Laurie Woolever on Anthony Bourdain, NYC's best restaurants, Le Swan, and what’s next
Photo credit: Steve Legato
🕒 14 min read
Laurie Woolever isn’t your typical writer. And that’s a very, very good thing.
A quick listen of her addictive, no-holds-barred Carbface for Radio Podcast with Laurie and Chris, and suddenly you too will have thoughts about Personal Pan Rice Krispie Treats, dump and stir shows, burger rings, Grape Mentos, and other culinary . And Appetites: A Cookbook that she co-authored with Anthony Bourdain, is anything but standard (i.e. a Korean army helmet filled with Budae Jigae, Anthony holding a bird upside in one hand and hair dryer int the other, for starters).
The sharp-witted author, podcast host, and long-time Anthony Bourdain collaborator, traveled to Toronto recently to be a part of a panel about women and food. Once settled back at home, she shared her thoughts about Carbface, Anthony, New York restaurants and more, in her trademark funny/smart/sardonic style.
What are three things you’ve learned in doing the CarbFace for Radio podcast?
Doing Carbface has taught me the value of practice and experience. When we first started working on it, I was nervous and self-doubting; the more episodes Chris and I make, and the more we spend time talking and riffing and being silly, the easier and better it gets.
I've also learned that there is value in creative endeavors that don't generate direct income. It's a change of pace for me; I have long found it hard to write something for the sheer love of writing, if there isn't an assignment or contract attached.
I have also learned more than I ever knew possible about the bizarre world of candy and snacks from around the world, thanks to our awesome and generous listeners who like to send us packages.
Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever. Photo credit: Stephanie Dickison.
Any advice for those wanting to write a cookbook?
We talked about this on an episode of Carbface with Matt and Ted Lee, who run an annual cookbook workshop, and I think they really got to the heart of it when they said, ask yourself why you want to write a book. If you think you're going to make a lot of money, you'll likely be disappointed.
From my own experience I'd say it's important to have an agent advocating for you, if you're not comfortable doing that yourself. The money you spend on commission is an investment in your career and the success of the book.
Also: TEST YOUR RECIPES. Send them out to a tester, re-work them yourself, and make your explanations clear and direct, whether in the method or the headnotes. Once it's out in the world, be prepared to promote it relentlessly. Publishing houses don't have the resources to promote all the titles they publish; it's up to authors to find or create opportunities to move copies.
In working with Anthony - both as his assistant and co-authoring Appetites: A Cookbook - you got to see a side of him away from the cameras. What would his fans be surprised to learn about him?
In going back over old episodes and transcripts, I am struck by how transparent Tony was about himself, in whatever mood or stage of life the cameras found him, but I think that people might have been surprised by the shy, gentle and generous sides of him that were as much who he was as the swaggering, wisecracking world traveler.
Left to your own devices, what three dishes do you tend to make for yourself?
I cook eggs almost every day, either a plain omelet with cottage cheese and raspberries, or fried eggs with vegetables, lentils and something spicy.
I like to make spaghetti -- lately it's the kind made of lentil or chickpea flour -- tossed with an egg and some grated cheese or nutritional yeast.
And I'm a big fan of roasting chicken thighs with salt and pepper in the toaster oven, which I'll eat with some garlicky sautéed greens and a purple sweet potato, also roasted in the toaster oven.
I like to cook a few big batches of vegetables and have them on hand for a few days.
Photo credit: Bobby Fisher for Appetites: A Cookbook.
Are those dishes vastly different than the ones you make for friends and family?
I think they're all delicious and would serve any of them to friends and family, but if I'm entertaining, I'll generally braise a hunk of fatty meat in the Instant Pot and then build a meal around that, making a sauce from the braising liquid and maybe cooking some rice and veg in that liquid, too.
Or I'll cook a real pasta, that is, white flour pasta. My sister came for dinner recently and I made Israeli couscous with basil pesto, green beans, blanched squid and chickpeas. It sounds odd but it was really tasty, and the green-ness of it sort of fooled us into believing it was healthy.
Are you reading any food-related books right now? If so, which ones?
The late chef Gina DePalma wrote a beautiful book about Italian sweets, based on her time living in Rome and traveling around the country, called My Sweet Italy.
