Description
Product Description
Winner, 2019 James Beard Award for Best Book of the Year in Writing
Finalist, 2019 IACP Award, Literary Food Writing
Named a Best Food Book of the Year by the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, BookRiot, and more
Semifinalist, Goodreads Choice Awards “Thoughtful, well researched, and truly moving. Shines a light on what it means to cook and eat American food, in all its infinitely nuanced and ever-evolving glory.” —Anthony Bourdain
American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories?
A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country. There’s a Cambodian couple in Lowell, Massachusetts, and their efforts to re-create the flavors of their lost country. A Uyghur café in New York’s Brighton Beach serves a noodle soup that seems so very familiar and yet so very exotic—one unexpected ingredient opens a window onto an entirely unique culture. A beignet from Café du Monde in New Orleans, as potent as Proust’s madeleine, inspires a narrative that tunnels through time, back to the first Creole cooks, then forward to a Korean rice-flour
hoedduck and a beignet dusted with matcha.
Sixteen adventures, sixteen vibrant new chapters in the great evolving story of American cuisine. And forty recipes, created by Lee, that bring these new dishes into our own kitchens.
Review
“Striking stories. . . . Lee is a master.”—New York Times Book Review
“Beautifully written.”—NPR “Lee is a gifted storyteller and those first few chapters will grab you and keep you riveted all the way to the end.”—Bon Appétit
“Capture[s] what the nation’s melting pot cuisine is today.”—Food & Wine, Staff Favorite “Part adventure tale, part memoir. . . . Don’t hit the beach without this remarkable book in your bag.”—Fine Cooking “Conjure[s] writers as diverse and compelling as Alexis de Tocqueville, M.F.K. Fisher and Anthony Bourdain. . . . Powerful, poignant, and timely.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Lee peels open the layers of what it means to be American today. . . . [Buttermilk Graffiti] contains a level of awareness that’s often missing from chef memoirs. . . . Lee is just as well-read and reflective as master of the genre Anthony Bourdain, but he brings a fresh take.”—Eater “Raw, gritty. . . . Each chapter in Buttermilk Graffiti presents a new adventure.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch “Lee is consistently willing to dive into unfamiliar places and challenging conversations to get stories that haven’t yet been told, and the reader emerges from Buttermilk Graffiti richer for his efforts. . . . Buttermilk Graffiti represents exactly the kind of inquiry that helps create a vibrant national food scene. It’s not a flavor-of-the-week Nutella lasagna recipe turned hashtag, and it’s not a reality food competition. The book is one hyper-curious chef, on the road, meeting people in places that haven’t already been covered to death and discovering what they eat and what makes it special. Based on the stories that Lee tells, the journey was valuable unto itself—and we’re just fortunate to get to tag along with him.”—Christian Science Monitor “A tapestry of American cuisine. . . . Lee’s elevation of the often anonymous people behind the food we eat speaks to his concern with not just style, but substance.”—Los Angeles Times “Like all great food writers, [Lee is] always on the verge of declaring the thing he is currently chewing on to be among the greatest things he’s ever eaten. He will eat two West Virginia slaw dogs before 8 a.m. and stay up all night on your porch drinking whiskey. . . . He’s so amiable that as you