Food Writing: The Rhetoric of

Gluttons

Allison Michelli
April 24, 2013
WRTC 201
The first requisite for writing well about
food is a good appetite. –A. J. Liebling
 12.4 million hits on Google for cookbooks
 54,088 titles listed on Amazon.com
 151 million food blogs

Examples:
But what makes food writing so popular???
 “Food is an intrinsically significant subject”
 Three Basic Needs: food, love, and security
 Represent motifs for life
 Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher
 “Our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed
and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one
without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am
really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the
love of it and the hunger for it.”
 “Food writing emphasizes abundance”
 A guilt free was of indulging
 “Food writing by the skinny is not to be trusted.”—Lynn Z.
Bloom
 “Readers are looking for insight, entertainment, and
relaxation”
 This can sometimes be placed above the search for information

 “Readers don’t have to know much about food to enjoy

reading about it”
 “Food writing is evocative, full of human emotion, energy,
sensory details, sensuality”
Food Blogging
 A popular form of blogging
that incorporates traditional
writing forms and
photography.
 Step-by-step recipes
 Examples:
 http://thepioneerwoman.com/
 http://www.bakerella.com/
Ingredients for Successful Food Writing
 Start in the kitchen hone your cooking skills
 Learn about foods preparation and its history
 Keep up with food news and trends
 Be creative in the search for information
 Read food related books, magazines, and articles
 Gain experience by volunteering at a culinary
school or writing for a local newspaper
 Make sure your stories have an angle specific to
the publication or geographic area
 Meet your deadlines
 Don’t give up!
#1 Tip to Remember: Tell a Story!
 Alan Richman
 Sportswriter in Philadelphia until joining GQ in 1986
 Has won 12 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards for
excellence in culinary writing
 “Whatever anybody asked me to do with food, I always just wrote
about it, and eventually I got a break, which didn't come until around
'90 or '91. That's how I became a food writer. It was by accident.”
 Books: Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater,

 Jeffrey Steingarten
 Graduated from Harvard Law School but eventually left his legal
career to join Vogue as a food critic
 Food critic at Vogue since 1989
 Won a National Magazine Award and a dozen James Beard Awards
and nominations
 Appears regularly on The Food Network
 Books: The Man Who Ate Everything, It Must’ve Been Something I
Ate
Application in the Classroom
“To teach food as a written art form is to teach a part of what it means to
be human.”
 Food texts are multifaceted
 Many different genre, tones, and approaches
 Mirrors the intricacies of writers and readers
 Jennifer Cognard-Black: Books that Cook (St. Mary’s College of Maryland)
 “If readers cook and consume a recipe from a story, the story moves beyond the
sense of sight. It is now tasted, smelled, touched, even heard. The story takes up
actual space. Whereas a book's pages are 2 D, food is 3-D; the story now has
weight, texture, shadow, depth. Fantasy becomes reality. Identification becomes
performance. Mind becomes body. And the story is ingested, incorporated into the
reader at the cellular level. The story literally comes alive.”
 Students opened up more when food was brought into the classroom
 Essay about family recipe recognize and articulate cultural experiences
 Students become more invested and experimental in their writing.
 Angela Cozart
 “Cozzy’s Restaurant” exercise
 Goal was to get students to go through the steps of the writing process
and write a descriptive paper.
 Read restaurant reviews in the newspaper, reflect on restaurant
experiences.
 Last step before writing class became “Cozzy’s Restaurant”
 Assignment: Write a restaurant review for “Cozzy’s Restaurant”
 address all senses (i.e., sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound)
 What did the food look like? Be specific.
 How did the food smell?
 Was the food tasty? Was it salty, spicy, hot, cold, or sour?
 What was the texture of the different dishes?
 Was the restaurant loud?
 “writing need not be a chore, but that it could be an interesting and
valuable process that could produce well-focused paragraphs and
easy-to-read essays.”
Works Cited
"Alan Richman." Wikipedia.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

Bloom, Lynn Z. "Consuming Prose: The Delectable Rhetoric Of Food Writing." College English 70.4 (2008): 346-362. ERIC. Web.

22 Apr. 2013.

Caruana, Claudia M. "Recipe For Successful Food Writing." Writer 115.11 (2002): 44. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

Cognard-Black, Jennifer, and Melissa A. Goldthwaite. "Books That Cook: Teaching Food And Food Literature In The English

Classroom." College English 70.4 (2008): 421-436. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.

Cozart, Angela, and Louise Winstead. "Cozzy's Restaurant: An Exploration Of The Writing Process Through The Eyes Of A Food

Critic." Reading & Writing Quarterly 22.3 (2006): 293-298. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.

Gernstetter, Blake. "So What Do You Do, Alan Richman, Food Writer?" Mediabistro.com. N.p., 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

"Jeffrey Steingarten." Wikipedia.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.