Dining out: All you can hold for five bucks / Joseph Mitchell -- The finest butter and lots of time / Joseph Wechsberg -- A good appetite / A.J. Liebling -- The afterglow / A.J. Liebling -- Is there a crisis in French cooking? / Adam Gopnik -- Don't eat before reading this / Anthony Bourdain -- A really big lunch / Jim Harrison -- Eating in: The secret ingredient / M.F.K. Fisher -- The trouble with tripe / M.F.K. Fisher -- Nor censure nor disdain / M.F.K. Fisher -- Good cooking: / Calvin Tomkins -- Look back in hunger / Anthony Lane -- The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer -- Fishing and foraging: A mess of clams / Joseph Mitchell -- A forager / John McPhee -- The fruit detective / John Seabrook -- Gone fishing / Mark Singer -- On the bay / Bill Buford -- Local delicacies: An attempt to compile a short history of The buffalo chicken wing / Calvin Trillin -- The homesick restaurant / Susan Orlean -- The magic bagel / Calvin Trillin -- A rat in my soup / Peter Hessler -- Raw faith / Burkhard Bilger -- Night kitchens / Judith Thurman -- The pour: Dry martini / Roger Angell -- The red and the white / Calvin Trillin -- The russian god / Victor Erofeyev -- The ketchup conundrum / Malcolm Gladwell -- Tastes funny: But the one on the right / Dorothy Parker -- Curl up and diet / Ogden Nash -- Quick, hammacher, my stomacher! / Ogden Nash -- Nesselrode to jeopardy / S.J. Perelman -- Eat, drink, and be merry / Peter De Vries -- Notes from the overfed / Woody Allen -- Two menus / Steve Martin -- The zagat history of my last relationship 409(3) / Noah Baumbach -- Your table is ready / John Kenney -- Small plates: Bock / William Shawn -- Diat / Geoffrey T. Hellman -- 4 a.m. / James Stevenson -- Slave / Alex Prud'Homme -- Under the hood / Mark Singer -- Protein source / Mark Singer -- A sandwich / Nora Ephron -- Sea urchin / Chang-Rae Lee -- As the french do / Janet MalColm -- Blocking and chowing / Ben McGrath -- When edibles attack / Rebecca Mead -- Killing dinner / Gabrielle Hamilton -- Fiction: Taste / Roald Dahl -- Two roast beefs / V.S. Pritchett -- The sorrows of gin / John Cheever -- The jaguar sun / Italo Calvino -- There should be a name for it / Matthew Klam -- Sputnik / Don DeLillo -- Enough / Alice McDermott -- The butcher's wife / Louise Erdrich -- Bark / Julian Barnes.

An compilation of essays, fiction, and cartoons on the world of food and drink from the pages of The New Yorker features contributions by Susan Orlean, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Anthony Bourdain, John Cheever, and Roald Dahl.