Rachel Laudan

Silence, deathly silence.  Then the conversation went back to where it had been five minutes before.  What had I said that provoked such a hostile reaction? It was the late 1960s and I was talking an after-lunch walk with old French friends S & G on one of their annual visits to my family in [...]

The gourmet was typically a rich male amateur to whom food was a passion. Foodies are typically an aspiring professional couple to whom food is a fashion. A fashion? The fashion. Couture has ceded the center ground to food. You don’t live with the same menu for years–you discover, embrace, explore minutely, get bored, and [...]

A slight tingle, a flinty taste, verging on sour.  What is this?  A moment of confusion. I am taken back to English pubs in the west country before urbanization and gastropubs hit, when there was bread and cheddar and scrumpy.  Scrumpy, a local cider, alcoholic of course, actually very alcoholic sometimes, had that tingle that [...]