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Jane Grossman Stern and Michael Stern (both born 1946) are American writers who specialize in books about travel, food, and popular culture. They are best known for their Roadfood books, website, and magazine columns, in which they find road food restaurants serving classic American regional specialties and review them. Starting their hunt for regional American food in the early 1970s they were the first food writers to regard this food as being as worthy to report on as the haute cuisine of other nations.
Since the Sterns began documenting regional American food in the 1970s many other writers and television personalities have used their pioneering work as inspiration. In addition to their early work with regional American food the Sterns' book Square Meals (Knopf 1985) put "comfort foods" like mac and cheese, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes on the culinary map. Square Meals did an audacious reverse spin on the tricked up and precious nouvelle cuisine that was beloved by food critics at that time.
Jane Grossman grew up in New York City, where she attended the Walden School and received a BFA in graphic design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Michael Stern grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968. They met as graduate students in art at Yale University and their first date, at Pepe's Pizza in New Haven, had a food focus. [1] The couple married in 1970. The following year, Jane earned an MFA in painting from Yale and Michael changed schools and earned an MFA from Columbia University in film. Neither found work in their fields of study.
After a short stint of producing documentaries for WNBC, a teaching job at Hunter College and another at Wesleyan University they began work on the book that eventually became the first Roadfood. The book was conceived as a book on "truck-stop dining," funded with an advance from a publisher. The Sterns set out in their car to travel through the United States and eat up to 12 meals daily at diners and local cafes. [1] The resulting first edition of Roadfood was published in 1977; the most recent edition was released in 2017.
In addition to their food writing, the Sterns have written books on American popular culture, including The New York Times bestselling Elvis World (1987) and The Encyclopaedia of Bad Taste (1990). In all, they have written over 30 books. They were staff writers for Gourmet magazine for 18 years, have written for The New Yorker , The Atlantic Monthly , and are now contributing editors at Saveur .
They are regular guests on American Public Media's public radio program, The Splendid Table . They have won numerous awards, including James Beard awards, and were inducted into Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America in 1992. [2] The Sterns founded Roadfood.com; the site was sold to Fexy Media in 2016. [3] After the sale, the Sterns remained in charge of editorial content of their website. [4]
In 2003, Jane Stern published Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself by Becoming an EMT, a memoir in which she described suffering from severe clinical depression when she was in her early 50s and overcame her depression by training and working as an emergency medical technician in Connecticut. In 2005 the book was made into a television movie, Ambulance Girl , for which actress Kathy Bates was nominated for an Emmy Award. The Sterns wrote a joint memoir, Two for the Road: Our Love Affair With American Food, in 2006.
The couple divorced in 2008; they still write as a team. [5] Jane now lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut; Michael and his present wife, Linda, reside in Aiken, South Carolina.
In 2011 the former couple published The Lexicon of Real American Food, and Jane Stern published a book on her little known but long-standing career as a tarot card reader. [5]
Sara Moulton is an American cookbook author and television personality. In an article for The New York Times, Kim Severson described Moulton as "one of the nation’s most enduring recipe writers and cooking teachers...and a dean of food television and magazines".
A chili dog is a hot dog served in a bun and topped with a meat sauce, such as chili con carne. Additional toppings may include cheese, onions, and mustard. The style has multiple regional variations in the United States, many calling for specific and unique sauce ingredients, types of hot dogs, or types of buns and referred to regionally under region-specific names.
A lobster roll is a dish native to New England and Atlantic Canada. It is made of lobster meat served on a grilled hot dog–style bun. The filling may also contain butter, lemon juice, salt, and black pepper, with variants made in some parts of New England replacing the butter with mayonnaise. Other versions may contain diced celery or scallion. Potato chips or French fries are the typical side dishes.
Gourmet is a cultural idea associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterized by their high level of refined and elaborate food preparation techniques and displays of balanced meals that have an aesthetically pleasing presentation of several contrasting, often quite rich courses. Historically the ingredients used in the meal tended to be rare for the region, which could also be impacted by the local state and religious customs. The term and the related characteristics are typically used to describe people with more discerning palates and enthusiasm. Gourmet food is more frequently provided with small servings and in more upscale and posh fine dining establishments that cater to a more affluent and exclusive client base. When it comes to cooking gourmet dishes, there are also frequent cross-cultural interactions that introduce new, exotic, and expensive ingredients, materials, and traditions with more refined, complex, formal, and sophisticated high-level cooking and food preparation techniques.
