Food & Cooking

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina talks about what it's like to be a Maitre D' at the fanciest restaurants in New York City. He has worked in the business for three decades telling wealthy diners, celebrities and even the mafia whether or not they can have the table by the window. His memoir is called Your Table is Ready.

James Beard Award-winning chef, Sean Sherman talks about his restaurant, Owamni, and about bringing more awareness to indigenous foods. He’s a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.

Clark says she's always looking for shortcuts in the kitchen — including ways to use fewer pans. Her latest cookbook is Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals.

Tucci has always connected to his roots through food, so he was devastated when cancer treatment put him on a feeding tube. He's now cancer-free, with a new memoir. Originally broadcast Oct. 5, 2021.

The renown chef and public television star, who died in 2004, spoke to Fresh Air in 1989 about the food she ate as a child in Pasadena, Calif. Child is the subject of the new documentary, Julia.

For actor Stanley Tucci, food isn't just sustenance; it's also a way to connect to his roots — to the backyard gardens of his Southern Italian ancestors, to the basement kitchen where his grandmother plucked chickens, to the delicious Sunday meals of his childhood. But three years ago, Tucci was diagnosed with oral cancer, and the cancer and its treatment nearly robbed him of his ability to enjoy food. Ater an intense radiation treatment, he is now cancer-free. His sense of taste has returned — and is actually heightened.

Investigative journalist Michael Moss's 2013 book, Salt Sugar Fat, explored food companies' aggressive marketing of those products and their impact on our health. In his new book, Hooked, Moss updates the food giants' efforts to keep us eating what they serve — and how they're responding to complaints from consumers and health advocates.

Reem assis says that many foods that are considered Middle Eastern or Israeli actually originated as Palestinian dishes. Her first cookbook, The Palestinian Table, chronicled the history of Palestinian food — along with some of her personal history. In her new book, The Arabesque Table, Kassis expands the focus to the cross-cultural culinary history of the Arab world.

Food science writer Harold McGee's new book Nose Dive is about how smell is essential to our sense of taste, why things smell the way they do and the ways different chemicals combine to create surprising (and sometimes distasteful) odors.

The James Beard award-winning chef says his flagship restaurant, Red Rooster, became his "haven" during the height of pandemic. Working with José Andrés' World Central Kitchen organization, Samuelsson converted the restaurant to a community kitchen. Over the course of six months, Red Rooster served more than 200,000 meals to first responders and others in need. he talks about that and his new book.

The former model/actress is nominated for an Emmy Award for hosting Top Chef. Her new show, Taste the Nation, explores immigrant cooking. Originally broadcast July 6, 2020.

Chef Tom Colicchio is one of the many restaurateurs wondering what will be left of the industry after the COVID-19 pandemic has run its course.

After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine.

Bourdain, who died at 61, traveled the world, sampling local cuisine and meeting people along the way. He told Fresh Air in 2016: "I'm happiest experiencing food in the most purely emotional way."

In her new memoir chef Lidia Bastianich recalls growing up on a family farm, escaping the communists, becoming a refugee and immigrating to the U.S., starting her own restaurant in Queens, and getting her own cooking show.