I was always obsessed with something. The food writer began testing cooking methods after stumbling across commenters butting heads under an article proclaiming the "best way" to cook bacon. Spotting the controversy behind an innocuous topic, Ella launched a regular "absolute best test" column for Food52, and experiments went wild.
On Instagram, under the handle @will.this.make.me.happy, she posted a photo of a craggy yellow pastry that fit perfectly in her palm. "No. Buttermilk scones with lemon zest do not alleviate anxiety," she captioned it. On December 4th, she posted again, declaring, beneath an image of a sugar-ringed cookie perched between her thumb and forefinger, "No. Pecan shortbread did not help me reconcile my massive ego with my meager sense of self."
During the 1959 session of the Louisiana state legislature, Governor Earl Long, the less famous younger brother of Senator Huey Long, "went off his rocker," as the tickled writer A. J. Liebling recounted in this magazine, adding, "The papers reported that he had cursed and hollered at the legislators, saying things that so embarrassed his wife, Miz Blanche, and his relatives that they had packed him off to Texas in a National Guard plane to get his brains repaired in an asylum."
Bourdain's seminal "Kitchen Confidential" was first published in 2000. Crack a copy and thank us later. The first writing of his that caught major public attention was a 1999 article that ran in The New Yorker titled "Don't Eat Before Reading This." This bitingly honest, sardonically-toned professional kitchen industry exposé formed the basis of what would expand to "Kitchen Confidential" - the bestselling book that launched Bourdain's written and on-screen career.
"I felt like this country gave me so much, I really fell in love with it. A way to give back through food was to educate people about the country and their cuisine and the history, because it's all so intertwined."