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A BookRiot Most Anticipated Travel Book of 2023

Italian beef and hot dogs get the headlines. Cutting-edge cuisine and big-name chefs get the Michelin stars. But Chicago food shows its true depth in classic dishes conceived in the kitchens of immigrant innovators, neighborhood entrepreneurs, and mom-and-pop visionaries.

Monica Eng and David Hammond draw on decades of exploring the city’s food landscape to serve up thirty can’t-miss eats found in all corners of Chicago. From Mild Sauce to the Jibarito and from Taffy Grapes to Steak and Lemonade, Eng and Hammond present stories of the people and places behind each dish while illuminating how these local favorites reflect the multifaceted history of the city and the people who live there. Each entry provides all the information you need to track down whatever sounds good and selected recipes even let you prepare your own Flaming Saganaki or Akutagawa.

Generously illustrated with full-color photos, Made in Chicago provides locals and visitors alike with loving profiles of a great food city’s defining dishes.

The secret history of manly eating in the Heart of Dixie

Man Food: Recipes from the Iron Trade is a flavorful tribute to Alabama’s industrial soul and culinary heart. Born from the legendary Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham—once the beating heart of the Magic City’s iron industry—this cookbook blends Southern tradition, foundry grit, and backyard hospitality into one unforgettable volume.

Collected from the pages of Pig Iron Rough Notes, a magazine once circulated among Alabama’s ironworkers, these recipes reflect the lives of men who forged metal by day and cooked with cast iron by night. Inside, you’ll find dishes like Brunswick Stew, Catfish Chowder, and Bean Hole Beans—hearty meals rooted in Alabama’s outdoors, work camps, and family kitchens.

With colorful stories, vintage illustrations, and a deep appreciation for cast-iron cooking, Man Food celebrates the “Gentlemen Cooks” of the South—men who knew that good food and good company were just as important as hard work. Whether you're a native Alabamian, a history buff, or a lover of Southern foodways, this book offers a delicious slice of Alabama culture.

Fire up your skillet, pour a cup of camp coffee, and taste the legacy of the Iron Trade—Alabama style.

When fine dining met fine art, a new Los Angeles was born.

Between 1979 and 1987, the city witnessed two cultural breakthroughs that may seem unrelated. A wave of bold, design‑forward restaurants helped launch the nationwide “New American” movement, serving innovative cuisine in sleek, modern spaces adorned with contemporary art. At the same time, Los Angeles celebrated a milestone: the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), its first major museum devoted solely to contemporary art—an institution long missing from a city with global ambitions.

Though often told separately, these stories are deeply intertwined. In this lively, revelatory book, Alison Pearlman uncovers how restaurants became galleries as well as vital crossroads for the chefs, artists, collectors, architects, and civic leaders who reshaped L.A.’s cultural identity. Together, they revived hopes that L.A. could reclaim the creative energy of its 1960s heyday and join the ranks of the world’s cultural capitals.

Drawing on extensive interviews with those who built this transformative era, Pearlman shows how L.A.—through distinctive architecture, daring personalities, and unconventional collaborations—created a cultural moment with national impact. Vivid, engaging, and richly researched, this book brings to life a heady period in the city’s history.

A must‑read for lovers of art, food, and the vibrant alchemy that emerges when creative worlds collide.

Part travelogue, part cookbook, Mercados takes us on a tour of Mexico’s most colorful destinations—its markets—led by an award-winning, preeminent guide whose passion for Mexican food attracted followers from around the globe. Just as David Sterling’s Yucatán earned him praise for his “meticulously researched knowledge” (Saveur) and for producing “a labor of love that well documents place, people and, yes, food” (Booklist), Mercados now invites readers to learn about local ingredients, meet vendors and cooks, and taste dishes that reflect Mexico’s distinctive regional cuisine.

Serving up more than one hundred recipes, Mercados presents unique versions of Oaxaca’s legendary moles and Michoacan’s carnitas, as well as little-known specialties such as the charcuterie of Chiapas, the wild anise of Pátzcuaro, and the seafood soups of Veracruz. Sumptuous color photographs transport us to the enormous forty-acre, 10,000-merchant Central de Abastos in Oaxaca as well as tiny tianguises in Tabasco. Blending immersive research and passionate appreciation, David Sterling’s final opus is at once a must-have cookbook and a literary feast for the gastronome.

