Toast : The Story of a Boy's Hunger

'My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead. This is not an occasional occurrence. My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning.' 'Toast' is Nigel Slater's award-winning biography of a childhood remembered through food. Whether recalling his mother's surprisingly good rice pudding, his father's bold foray into spaghetti and his dreaded Boxing Day stew, or such culinary highlights as Arctic Roll and Grilled Grapefruit (then considered something of a status symbol in Wolverhampton), this remarkable memoir vividly recreates daily life in 1960s suburban England. Likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses form a fascinating backdrop to Nigel Slater's incredibly moving and deliciously evocative portrait of childhood, adolescence and sexual awakening.

"Nigel Slater at his unpretentious, delicious best." –Nigella Lawson, author of How to Be a Domestic Goddess

"His writing could not be more palate-cleansing... his acidic riffs put you in mind of Nick Hornby, Martin Amis and Philip Larkin all at the same time." –The New York Times

"Nigel is a genius." –Jamie Oliver, author of Jamie’s Kitchen, The Naked Chef, and Happy Days with the Naked Chef

"Nigel Slater's Toast is an exceptional book. It brilliantly weaves hungers together: belly hunger, sexual hunger, and the hunger for love and loss. I loved every page and the poignancy of being a child is dead on." –Jane Stern, author of Ambulance Girl, coauthor of Roadfood, and contributing editor at Gourmet magazine

"I enjoyed every moment of reading Nigel Slater's Toast. It's hard to imagine a more elegantly rendered memoir of growing up. Funny, poignant, artful, erotic, sad, a story conveyed through intelligent and unsentimental prose—the book is a jewel." –Michael Ruhlman, author of The Soul of a Chef

"Toast is a remarkable story of a young man's life, and the food that nourished it. Well written, lively and engaging." –Marie Simmons, author of Fig Heaven

"The genius of his food writing comes from an obvious belief that food and happiness share the same organ in the brain." –Lynne Truss

"Convincing, engaging, and rich with detail, Slater’s prose lets readers taste the pink marshmallows, smell the freshly baked oat cookies, and feel the crunch of the green beans. Paced as superbly as a seven-course meal, [Toast is] able to engage the heart and the memory as well as the taste buds.--Publishers Weekly

"A banquet of unlikely delectations... England’s answer to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential." –Daily Telegraph (UK)

"No one writes more temptingly about food." –The Independent (UK)

"An inspired memoir, boil-in-the-bag Proust!" –Tim Adams, Observer (UK)

"This artful, disconcerting, endearing book deserves a place in the literature of childhood unhappiness and survival against the odds." –Daily Telegraph (UK)

"A vivid record of people whose lives never warrant the study of historians, biographers or even novelists... wonderful... extraordinary." –Matthew Fort, The Observer (UK)

"Nigel Slater's Toast eats its way through a difficult childhood... this is an ingenious and touching treat." –Hermione Lee, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 2003 (UK)

"Utterly irresistible... You read this remarkable memoir partly cringing, partly marvelling at Slater’s hallucinogenic retrieval off times past. He is the Proust of the Nesquik Era. – Independent Books of the Year (UK)

"Proves he can write mouth-wateringly about families and life, too: I gobbled it up." –Daily Telegraph Books of the Year (UK)

"Toast follows a recipe—boyhood blues without bitterness—that looks simple yet is actually hard to pull off. Slater manages it." –Guardian (UK)

"Delightful... singular and original." –Evening Standard (UK)