Civil Eats

“Failing that, I realize that a writer’s business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed—and trying to save him—again and again; forever.”

This isn’t about how to be a writer but about how to be a cook, and then once you are, how to be chef. That final line in a story by John Irving, though, runs through every good lesson in knowing what one’s job is. It is usually something much stranger than you had expected and more like what John Irving realized his was when he realized he was a writer, which was to set terrible fires every day and every day to put them out. Read More

It took a teenager from Wyomissing, PA who had never heard of Alice Waters to figure out what was missing on the culinary scene in Berkeley. Read More