The Best American Food Writing 2020 Quotes

“There are no shortcuts. There are no hacks. There is just hard work and life experience and two different kinds of omelets, neither one of which is better than the other, just as long as they’re well made.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020

“But a part of sobriety is learning to deal with boredom, which in time you realize is more like simplicity.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020

“Portland's commitment to a daring, perfectionist hedonism is still the city's strongest culinary unifier. At Hat Yai, the casual southern-Thai restaurant from local empire-builder Ninsom, fried chicken comes as a set with curry and roti, and its thin, spiced crust shatters over meat seasoned to the bone. At the newly opened Yonder, chef Maya Lovelace's counter-service ode to her North Carolina's childhood, the spicy, tender fried catfish demanded not just enjoyment but gluttony. Dinner at Naomi Pomeroy's Beast on Tuesday nights is a throwback four-course menu meant to evoke its supper club origins, serving utterly of-the-moment morel and asparagus pastas and a hunter's chicken made with last summer's preserved tomatoes. The 19-course tasting menu at Erizo, run by Eater Young Gun Jacob Harth, ends with a massive halibut collar and a raft of Parker House rolls. It's sort of useless to consider whether any of these meals are Honest, but you can't deny they are Good.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020: A Literary Collection of Essays Celebrating Food, Culture, and the Stories Shaping Our Culinary World

“The 19th-century Americana and DIY energy that became associated with Brooklyn dining were arguably transplanted from Portland. At Le Pigeon, one of the defining restaurants of mid-aughts Portland, bucking tradition remains pleasingly de rigeuer and unapologetically deranged. Lobster-stuffed fried chicken, a recent dish that could have merely been a dare, instead crams the luxury of lobster bisque inside of a fried hunk of chicken breast, the richness cut just enough by bright spring peas and slaw. The logic of the lobster fried chicken is a dogged quest to overload all pleasure centers in the weirdest possible way. Eating it makes you want to die, but happily.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020: A Literary Collection of Essays Celebrating Food, Culture, and the Stories Shaping Our Culinary World

“the American dining public what it wants. And what most Americans want is the elements of Japanese culture that they like—the nice-looking things; the tender, palatable foods; the weird stuff, but nothing icky or slimy. What most Americans want isn’t Japanese: what they want is Japanese-y.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020

“Maybe a film is just a diversion, a way to feel briefly better about our lives, the limitations and disappointments that define us, the things we cannot change. Most of us leave the theater, after all, and just go on being ourselves. Still, maybe something else is possible. Maybe in the moment when the music swells, and our hearts beat faster, and we feel overcome by the beauty of an image—in the instant that we feel newly brave and noble, and ready to be different, braver versions of ourselves—that we are who we really are.”
― J. Kenji López-Alt, The Best American Food Writing 2020