AN OBSERVER, GQ, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, THE WEEK AND BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2025
Longlisted for the André Simon Food and Drink Book Award

'Entertaining, alarming, illuminating, alive'
NIGELLA LAWSON
'Brilliant and original'
NIGEL SLATER
'Ruby is a rare and singular voice. I loved this book'
ANNA JONES

The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now?

Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and discussing it - is no longer a subculture. It's become mass culture.

The food landscape is more expansive and dizzying by the day. Recipes, once passed from hand to hand, now flood newspaper supplements and social media. Our tastes are engineered in food factories, hacked by supermarkets and influenced by Instagram reels.

Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original analysis traces this extraordinary transformation over the past seventy-five years, making sense of this electrifying new era by examining the social, economic, and technological forces shaping the foods we hunger for today.

Exploring the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of TikTok critics and absurdities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh's laser-sharp investigation leaves her questioning: how much are our tastes, in fact, our own?

Discover All Consuming Bubble Tea | Critics | Recipes | Martha Stewart | Mob |Fast food | Hype queues | Nara Smith | Tiktok | Viennetta | Weekend supplements | Wife Guys | Cult Cookbooks | Lobster | Influencers | Wellness elixirs | Entertaining | Keith Lee | Wimpy with Ruby Tandoh this autumn.