M. F. K. Fisher. Anything she wrote. But I do love "As They Were".

A. J. Liebling, ''Between Meals: An Appetite For Paris''. Liebling is one of the great journalists at the New Yorker. A full-throated Francophile and unashamed gourmand, he followed the Allies through North Africa and Normandy to see the liberation of Paris. After returning home, he wrote on New York, politics, food, and boxing (''The Sweet Science'' is one of the great classics of boxania). In the 1950's he produced this slim little book, his memories of food and people in France. He died in the 1960s.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Hands down my favorite non-cookbook foodie book.

Alexa

Alexa I also loved Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Another one that was enjoyable was Garlic & Sapphires - The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl - a really funny book about her life as a restaurant critic who dresses down to test how top restaurants treat the more modest looking clients.

SharonCb

I enjoyed "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant." "Kitchen Confidential" was a good romp. "The Making of a Chef" was also a good read. I liked "What We Eat When We Eat Alone" and Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food."

"An Embarrassment of Mangoes" was more about life on a sailboat than food but cooking in a boat galley with ingredients found in the Caribbean was much discussed.

I recently finished ''Confections of a (Closet) Master Baker'' by Gesine Bullock-Prado. Since I was always a baker first, this hit my sweet spot!

Loved Kitchen Confidential. I found another perennial favorite in Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West - it really tickled my Southern funny bone.

Loved Liebling's "An Appetite for Paris," "Garlic & Sapphires," Julia Child's "My life in Paris" and "Kitchen Confidential."

Though it's not really a book about food, "Fried Green Tomatoes" is a great read, and it has lots of recipes from The Whistle Stop Cafe printed in the back. We had a party using those recipes, and had a great time!

Sherry

Yet another vote for Liebling's "Between Meals: an Appetite for Paris". It was written toward the end of his life in which he recalled a year in the twenties spent in Paris as a young man. It has a perspective that only an older person can have about the beauty and fragility of the wonder of youth. In the final chapter, 'Passable', he reminisces about a love affair. It brings tears to my eyes every time I read it, and I've probably read it a dozen times.

Liebling once said that he could write faster than anyone who could write better, and wrote better than anyone who wrote faster. He was a writer for the New Yorker during WWII and thereafter; some of his WWII writings are fabulous. He's a master of setting up a story based on character sketches, then whacking you over the head when something bad happens to that character in whom you've gotten involved.

While 'Between Meals' is available on its own in paperback, it's also included in a Library of America volume of Liebling. That volume includes 'The Earl of Louisiana', a biographical sketch of Earl Long. A lot of the scenes in the Paul Newman movie 'Blaze' seem to have been lifted directly from that book.

Liebling died in 1963. Since then his works have drifted in and out of print. He's one of the few writers whose work I buy sight unseen; if I don't have a copy of that work, I'll buy it. A used bookstore owner once noted that it's almost impossible to keep Liebling on the shelf; the volumes are sold very quickly to the legions of fans out there. Fortunately the Library of America has a very nice two volume set of some of his better stuff. Some years back someone published a nice collection called 'Liebling Abroad' which is worth picking up. (It contains 'Between Meals' as well.)

anything by Ruth Reichel, And The baker's Apprentice as well as Bread Alone by Judith Hendricks...and don't discount Like Water for Chocolate.
Currently reading My Life in Paris.
Linda C

Although it isn't a book about food, Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast' has a great passage. Hemingway is writing about his starving-artist existence in Paris in the Twenties. He finally sells a story and has enough money to eat out. He goes to Brasserie Lipp:

ÂI sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer and I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and for potato salad.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I ate and drank very slowly. When the pommes a l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce.

I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the distingue and I drank half of it.

* * *
Makes you want to fly to Paris and order that, doesn't it?

By the way, in the Les Halles Cookbook, Anthony Bourdain lists Liebling's Between Meals as one of his favorite books on food. Here's a great passage from 'Between Meals':

During that invaluable year, I ran across a keen observer who gave me a tip: "If you run across a restaurant where you often see priests eating with priests, or sporting girls with sporting girls, you may be confident that it is good. Those are two classes of people who like to eat well and get their moneyÂs worth. If you see a priest eating with a layman, though, donÂt be too sure about the moneyÂs worth. The fellow en civil may be a rich parishioner, and the good Father wonÂt worry about the price. And if the girl is with a man, you canÂt count on anything. It may be her kept man, in which case she wonÂt care what she spends on him, or if the man is keeping her, in which case she wonÂt care what he spends on her."

Great stuff. The link is to Google Books; they have printed the intro and first 11 pages of Between Meals.

