If a bad attitude could be subject to copyright, my ten years as a waiter would have left me obscenely wealthy. Working the floor, I was the Kerry Packer of passive aggression. Sullen insolence was my personal trademark, diligently honed and perfected over time. For a long list of perceived diner slights-ranging from ordering the tomato sauce separately to the fries, to calling me 'dear'-I could perform a Jekyll and Hyde switch into the most perfunctory,...

"John T. Edge, "the Faulkner of Southern food" (the Miami Herald), reveals a South hidden in plain sight, where restaurants boast family pedigrees and serve supremely local specialties found nowhere else. From backdoor home kitchens to cinder-block cafes, he introduces you to cooks who have been standing tall by the stove since Eisenhower was in office. While revealing the stories behind their food, he shines a bright light on places that have become...

"A lively and delectable tribute to the sensuous arts of cooking, loving, and living, Romancing the Stove is sure to stir the senses, and tickle the taste buds! Combining crowd-pleasing original recipes, mythology, and fail-safe trade secrets, chef and culinary courtesan Margie Lapanja (famous for her Cowboy Cookie recipe--revealed for the first time in this book) has concocted the most unique, engaging collection of mouth-watering menus and fun stories....

Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

Hot Sauce Nation is a red-hot ride through the story of hot sauce in America. Why should the world's most painful food have inspired such adoration in the USA? While chili pepper-based sauces have transformed cuisines worldwide, successive waves of immigrants landing in the New World have turned up the heat on the American palette with their native pungent sauces. Today, the fast-growing hot sauce industry has made it into everything from salsa to...

Once little more than party fuel, tequila has graduated to the status of fine sipping spirit. How the Gringos Stole Tequila traces the spirit's evolution in America from frat-house firewater to luxury good. But there's more to the story than tequila as upmarket drinking trend. Author Chantal Martineau spent several years immersing herself in the world of tequila -- traveling to visit distillers and agave farmers in Mexico, meeting and tasting with...

"Forget about getting back to the land, David Tanis just wants you to get back to the kitchen For six months a year, David Tanis is the head chef at Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, California, restaurant where he has worked alongside Alice Waters since the 1980s in creating a revolution in sustainable American cuisine. The other six months, Tanis lives in Paris in a seventeenth-century apartment, where he hosts intimate dinners for friends and paying...

David Moscow, the creator and star of the groundbreaking series From Scratch, takes us on an exploration of our planet’s complex and interconnected food supply, showing us where our food comes from and why it matters in his new book of global culinary adventures. In an effort to help us reconnect with the food that sustains our lives, David Moscow has spent four years going around the world, meeting with rock-star chefs, and sourcing ingredients...

"For this companion volume to the award-winning Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid travel west from Southeast Asia to that vast landmass the colonial British called the Indian Subcontinent. It includes not just India, but extends north to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal and as far south as Sri Lanka, the island nation so devastated by the recent tsunami. For people who love food and cooking, this vast region is a source of infinite...