Longreads Best of 2019: Food Writing

Mayukh SenJames Beard Award-winning writer and Adjunct Professor at New York University’s Arthur L.

Mayukh SenJames Beard 获奖作家、纽约大学 Arthur L.

Carter Journalism Institute

卡特新闻学院

## The Chef Who Can Teach Us a Thing or Two About Grit (Julia Bainbridge, Heated)

## 能教我们一两件事关于毅力的厨师（朱莉娅·班布里奇，《Heated》）

I tend to agree with most criticisms of using the first-person in profiles: Who cares about the writer?

我倾向于同意大多数关于在个人资料中使用第一人称的批评：谁关心作者？

Why the throat-clearing about yourself?

为什么要清清嗓子呢？

Who asked about you when I’m just trying to read about Rihanna?

当我想读有关蕾哈娜的文章时，谁问起你了？

It takes a writer of real skill, and very little vanity, to pull off this first-person trick.

需要一个具有真正技巧的作家，并且很少有虚荣心，才能完成这种第一人称技巧。

I marvel at the way Julia Bainbridge gently, unobtrusively inserts herself into this Heated profile of chef Iliana Regan.

我惊叹于朱莉娅·班布里奇 (Julia Bainbridge) 温柔、不引人注目地融入厨师伊利亚娜·里根 (Iliana Regan) 的热情形象中的方式。

In doing so, Bainbridge allows the reader to understand the subject in fuller, more generous terms.

通过这样做，班布里奇让读者能够更全面、更慷慨地理解这个主题。

There is a current of melancholy that runs through Bainbridge’s piece, pegged to the release of Regan’s National Book Award-longlisted memoir, Burn the Place; you get the sense that the writer understands her subject intimately.

班布里奇的作品中弥漫着一股忧郁的气息，与里根入围国家图书奖入围的回忆录《燃烧这个地方》的发行有关；你会感觉到作者对她的主题有深入的了解。

(I should note that Regan’s memoir inspired a number of very fine pieces, including those by Deborah Reid and Helen Rosner.

（我应该指出，里根的回忆录启发了许多非常优秀的作品，包括黛博拉·里德和海伦·罗斯纳的作品。

Read those, too.) Certain details — the nervous tug of a sweater, the smell of cigarette smoke and beer wafting from a bar — could’ve read like strained flourishes in a lesser writer’s hands, but Bainbridge uses these observations sparingly, bringing Regan to life.

也读一下这些。）某些细节——紧张地拉扯毛衣、酒吧里飘出的香烟烟雾和啤酒的味道——在一个不那么作家的笔下读起来可能像是紧张的华丽辞藻，但班布里奇很少使用这些观察结果，把里根带入了生活。

She works carefully, sentence by sentence, with some turns of phrase that stop me dead in my tracks.

她一个字一个字地认真地工作，有些措辞的转折让我完全无法理解。

“The alcohol is gone,” Bainbridge writes at one point, “but the -ism remains.” Bainbridge shows that the first-person, when deployed correctly, can showcase a profile writer’s empathy, not their ego.

班布里奇曾写道：“酒精消失了，但主义依然存在。”班布里奇表明，如果部署得当，第一人称可以展示个人资料作者的同理心，而不是他们的自我。

Alexa van SickleWriter, senior editor, Roads and Kingdoms

Alexa van Sickle作家，《道路与王国》高级编辑

## Death, Migration and the Loss of Culture (Janelle Bitker, San Francisco Chronicle)

## 死亡、移民和文化的丧失（Janelle Bitker，《旧金山纪事报》）

There is no shortage of food writing that illuminates the many ways we keep ties to the food of our families and cultures.

不乏有关美食的写作，它们阐明了我们与家庭和文化的食物保持联系的多种方式。

Often, stories come with an assist from older relatives who serve as the custodians of recipes for future generations to discover and preserve.

通常，故事是在年长亲戚的帮助下进行的，他们是食谱的保管人，供后代发现和保存。

But as Janelle Bitker explores in this personal essay, what if that’s not your family’s story?

