New York in a Dozen Dishes

In thirteen essays (a baker's dozen) covering distinctive dishes from a cross-section of New York City's cultural makeup, veteran food journalist Robert Sietsema explores how foods from around the world arrived, commingled, and became part of the city's culinary identity. Sietsema writes from personal experience as a restaurant critic eating in thousands of restaurants across five boroughs (and New Jersey) over the span of multiple decades; each chapter ends with a recipe. Fried chicken in Harlem. Pizza in Coney Island. Venturing to out-of-the-way neighbourhoods in search of great food has blossomed into a cultural phenomenon, drawing thousands of New York locals and tourists alike. But Robert Sietsema was the original outer-borough food explorer, and he inspired a generation of food lovers to sample ethnic dishes and other cheap eats across the city's five boroughs over his 20 years as restaurant critic at The Village Voice. 'New York in a Dozen Dishes' distils Sietsema's 40 years of eating across the city into a set of essays on dishes from a cross-section of the city's international culinary landscape: a portrait of modern New York through its food. Written with Sietsema's characteristic charm, chapters cover the evolution of fried chicken from women-run cafes in Harlem to hipster joints in Williamsburg, the history of New York-style pizza, and egg fu yung and the endangered "American Chinese" cuisine. Each chapter ends with a recipe. AUTHOR: Perhaps no one has contributed more to creating the culture of gastronomic exploration than Robert Siestema, "New York's flavour barometer" according to the Jewish Daily Forward, who for two decades was the restaurant critic at The Village Voice, his beat the other 99% of restaurants-the ethnic and cheap eats-not covered in other review columns. His writing for the Voice and Gourmet has won numerous awards and several James Beard and IACP/Bert Greene nominations; he speaks widely about food (everywhere from colleges to the South by Southwest festival) and has written on the ethics of food writing-about which he is considered an expert-for the Columbia Journalism Review. He currently writes from a wide vantage point as a restaurant critic for Eater.com, and a contributor to the New York Times, Lucky Peach, and elsewhere.