Greetings, friends!
As we’re going on an ice cream field trip next week, I wanted to share some food-related NYC books that have been shared with me recently. Even if you can’t join us at Ample Hills, or aren’t in the city, perhaps they’ll give you a little inspiration for your next culinary adventure:
Zabar’s: A Family Story by Lori Zabar, was already on my radar when my friend gifted it to me a few months ago. It’s a new-ish release that tells the story of the Upper West Side institution, and is the perfect pairing for You’ve Got Mail, which is objectively the Official NYC Movie of Autumn.
Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf was brought to my attention by Lisa and documents one person’s mission to eat a cheese slice at every pizza shop in NYC. Basically, my dream job.
Food and the City by Ina Yalof was also recommended by Lisa and features interviews with and stories about New Yorkers who exist in as facets of the food world.
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman is a social history on the food cultures of the turn-of-the-century melting pot of the Lower East Side.
At home, I’ve been undergoing a big apartment purge and have made some hard decisions about which cookbooks stay, and which ones go. I love looking at cookbooks, but really only end up only making a few recipes more than once. Going forward, I think check them out of the library or borrow from friends before committing to growing my small stack. Two that made the cut are charmingly outdated, out-of-print but not hard to find, and just totally delightful:
The Dean & Deluca Cookbook is a dense volume of recipes from the city’s fanciest food shop (RIP). It reminds me of the NYC I first experienced as a young person (and of all the soups I got there when I was interning upstairs at Interview) and is full of great things for large lunches, especially.
The Greenwich Village Cookbook is a very special oddity published in 1969, which contains a map of Greenwich Village restaurants and recipes from their chefs. It is, of course, very outdated and would make a great subject for a dinner menu party. What I love most is that it’s put together as if it was the passion project of a nosy neighbor.
And one that I am waiting on to come in the mail:
New York Cookbook by Molly O’Neill is a comprehensive cookbook of pretty much all cuisines that are represented in NYC and the cultures that brought them here. Molly was an acclaimed food journalist who reported of the various facets of American food. I appreciate her work because she focused on telling the whole story — not just the influence of European cultures on the food we associate with NYC, but the food of everyone.
I got totally carried away here, but while I’m at it: have you read this exposé on where NYC coffee cart pastries come from? It’s riveting.
See you next week, either in your inbox, or in person. Until then, I hope you’ll go out and eat something delicious this week.
Yours in fiction,
Caroline
Being a lover of cookbooks myself, I enjoyed this post very much! Thank you for the recommendations! Curious to know — for the books you purged and didn’t make the cut, did you sell or donate?
Started reading the Pizza book. Lombardi’s has good pizza. We cried when we ate it.