Winner, 2019 James Beard Award for Best Book of the Year in Writing
Finalist, 2019 IACP Award, Literary Food Writing
Named a Best Food Book of the Year by the Boston Globe,
Smithsonian, BookRiot, and more
Semifinalist, Goodreads Choice Awards
"Thoughtful, well researched, and truly moving. Shines a light on what
it means to cook and eat American food, in all its infinitely nuanced
and ever-evolving glory."
--Anthony Bourdain
American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures
collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors.
But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is
as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the
beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the
traditions, the innovations, the memories?
A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two
years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the
country. There's a Cambodian couple in Lowell, Massachusetts, and their
efforts to re-create the flavors of their lost country. A Uyghur café in
New York's Brighton Beach serves a noodle soup that seems so very
familiar and yet so very exotic--one unexpected ingredient opens a
window onto an entirely unique culture. A beignet from Café du Monde in
New Orleans, as potent as Proust's madeleine, inspires a narrative that
tunnels through time, back to the first Creole cooks, then forward to a
Korean rice-flour hoedduck and a beignet dusted with matcha.
Sixteen adventures, sixteen vibrant new chapters in the great evolving
story of American cuisine. And forty recipes, created by Lee, that bring
these new dishes into our own kitchens.
