We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is—or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . . But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal cliché—“we are what we eat”—traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity.
Anya von Bremzen is one of the most accomplished food writers of her generation: the winner of three James Beard awards; a contributing writer at AFAR magazine; and the author of six acclaimed cookbooks, among them The New Spanish Table, The Greatest Dishes: Around the World in 80 Recipes, and Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook (coauthored with John Welchman). Her memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, has been translated into nineteen languages. Anya has been a contributing editor at Travel+Leisure and Food & Wine, and has written for Saveur, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy, among other publications. Her work has been anthologized in several editions of Best Food Writing and in The Best American Travel Writing. A former concert pianist, Anya is fluent in four languages and when not on the road divides her time between New York and Istanbul.
