Although I haven’t talked about it enough here over the years, I’m enthralled by thoughtful food writing – whether it’s the reviews of street food by Los Angeles’ Jonathan Gold, the profane visits round the world by Anthony Bourdain, the reviews of neighborhood restaurants and stories of food culture in the Washington, DC area by my friend Tim Carman, or the discussion of food life here on the prairie by Sarah Baker Hansen. We all must eat; what we eat and why is a big part of who we are. And these writers, and so many others, help tell these stories beyond the communities where they originated.
My Dear Wife and I share a subscription to The New Yorker, where she generally reads it in the print magazine and I consume it on my tablet. But earlier this week she gave me several copies of the magazine opened up to food articles, all written by the New Yorker’s food writer Hannah Goldfield. They cover everything from the Minnesota State Fair’s unique food offerings (as a frequent visitor there, I can say they are amazing and sometimes deeply weird), to Indian pizza, to baking flour tortillas, to remembering the late, great Bourdain. Without further ado other than a bon appetite, here is some great food writing for your weekend.
- The Quintessentially American Story of Indian Pizza
What if you combined classical Indian food with American bar food staples like pizza? Perhaps you would discover the perfect stoner food. - The Self-Taught Cook who Mastered the Flour Tortilla
Who would think you could find her perfect flour tortilla being baked in Lawrence, Kansas? - Nostalgic Cravings at the Minnesota State Fair
The Minnesota State Fair has the best food. For years the star for me was the deep-fried walleye sandwich, but in recent years it’s been replaced for me by Hamline Methodist Dining Hall’s “Holy Hamloaf Breakfast Sandwich. But for the vast majority of fair goers, the must-have is a bucket of Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies. - Hannah Goldfield on Anthony Bourdain’s “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”
Goldfield takes a look back at the New Yorker article by Bourdain that in a matter of days transformed him from a local cook to a nationally known food writer. You can read Bourdain’s original piece here from back in 1999.