但正如 Janelle Bitker 在这篇个人文章中探讨的那样，如果这不是你家人的故事怎么办？

What if, through migration or other ways, we lose “our” recipes?

如果通过移民或其他方式，我们失去了“我们的”食谱怎么办？

Framed by a visit to her Chinese grandparents’ grave in Fremont, California, Bitker traces how her own family’s food traditions have faded, in some cases after a single generation.

比特克以参观位于加利福尼亚州弗里蒙特的中国祖父母坟墓为背景，追溯了她自己家族的饮食传统是如何消失的，有时是在一代人之后。

Bitker’s family has broad cultural roots: Hakka Chinese, Hong Kong, Russia, the American South, the Bay Area.

Bitker 家族有着广泛的文化根源：中国客家、香港、俄罗斯、美国南部、湾区。

Her maternal grandparents fell in love in Hong Kong but ended up in San Leandro.

她的外祖父母在香港坠入爱河，但最终来到了圣利安德罗。

Bitker didn’t grow up eating Hakka or Hong Kong cuisine, and her mother, who has lived longer in the U.S. than in Hong Kong, only cooks one Hakka dish.

比特克并不是吃客家菜或香港菜长大的，她的母亲在美国生活的时间比在香港的时间长，只会做一道客家菜。

Bitker feels an even bigger cultural loss on her father’s side.

比特克觉得她父亲那边的文化损失更大。

Her grandfather was Russian and Jewish but born in Japan.

她的祖父是俄罗斯人和犹太人，但出生在日本。

The war brought his family to Shanghai, China — which at the time was one of the safest places for Jews, until it wasn’t — and eventually her grandfather got stranded in the Philippines as a prisoner of war, after he tried to flee to the U.S. Her father remembers piroshkis and beef Stroganoff on his table when he was growing up, but those dishes didn’t make their way to Bitker.

战争把他的家人带到了中国上海——当时这里对犹太人来说是最安全的地方之一，后来却不是——最终，她的祖父在试图逃往美国后，作为战俘被困在菲律宾。她的父亲记得小时候餐桌上有皮罗什基和斯特罗加诺夫牛肉，但这些菜肴并没有进入 Bitker。

She wonders, “How many generations does it take to become another culturally ambiguous American family?

她想知道，“需要多少代人才能成为另一个文化上模糊的美国家庭？

Is migration the death of traditions?” Of course, the answer is that it’s quite the opposite: We create our own new ones.

移民是传统的消亡吗？”当然，答案恰恰相反：我们创造自己的新产品。

But in tracing her remarkable family history, this piece also shows that there are plenty of stories to tell about how we lose food traditions, not just about how we preserve them.

但在追溯她非凡的家族历史时，这篇文章还表明，有很多故事可以讲述我们如何失去饮食传统，而不仅仅是我们如何保存它们。

Gustavo ArellanoLos Angeles Times features writer, author of ¡Ask a Mexican!

古斯塔沃·阿雷利亚诺《洛杉矶时报》专题报道作家、《问问墨西哥人！》一书的作者

and Taco USA

和美国塔可

## The Paleta War (Serena Maria Daniels, Eater)

## 帕莱塔战争（瑟琳娜·玛丽亚·丹尼尔斯，《食者》）

Over the past 15 years, Mexicans across the United States have looked on in quizzical pride as ice cream shops under the name “La Michoacana” (“The Woman from Michoacán”) or variants sprung up wherever Mexicans were — the Southwest and big cities, yes, but also Omaha, Des Moines, and even Bethlehem (okay, Belen, New Mexico).

在过去的 15 年里，美国各地的墨西哥人带着一种奇怪的自豪感，看着名为“La Michoacana”（“来自米却肯州的女人”）的冰淇淋店或其他墨西哥人所在的地方如雨后春笋般涌现的冰淇淋店——西南部和大城市，是的，还有奥马哈、得梅因，甚至伯利恒（好吧，新墨西哥州的贝伦）。

The La Michoacana brand is the Baskin-Robbins of Mexico — but almost all of the American stores that use the name are independently run shops that have nothing to do with the decades-old Mexican company.