Here is a link that might be useful: intro to Between Meals

I was fascinated by "Hometown Appetites." It's the biography of Clementine Paddleford, food writer with the New York Herald Tribune, who according to the dust jacket "at the height of her career...was as popular as Julia Child and as respected as James Beard."

Here is a link that might be useful: Amazon's description of Hometown Appetites

One of these days I'm going to have to read Kitchen Confidential. I've never heard of Liebling, but then, I've never been into the New Yorker style of writing. I wonder if I'd like his books. It sounds like they might be the exception to my disliking The New Yorker.

I loved Garlic and Sapphires, and one other of her books which I didn't like as well. I don't remember which one it was, but it was about her early adult life. It was fascinating in some parts, dreary in others.

There's a Dean Koontz book where the main character is the son of a baker, and he's raised to be a baker too. The whole family are foodies, and even though it's only a sub plot in the book, it's fun to read about their meals. The book is called Life Expectancy, and is a marvelous book if you're into sort of surreal, somewhat horror, but different than horror, fiction.

Sally

I loved "Kitchen Confidential", and I'm on the waiting list at the library for his newer book "A Bloody Valentine" which got good reviews on Amazon.

"My Life in France" by Julia Child was wonderful, and I also loved "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle. I know it wasn't exacly a food book, but I have to admit that I was hooked after reading the first paragraph which was his description of their New Year's Day celebration dinner. If you're a dog lover (and maybe even if you're not), his book "A Dog's Life" was laugh out loud funny.

"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser is an oldie but goodie.

Several years ago I read an interesting book which profiled the history of salt, corn, olives and wheat, but for the life of me I can't remember the title. If anybody knows what the name of it was, please respond so I can stop trying to remember LOL.

I struggled with "An Omnivore's Dilemma" by Pollan and didn't finish it. But I'm currently reading "In Defense of Food" and enjoying it.

What an interesting thread :-)

Becky

I just remembered that I enjoyed William Alexander's book, The $64 Tomato, which is about gardening and food, and his adventures going from city life to rural life. He's written a new book called 52 Loaves, which looks interesting, too. It's about trying to create the perfect loaf of bread, and his time at a monastery trying to help some monks do the same thing. I can't wait till the library gets it.

Sally

Sally,

Reichel's other book sounds like Comfort me with Apples. Her descriptions of Paris are captivating. Her affair and subsquent demise of her marriage is quite dreary. So maybe?

I would like to read some MK Fisher, she sounds wonderful.

I liked a book by Waverly Root, ''The Food Of France'', as I recall it is more of a study of regional French food than a first-person narrative ''experience'' book. ''Kitchen Confidential'' is an awesome book. I browsed a book by Jeffrey Steinberg that looked promising, but haven't bought it yet.

On A.J. Liebling, who is one of my favorite writers, there are two excellent collections of his work. ''Liebling Abroad'' is his writing about France and his war correspondence from the African and Normandy campaigns. ''Liebling At Home'' is his writing about the characters, cads, and press of New York and other regions of the US. Both are out of print. His most widely-available works are probably ''Between Meals'' and ''The Sweet Science''. I used to buy any Liebling book whenever I saw it, whether or not I already had a copy, and give them as gifts.

Laurie Colwin's 'Home Cooking' and 'More Home Cooking' -- she doesn't give you a list of ingredients, but turns each recipe into an essay.

also, from way, way back:
'Scheherazade Cooks!' by Waldeena Ateyer. The Sultan took a new bride every night but Scheheradaze saves her neck quite literally and permanently by spinning wonderful stories and cooking exquisite meals. (set in Bagdad, the City of Peace)
may it be that again!!!

kay

Another Reichl book is "Tender at the Bone." I loved it! I don't think I've read "Comfort me with Apples" but I think I will give it a try.

Comfort Me With Apples might have been it. It did involve the demise of her marriage, her affair, the tragic failed adoption of her first little girl, and a bizarre account of her dinners with Danny Kaye, showing a side of Kaye that I'd never, ever even thought existed. Strangely, I don't remember the part about Paris.

Sally

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is the book that helped me go more local in my food shopping. Interesting read.

If you enjoy Peter Mayle, it's worth chasing down his now out-of-print book 'Bon Appetit'. In it he travels throughout France for a year, sampling the best frog legs, wines, snails, poulardes de Bresse...very entertaining.

How does one get a job like that?

I don't know how to get that job, arley, but it is a lot of fun. Funny thing is, those writers don't think it's fun at all, it's work - and they often just sample the food or they'd weigh 400 lbs! My hub was a reporter for a major daily, and we went on reviews with the food writer many times (and I always ate everything in sight!). Terrific to eat the best foods at the best places on the company dime! I always told my husband I wished he'd get out of straight news and be the food editor, or better yet, the travel editor! Even the automobile writer or movie reviewer would have been cool!