Los Angeles: A patchwork megalopolis defined by its unlikely cultural collisions; the city that raised and shaped Roy Choi, the boundary-breaking chef who decided to leave behind fine dining to feed the city he loved—and, with the creation of the Korean taco, reinvented street food along the way.
Abounding with both the food and the stories that gave rise to Choi's inspired cooking, L.A. Son takes us through the neighborhoods and streets most tourists never see, from the hidden casinos where gamblers slurp fragrant bowls of pho to Downtown's Jewelry District, where a ten-year-old Choi wolfed down Jewish deli classics between diamond deliveries; from the kitchen of his parents' Korean restaurant and his mother's pungent kimchi to the boulevards of East L.A. and the best taquerias in the country, to, at last, the curbside view from one of his emblematic Kogi taco trucks, where people from all walks of life line up for a revolutionary meal.
Filled with over 85 inspired recipes that meld the overlapping traditions and flavors of L.A.—including Korean fried chicken, tempura potato pancakes, homemade chorizo, and Kimchi and Pork Belly Stuffed Pupusas—L.A. Son embodies the sense of invention, resourcefulness, and hybrid attitude of the city from which it takes its name, as it tells the transporting, unlikely story of how a Korean American kid went from lowriding in the streets of L.A. to becoming an acclaimed chef.

L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food

Biographies & Memoirs

Nguyen, Tien

Choi, Roy

Phan, Natasha

Arts & Literature

Anthony Bourdain/Ecco

The debut title in the Anthony Bourdain Books line, The Prophets of Smoked Meat by “Barbecue Snob” Daniel Vaughn, author of the enormously popular blog Full Custom Gospel BBQ, is a rollicking journey through the heart of Texas Barbecue.
From brisket to ribs, beef to pork, mesquite to oak, this fully illustrated, comprehensive guide to Texas barbecue includes pit masters’ recipes, tales of the road—from country meat markets to roadside stands, sumptuous photography, and a panoramic look at the Lone Star State, where smoked meat is sacred.

The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Daniel Vaughn

Cooking by Ingredient

Pain Don’t Hurt is the no-holds-barred memoir from the only professional fighter in history to return to the ring after open-heart surgery, kickboxer Mark “Fightshark” Miller—an inspiring story of family, determination, and redemption.
In 2007, Mark Miller was a rising star in professional kickboxing, until a routine physical uncovered a serious condition that required open-heart surgery. The crisis helped to temporarily reunite his fractured family and made Miller more determined than ever to return to the kickboxing ring. But within a year, his parents and brother were all dead, and Miller’s fragile optimism imploded, sending him into a tailspin of drugs and alcohol.
Pain Don’t Hurt is a story of incredible tenacity, dedication, and hard work—how one fierce competitor overcame repeated obstacles to realize his dreams. Miller recounts stories ranging from his childhood spent in the Steelers locker room to the surprising life lessons he learned from other fighters to his triumphant return to fighting in a Moscow kickboxing ring. He talks sincerely about family and fatherhood—of the hard lessons about masculinity and violence learned from his father. He also offers an inspiring, exciting, and frank account of the fights—both in and out of the ring—that have shaped him.
A deeply personal account of guts, blood, and glory, Pain Don’t Hurt pays tribute to the never-say-die spirit embodied in a man who refuses to back down, no matter the odds.

Pain Don't Hurt: Fighting Inside and Outside the Ring

Arts & Photography

Miller,Mark

Jones, Shelby

History & Criticism

Once upon a time, salad was iceberg lettuce with a few shredded carrots and a cucumber slice, if you were lucky. A vegetable side was potatoes—would you like those baked, mashed, or au gratin? A nice anniversary dinner? Would you rather visit the Holiday Inn or the Regency Inn? In Grand Forks, North Dakota, a small town where professors moonlight as farmers, farmers moonlight as football coaches, and everyone loves hockey, one woman has had the answers for more than twenty-five years: Marilyn Hagerty. In her weekly Eatbeat column in the local paper, Marilyn gives the denizens of Grand Forks the straight scoop on everything from the best blue plate specials—beef stroganoff at the Pantry—to the choicest truck stops—the Big Sioux (and its lutefisk lunch special)—to the ambience of the town's first Taco Bell. Her verdict? "A cool pastel oasis on a hot day."
No-nonsense but wry, earnest but self-aware, Eatbeat also encourages the best in its readers—reminding them to tip well and why—and serves as its own kind of down-home social register, peopled with stories of ex–postal workers turned café owners and prom queen waitresses. Filled with reviews of the mom-and-pop diners that eventually gave way to fast-food joints and the Norwegian specialties that finally faded away in the face of the Olive Garden's endless breadsticks, Grand Forks is more than just a loving look at the shifts in American dining in the last years of the twentieth century—it is also a surprisingly moving and hilarious portrait of the quintessential American town, one we all recognize in our hearts regardless of where we're from.

Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews

Hagerty, Marilyn

Cooking Education & Reference

The riotous and unbridled confessions of a debauched rock and roller and his adventures in excess while touring Middle America on the ’80’s hair-metal nostalgia circuit 
The Unband emerged from the suburbs of late ’80’s New England and drank, drugged, crashed, and burned their way across the United States until, on the brink of the new century and with the help of their dominatrix manager, a drug-dealing patron bent on revolution, and a willful record executive or two, the band got their Big Break, in a collapsing music industry where boy-band pop ruled and rock music had been declared dead. Equal parts This Is Spinal Tap and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Adios, Motherfucker is the candid and hilarious account of that experience, now updated and expanded from the version published in 2004 as Gentlemanly Repose. 
In this epic, intoxicated memoir, Unband bassist Michael Ruffino takes readers along on a raucous tear across a surrealistic landscape populated with crack-smoking Girl Scouts, beer-drinking chimps, two-fisted femmes fatales, and murderous headbangers by the horde, while on tour with giants of heavy metal including Ronnie James Dio, Lemmy Kilmister, Def Leppard, Anthrax, and a veritable Who Was Who of reunited ’80’s hair bands. 
Into that volatile mix, The Unband brought do-it-yourself pyrotechnics, a giant inflatable hand (for making giant inflatable gestures), a high tolerance for substance abuse of all kinds, and an infectious love of rock and roll and everything it stands for. Chronicling everything from the drug-fueled chaos in the underground caverns of California to shotgun-toting barmaids on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, Adios, Motherfucker is a reader’s all-access pass, a comic odyssey through the netherworld of heavy rock.

Adios, Motherfucker: A Gentleman's Progress Through Rock and Roll

Ruffino, Michael

Humor & Entertainment

From rising culinary star Danny Bowien, chef and cofounder of the tremendously popular Mission Chinese Food restaurants, comes an exuberant cookbook that tells the story of an unconventional idea born in San Francisco that spread cross-country, propelled by wildly inventive recipes that have changed what it means to cook Chinese food in America
 Mission Chinese Food is not exactly a Chinese restaurant. It began its life as a pop-up: a restaurant nested within a divey Americanized Chinese joint in San Francisco’s Mission District. From the beginning, a spirit of resourcefulness and radical inventiveness has infused each and every dish at Mission Chinese Food. Now, hungry diners line up outside both the San Francisco and New York City locations, waiting hours for platters of Sizzling Cumin Lamb, Thrice-Cooked Bacon, Fiery Kung Pao Pastrami, and pungent Salt-Cod Fried Rice.
The force behind the phenomenon, chef Danny Bowien is, at only thirty-three, the fastest-rising young chef in the United States. Born in Korea and adopted by parents in Oklahoma, he has a broad spectrum of influences. He’s a veteran of fine-dining kitchens, sushi bars, an international pesto competition, and a grocery-store burger stand. In 2013 Food &amp; Wine named him one of the country’s Best New Chefs and the James Beard Foundation awarded him its illustrious Rising Star Chef Award. In 2011 Bon Appétit named Mission Chinese Food the second-best new restaurant in America, and in 2012 the New York Times hailed the Lower East Side outpost as the Best New Restaurant in New York City. 
The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook tracks the fascinating, meteoric rise of the restaurant and its chef. Each chapter in the story—from the restaurant’s early days, to an ill-fated trip to China, to the opening of the first Mission Chinese in New York—unfolds as a conversation between Danny and his collaborators, and is accompanied by detailed recipes for the addictive dishes that have earned the restaurant global praise. Mission Chinese’s legions of fans as well as home cooks of all levels will rethink what it means to cook Chinese food, while getting a look into the background and insights of one of the most creative young chefs today.

