The Best American Food Writing 2019

How and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of this world—and what is to become of it. — Michael Pollen, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

in these modern times everything from asparagus to venison comes to the table by plane and is available all through the year. Heaven knows where it all originates—hothouses, food factories, or different hemispheres, I imagine—but there it is, whatever you want, at a price. Or rather, several prices. It costs more, obviously. It won’t be as fresh as

Every bite is a memory, and the most powerful memories are the first ones. At this table, we are given both food and love, and we could be forgiven if, later in life, we have trouble distinguishing the two. It is here that we develop our passions and our disgusts, and get a sense of whether it is more of a waste to leave something on the side of th

He was seeing beyond the surfaces of the land to its hidden truths. Some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a glass of Jack and listened to the trucks heading south on 220, carrying crates of live chickens to the slaughterhouses—always under cover of darkness, like a vast and shameful trafficking—chickens pumped full of hormones that lef