La Michoacana 品牌是墨西哥的 Baskin-Robbins，但几乎所有使用该名称的美国商店都是独立经营的商店，与这家拥有数十年历史的墨西哥公司没有任何关系。

So how did La Michoacanas become so ubiquitous in el Norte, and so quickly?

那么，La Michoacanas 是如何在北北部变得如此普遍、如此迅速的呢？

Tostada Magazine editor Serena Maria Daniels tells a fabulous story that involves lawsuits, immigration, and history, and that will make you want to spread chile-mango ice cream across your keyboard afterward.

Tostada 杂志编辑 Serena Maria Daniels 讲述了一个涉及诉讼、移民和历史的精彩故事，这会让你想在事后在键盘上涂上智利芒果冰淇淋。

Helen RosnerWriter, The New Yorker food correspondent

海伦·罗斯纳 (Helen Rosner) 作家、《纽约客》美食记者

## Toward a Theory of American Festival Cusine (Meghan McCarron, photos by Gary He, Eater)

## 走向美国节日美食理论（Meghan McCarron，摄影：Gary He，Eater）

The amazing team of writer Meghan McCarron and photographer Gary He have been killing the Presidential Candidate Foodstuff beat this year.

作家梅根·麦卡伦 (Meghan McCarron) 和摄影师加里·贺 (Gary He) 组成的出色团队在今年击败了总统候选人食品。

Despite the differences in their respective mediums, they share a distinct and tremendously exciting style: sharp-edged, slightly removed, warmly analytical, with an almost formalist sense of romance.

尽管各自的媒介存在差异，但它们有着独特且极其令人兴奋的风格：尖锐、略带疏离、热情分析，带有近乎形式主义的浪漫感。

Of the many pieces that came out of their time together at the Iowa State Fair (including the riotous “Why We Never Tire of Politicians Stuffing Their Faces”), my favorite was McCarron’s clever assessment of the mobile fried food economy, and the slippery notion of “real America,” deepened and made more golden with He’s almost surreal photos of funnel cake and turkey legs.

在他们在爱荷华州博览会上一起创作的许多作品中（包括骚乱的“为什么我们永远不会厌倦政客们的脸庞”），我最喜欢的是麦卡伦对流动油炸食品经济的巧妙评估，以及“真正的美国”的狡猾概念，他的漏斗蛋糕和火鸡腿的近乎超现实的照片加深并变得更加金黄。

## The Great Regression (Jon Bonné, Taste)

## 大回归（Jon Bonné，品味）

I love it — I LOVE IT — when great writers apply their critical lens to restaurants as cultural phenomena, rather than just talking about them as places where the food is good or bad and the prices are low or high.

我喜欢——我喜欢——当伟大的作家将他们的批判性视角作为一种文化现象来看待餐馆时，而不是仅仅把它们当作食物好坏、价格高低的地方来谈论。

In this scathing, beautifully written piece, Bonné dissects the mini-trend, at the high end, of restaurants that more or less cosplay a mid-century notion of masculinity.

在这篇措辞严厉、文笔优美的文章中，博内剖析了高端餐厅的小趋势，这些餐厅或多或少地扮演了中世纪的男性气质概念。

He makes the case that the mahogany prime rib carts and sleek martini services and all that jazz are just dazzle camouflage for a truly distasteful core of retrograde and exclusionary values — white male fragility, restaurant edition: “Keep your Noma sensibilities and edible flowers,” he writes, explaining these restaurants’ sales pitch.

他认为，桃花心木的上等排骨推车、时尚的马提尼服务以及所有爵士乐都只是令人眼花缭乱的伪装，掩盖了真正令人反感的倒退和排他价值观的核心——白人男性的脆弱性，餐厅版：“保留你的诺玛情感和可食用的鲜花，”他在解释这些餐厅的销售宣传时写道。

“Stick them into the part of a cow not served on a silver trolley, and let us dine in a time before tofu and Title IX.”

