Care and Feeding

Laurie Woolever - Anthony Bourdain's lieutenant and co-author of bestsellers Appetites and Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography - traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at some of the most revered restaurants and food publications in New York. Alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business, there's more to this story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often-pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve out her own space as a woman in a world both toxic and intoxicating, while balancing her consuming work with a sometimes-ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens towards an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding.

About the Author

Laurie Woolever is a writer and editor. She spent nearly a decade assisting Anthony Bourdain, with whom she coauthored the cookbook Appetites and World Travel. She’s written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others, and has worked as an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.