Overview

Food and drink do a lot more than address physical need. They play a central role in our emotional and social existence. They serve as currency for hospitality, love, and affection, as a security blanket and plug for psychic wounds, and as a touchstone for times that have slipped into memory. They provide an excuse for people to sit together and share a meal, a round or two, and, often, the experience of connection. Cognoscenti have long laid claim to this turf. They got a lot of company - and competition - in the late 20th century, when food and drink escalated into the stuff of entertainment, foodie and cocktail cultures, multiple TV networks, and intellectual superiority. Writer and critic Kathy Biehl wandered through this terrain as it morphed and reported her findings to all manner of publications, in print and online. The joys, quirks, and questionable behavior that she observed fill this kaleidoscopic collection of her award-winning commentary and diaristic reports From Houston's burgeoning culinary landscape to late-night revelry in Britain and Barcelona to a Hell's Kitchen TV studio, it captures a way of life we take for granted no longer, when people freely gathered at tables and counters, shared food, raised glasses, and partook of drama and laughter and magic.

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9781736432105

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Reviews

If you love to eat and have a sense of humor Kathy will have you chuckling at her stories and craving some Doritos. She proves that writing about food doesn't have to be so darn serious. I wish it could all be this fun. - Sue Reddel, Food Travelist Three cheers (salt, butter, and sugar) for Kathy Biehl's wittily, wonderfully worded collection of mouth watering essays. Reading Eat, Drink & Be Wary was like going on a tasting tour - with a menu that encompasses not just food but the deeply felt culture that surrounds it. Culinary primitives like me will also be glad to know that the smorgasbord frequently skirts the exclusive grottoes of gourmetism and makes a beeline towards delicious, delicious junk. Devour this book! - Trav S .D., author, No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous and the blog Travalanche I love little books like this. They're like going to a coffee house for an hour with a good friend and just spilling the beans. And this one is focused on the major appetite we can talk about in mixed company. A fun, cathartic book we all need to have at hand to cleanse our metaphorical reading palates. - John-Michael Albert, author of 8 volumes of poetry (most recent: Questions You Were Too Polite to Ask, Marble Kite Press, 2018) and 8th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH (2011-2013) In this slim but brimming little book, Kathy Biehl surpasses conventional food writing to present us with a perfect Turducken. What looks like a dining guide is actually an ejection seat to the past, with a juicy little centre celebrating the weird. We travel through the screen door for comfort food, participate in the debacle of an over hyped restaurant, find ourselves with a cushy place in the limousine on our way to a magical midnight feast. The special of the house is a zoetrope of which she is a (sometimes) willing participant. Logic and reality - even dining is lagniappe! Her book is a treat! -- Kelley Loftus, author of The Moon in Mortonsfield, Our Year Without Maps, and A Circle of Stones

Author Information

Kathy Biehl spent some 30 years covering food, drink, and the behaviors they inspire. For more than a decade she reviewed restaurants for The Houston Business Journal, Houston Press, Time Out New York (including its first dining guide), and a slew of online directories and guides. She contributed cover stories to Houston's dining magazine My Table and wrote the food news column for the doctor's travel and leisure magazine Diversion and the legal research journal LLRX.com. She is the editrix and primary writer of the zine Ladies' Fetish & Taboo Society Compendium of Urban Anthropology and its companion blogs. Her food writing has won awards from the Association of Food Journalists and Houston Press Club, as well as the title Pseudo-Food X Pert, from a review subject she'd caught impersonating a competitor.

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