Unfortunately, her long illness delayed her finishing it, and it was never published. I was lucky to get a copy of the manuscript before she died in 2015, and I read it again recently, before my first visit to Rome. It's bittersweet in the extreme; she was a magnificent writer, with prose that is wry and economical and warm and informative, and I really hope that someone sees fit to publish it posthumously.
What kind of non-food books are you most drawn to?
I love contemporary novels; I just read Fleishman Is In Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. I also really like memoirs written by people with significant mileage on their lives; bonus points for being funny (Tina Fey's Bossypants is the gold standard). And I love collections of personal essays; the best one I've read recently is Alicia Tobin's So You're A Little Sad, So What? Nice Things to Say to Yourself on Bad Days and Other Essays.
La Caridad 78, New York City. Photo credit: Antonio Mora.
Describe a typical day of eating from when you get up until you go to bed.
Coffee is always the first priority. I use Café Bustelo, which has the best flavour, is dark and rich, and is also very cheap. It's often two bricks for $5 at my local grocery store, so I stock up. There are about seven bricks in my freezer right now. I used to do the Italian stovetop espresso thing, but generally I want a small ocean's worth of coffee each morning. So, coffee with whole milk.
Then I'll make the aforementioned omelet with cottage cheese and raspberries, or fried eggs with whatever leftover cooked veg I have from the previous night's dinner.
I work at home, so at some point mid-morning I'll wander back into the kitchen for more coffee, a handful of almonds, a piece of fruit, or this kind of awful breakfast cereal that's like Cheerios but made from quinoa. It fills the need for something crunchy and something sweet. I love actual sweets, but I am now middle-aged and have still not figured out how to enjoy a reasonable portion of them, so I mostly don't/can't keep things like cookies or candy around.
If I'm home for lunch, it's generally dinner leftovers, plus or minus a few eggs, or a can of tuna or some cottage cheese. If I'm out, I try to get something reasonably healthy, like deli nori rolls that don't give me an immediate botulism vibe, or steam table soup, or one of those absurd birthday cake-flavored protein bars and a cup of coffee, which is absolutely as tragic as it sounds, but I don't care, it's a portable $4 lunch and I love it.
If my 11-year-old son is with me in the evening, I'll make us some kind of standard dinner: variations on braised or roasted chicken, or burgers, or a substantial soup, or pasta, or tacos made with ground meat and soft corn tortillas. The other day I made "Dinner Nachos" -- I cut up some corn tortillas and fried them in oil, then topped them with the last of the leftover braised short ribs and some shredded mozzarella, microwaved it and added mild salsa from a jar.
If my son isn't with me, I'll do eggs plus vegetables and maybe lentils or chicken, or a bowl of cereal, or I'll go out. My boyfriend took me to one of his childhood favourites recently, La Caridad 78 in Manhattan, which is old-school Cuban Chinese, straightforward, cheap and delicious. That kind of place is my strong preference lately, over self-consciously cool places, or fine dining. There's a great place in my neighbourhood called The Queensboro, that's comfortable and relaxed, with great food -- nothing too fancy, but everything done really well -- and as a bonus, it's a few blocks' walk from my apartment.
Le Swan French Diner, Toronto. Photo credit: Laurie Woolever
Top three restaurants you’ve been to
In my life? Uh ... I had the best omelet ever at Le Swan recently; it was just perfectly cooked, and the shaved cheese and ham gilded the proverbial lily. It's exactly the kind of dining room I like; it was basically an ideal restaurant experience.
I used to live around the corner from Casa Adela, a tiny place on Avenue C in Manhattan with the best rotisserie chicken and plantains I have ever had. The consistency, coupled with the warmth, value and the inscrutably, insanely delicious seasoning on the chicken, make this a top restaurant memory for me.
And I will always love Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant in the basement of Grand Central Station.
Three restaurants you order the most takeout/delivery from
I do very little takeout/delivery, but when I do, it's pho from a place in my neighbourhood called Thai Son, tamales from the unnamed business that sets up every Sunday at my local farmers’ market, or a run through the hot and cold buffet at Woorijip, an excellent Korean take-out place in Manhattan.
What projects are you working on right now?
I am finishing a travel book that I started co-authoring with Tony Bourdain before his death (World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, available for pre-order until its release this October), and am also working on an oral biography of his life.
I enjoy the collaboration process, and helping non-writers with interesting lives to tell their stories, and I'm also starting to believe that I've got a few stories of my own worth telling.
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