The Chicago Food Encyclopedia is a far-ranging portrait of an American culinary paradise. Hundreds of entries deliver all of the visionary restauranteurs, Michelin superstars, beloved haunts, and food companies of today and yesterday. More than 100 sumptuous images include thirty full-color photographs that transport readers to dining rooms and food stands across the city. Throughout, a roster of writers, scholars, and industry experts pays tribute to an expansive--and still expanding--foo...

What was eating them? And vice versa.In What the Great Ate, Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous—and often notorious—figures throughout history. Here is food• As code: Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.• As superstition: Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his o...

Food Snob n: reference term for the sort of food obsessive for whom the actual joy of eating and cooking is but a side dish to the accumulation of arcane knowledge about these subjectsFrom the author of The United States of Arugula--and coauthor of The Film Snob’s Dictionary and The Rock Snob’s Dictionary--a delectable compendium of food facts, terminology, and famous names that gives ordinary folk the wherewithal to take down the Food Snobs--or ...

The wickedly entertaining, hunger-inducing, behind-the-scenes story of the revolution in American food that has made exotic ingredients, celebrity chefs, rarefied cooking tools, and destination restaurants familiar aspects of our everyday lives.Amazingly enough, just twenty years ago eating sushi was a daring novelty and many Americans had never even heard of salsa. Today, we don't bat an eye at a construction worker dipping a croissant into robust specialty coffee...

A new edition of the authoritative and appealing anthology, comprised of the finest culinary prose from the past year's books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and Web sites. With food writing and blogging on the rise, there's no shortage of treats on the buffet to choose from, including selections from both established food writers and new stars on everything from noted gastronomes to how to fry an egg, from erudite culinary history to delectable memoirs. Evocative, provocative, sensuo...

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts-in delicious detail-the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs,...

Twenty-seven extraordinary chefs tell the personal stories behind their culinary triumphs.Over the past decade, our culture's interest in the world's great chefs has grown phenomenally. Once known to only the most dedicated gourmets, these supremely talented men and women have become high-profile stars with restaurants as their stages—masterful artists working in the medium that binds us all: food!A wonderful companion volume to The French Culinary Institute's hit public te...

AS SEEN IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY JEREMIAH TOWER: THE LAST MAGNIFICENTNewly revised and reissued to coincide with The Last Magnificent, a documentary feature produced by Anthony Bourdain, the indelible and entertaining memoir from Jeremiah Tower which chronicles life at the front lines of redefining modern American cuisine.Widely recognized as the godfather of modern American cooking, Jeremiah Tower is one of the most influential cooks of the last forty years...

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.Calvin Trillin has never been a champion of the “continental cuisine” palaces he used to refer to as La Maison de la Casa House—nor of their successors, the trendy spots he calls “sleepy-time restaurants, where everything is served on a bed of something else.” What he treasures is the superb local specialty. And he will go anywhere to find one.As it happens, some of Trillin...

The multiple-James Beard Award–winning restaurant critic for Los Angeles Magazine delivers an arresting exploration of our cultural demand for "artisanal" foods in a world dominated by corporate agribusiness.We hear the word "artisanal" all the time—attached to cheese, chocolate, coffee, even fast-food chain sandwiches—but what does it actually mean? We take "farm to table" and "handcrafted food" for granted now but how did we get here? In Finding the Flavors We Lost

A guide to the best of the city from its premier newspaper.The Chicago Tribune Guide to Chicago is a convenient travel guide for the Chicago area, with recommendations from knowledgeable insiders. Drawing on the extensive expertise of the city's most prominent newspaper, it's perfect for tourists and locals alike. Whether you're planning a weekend getaway or an afternoon on the town, you can discover the best Chicago has to offer in dining, entertainment, m...

**“The one food book you must read this year."*—Southern LivingOne of Christopher Kimball’s Six Favorite Books About Food*A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades**Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover po...