I’m a writer, editor, public speaker, and former cook. For nearly a decade, I worked as the lieutenant to the late author, TV host and producer Anthony Bourdain.
I’ve written for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach (RIP), Saveur, Bloomberg, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others. In 1996, I earned my bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, after which I moved to New York, dicked around for a few years, then completed the professional training program at the French Culinary Institute, where chef-instructor Pascal Béric gave me the single best piece of advice I’ve ever received: “Don’t freak out! Freaking out is not gonna help.”
I’ve been a private cook, nanny, caterer, writer, busgirl, recipe tester, farm hand, video store clerk, and a food editor. I worked as Mario Batali’s assistant from 1999 to 2002, during which time I contributed to the writing of his books Holiday Food (2000) and The Babbo Cookbook (2002). I edited and recipe-tested Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook (2004), and the spent several years as an editor, at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator.
In 2016, Ecco (an imprint of HarperCollins) published Appetites: A Cookbook, which I co-authored with Anthony Bourdain. Our second collaboration, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, was published by Ecco in April 2021, and entered the New York Times bestseller list at #1. In September 2021, Ecco published Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at #7. Appetites, World Travel and Bourdain have each been translated into more than a dozen languages.
I am currently co-authoring a book about sourdough baking with Richard Hart of Copenhagen’s Hart Bageri, to be published by Clarkson Potter in fall 2024. I’m also writing a memoir called Care and Feeding, to be published by Ecco in 2025. I co-host a food-focused podcast, Carbface for Radio, with affable shit-stirrer Chris Thornton, and am one of 60 writers for Flaming Hydra, a brand-new newsletter collective.