Now in paperback! A celebration of cooking and the pleasures of food from literary legend Jason Epstein.

Jason Epstein, the legendary editor and publisher of Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal, E. L. Doctorow, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, and Maida Heatter takes us on a culinary tour through his eventful life, beginning with his childhood summers in Maine, where his decision to improve upon his grandmother's chicken pot pie led to a lifetime at the stove.

From the great restaurants of postwar Paris to the narrow streets of New York's Chinatown today; from a New Year's dinner aboard the old Ile de France with Buster Keaton to an evening at New York's glamorous "21" restaurant with the dreaded Roy Cohn; from Chinese omelettes with the great Jane Jacobs at the edge of the Arctic Ocean to a lobster dinner with the Mailers on Cape Cod, as well as a warning to examine the chair before you sit down to dinner with W. H. Auden, this delicious book celebrates a lifetime of pleasure in cooking and eating well.