Buttermilk Graffiti

<b>Winner 2019 James Beard Award for Best Book of the Year in Writing</b> <p/><b>Finalist 2019 IACP Award Literary Food Writing</b> <p/><b>Named a Best Food Book of the Year by the <i>Boston Globe</i> <i>Smithsonian</i> BookRiot and more</b> <p/><b>Semifinalist Goodreads Choice Awards <p/> Thoughtful well researched and truly moving. Shines a light on what it means to cook and eat American food in all its infinitely nuanced and ever-evolving glory. <br> --Anthony Bourdain</b> <p/> American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive cultures collide and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee who like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton is as much a writer as he is a chef that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions the innovations the memories? <p/> A natural-born storyteller Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country. There's a Cambodian couple in Lowell Massachusetts and their efforts to re-create the flavors of their lost country. A Uyghur café in New York's Brighton Beach serves a noodle soup that seems so very familiar and yet so very exotic--one unexpected ingredient opens a window onto an entirely unique culture. A beignet from Café du Monde in New Orleans as potent as Proust's madeleine inspires a narrative that tunnels through time back to the first Creole cooks then forward to a Korean rice-flour <i>hoedduck</i> and a beignet dusted with matcha. <p/> Sixteen adventures sixteen vibrant new chapters in the great evolving story of American cuisine. And forty recipes created by Lee that bring these new dishes into our own kitchens.