The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook

Ying, Chris

Bowien, Danny

A journalist and blogger takes us on a colorful and spicy gastronomic tour through Viet Nam in this entertaining, offbeat travel memoir, with a foreword by Anthony Bourdain.
 Growing up in a small town in northern England, Graham Holliday wasn’t keen on travel. But in his early twenties, a picture of Hanoi sparked a curiosity that propelled him halfway across the globe. Graham didn’t want to be a tourist in an alien land, though; he was determined to live it. An ordinary guy who liked trying interesting food, he moved to the capital city and embarked on a quest to find real Vietnamese food. In Eating Viet Nam, he chronicles his odyssey in this strange, enticing land infused with sublime smells and tastes.
Traveling through the back alleys and across the boulevards of Hanoi—where home cooks set up grills and stripped-down stands serving sumptuous fare on blue plastic furniture—he risked dysentery, giardia, and diarrhea to discover a culinary treasure-load that was truly foreign and unique. Holliday shares every bite of the extraordinary fresh dishes, pungent and bursting with flavor, which he came to love in Hanoi, Saigon, and the countryside. Here, too, are the remarkable people who became a part of his new life, including his wife, Sophie.
A feast for the senses, funny, charming, and always delicious, Eating Viet Nam will inspire armchair travelers, curious palates, and everyone itching for a taste of adventure.

Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table

Holliday, Graham

Professionals & Academics

The first cookbook from one of the world’s most groundbreaking chefs and a pioneering restaurant on the Lower East Side—the story of Wylie Dufresne’s wd~50 and the dishes that made it famous
 When it opened in 2003, wd~50 was New York’s most innovative, cutting-edge restaurant. Mastermind Wylie Dufresne ushered in a new generation of experimental and free-spirited chefs, and introduced a wildly unique approach to cooking, influenced by science, art, and the humblest of classic foods like bagels and lox, and American cheese. 
A cookbook that doubles as a time capsule, wd~50 is a glimpse into a particular moment in New York City food culture, embodied by a restaurant so distinct it inspired New York Times critic Pete Wells to compare its closing in 2014 to that of the notorious music venue CBGB, “with way nicer bathrooms.” With gorgeous photography, detailed recipes explaining Wylie’s iconic creations, and stories from the last days of the restaurant, wd~50 is a collectible piece of culinary memorabilia. Fans of Wylie, food lovers, and industry insiders who have been waiting for a chance to relive the excitement and artistry of wd~50 can finally do just that.

wd~50: The Cookbook

Meehan, Peter

Dufresne, Wylie

Reference

In the spirit of Mindy Kaling, Kelly Oxford, and Sarah Silverman, a compulsively readable and outrageously funny memoir of growing up as a fish out of water, finding your voice, and embracing your inner crazy-person, from popular actress, writer, and comedian Bonnie McFarlane.
 It took Bonnie McFarlane a lot of time, effort, and tequila to get to where she is today. Before she starred on Last Comic Standing and directed her own films, she was an inappropriately loud tomboy growing up on her parents’ farm in Cold Lake, Canada, wetting her pants during standardized tests and killing chickens. Desperate to find “her people”—like-minded souls who wouldn’t judge her because she was honest, ruthless, and okay, sometimes really rude—Bonnie turned to comedy. In her explosively funny and no-holds-barred memoir, Bonnie tells it like it is, and lays bare all of her smart (and her not-so-smart) decisions along her way to finding her friends and her comedic voice.
From fistfights in elementary school to riding motorcycles to the World Famous Comic Strip, to Late Night with David Letterman, and through to her infamous “c” word bit on Last Comic Standing, You’re Better Than Me is her funny and outrageous trip through the good, bad, and ugly of her life in comedy. McFarlane doesn’t always keep her mouth shut when she should, but at least she makes people laugh. And that’s all that matters, right?

You're Better Than Me: A Memoir

McFarlane, Bonnie

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Books by Anthony Bourdain/Ecco