The Best American Food Writing 2021 by Gabrielle Hamilton

The Best American Food Writing 2021 Reviews

• 
  Abby Hartzell

  I read this collection every year, and every year it's an amazing experience. Top articles included the article on gout, the meditation on eating meat, the feature on Ethiopian chicken nationalism, and the artcile about the AIDs crisis recipe/humor publication.
• 
  Sarah McCurdy

  I look forward to this anthology every year… and was sorely disappointed with this years collection. Hamiltons introduction was a highlight. Her writing is fierce, precise, and connects you to moments in time that I find deeply satisfying. Within the collection, however, I rarely felt any of those moments. I wish there was a stronger theme that ties the collection together (I.e, diversity, pandemic woes, resilience, creativity). Instead, I was bored by the subjects, didn’t find the food writing particularly compelling, and was disappointed by the lack of source-diversity.
  
  When I’ve finished this collection in the past, I feel like I’ve grown my understanding for what’s actually happening in the food world during the year 20xx. There were moments that I felt connected to different moments of time, but overall felt myself thinking: why was this story essential for 2020?
• 
  Emma

  As with any collection of essays, articles, or short stories, this one has some very high highs and some very low lows. The first article about Nina Compton was a strong opener. Other highlights:
  
  Priya Krishna’s “How to Feed Crowds in a Protest or Pandemic? The Sikhs Know”
  MacKenzie Chung Fegan’s “All Brandon Jew Wants Is for Chinese Restaurants to Know Their Worth”
  Kaitlin Menza’s “What It’s Like to Self-Quarantine with a Michelin-Starred Chef”
  Foster Kamer’s “Making Reservations”
  Dayna Evans’s “Who Will Save the Food Timeline?”
  Eric J. Wallace’s “The Chef Restoring Appalachia’s World-Class Food Culture”
• 
  Melissa

  I enjoy reading the various annual anthologies in The Best American series, but for whatever reason, this was my first time partaking of The Best American Food Writing. Absolutely loved this collection of essays! Because the 2021 edition encompasses work that was published in 2020, these selections focused heavily on the uncertain early months of the pandemic, understandably so. Climate change and sustainability are also predominant themes. Written by diverse authors, these essays also span the globe and introduce the reader to new cultures and, of course, new cuisines and foods.
  
  Almost every essay was an insightful and thought-provoking read. My favorites included the following (listed in the order they appear in the book):
  
  A New Orleans Chef Navigates Disaster by Helen Rosner (The New Yorker) - excellent profile of chef Nina Compton and how she dealt with the early days of COVID
  
  How a Cheese Goes Extinct by Ruby Tandoh (The New Yorker) - the death of Mary Holbrook, a legendary cheesemaker, and the challenges of cheesemaking in the pandemic
  
  Good Bread by Bill Buford (The New Yorker) - heartbreaking story of Buford's apprenticeship with Bob, a French breadbaker beloved by his village
  
  How to Feed Crowds in a Protest or Pandemic? The Sikhs Know by Priya Krishna (The New York Times) - astonishing and inspiring story of a gurdwara (place of worship for Sikhs) in Queens Village where a group of 30 people cook massive quantities of food for anyone, free of charge. During the pandemic, they made and served more than 145,000 meals in 10 weeks.
  
  Once the Disease of Gluttonous Aristocrats, Gout is Now Tormenting the Masses by Ligaya Mishan (T: The New York Times Style Magazine) - I honestly did not know much about gout until reading this essay.
  
  This Is the Dumbest Foodie Battle of Our Time by Rebecca Onion (Slate) - the ongoing battle of people disliking long narratives preceding recipes on food blogs and websites.
  
  SF Restaurants $200 Per Person Dome is America’s Problems in a Plastic Nutshell by Soleil Ho (The San Francisco Chronicle) - comparing the igloo-domed tables on pricy restaurant's patios and city streets to homeless tent cities.
  
  All Brandon Jew Wants is for Chinese Restaurants to Know Their Worth by Mackenzie Chung Fegan (Resy) - one chef's pride in his family's heritage and food
  
  Close to the Bone by Amy Irvine (Orion) - this might be one of the most gruesome essays about eating meat that I've ever read but I was absolutely riveted because of Irvine's fantastic writing. That says something.
  
  Incubated Futures by Britt H. Young (n+1) - Kentucky Fried Chicken plans to open in Ethiopia, despite the unpopularity of chicken in the country.
  
  Soli/dairy/ty by Liza Monroy (Longreads) - a new mother goes vegan and learns about the dairy industry's practice of removing calves from their lactating mothers.
  
  Get Fat, Don't Die by Jonathan Kauffman (Hazlitt) - this essay takes one back to the AIDS epidemic through "Get Fat, Don't Die!" a cooking column in Diseased Pariah News, a zine for AIDS patients.
  
