Laurie Woolever’s memoir “Care and Feeding” delivers exactly what its title promises—both the nurturing aspects of food work and the exhausting price of maintaining a career in an industry notorious for excess. The former assistant to culinary titans Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain serves up a raw, often uncomfortable account of navigating the male-dominated restaurant world while battling her own demons of addiction and self-sabotage.
Woolever writes with the same unflinching honesty that made her collaborations with Bourdain (“Appetites: A Cookbook” and “World Travel: An Irreverent Guide”) so compelling. Here, however, she turns that unsparing lens on herself, chronicling a journey from upstate New York obscurity to the heights of food media, with all the messy detours along the way.
Cooking in the Shadows of Giants
What distinguishes “Care and Feeding” from other food industry memoirs is Woolever’s perspective as the woman behind powerful men. The book’s narrative spans her professional evolution from nervous culinary school graduate to private cook for wealthy Manhattanites to Batali’s assistant during Babbo’s heyday to Bourdain’s trusted collaborator until his death by suicide in 2018.
Woolever doesn’t position herself as an innocent bystander in the excesses of restaurant culture. Instead, she candidly documents her eager participation in its worst excesses—the blackout drinking, casual drug use, and disastrous sexual encounters that marked her twenties and thirties. When she describes her first trip to Atlantic City with Batali, which culminates in her vomiting on the Garden State Parkway while he laughs, she notes her twisted pride at being included in his inner circle despite his demeaning behavior.
The book’s most compelling sections detail her complex relationships with both celebrity chefs:
- Mario Batali: Her four years as his assistant included inappropriate touching and “joking” sexual harassment, which she acknowledges she mostly tolerated to maintain her position. Years later, when #MeToo allegations against Batali surface, Woolever confronts her complicated feelings about speaking out against someone who had opened doors for her.
- Anthony Bourdain: Her partnership with Bourdain represents a more equitable professional relationship, though she grapples with guilt after his suicide, wondering if she missed signs of his deteriorating mental health while managing his increasingly Asia Argento-centered schedule.
Beyond the Name-Dropping: A Personal Reckoning
While famous names populate the pages, “Care and Feeding” is fundamentally Woolever’s own story of addiction and recovery. Her confessions about manipulating her marriage, engaging in serial infidelity, and prioritizing substances over relationships are delivered with a brutal self-awareness that can make readers squirm. The moment her husband discovers her journal detailing her affairs is especially wrenching—his fury met with her strange relief that the charade is finally over.
Woolever’s journey to sobriety unfolds gradually, beginning with giving up alcohol before eventually surrendering marijuana as well. Her description of learning to face life’s difficulties without chemical cushioning offers the book’s most redemptive arc:
“Being completely sober for the first time in decades, I quickly found myself far less tortured by the minutiae of daily living in an imperfect world, and also far more aware of the wonderful ordinariness all around me. I learned the name of the pink and white and blue flowering bushes (hydrangeas) that were all over my neighborhood, which I’d never before noticed, despite their being extraordinarily common.”
The Highs and Lows of Food World Access
The memoir excels in its vivid food scenes across the globe:
- A revelatory bowl of bún bò Hue (spicy beef noodle soup) in Vietnam
- A bizarre encounter with a rude stranger after ordering KFC in Jaffna, Sri Lanka
- The disappointing reality of El Bulli’s molecular gastronomy empire
- A transcendent home-cooked meal in Sri Lanka
Yet Woolever never presents these experiences as aspirational. Instead, she consistently reveals the often-exploitative power dynamics behind culinary adventures—whether it’s wealthy Manhattan families underpaying for private cooking or celebrity chefs leveraging their status for sexual access.
Critique: Self-Absorption as Both Feature and Bug
The memoir’s greatest weakness mirrors its greatest strength: Woolever’s intense self-focus. While her unflinching self-examination drives the narrative, it sometimes slides into navel-gazing that glosses over the impacts of her choices on others. Her son Eli appears primarily as a background character whose needs occasionally interrupt her personal dramas.
Similarly, the book’s treatment of the cultural appropriation inherent in food media goes largely unexamined. Woolever documents her globe-trotting food adventures without meaningfully engaging with her privileged position as a white American writing about cuisines not her own. This oversight feels especially glaring given contemporary discussions about representation in food media.
The prose occasionally suffers from overwrought metaphors (“a high-pressure fire hose of vomit emerging from my mouth”) and repetitive themes, particularly in the sections detailing her relationship with “Jack,” an emotionally unavailable love interest whose manipulations consume too many pages.
Industry Insight Worth the Discomfort
Despite these flaws, “Care and Feeding” provides valuable witness to a particular moment in food culture. Woolever’s accounts of working alongside Batali during his rapid empire building and with Bourdain during his transition from chef to global icon offer genuine historical value for anyone interested in American culinary evolution.
Her insider perspective on the early 2000s restaurant scene captures a transitional period when celebrity chefs first became mainstream cultural figures and “foodie” entered the national lexicon. Her front-row seat to the industry’s #MeToo reckoning adds important context to those public downfalls.
Beyond the Cautionary Tale: A Survival Story
What ultimately elevates “Care and Feeding” beyond industry tell-all or addiction memoir is Woolever’s remarkably clear-eyed assessment of her own complicity in toxic systems. She makes no excuses for her behaviors while acknowledging the structural problems that enabled them. Her eventual embrace of sobriety comes not as a neat redemption arc but as an ongoing practice of honesty and self-reflection.
In the epilogue, Woolever reflects:
“Here are some of the guidelines I’ve learned from 12-step meetings, the associated literature, and conversations with people in recovery: be honest, acknowledge your part in any situation, keep perspective, let go of self-centered thinking, help others, don’t drink. So far, the only one I’ve been able to do without fail is ‘don’t drink,’ but by bearing the rest in mind, I’ve calmed down, stayed sober, and cobbled together a career as a writer.”
This hard-won wisdom feels authentically earned rather than prescribed, making the memoir’s conclusion satisfying despite its lack of tidy resolutions.
Verdict: Uneven but Essential Reading
“Care and Feeding” joins works like Stephanie Danler’s “Sweetbitter,” Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Blood, Bones & Butter,” and Lisa Donovan’s “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger” in the canon of food industry memoirs that refuse to romanticize restaurant culture. Woolever’s contribution stands out for its unflinching examination of addiction, its behind-the-scenes access to culinary icons, and its documentation of an industry at a moral crossroads.
The book is not without significant flaws—sections drag, some characters remain underdeveloped, and certain ethical questions go unexamined. However, Woolever’s sharp prose, darkly funny observations, and courageous self-scrutiny make “Care and Feeding” compelling reading for anyone interested in food culture, addiction recovery, or women’s experiences in male-dominated industries.
By its conclusion, Woolever has demonstrated that true nourishment—the real “care and feeding” of the title—comes not from external validation or chemical escape but from the difficult work of honesty and accountability. It’s a lesson as applicable to readers as it was to the author herself.