The memoir is a tricky beast of a book to write, not only do you have to be a great wordsmith (a requirement for any good book) but you also have to be rather interesting, or at least had a series somewhat extraordinary things happen to you, otherwise what’s the point? 

Last year I read Heat (as did my colleague Richard) by Bill Buford, a former columnist for The New Yorker.  Bradford goes to work in the kitchen of a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Mario Batali and learns the extreme nature of high end commercial cooking.  I felt this book perfectly captured what a food memoir should be:  the day in and day out slog of working in a commercial kitchen mixed with an exotic adventure to learn the roots of your craft all told with well-crafted prose.  Find Heat, and 49 more Food Memoirs in our list of the…

The Fifty Best Food Memoirs