An Instant New York Times Bestseller! A candid funny and occasionally devastating culinary
memoir of a woman making her way through the food world navigating addiction a cultural
reckoning and an unexpected tragedy In this moving hilarious and insightful bestselling
memoir Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working within the
high-stakes celebrity chef culture at revered restaurants and food publications alternately
bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there’s more to
the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.
Behind the scenes Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic a high-functioning addict’s often
pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and
wryly self-deprecating Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is
by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip
club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while
balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and
motherhood. As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face
their own high-profile descents she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs in a
story of both workplace toxicity and personal recovery and how to hold on to the parts of her
life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding. This is a story of keeping it together
until several successive implosions-careers marriages reputations lives-show that control is
an illusion. A Behind-the-Scenes Look: Go from a seedy Atlantic City strip club with Mario
Batali to the Park Hyatt Tokyo with Anthony Bourdain witnessing the chaos and charisma of two
of the food world’s biggest stars. An Unflinching Addiction Memoir: A raw and darkly funny
account of binge drinking bad decisions and the slow journey toward sobriety in an industry
that runs on excess. Women in the Culinary World: A candid exploration of what it takes to
carve out a space as a woman in a kitchen culture that is by turns toxic and intoxicating
balancing ambition with motherhood. A Cultural Reckoning: Witness the food world’s overdue
reckoning from the inside as high-profile mentors face their own descents and hard questions
must be answered.
