Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever

Laurie Woolever – co-author of bestsellers Appetites and Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography – traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at food publications and revered restaurants in New York and around the world with two of the most powerful men in the business: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. But there’s more to this story than the two bold-faced names on her resume.

Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is 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.

From the New York Times bestselling author Laurie Woolever, this is a very candid, funny and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world while navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning and an unexpected tragedy.

About the Author: Laurie Woolever is a writer, editor, public speaker and former cook. For nearly a decade, she worked with the late author, TV host and producer Anthony Bourdain. She has written for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Food & Wine, Bloomberg and others, edited Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook (2004), and then spent several years as an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator. She also co-authored Appetites: A Cookbook with Anthony Bourdain, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, and wrote Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, all New York Times bestsellers.

25 Mar 2025

Care and Feeding: New York Times bestselling author of BOURDAIN by Laurie Woolever ISBN 9781923293267