  What It's Like to Self-Quarantine with a Michelin-Starred Chef by Kaitlin Menza (Grub Street) - self-explanatory title
  
  Making Reservations by Foster Kamer (Gossamer) - an insider's look at exclusive restaurants' reservation practices
  
  The Nazi Origins of Your Favorite Natural Wine by Leah Rosenzweig (GEN) - an Austrian wine with a namesake's problematic history.
  
  The Queer Legacy of Elka Gilmore by Mayukh Sen (Eater) - the lasting influence of a queer chef
  
  Who Will Save the Food Timeline? by Dayna Evans (Eater) - The Food Timeline is an extensive online resource of food history, loving compiled and maintained by Lynne Olver. Now deceased, the question is what will become of her life's work, a reference for chefs and everyday cooks alike.
  
  
• 
  A.M. Arthur

  I'm not usually much for reading nonfiction essays, but I decided to read this because some of the chosen articles were about what the restaurant industry/food world went through and how it changed because of 2020. I found most of the choices fascinating, some slightly boring, and a handful of outstanding pieces.
• 
  Nikki

  Unfortunately, one of the weaker collections of this anthology of the 2018, 2019, and now 2021 that I've read. I think I need to go back and do 2020, though I suspect that may be a bit depressing and was part of the reason I skipped ahead to 2021. I think this suffered from poor editing and essay selection - not enough variety in length, topic, or writing style. I look forward to this collection every year and was sorely disappointed to find so few standout essays here. Not my year, I suppose!
• 
  Kate

  Well, the first essay almost undid me. I'm not ready for pandemic reading -- and layering Hurricane Katrina in there was just too much. I almost gave up the book right then and there. I'm so glad I didn't. "Good Bread" and "Get Fat Don't Die" were all by themselves worth it. Just fantastic. And I learned so much. Literally all of the rest of them were so informative and educational both about food and about the food world. Just fantastic and fabulous, and well worth the readd even if it did get off to a rough start.
• 
  Lauryn

  A solid start to the year! Normally I don’t like reading things about the pandemic while it is still happening, but the stories in here offer a necessary perspective and it’s kind of an odd feeling to read things from the early days of the pandemic this far into it. But there are also just some very well written pieces in here and I really enjoyed them. This was my first best food writing read and now I really want to read the previous editions! Here’s to reading lots more food writing this year!!
• 
  Emily

  I really love this series. I look forward to it every October and picked up my copy on a leaf-peeping New England excursion. This volume evokes many emotions- longing for my Appalachian background, deep empathy for the dairy cow, wanderlust to many domestic and exotic locations, scoffing at high-end restaurants I’ll never be rich enough to set foot in, and, most of all, hunger. Hunger for food, yes, and for the brilliant food writing that make this series what it is. I’m already looking forward to the 2022 edition.
• 
  Emily Ack

  Unclear if it's editor's choices or the selection of 2021, but the essays were primarily biographies of chefs (I don't care) or about restaurant industry (also don't care).
  
  I'd say my general favorites are personal memoir-styles or informative/educational. Bonus point for exploring regional, cultural, political, and historical aspects.
  
  Good features:
  -"How a Cheese goes Extinct" (which included biographical elements, but those were NOT the focus)
  -"Good Bread" (memoir-style, regional bread, also present in Best American Travel Writing 2021)
  -"Incubated Futures" (exploring regional/cultural/political efforts of promoting chicken in Ethiopia)
  -"Making Reservations" (a humorous micro-memoir of a restaurant hostess)
  -"What it's like to quarantine with a Michelin-starred chef" (takes the large topic of quarantine and personalizes it)
  
  Otherwise, I simply did not care about the expensive restaurants or what their chefs were doing.
• 
  Natalie

  This book has a wide variety of pieces about food: food insecurity, restaurants during the pandemic, ethnic restaurants, water connoisseurs, cheese farms, and bread bakers. Some of the pieces were artfully written, such as the one about eating in Mongolia (though the foods she ate sounded disgusting), or the one about public dislike of head notes in blog recipes. Some seemed a bit tedious but I liked the range and variety of subjects and writing styles. A nice nonfiction book to read between fantasy and sci fi books.
• 
  Katie

  3 1/2*
  
  Some of these were absolutely fascinating!
  
  There were 8 I rated 5/5* :
  - How a Cheese Goes Extinct ( Ruby Tandoh )
  - Good Bread ( Bill Buford )
  - How to Feed a Crowd in a Protest or Pandemic? ( Priya Krishna )
  - Once the Disease of Gluttonous Aristocrats, Gout is Now Tormenting the Masses ( Ligaya Mishan )
  - SF Restaurants $200 Per Person Dome is America’s Problems in a Plastic Nutshell ( Soleil Ho )
  - All Brandon Jew Wants is for Chinese Restaurants to Know Their Worth ( Mackenzie Chung Fegan )
  - Soli/dairy/ty ( Liza Monroy )
  - Who Will Save the Food Timeline ( Dayna Evans )
• 
  Bryan Myers

  This really is America's best food-writing, a lot of food-related stories from all over.
  
