As you probably noticed, Ravenous launched a membership drive this week, and our goal is to get 300 new paid subscribers by September 19. And we are offering a one-time 25% discount on an annual subscription, at any tier. For the many of you who are already paid subscribers, we’ve got another avenue through which you can support us.
Do you like books? Are you one of the people who actually reads at least a book (or 50) each year? As part of the Ravenous crew, I am going to assume you do… and that The Atlantic seriously misrepresented the so-called end of reading in that hysterical article it published. Ironically, it sent out an email testing the waters about launching a book club recently, so reading can’t be all that DOA.
We have some great news for all you book people. Ravenous has an online bookstore with Bookshop.org that will allow us to feature all the books we put in our stories, but also allows us to share some of our favorite food books with you.
One of the books Amy McCarthy selected is Anthony Bourdain’s Typhoid Mary. “Kitchen Confidential and the crime novels get all the attention, but I love Bourdain’s take on Mary Mallon, the woman who killed so many people simply by refusing to stop cooking,” she says. “Is it his best-written book? No! Do I love it? Yes!”
The impossibly cool Ashok Selvam picked this comic book series that has been bound into a graphic novel, Chew by John Layman and illustrated by Rob Guillory. “Chew was a groundbreaking comic book series with a simple (and a little bit gross) premise centering around an FDA agent who has the telepathic ability to see visions from the food he consumed and the wacky hijinks that ensue,” he says.
Fiction books can be all about food too, and this pick from Frances Dumlao, Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala, is going right onto my reading list. “At the age of 33, this was the first fictional book I read with a Filipino American main character,” says Dumlao. “It’s the first installment in Manansala’s book series that’s part mystery, part coming-of-age story, and takes place around a Filipino restaurant.”
Jaya Saxena recommends Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America's Gay Restaurants by Erik Piepenburg. “What is a gay restaurant? Piepenburg makes the case that it's where gay people eat, and what a wonderful survey of so many of those places, including the HoJo's,” she says.
As for me, I think you should read A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers. It’s a novel about a woman who is both a food writer and a serial killer, who turns cannibalistic, eating the organs of men who wronged her. It’s also some of the most beautiful, tactile, and sensual food writing I’ve ever read.
We’ve also highlighted all the books we’ve featured in Ravenous stories, which is a pretty wild list of different books. Jaya put Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus into her history of the hot dog and how it became our default Fourth of July food, for more reading.
Frances shared Filipinx: Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora by Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan in her story on Filipino spaghetti’s ascension into the mainstream (and maybe even the cool-stream).
I did a piece not long after we launched, looking at what is new in Texas barbecue according to Evan LeRoy of LeRoy and Lewis in Austin — who has a great cookbook co-written by Texas Monthly’s Paula Forbes, appropriately called New School Barbecue Recipes for Next-Level Smoking and Grilling from Austin's LeRoy and Lewis. Two words: Pastrami beets.
Creating these bookstores allows Ravenous to earn affiliate revenue while supporting independent bookstores, and we hope it gives you a chance to get into our brains with some books we like. If you’ve already subscribed to Ravenous, this is another wonderful way to support us. Happy reading!
New on Ravenous this week
Amy McCarthy
Amy McCarthy
Courtney E. Smith
Bird Droppings 🐦⬛
- Texas Monthly reports on the James Beard Award-winning chef at Maximo’s in Houston, Adrian Torres, who is also a DACA recipient. Even though he’s in America legally, he is among the many who were given a path to citizenship through this Obama-era program and are being swept up in Trump ICE actions. Torres talks about feeling the stress of that and wondering what will happen to the program.
- Back in May, I reported on Taylor Sheridan’s impact on the DFW food scene with his massive filming operations, shooting in and buying up restaurants. Apparently, DFW restaurant owners are now calling it the Taylor Sheridan effect.
- Slate investigates one of the pressing questions of our time: Why are people so obsessed with Raising Cane’s? Lord knows I’d like to know. It's just chicken fingers, y'all.
