About this item
My Usual Table is a love letter to the great restaurants that have changed the way we eat - from Trader Vic's to Chez Panisse and Spago to elBulli - and a vivid memoir of a life lived in food, from a founding editor of Saveur and James Beard Award-winning writer Colman Andrews.For reviewer, writer, and editor Colman Andrews, restaurants have been his playground, his theater, his university, his church, his refuge. The establishments he has loved have not only influenced culinary trends at home and abroad, but represent the changing history and culture of food in America and Western Europe. From his usual table, he has watched the growth of Nouvelle Cuisine and fusion cuisine; the organic and locavore movements; nose-to-tail eating; and so-called "molecular gastronomy.
About the Author
Colman Andrews' new cookbook is "The British Table: A New Look at the Traditional Cooking of England, Scotland, and Wales." His previous cookbooks have won wide acclaim. His first one, "Catalan Cuisine", originally published in 1988 and still in print, has been named one of the "50 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by the Observer Food Monthly and one of his more recent ones, "The Country Cooking of Ireland", was honored as Best International Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation in 2010 and beat out all other entries in all categories as foundation's Cookbook of the Year, then went on to win the 2011 Best International Cookbook prize from the International Association of Cooking Professionals. Andrews was a co-founder of Saveur, and its editor-in-chief from 2002 to 2006. After leaving the magazine, he became the restaurant columnist for Gourmet, serving in that capacity until its untimely demise. He is now the editorial director of TheDailyMeal.com. A native of Los Angeles with degrees in history and philosophy from UCLA, he was a restaurant reviewer and restaurant news columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and for three years edited "Traveling in Style", the Times travel magazine. Throughout the 1980s, he was wine and spirits columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, and published widely as a freelance writer, covering food, wine, travel, music, art, architecture, design, and the entertainment industry. The recipient of eight James Beard awards, Andrews is the co-author and co-editor of three Saveur cookbooks and nine of his own books on food: "Catalan Cuisine (which introduced the now-trendy cooking of Spain's Catalonia region to America) ; "Everything on the Table"; "Flavors of the Riviera"; "The Country Cooking of Ireland"; "Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food" (a biography of Catalan superchef Ferran Adrià, also available in Spanish, French, and Italian translations) ; "The Country Cooking of Italy"; "The Taste of America"; a memoir called "My Usual Table: A Life in Restaurants; and the just-published cookbook "The British Table." Considered an expert on Spanish cooking, he authored the first-ever Spanish Culinary Curriculum, in partnership with José Andrés, for New York's International Culinary Center, and in 2012, was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi, the highest civil honor granted by the government of Catalonia, in recognition of his services in popularizing Catalan cuisine around the world.
