The Vegetarian Flavor Bible

This book started with a problem: I didn’t know what to eat.

In two decades of writing about food, I’ve have had the pleasure and

privilege of interviewing many of the world’s greatest chefs while studying

their secrets for making food taste great.

My work-related eating (including

wine-tasting lunches and dinners) often took me to the dining rooms of

DANIEL, Le Bernardin, and Per Se—or, during a year spent eating at chefs’

favorite restaurants from coast to coast, sampling In-N-Out burgers, porkand-crab soup dumplings, and both Pat’s and Geno’s cheese steaks.

My life

included an endless pursuit of deliciousness, and I was always thrilled to

discover what I’d learn from the next bite.

But as more and more headlines

trumpeted the relationship between nutrition and wellness, it dawned on me

that for someone who ate for a living, I’d thought surprisingly little about

what to put in my body to keep myself healthy when I wasn’t busy eating for

professional reasons.

After I lost both my father and stepmother to cancer between 2006 and

2009, I couldn’t help thinking about my own half-century birthday looming

on the horizon.

It finally occurred to me, for the first time in my life, that I

might want to start including healthfulness as a criterion for choosing what to

eat.