“把它们插进银色手推车上未供应的牛的部位，让我们在豆腐和第九条之前用餐。”

Tove DanovichFreelance food and agriculture journalist

托芙·达诺维奇（Tove Danovich）自由食品和农业记者

## Competitive Oyster Shucking Is Real, Decadent, And China’s Best Party (Noelle Mateer, Deadspin)

## 剥牡蛎竞争是真实的、颓废的、中国最好的派对（Noelle Mateer、Deadspin）

I fell in love with food writing when I learned that to write about food is to write about anything.

当我了解到写食物就是写任何东西时，我爱上了食物写作。

Food is wrapped up in personal memory and heritage, politics and history.

食物包裹着个人记忆和遗产、政治和历史。

Noelle Mateer’s piece for Deadspin proves why readers would be bereft if food writing were restricted to recipes and graded restaurant reviews.

诺埃尔·马蒂尔 (Noelle Mateer) 为 Deadspin 撰写的文章证明，如果美食写作仅限于食谱和分级餐厅评论，那么为什么读者会感到失落。

(It would be as sad as if sports writing decided it was better off “sticking to sports.”) This story reeled me in right away with an image of 60 people shucking oysters on the Great Wall of China.

（如果体育写作决定“坚持体育”会更好，那就太可悲了。）这个故事立刻让我想起了 60 个人在中国长城上剥牡蛎的画面。

How oysters, which filter impurities from the water, came to be served raw in China, and who can afford to eat them, are a few of the pearls of this story.

牡蛎可以过滤水中的杂质，如何在中国生吃，以及谁有能力吃牡蛎，这些都是这个故事的一些亮点。

## Who’s Considered Thin Enough for Eating Disorder Treatment?

## 谁被认为足够瘦，可以接受饮食失调治疗？

(Virginia Sole-Smith, Elemental)

（弗吉尼亚·索尔·史密斯，《元素》）

When I talked about this story with a friend, his first question threw me off: “What is an eating disorder exactly?” But the question of what an eating disorder is — and not what someone with an eating disorder looks like — is the heart of this overdue story by Virginia Sole-Smith.

当我和朋友谈论这个故事时，他的第一个问题让我困惑：“饮食失调到底是什么？”但什么是饮食失调——而不是饮食失调的人长什么样——才是弗吉尼亚·索尔·史密斯这个迟到的故事的核心。

Insurance companies and doctors often use low weight as a benchmark for diagnosing and treating eating disorders, even when anyone who dangerously restricts food intake is at risk of physiological complications.

保险公司和医生经常使用低体重作为诊断和治疗饮食失调的基准，即使任何危险地限制食物摄入的人都面临着生理并发症的风险。

This article shows a particularly harmful example of how diet culture has made it seem acceptable to starve yourself—as long as you’re big.

这篇文章展示了一个特别有害的例子，说明饮食文化如何让自己挨饿似乎可以接受——只要你体型大。

Sole-Smith’s deftly handled reporting and writing on this immensely complicated subject makes for one of the most memorable pieces I’ve read this year.

索尔史密斯巧妙地处理了这个极其复杂的主题的报道和写作，这是我今年读过的最令人难忘的文章之一。

Michael W.

迈克尔·W.

TwittyWriter, culinary historian, educator, author of James Beard Award-winning book The Cooking Gene

Twitty作家、烹饪历史学家、教育家、詹姆斯·比尔德奖获奖著作《烹饪基因》的作者

## Le Colonial Is an Orientalist Specter (Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle)

## Le Colonial是东方主义幽灵（Soleil Ho，旧金山纪事报）

The image of the food critic as a stodgy white man or woman with resting jerk face here to maintain the Eurocentric status quo came to a stunning halt with Soleil Ho’s review of the Vietnamese restaurant, Le Colonial.

