Writing about food since 2004.
Category
Essays
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I Hate Au Bon Pain
I don’t like Au Bon Pain. When I walk past it and look at the people eating inside, they always look sad. There’s a reason they look sad: the food is not good. I’m not against fast food–I enjoy Wendy’s, In-N-Out Burger; I also enjoy sandwichey fast food places that are in the same genre…
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The Food World & The Theater World
The James Beard Awards were last week, this week the Tonys. It’s often occurred to me that theater geeks have much in common with foodies and now I’d like to make a list of how the theater world is similar to the food world and vice-versa: * The food world and the theater world are…
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Warm Weather Food (A deeply focused, highly intelligent, penetrating essay and not a review of “Sex & The City: The Movie”)
This is a post about warm weather food only I just got back from “Sex and the City: The Movie” and I’d rather write a post about that. But I will be good and stick to my subject matter, albeit a thin subject. I mean, really what’s there to say about warm weather food when…
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No Jacket Required (An Anti Dress-Code Manifesto)
The man was a regular. He walked in confidently, with an air of entitlement about him. I’m not sure what he did for a living–was he a stock broker? An investment banker? A bestselling novelist?–whatever he was, it didn’t matter. He smacked of success; he glowed with accomplishment. He moved briskly from the door to…
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My Favorite Food Movie: Defending Your Life
Favorite food movies are like days of the week; for all intents and purposes, there are only seven of them. 1. Ratatouille; 2. Eat Drink Man Woman; 3. Tampopo; 4. Chocolat; 5. Babette’s Feast; 6. Big Night; 7. Like Water For Chocolate. [This Serious Eats thread seems to confirm that.] I don’t want to ruffle…
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The A.G.’s Guide To Equipping Your Kitchen
So you’re getting married, moving into a new house with your betrothed and people are asking: “What should we get you?” You can register at a store like Williams Sonoma or Bed, Bath & Beyond but when it comes to the kitchen you don’t know where to begin. That’s the very situation my future sister-in-law,…
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Food Tastes Better When It Has a Good Story
We ask many things of our food. We ask that our food is clearly identifiable (anything strange and murky immediately turns us off); we ask that our food is reasonably healthy–even if that means laying a redemptive tomato on a greasy, heart-crushing 5-pound burger. We ask that our food is prepared in a clean kitchen,…
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The Night I Let Friends Cook For Me
Psychologically speaking, I’m a Jewish mother. I smother those I love with attention, worry, enthusiasm, judgment and, most of all, food. The food bit is a relatively recent development–I wasn’t smothering my high school friends with food–but now that I do cook and cook quite regularly, I have an almost compulsive need to feed others.…
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Food Negation Theory
I have a theory. If you make spaghetti cacio e peppe for dinner, inspired by “Lidia’s Italy” on PBS–a dish of what is, essentially, spaghetti, pecorino cheese and pepper–you can undo whatever nutritional damage this does to your physique and/or health by eating a tub of green beans at the same time, as illustrated by…
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I Don’t Have A Microwave
Last night, I cooked a spontaneous lasagna for six friends after which I served them delicious Meyer lemon bars. One of these friends, who we’ll call “Mark,” hadn’t eaten all day and despite all the food I stuffed him with was still hungry. Luckily I had leftover cauliflower pasta from last week in the fridge…
