5 New Kitchen Memoirs for Fans of The Bear

Accidentally on Purpose: A Memoir

In her delightful debut memoir, Top Chef host Kish (It’s All in the Sauce, a children’s cookbook) covers her early experiences in the kitchen and the path to her TV breakthrough. Born in 1983 Seoul and adopted by American parents in Michigan, Kish details a mostly ordinary childhood laced with spaghetti with red sauce and Creamsicle sodas. Encouraged by her mother to explore her affinity for cooking as a teenager, Kish paid a visit to Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago. After enrolling in and graduating from the culinary school, Kish moved to Boston, where she worked under chef Barbara Lynch at Stir and dabbled in cocaine and alcohol while finding her footing in the pressure-filled world of fine dining. Her winning run on Top Chef gets a lot of play in the narrative, as do inspiring encounters with the likes of Emeril Lagasse and Padma Lakshmi, whom Kish replaced as host of Top Chef in 2023. Also touching are sections about Kish coming out as gay to her family and friends after her professional success bolstered her confidence. Self-assured yet down-to-earth, Kish’s account will resonate with aspiring chefs and Top Chef fans alike. Agent: David Forrer, InkWell Management. (Apr.)

Care and Feeding: A Memoir

In this profane, exhilarating autobiography, Woolever (World Travel)—a former cook and assistant to Anthony Bourdain—takes readers on a ride-along through her turbulent decades in the food industry. After falling in love with cooking during college, Woolever moved to New York City in 1996, stumbling “into the food world at a time when cooking and eating became an increasingly respectable and well-documented form of mass entertainment.” She worked odd jobs while taking classes at the French Culinary Institute, and eventually became an assistant to chef Mario Batali, a sometimes “tyrannical, irrational, and mean” boss who Woolever claims sexually harassed her during her first day on the job—though he also helped her sell her first pieces of freelance food writing. Through Battali, Woolever met Bourdain, who eventually hired her to help write a cookbook and serve as an all-purpose assistant. Throughout, Woolever paints a raw portrait of the culinary world’s hypermasculine work culture, but she steers clear of playing the victim, frankly acknowledging her own addictions, affairs, and mental health struggles, which nearly derailed her career before 12-step meetings helped her get sober. These rowdy reflections enlighten and entertain. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty

Journalist and chef Reichert debuts with a mesmerizing memoir about grappling with depression and growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The youngest child in a tranquil Edmonton household, Reichert spent blissful afternoons cooking with her grandmother, accompanying her father to the restaurants he owned, and testing out her own recipes. “Food was everything,” Reichert writes. “I knew it was delicious and I knew it was precious.” The flip side of Reichert’s sunny upbringing, however, was an unrelenting pressure to be happy, and a deep sense of shame whenever she struggled to contain her fear or sadness: “Life was painted with almost too much color in an effort to brighten what had come before.” After eating borscht on a trip to Warsaw as an adult, Reichert was moved to investigate her father’s time in Auschwitz and to unpack how the experience shaped his—and by extension her—love of food and obsession with joy. Recounting major meals and events in her life, from a bumpy marriage to her decision to become a chef, Reichert weaves a rich narrative tapestry that traces her journey toward self-knowledge in luminous prose. Nimble and nourishing, this is not to be missed. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary.

Hunger Like a Thirst: From Food Stamps to Fine Dining, a Restaurant Critic Finds Her Place at the Table

James Beard Award winner Rodell discusses the origins and evolution of her food writing career in this charming debut. “I remember the lighting, the tinkle of glasses, the swoosh of the waiters, the mesmerizing, intense luxury of it all,” she writes in the opening chapter, recalling her first fine-dining experience as a nine-year-old in Melbourne. That dinner stuck with Rodell into young adulthood and eventually spurred her to work as a hostess at a trendy restaurant in North Carolina, where she’d settled with a boyfriend in her early 20s. After a stint in New York City, Rodell returned to North Carolina with her husband and baby, and began writing restaurant reviews for a local newspaper to keep the family afloat. She quickly realized she’d found her calling, and much of the narrative traces her subsequent gigs at Atlanta’s Creative Loafing, L.A. Weekly, and the New York Times’ Australia bureau. Throughout, Rodell proves the accuracy of her self-description­—“I’m a classic restaurant critic with a slightly filthier vocabulary and an audience in mind that was less wealthy gourmand and more ratbag line cook”­—with punchy and accessible prose. This hearty, heartfelt missive will appeal to anyone who likes to wax poetic about a memorable meal. Agent: Kitty Cowles, Cowles Literary. (May)

I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir

Restaurateur McNally (The Balzthazar Cookbook) holds little back in this intense autobiography. He opens with his 2018 suicide attempt after suffering a debilitating stroke, then flashes back to his 1950s childhood in London’s East End, a time and place “permeated” by the aftershocks of WWII. McNally writes vividly of his formative years, which saw him leave school at 16 to pursue an acting career. From there, his life took several unexpected turns: McNally moved to Manhattan and was promoted from oyster shucker to maître d’ at a trattoria in Greenwich Village because of his English accent, pursued romantic relationships with men and women, and directed two films, one of which he now disowns (“I’d rather be waterboarded than watch it again”). He went on to open several major New York restaurants in the 1980s and ’90s, including Balthazar and the Odeon, and paints this ongoing phase of his career as a picaresque punctuated by Mafia shakedowns and battles with food critics. Throughout, McNally makes good on his reputation for unvarnished, sometimes-controversial commentary—at one point, he comes to Woody Allen’s defense—but the intimacy this approach generates makes it more of a feature than a bug. It adds up to an intriguing portrait of a complex personality. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA. (May)