A candid, funny, and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world, navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning, and an unexpected tragedy
In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But theres more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.
Behind the scenes, Lauries life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it allfrom a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulliwhile balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.
As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Lauries mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her lifes work that she truly values: care and feeding.
