Food literature

Food literature is about food, but it is not made up of cookbooks. There are no ingredient lists or cooking times here, but stories, history, reportage and guides from and about the world of food.

Under Inside the Kitchen, we bring together memoirs, biographies and reportage from restaurant kitchens. Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, Bill Buford's Heat and Dirt, David Chang's Eat a Peach and Marco Pierre White's White Heat all belong here, as do Magnus Nilsson's story of Fäviken and René Redzepi's diary of a year at Noma.

Food History & Culture contains the books that explain why we eat the way we do. Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste from 1825, Richard Tellström's exploration of 800 years of Swedish food culture, the history of kitchen utensils and the cookbook considered as a genre in its own right.

The Restaurant Industry is about the business behind the food, including service, hospitality, ownership and economics. Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality and Nicholas Lander's The Art of the Restaurateur are excellent starting points for anyone who wants to understand how a restaurant actually works.

Guides are books you travel with rather than cook from, featuring recommendations for restaurants, bars and pizzerias around the world, selected by chefs and bartenders who eat out for a living.

Food literature is for anyone who enjoys reading about food as much as cooking it. It is also the shelf that explains why today's kitchen looks the way it does, and the books that often make the best gifts for someone who already owns every cookbook.