Foodie Memoirs

Cellar Rat

My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly

By: Hannah Selinger
Narrated by: Hannah Selinger
Length: 7 hours 29 minutes

What happens when a career you love doesn’t love you back?

As Hannah Selinger will tell you, to be a good restaurant employee is to be invisible. At the height of her career as a server and then sommelier at some of New York’s most famed dining institutions, Selinger was the hand that folded your napkin while you were in the bathroom, the... Read more

Accidentally on Purpose

By: Kristen Kish
Narrated by: Kristen Kish
Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

A tender, cleareyed memoir, Accidentally on Purpose charts a journey full of purpose, belonging, and real love—a “recipe for a life worth living” (Stacy London).

Kristen Kish never could have imagined people on the street knowing her name—not when she was a carefree softball-tossing kid, in high school working at a pretzel stand, and not even... Read more

Be Ready When the Luck Happens

A Memoir

By: Ina Garten
Narrated by: Ina Garten
Length: 8 hours 47 minutes

“This memoir is a masterclass on how to succeed in business, follow your heart and to never settle. Among the many memories, Ina discusses the pivotal moment she answered a newspaper ad and how it changed her life! Take chances, do what you love and surround yourself with people who support you. Read more

What I Ate in One Year

(and related thoughts)

By: Stanley Tucci
Narrated by: Stanley Tucci
Length: 8 hours 1 minute

“Stanley Tucci's humanity, dry humor and love of great food come through loud and clear in this diary detailing a year of his life and meals. Read more

Love, Loss, and What We Ate

A Memoir

By: Padma Lakshmi
Narrated by: Padma Lakshmi
Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s HeartburnLong before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television... Read more

World Travel

An Irreverent Guide

By: Anthony Bourdain & Laurie Woolever
Narrated by: Laurie Woolever, Shep Gordon, Christopher Bourdain, Jen Agg, Matt Walsh, Bill Buford, Claude Tayag, Nari Kye, Vidya Balachander & Steve Albini
Length: 12 hours 11 minutes

“There are not words for how much I miss the voice of Anthony Bourdain. A new collection of his writings put together with Laurie Woolever (his assistant for 10 years) details his favorite places on earth and with notes on how to visit them. As we prepare to travel as safely as possible again, it's comforting to have Bourdain as my companion if... Read more

Kitchen Confidential

Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

By: Anthony Bourdain
Narrated by: Anthony Bourdain
Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

“Bourdain begrudgingly offers, among other things, a cracked and battered pair of rose-colored glasses through which to view the world. Read more

Yes, Chef

A Memoir

By: Marcus Samuelsson
Narrated by: Marcus Samuelsson
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
 
It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for... Read more

My Life in France

By: Julia Child
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
Length: 11 hours 17 minutes

In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her “true calling.”

From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre, en route to Paris, in the fall of 1948, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who... Read more

Give a Girl a Knife

A Memoir

By: Amy Thielen
Narrated by: Amy Thielen
Length: 10 hours 9 minutes

A beautifully written food memoir chronicling one woman’s journey from her rural Midwestern hometown to the intoxicating world of New York City fine dining—and back again—in search of her culinary roots
 
Before Amy Thielen frantically plated rings of truffled potatoes in some of New York City’s finest kitchens—for chefs David Bouley, Daniel... Read more

Blood, Bones & Butter

The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

By: Gabrielle Hamilton
Narrated by: Gabrielle Hamilton
Length: 10 hours 3 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • Newsday • The Huffington Post • Financial Times • GQ • Slate • Men’s Journal • Washington Examiner • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews • National Post • The Toronto Star • BookPage • Bookreporter

“I wanted the lettuce and... Read more

Sous Chef

24 Hours on the Line

By: Michael Gibney
Narrated by: Fred Berman
Length: 5 hours 42 minutes

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME

The back must slave to feed the belly. . . . In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen. Here readers will find all the details, in rapid-fire... Read more

Garlic and Sapphires

The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

By: Ruth Reichl
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Length: 10 hours 57 minutes

GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES is Ruth Reichl's riotous account of the many disguises she employs to dine anonymously. There is her stint as Molly Hollis, a frumpy blond with manicured nails and an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque. The result: her famous double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and... Read more

Stir

My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home

By: Jessica Fechtor
Narrated by: Fechtor Jessica
Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

At twenty-eight, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved.



Jessica's... Read more

My Berlin Kitchen

A Love Story, with Recipes

By: Luisa Weiss
Narrated by: Angela Dawe
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

It takes courage to turn your life upside down, especially when everyone is telling you how lucky you are. But sometimes what seems right feels deeply wrong. My Berlin Kitchen tells the story of how one thoroughly confused, kitchen-mad romantic broke off her engagement, quit her dream job, and went across the ocean in search of happiness.Luisa... Read more

Mastering the Art of French Eating

Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

By: Ann Mah
Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

The memoir of a young diplomat’s wife who must reinvent her dream of living in Paris—one dish at a time

When journalist Ann Mah’s diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on... Read more

Life, on the Line

A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat

By: Grant Achatz & Nick Kokonas
Narrated by: Johnny Heller
Length: 12 hours 51 minutes

In 2007, chef Grant Achatz seemingly had it made. He had been named one of the best new chefs in America by Food & Wine in 2002, received the James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year Award in 2003, and in 2005 he and Nick Kokonas opened the conceptually radical restaurant Alinea, which was named Best Restaurant in America by... Read more

Home Cooking

A Writer in the Kitchen: A Memoir and Cookbook

By: Laurie Colwin
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, the acclaimed author of Happy All the Time delivers a beloved cookbook manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. • With a foreword by Ruth Reichl.

“As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the... Read more

Dirt

Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking

By: Bill Buford
Narrated by: Bill Buford
Length: 16 hours 51 minutes

“You can almost taste the food in Bill Buford’s Dirt, an engrossing, beautifully written memoir about his life as a cook in France.” —The Wall Street Journal

What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old... Read more

The Cooking Gene

A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

By: Michael W. Twitty
Narrated by: Michael W. Twitty
Length: 15 hours 20 minutes

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and... Read more