Craig Claiborne was an American restaurant critic, food journalist and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for The New York Times, he was also the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography. Over the course of his career, he made many contributions to gastronomy and food writing in the United States.
Saveur is an online gourmet, food, wine, and travel magazine that publishes essays about various world cuisines. The publication was co-founded by Dorothy Kalins, Michael Grossman, Christopher Hirsheimer, and Colman Andrews. It was started by Meigher Communications in 1994. World Publications bought Saveur and Garden Design in 2000. In October 2020, Bonnier Corporation sold Saveur, along with several other publications, to venture equity group North Equity.
Roadfood is a series of books by Jane and Michael Stern originally published in 1977. The term Roadfood was coined by the Sterns to describe the regional cuisine they discovered when they began driving around America in the early 1970s. Their focus was not on deluxe fare, but on everyday local food – barbecue, chili, fried chicken, apple pie – and the unpretentious restaurants that serve it: diners, small-town cafes, seaside shacks, drive-ins, and bake shops.
Fuchsia Charlotte Dunlop is an English writer and cook who specialises in Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuan cuisine. She is the author of seven books, including the autobiographical Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper (2008). According to Julia Moskin in The New York Times, Dunlop "has done more to explain real Chinese cooking to non-Chinese cooks than anyone".
Pat's Hubba Hubba, also known as "Hubba's", was a late-night greasy spoon chili restaurant located at 24 North Main Street in the village of Port Chester in Westchester County, New York. Near the New York-Connecticut border, Hubba's catered to the local bar scene by staying open until 5:00 am on the weekends, and at least 3:00 am on weeknights.
Nu-Way Weiners, Inc., is a company that operates a chain of fast food restaurants in the Middle Georgia area. The first Nu-Way restaurant opened in Macon, Georgia, United States, on February 27, 1916, at 218 Cotton Avenue in downtown Macon. Nu-Way is known for its iconic hot dogs – unique for their red color. Nu-Way also serves an extensive breakfast menu which includes egg platters, bacon & egg sandwiches, spicy dog biscuits, pancakes, etc. In addition Nu-Way is famous for their hamburgers which include their chili-burgers, cheeseburgers and Mega-Burgers.
Red's Eats is a take-out restaurant located in Wiscasset, Maine. It is one of the most well-known and most-written-about restaurants in the state.
Mosca's is a Louisiana Creole Italian restaurant in Waggaman, Louisiana, near New Orleans. Operated by the same family since it opened in 1946, it has long been regarded as one of New Orleans' best restaurants, known for dishes such as Oysters Mosca, crab salad, Chicken a la Grande, and pineapple fluff.
Rozanne Gold is an American chef, journalist, cookbook author, and international restaurant consultant. A four-time winner of the James Beard Award, she is a graduate of Tufts University in psychology and education, and holds an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Otto's Sausage Kitchen, formerly Otto's Meat Market, is a sausage restaurant and meat market located in the Woodstock neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States. German immigrant Otto Eichentopf established Otto's Meat Market in Aberdeen, Washington in the 1910s before relocating to Portland in 1921. Otto's Meat Market opened on Southeast Woodstock Boulevard in 1922. A new building was constructed at its current location in 1936–1937. Eichentopf's son Edwin acquired the store in the 1940s; Edwin's son Jerry, who began working at Otto's full-time starting at age eighteen, acquired the stores in 1983. Since then, he and his wife have expanded the retail part of the store. The family, which now includes the couple's children and extended members, makes more than forty sausage varieties on site, including some based on Eichentopf's recipes from Germany.
Road food is a cuisine concerning food prepared especially for hungry travelers who arrive by road. Most road food establishments are casual dining restaurants. American road food is associated with "comfort food" such as hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, barbecue, and pizza. Road food establishments can include fast food, cafes and barbecue shacks.
Stella Parks is an American pastry chef and food writer based in Kentucky. She has worked in various Lexington-area restaurants, notably Table 310, and was a longtime contributor to Serious Eats. Parks received a James Beard Foundation Award in 2018 for her bestselling cookbook BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts.
The James Beard Foundation Awards are annual awards presented by the James Beard Foundation to recognize culinary professionals in the United States. The awards recognize chefs, restaurateurs, authors and journalists each year, and are generally scheduled around James Beard's May birthday.
Bread and Ink Cafe, or simply Bread and Ink, is a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
The P&H Truck Stop is a truck stop and diner in Wells River, Vermont, along Interstate 91.