New case studies documenting ten thousand years of cuisines across the cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico, from the earliest gathered plants, such as guajes, to the contemporary production of tejate and its health implications.

Among the richest culinary traditions in Mexico are those of the “eight regions” of the state of Oaxaca. Mesquite Pods to Mezcal brings together some of the most prominent scholars in Oaxacan archaeology and related fields to explore the evolution of the area’s world-renowned cuisines. This volume, the first to address food practices across Oaxaca through a long-term historical lens, covers the full spectrum of human occupation in Oaxaca, from the early Holocene to contemporary times. Contributors consider the deep history of agroecological management and large-scale landscape transformation, framing food production as a human-environment relation. They explore how, after the arrival of the Spanish, Oaxacan cuisines adapted, diets changed, and food became a stronger marker of identity. Examining the present, further studies document how traditional foodways persist and what they mean for contemporary Oaxacans, whether they are traveling ancient roads, working outside the region, or rebuilding after an earthquake. Together, the original case studies in this volume demonstrate how new methods and diverse theoretical approaches can come together to trace the development of a rich food tradition, one that is thriving today.

An ethnography of mezcal and how it has become a global, "artisanal" good.

Mezcal is booming. Once considered a peasant drink—the rough, lowbrow cousin of the more refined tequila—the smoky spirit is now prized by connoisseurs the world over. It is also hailed as a savior of Oaxaca, powering a craft industry that can uphold rural economies and Indigenous traditions.

Ronda L. Brulotte traces mezcal’s swift rise and its effects on communities that have distilled and enjoyed the beverage for generations. Only in the late 1990s did mezcal begin to escape its longstanding associations with Indigenous and working-class life, even as these very qualities supply the “authenticity” that elite consumers crave. Through a detailed ethnography of the spirits industry in Oaxaca, Brulotte compares the ideal of the artisanal economy with the reality of participation in global markets. Her findings—focused on tourism-led development and gentrification, the exploitation of women and smallholders, and swelling regional migration pressures—raise troubling questions about the ecological and social sustainability of a new craft imaginary that rebrands rustic products as luxury goods.

If you're interested in cooking with herbs and want to use the best of Michigan and the Midwest's seasonal foods, then this is the cookbook for you.

The recipe section is written for both the novice and the more experienced cook. Each recipe has helpful information about serving suggestions and menu ideas. Scattered throughout the book are handy tips related to foods, herbs, and cooking. In addition, Michigan Herb Cookbook includes a section on herb growing and designing in which planting, growing, freezing, drying, and storage tips for over thirty herbs are explained in detail.

You will find over 150 recipes in the book's seven chapters. More than half are low-fat, and there are many vegetarian favorites. Also, a chapter devoted to condiments and "little extras" contains various herb blend, vinegar, chutney, pesto, and sauce recipes, such as Sun-Dried-Tomato Pesto and Roasted Red Pepper Sage Sauce.

Suzanne Breckenridge, formerly a ceramics and cooking instructor, is now a food stylist and caterer. Marjorie Snyder is a freelance food writer, a cooking teacher at a junior college, and cofounder and president of the Madison Wisconsin Herb Society.

Elizabeth Zanoni provides a cutting-edge comparative look at Italian people and products on the move between 1880 and 1940. Concentrating on foodstuffs—a trade dominated by Italian entrepreneurs in New York and Buenos Aires—Zanoni reveals how consumption of these increasingly global imports affected consumer habits and identities and sparked changing and competing connections between gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Women in particular—by tradition tasked with buying and preparing food—had complex interactions that influenced both global trade and their community economies. Zanoni conveys the complicated and often fraught values and meanings that surrounded food, meals, and shopping.

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Migrant Marketplaces offers a new perspective on the linkages between migration and trade that helped define globalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

By universal acclaim, Diana Kennedy is the world’s authority on the authentic cuisines of Mexico. For decades, she has traveled the length and breadth of the country, seeking out the home cooks, local ingredients, and traditional recipes that make Mexican cuisines some of the most varied and flavorful in the world. Kennedy has published eight classic Mexican cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning Oaxaca al Gusto. But her most personal book is My Mexico, a labor of love filled with more than three hundred recipes and stories that capture the essence of Mexican food culture as Kennedy has discovered and lived it. First published in 1998, My Mexico is now back in print with a fresh design and photographs—ready to lead a new generation of gastronomes on an unforgettable journey through the foods of this fascinating and complex country.