My guest this week is a writer, editor, public speaker, and former cook. For nearly a decade, she worked as the lieutenant to the late author, TV host and producer Anthony Bourdain. She has written for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Food & Wine, Rolling Stone, Saveur, Bloomberg, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, after which she moved to New York and completed the professional training program at the French Culinary Institute, where chef-instructor Pascal Béric gave her the single best piece of advice she had ever received: “Don’t freak out! Freaking out is not gonna help.” She worked as Mario Batali’s assistant from 1999 to 2002, during which time she contributed to the writing of his books Holiday Food (2000) and The Babbo Cookbook (2002). She edited and recipe-tested Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook (2004), and then spent several years as an editor, at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator.
In 2016, Ecco (an imprint of HarperCollins) published
Appetites: A Cookbook, which she co-authored with Anthony Bourdain. Their second collaboration,
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, was published by Ecco in April 2021, and hit the
New York Times bestseller list at #1. In September 2021, Ecco published
Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, which debuted on the
New York Times bestseller list at #7
. Appetites,
World Travel and
Bourdain have each been translated into more than a dozen languages. She recently co-authored, with Richard Hart, the James Beard Award-winning
Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking, published by Clarkson Potter in November 2024. Her memoir,
Care and Feeding, was published by Ecco in March 2025, and debuted on the
New York Times bestseller list at #8. She also co-hosts a food-focused podcast,
Carbface for Radio, and is a writer for
Flaming Hydra, a creator-owned newsletter collective. She just co-authored
Essentially Basque with chef Ryan Bartlow, and is currently co-authoring a memoir with a star of the beverage world.
In this episode, Laurie talks about how the power of having worked with bold-faced names opened many doors for her and also had its complications. We talk about trying to balance motherhood with meaningful work, the benefit of trying things and realizing they are not the right things for us and facing our failures. Laurie talks candidly about her substance abuse and path to sobriety and how she now knows how much better life is without the use of substances. Her story is intimate and challenging and beautiful and filled with some pretty high highs and some pretty low lows. She is brilliant and funny and honest and I hope you enjoy getting to know her and hearing her story!
So happy you're joining us,
xx
Jo
Find Laurie at:
http://lauriewoolever.com/about Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/lauriewoolever/Eat My Words Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/eatmywordsthepodcast/