What a Week! Welcome to the World, Food Person

Hey everyone,

I’m still out of breath from the whirlwind of a week I’ve had.

First of all: to those of you who came to one of my New York events, thank you! It was so sweet meeting so many of you in person, especially the ones who’ve been reading me “forever.” Thanks for sticking around!

Okay let me walk back through it….

On Tuesday morning, Craig and I walked Winston and then, at 10:15, we walked over to Books Are Magic where I saw Food Person in the wild for the first time (here’s a video):

amateurgourmet

A post shared by @amateurgourmet

It’s hard to describe the feeling of seeing your first novel in the book store for the first time. As someone who spends a great deal of my life browsing around bookstores, I tried to put myself in the head of someone encountering this book for the first time. All I could think was: “Oooh, I’d want to read that!”

On Tuesday night, I had the most magical evening with Joanna Goddard of Cup of Jo who emceed the most wonderful event at Brooklyn Heights Public Library.

You can read Joanna’s excellent post about it here, including a play-by-play of the conversation.

And here’s a cute picture from that post of me and Craig and my cute embroidered shirt from Haus of Hanz on Court Street:

And for those who want to watch our whole conversation, here it is on YouTube:

After the event, a few of us went to Inga’s Bar where we ate morel mushrooms, agnolotti, and little gem salad before five of us had chicken and one of us had skate (that was me):

On Wednesday night, I did an event with my ol’ food blogging pal Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen at one of my favorite stores in all of New York, Archestratus:

The crazy thing is that when I was writing this book, I was living in L.A. and fantasizing about Archestratus when I invented Alice’s Cookbook Emporium which is the bookstore in the book. So it felt like I was going through The Looking Glass when I was at an event at the very same bookstore that I imagined a fantasy version of to write the book in the first place. Did you follow all that?

As if that weren’t cool enough, I also got to meet my characters in real life… well at least their voice: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw who reads the audiobook!

Mia’s every bit as lovely in real life as she is on audio… can’t wait to listen to the whole book back on the Peloton.

My conversation with Deb ran the gambit from what inspired me to write the book (a real life ghostwriting experience!) and the state of food media today (it’s all on Substack, baby).

Afterwards, a few of us went to Wenwen on the recommendation of my publicist Emily (thanks Emily):

Their most famous dish is their BDSM Chicken (Brined Deboned Soy Milk) of which they only have 5 available per day:

Loved everything about it: from the crispness of the skin, to the spicy powder on top, to the presentation which was, indeed, very BDSM.

Everything else was top notch too; especially loved the Lo Ba Beng (Pork Belly, Rice, Soft Egg, Cilantro, Pickled Mustard Green, Peanut Butter):

And the Cold Sesame Noodles:

My favorite bite, though, was the dessert: Fried Tangyuan w/ Ice Cream (v) 冰火炸湯圓 Black Sesame Tangyuan, Cilantro, Dehydrated Peanut Butter, Condensed Milk Candied Peanut:

Sort of like deep-fried mochi which all kinds of sauces and powders. So good!

While there, The Wall Street Journal review came out and I read it secretly in the bathroom… it was a rave!

Yesterday I was on Scott Simon’s NPR show which will air tomorrow’s Weekend Edition.

Then I brought Elka, my publicist, to lunch with my parents at Michael’s in midtown:

I had a white asparagus pizza with morels:

And that concludes my whirlwind week. Phew!

If you haven’t purchased Food Person yet, what are you waiting for?

And if you’ve purchased and read Food Person — and especially if you enjoyed it — please write a nice review on Amazon, GoodReads, or wherever else you write reviews!

Okay, I’m going to go collapse into a heap….

Happy birth week, Food Person!
XO,

Adam