W.H. Auden once said of legendary food writer MFK Fisher “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.”

This is how I feel about Elissa Altman.

I am far from the first to say so.  Altman was once described as “The illegitimate love child of David Sedaris and MFK Fisher,” which is also quite fitting, since she approaches her craft the way she does her life, with humor and love, and not without some occasional sarcasm.

She wields a sharp wit and an even sharper eye for detail in her new memoir, Poor Man’s Feast – A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking (Chronicle, 2013).  Based on her James Beard Award-winning blog of the same name, which by the way is a must read for anyone who is serious about food, the book takes us on a meandering journey through the last couple of decades of Altman’s food-obsessed life, centered on discovering love and rediscovering simplicity.

It’s not that the stories she relates are new or particularly revelatory.  It’s in how she tells the tales – the instantly relatable language that draws a reader in and makes her your best friend.  Altman’s prose transports you through time ands space and makes you immediately familiar with times and places and dishes you may never have seen.

The reader does not need to know firsthand the SoHo neighborhood of New York to be instantly transported there in the 1980s, “Each street decorated with art illegally painted on city property in the middle of the night, showcasing a frustrated, apoplectic Reagan under the words ‘Silence=Death.’”  One needs never to have set foot in a Dean and DeLuca store to feel the vibe of Altman’s former place of employment, at once alive with a passion for great food and awash in the era’s yuppie snobbishness, and still blissfully unaware that within five years AIDS would take half their male employees.

Far more joyous though is the love story she intertwines with occasional recipes and reminiscences of their origins.  We learn how she found the love of her life, Susan, on an internet dating site, and how one would take the train to visit the other every Sunday as their romance blossomed.  They share a passion for good food, but Susan’s Spartan sensibilities would eventually tame Altman’s lust for flashy, complicated “tall food.”