10 Must-Read Food and Culture Books That Inspired Us in 2024
Food is powerful tool of connection. Vital to survival, it’s engrained in every element of our global existence. On, perhaps, a lighter note — food makes for a great read. This collection of books kept our mouths watering and the wheels turning. Ranging from delicious fiction exploring personal relationships and travel, to political analysis; any type of reader can find something to devour from this list.
Family Meal by Bryan Washington
Perfect for: The “Sweetbitter” Enthusiast
Dish to Share: “The smell of chicken turnovers woke me up in the morning. Cam leaned across the counter, crimping more pastry folds with his fingertips. I thought about how, when I was a kid, the smell of grits and eggs on the stove stirred the same electricity in my head. When I asked where all of this knowledge came from, Cam shook his head and said, A past life. Maybe that should’ve annoyed me, but it didn’t. Because I got it. Everyone comes from somewhere.”
Key Ingredients: Industry Life, Romance, Grief
Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics by Fabio Parasecoli
Perfect for: The International Politics Buff
Dish to Share: “It is easy for politicians and political movements to promote their ideological agendas by leveraging the emotional attachment and sense of pride in culinary traditions of localities at various scales: a country, a region, or even a city.”
Key Ingredients: Food as Politics, Nationalism, Food and Belonging
We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything by Arionne Nettles
Perfect for: The Chicago Cultural Guru
Dish to Share: “And yet, despite these inequities, Black Chicago continues to persevere—just as we have in the past. And friends, Black Chicago, the love of my life, never loses its sparkle. Even when we need to shine a dull veneer back to its glory days, its value and potential don’t change.”
Key Ingredients: Chicago History, Pop Culture, Cultural Expression
Malört: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel
Perfect for: That Friend that Insists on a Shot of Malört for Every Out of Towner
Dish to Share: “Pat knew nothing of the honor. Neither did George’s kids. There were no keepsakes or mementos to suggest that such a trip happened or such an honor was bestowed. A visit to the king of Sweden might have happened—or maybe it didn’t. It could easily have been a slice of imaginative George Brode marketing, and if it was, so might have been Carl Jeppson. Pat was clear that George never let the facts get in the way of a good story. To Peter, it seemed equally likely that Carl did or didn’t exist.”
Key Ingredients: Spirits, Local Legend, Beverage History
Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman
Perfect for: The Slow Food Seed Saver
Dish to Share: “It’s estimated that 75 percent of vegetable varieties worldwide have been permanently lost, while 95 percent of America’s historical produce is gone. But every once in a while, one of those ‘extinct’ veggies is plucked from the void.”
Key Ingredients: Food Preservation, Food History
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl
Perfect for: That Friend Who Sees Romance in Everything
Dish to Share: “’You eat as if it matters, and with your entire body. Each time it is as if you are leaping into the ocean.’ Was it only the oysters? She took a sip of wine and once again experienced the sensation of a brook rushing down a mountain. She thought of all the exotic foods she had banished from her life and had the sudden urge to know the taste of caviar and lobster. It had to be the dress.”
Key Ingredients: Travel, Art, Grief
The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey (Third Edition) by Laila El-Haddad & Maggie Schmitt
Perfect for: The Global Cookbook Collector
Dish to Share: “For Abu Ameen, as for so many immigrants, cooking became the means of retaining and passing those memories on the next generation. For Palestinians, this legacy takes on a heightened significance and a perceived sense of urgency: a last straw to clutch onto before all that was known is erased forever.”
Key Ingredients: Global Cuisine, Food and Conflict, Cultural Preservation
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
Perfect for: The Jet-Setting, Smut-Loving Romantic
Dish to Share: “Theo cares about all of this, but they’re an instincts-first eater… Taste is what I do; Theo makes me better at it.”
Key Ingredients: European Travel, Romance, LGBTQIA+
Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Perfect for: The Host Doing the Most
Dish to Share: “It was so reassuring to know that I wasn’t alone, that other women were experiencing the same confusion, making the same mistakes, and choosing to make big changes when they hit thirty. More important, I realized that I hadn’t been wasting my time…I was simply doing research.”
Key Ingredients: Memoir, Celebrity Chef, Entertaining
The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024 edited by Padma Lakshmi
Perfect for: Catching Flights and Feelings
Dish to Share: “Each grilled cheese sandwich is entirely itself, like the moon is its whole self in a barrel of water. What else could it be? It is enough. To encounter it is to encounter something made for pleasure which gives pleasure in the beholding and in the consuming,” Talia Lavin — Notable Sandwiches #75: Grilled Cheese.
Key Ingredients: Food and Memory, Cultural Exploration, Travel
Pick up a copy these great reads and the latest issue of edible from any of our favorite indie books stores! Including, but certainly not limited to:
