Author’s Note

Food writing comes in three flavors. Restaurant critics look for peaks of enjoyment that can be had from eating and drinking. Cookbook writers are after formulas used to replicate what the critics found. Dieticians analyze foodstuffs and techniques to find those that maximize the eater’s health.

It’s peculiar that the three categories of endeavor only rarely overlap. But that is changing, for not the least of reasons that food writers refocus their quests as they get older—if they keep covering their beat at all.