes as in its quirks and fancies,' she wrote. This included the esoterica of regional pies and rare apple cultivars. Something could be worthwhile without being useful. 'Walk into the yard of Château Mouton Rothschild,' began Jane's recipe for jellied rabbit, 'and you see a scatter of small fires. Some flare into the sky, others smoke as they are fed faggots of vine prunings.' Noisettes de porc aux pruneaux de Tours, crépinettes with chestnuts, carottes à la Vichy, angel's hair charlotte. She drew from the culinary canon as far back as Gervase Markham's seventeenth-century The English Huswife. ...more ”
― Ruby Tandoh, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

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“ Only the rougher folks are out at night, and Blue Jean's is the one place they'll go for a meal. With a reputation of serving anybody, no matter who they are or what they're involved in, the diner attracts all sorts of characters. ...more ”
― Maisy Heart, Midnight at the Diner: A Young Adult Romantic Suspense Thriller

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