在 Soleil Ho 对越南餐厅 Le Colonial 的评论中，美食评论家的形象是一个古板的白人男人或女人，带着一张混蛋的脸，以维持以欧洲为中心的现状。

Soleil, an accomplished and controversial, smart-dressing intellectual whose interests extend into food, visual art, writing, and cultural critique, challenged the restaurant’s proprietors beyond food.

索雷是一位颇有成就、颇具争议、衣着考究的知识分子，他的兴趣涉及食品、视觉艺术、写作和文化批评，他对餐厅老板的挑战超出了食品范围。

As a Vietnamese American and self-described queer woman, she challenged the French colonial decor, the yearning for colonial-era nostalgia in light of what those signifiers mean to a descendant of the colonized, as well as to those uninitiated in the socio-political world of Southeast Asia.

作为一名越南裔美国人，她自称是酷儿女性，她挑战了法国殖民时期的装饰，挑战了对殖民时代怀旧的向往，因为这些标志对殖民地后裔以及东南亚社会政治世界的新手意味着什么。

Without losing the disciplined gaze of a food critic, this review put face forward to the reader ideas about culinary justice equal to questions about plating, taste, and concept.

这篇评论在不失美食评论家严谨的目光的情况下，向读者提出了关于烹饪正义的想法，就像关于摆盘、口味和概念的问题一样。

Would you want to eat in a space that reflected and honored the path to an unshakable trauma in the history of your family or peoplehood?

您想在一个反映并尊重您的家庭或民族历史上不可动摇的创伤之路的空间里吃饭吗？

In a time when diners are thinking about the “position” and packaging of their food, Ho modeled, in the hottest days of the culture wars, the fine line between concept and convenient stereotypes that unwittingly create a divide even before we dine.

在食客思考食物的“定位”和包装的时代，何在文化战争最激烈的日子里塑造了概念和方便的刻板印象之间的微妙界限，这种界限甚至在我们用餐之前就不知不觉地造成了分歧。

Gwendolyn KnappWriter, memoirist, assistant editor Houstonia

格温多林·纳普 (Gwendolyn Knapp) 作家、回忆录作家、助理编辑 Houstonia

## The Grill That Gave ‘90 Kids Their Kitchen Training Wheels (Aaron Goldfarb, Taste)

## 为 90 岁孩子提供厨房训练轮的烧烤店（Aaron Goldfarb，品味）

In the late ’90s and early aughts, my father broke out the George Foreman Grill every evening, placing several slices of fluffy, buttered (well, margarined) Publix bakery French bread on the grill, and held the lid down for a good minute.

在 20 世纪 90 年代末和 20 世纪 80 年代初，我父亲每天晚上都会打开 George Foreman Grill，将几片蓬松的涂有黄油（好吧，人造黄油）的 Publix 面包店法式面包放在烤架上，然后盖上盖子烤上一分钟。

He loved to have these little flattened, greasy pieces of toast with dinner.

他喜欢在晚餐时吃这些扁平的、油腻的小吐司。

That’s pretty much all he used his George Foreman for until the device faded into retirement in the garage, along with his kayak and 17 awful, outdated printers before it.

这几乎就是他使用他的 George Foreman 的全部用途，直到这台设备和他的皮划艇以及之前的 17 台糟糕、过时的打印机一起在车库里退役。

Aaron Goldfarb’s ode to the George Foreman sent me back to the flattened-toast era and gave me a good chuckle, which is necessary in these trying times.

亚伦·戈德法布 (Aaron Goldfarb) 对乔治·福尔曼 (George Foreman) 的颂歌让我回到了扁平吐司时代，并给了我一个好笑，这在这个艰难的时期是必要的。

Also, it’s wild to think that the contraption is the second-most purchased home appliance of all time.

此外，认为这款装置是有史以来购买量第二大的家用电器也很疯狂。

The George Foreman was advertised for its ability to drain fat from food; meat grease would slide off it into a little vat.

乔治福尔曼因其能够从食物中排出脂肪而受到广告宣传；肉油脂会滑落到一个小桶里。

But how many other garages are now burdened with these vessels?

但现在还有多少其他车库装载着这些船只呢？

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