A life well fed
As is the case in hospitality, Laurie Woolever has spent her career in service to others — feeding the needs of catering clients, the food media machine and a pair of superstar chefs.
For herself, she collects only crumbs of shame-filled happiness.
Woolever's memoir, Care and Feeding, plumbs the depths of her dysfunctional personal life while offering an intimate view of the equally dysfunctional fine dining establishment.
David Scott Holloway photo
Laurie Woolever was a longtime assistant to Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018. She penned the 2021 book Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.
Born in upstate New York, Woolever charts her path, in searing detail, from small-town obscurity to culinary school to the employ of famous restaurateurs Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.
Cooking for hire and assisting for the diametrically opposed chefs are a means to an end. At least initially. Woolever's aspiration is to become a gainfully employed food writer.
Spoiler alert (not really): She's more than attained that goal over the last three decades as a food magazine editor, cookbook co-author and frequent contributor to major publications such as the New York Times and GQ. She's also author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, an illuminating bestseller that aims to capture the complex humanity of her former boss, who died by suicide in 2018.
While Care and Feeding exists in the same universe as Woolever's previous work, with Batali and Bourdain providing gravitational pull, the memoir gives voice to the unsung masses keeping the whole celebrity food system in orbit.
'Very few people are curious about the unknown women who prop up the work of important men,' Woolever writes following a publishing slight in which her name was left off a printing of Appetites: A Cookbook, co-written by Bourdain and herself.
Fresh out of cooking school, Woolever lands a job as Batali's personal assistant. Dubbed 'Woolie' by the red-haired Italian chef, she becomes privy to the disturbing chasm between his public and real-life personas.
There's a lot of nuance in the celebrity profiles thanks to Woolever's close proximity and self-awareness. She grapples with her reverence and revulsion for Batali, who introduced her to Bourdain and who was later accused of sexual assault. And her reflections about 'Tony' (a good and flawed human) in the aftermath of his sudden death are particularly insightful.
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This coming-of-age autobiography also gives voice to the author's various addictions — alcohol, exercise, love, attention — which she references casually and constantly.
Care and Feeding
Instead of dragons to be slain, Woolever's habits are depicted as toxic friends tagging along for every personal milestone and professional impasse. It's an effective framing that captures the comfort and insidious nature of a functioning addiction.
Despite the dark subject matter, the tone isn't sombre. Woolever is self-deprecating and has a knack for quippy, evocative descriptors — in turn describing herself as 'all turtle, no shell' during a moment of emotional vulnerability or suffering through a hangover with eyes that 'felt like burnt holes in a blanket.'
While some sections are overburdened with minutiae about the publishing or restaurant industries, Care and Feeding is a juicy page-turner and a feat of sharp personal storytelling.
Eva Wasney is an arts and life reporter for the Free Press.
Eva WasneyReporter
Eva Wasney has been a reporter with the Free Press Arts & Life department since 2019. Read more about Eva.
Every piece of reporting Eva produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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