A collection of the year’s top food writing, selected by guest editor Sohla El-Waylly and series editor Silvia Killingsworth.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

The volume gathers investigative reporting that uncovers the disputed origins of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and follows food-delivery workers patrolling the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Contributors document the commercial rise of Nashville hot chicken across racial divides and chronicle how Vietnamese American families built a fresh tofu hub in San Jose.

Other pieces follow writers who test pungent car wire tape, observe silent diners at a Japanese noodle counter, or recreate heirloom kimchi in home kitchens.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

• Food Politics: Tom Finger exposes how nineteenth-century land syndicates drained California’s massive Tulare Lake into industrial wheat fields to feed factory workers in Manchester, England.
• Culinary History: Willa Glickman retraces botanist David Fairchild’s globe-trotting expeditions for the USDA, which introduced avocados, dates, and mangoes to American soil at the height of imperial expansion.
• Food Essays: Shane Mitchell explores Southern peach heritage across Georgia orchards and agricultural research labs, visiting Fort Valley’s festival to sample a seventy-five-gallon cobbler baked over school-bus floor panels.
• Food Criticism: Ligaya Mishan examines the modern obsession with hyper-realistic trompe l'oeil illusion cakes, dissecting viral videos of sliced Croc sandals alongside Renaissance sugar banquets.