Steal the Menu

Book excerpt: Part autobiography, part culinary history, Steal the Menu is former New York Times food editor Raymond Sokolov’s account of four decades of eating. From his pathbreaking dispatches on nouvelle cuisine in France to finding top-notch Chinese dishes at a New Jersey gas station to picking the brain of the most Michelin-starred chef in the world, Sokolov captures the colorful characters and mouth watering meals that define food today. Throughout, he shares a lifetime of personal anecdotes, including infuriating President Nixon’s daughter over a wedding cake, as well as prescient observations on one of the most tumultuous—and exciting—periods in gastronomic history.