Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Exert.

Women in the culinary world have long fought to be heard, respected, and given full credit for their

contributions, you know, for their rightful place at the table. With a career spent both cooking and

writing about food alongside well-known chefs and television personalities like Mario Bittali and

Anthony Bourdain, Lori Willever has a unique perspective on navigating the complex world of food culture.

She's the best-selling author of Bourdain, the definitive oral biography, a collection of interviews with those who knew him personally and professionally, and co-author of World Travel and Irreverent Guide with Anthony Bourdain.

Her new memoir, care, and feeding

is on bookshelves now. Thanks for joining me, Lori. Thank you for having me. Very happy to be here.

Can you describe the professional world you entered following culinary school? Was it and does it

remain a culture of food, alcohol, and drugs in Karen feeding you

were pretty wide open regarding your road to addiction and recognizing when you needed help.

Yeah, I will say that the world of restaurants and professional cooking that I entered into

was very high pressure and very high

stakes, but also a lot of fun. There was pretty easy access to alcohol, but I do want to say

that my perspective comes from one specific restaurant. So I think that there is a range,

certain fine dining restaurants. There's a very low tolerance for drinking on the job, joking around, there's silence in the kitchen. That was not my

experience. Things were a little looser, a little bit more fun. And this was the late 90s and early 2000s. So that was a specific

point in time. I do think that kitchens remain a high pressure, high stakes environment. There is a lot

of goofing around and a lot of camaraderie, a lot of ways to blow off steam. But I do think that

things have changed for the better. That's my anecdotal understanding from

speaking to friends who are still in the business. I was going to ask you about working in high

pressure environments. You write about the challenges of finding your path while working in various

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