  Notable reads this year include:
  - Good Bread by Bill Buford (convinced me to buy Buford's Dirt)
  - Soli/Dairy/Ty by Liza Monroy (made me re-evaluate my relationship with dairy)
  - Who Will save the food timeline? by Dayna Evans (introduced me to the Food Timeline)
  - Close to the Bone by Amy Irvine (an argument for eating locally rather than vegan/vegetarian through the scope of transportation of food).
  - Soleil Ho's piece on plastic dining bubbles
  - Incubated Futures was good too.
• 
  Jill

  I really enjoyed this collection of previously published food articles. The variety of subjects kept it interesting and included many references to the pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, food trends, agriculture, and other subjects related to food in tangential ways. I found myself Googling to learn more about the authors and their subjects. I even watched a Netflix Chef’s Table episode about the Gaggan Anand, top Asian chef in Asia, the subject of one of the articles. This is the best kind of writing - when I’m still thinking about it long afterwards and expanding my awareness.
• 
  Zachary Little

  I impulse ordered this book one evening because I wanted to read stories of resilience in the face of the early pandemic. And I got some of that! But I mostly got gut-wrenching dispatches from the vanguard of the climate crisis. An absolutely harrowing read. But some really sweet, personal gems in there, too. These collections are always so good. I re-read Foster Kamer's essay "Making Reservations" (which is here:
  https://www.gossamer.co/articles/maki...) three times because I enjoyed it so much.
• 
  Beth

  What I love about this new-ish series is that it's so consistent. I like nearly all of the pieces, unlike other Best of compilations. My favorites were A New Orleans Chef Navigates Disaster (lots of COVID-themed essays this year, obviously), Good Bread, This Is the Dumbest Foodie Battle of Our Time, and Get Fat, Don't Die. I also liked the ones about gout, the food timeline (shout out to librarians), Appalachian food, and water tastings.
• 
  Lene Kretschz

  3.5 stars. A varied collection of essays featuring a few really strong entries (by Bill Buford, Amy Irvine, Helen Rosner, and Dayna Evans), a few very good ones (Ruby Tandoh, Mayukh Sen, Eric J. Wallace, Navneet Alang, Jonathan Kauffman), some filler, and a couple whose inclusion in a "best of" volume I honestly can't comprehend. So, standard for this series. If you've liked previous editions, you'll surely like this year too.
• 
  Jennifer Puccini

  4.5 stars 🌟
  
  I stumbled upon this series the year before and decided to buy the Food writing edition on a whim. Now, I eagerly await the publications of the next edition every year. My favorites in the 2021 collection include:
  ● How a Cheese Goes Extinct
  ● Soli/dairy/ty
  ● Get Fat, Don't Die
  ● What a 1994 Starvation Experiment Reveals About 2020 Food Insecurity
  ● Who Will Save the Food Timeline?
  ● What it's Like to Self-Quarentine with a Michelin-Starred Chef
• 
  Lex

  Inspiring! Considering this is "Best American Food Writing" I was surprised by the global lense of some of the essays ("How a Cheese Goes Extinct" was based in England while "Incubated Futures" focused on Ethiopia. Others were set in France and a Thailand). Standouts for me included "Good Bread," "Close to the Bone," "Get Fat, Don't Die," "Waterworld" and "Who Will Save the Food Timeline?"
• 
  Betsie Bush

  2022 Read Harder Challenge - Best ___ Writing of the Year (Food Writing, 2020).
  
  This was the perfect edition to listen to. I had been looking forward to reading some of the writing that came out of 2020 (specifically related to the pandemic), and this was a good choice--a wide range of interesting topics.
• 
  Sheri

  I know that 2021 was totally absorbed and drowned out by covid but our food year didn’t need to remind me on so many pages. There were stories which I appreciated but not as many as I had hoped. The book was also shorter than usual (this my 7th year). So, sadly, not a good year for this book.
• 
  Carrie Honaker

  Like any anthology, this was a mixed bag. Highlights for me were Helen Rosner’s piece about Nina Compton, and Jonathan Kauffman’s exploration of Diseased Pariah News, the AIDS humor zine from Beowulf Thorne. Both pieces are food writing at their best: insightful, direct, and entertaining.
• 
  Tessy Consentino

  I loved these essays on food, the food industry, restaurants, the pandemic and more. I didn’t think I’d learn so much and there’d be such a variety of topics.
• 
  Marlene

  There was so much written that was off topic of food, though important issues, such as AIDs, diversity etc. I wish some of those articles were left out of a food writing book.
• 
  Kate

  The essays were really interesting and eye opening in some cases. Liked the variety of topics and felt the essays were relevant, informative, and engaging.