amanda hesser: 718.594.7180 or [email protected]/food52/presskitfinalaug2.pdf ·...

Amanda Hesser: 718.594.7180 or [email protected] Merrill Stubbs: 617.851.4145 or [email protected]

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About food52 Founders Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs “We met five years ago, when Amanda was looking for help with a cookbook she was writing for the New York Times. Testing over 1200 recipes together led to a great friendship, and food52 grew out of a discovery we made while working on the book: the best recipes come from home cooks. We want to celebrate these unsung heroes by giving them a place to show off their work and learn from other great cooks.” – Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. Amanda Hesser grew up in a family where everyone, including her father, cooked. In college, she worked at a bakery on Saturday nights and drove a truck through Boston at dawn, delivering the bread. She later worked in bakeries and restaurants in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. After writing her first book, The Cook and the Gardener, Amanda was hired by the New York Times as a food reporter. In 11 years at the paper (the last 4 as the food editor of the Times Magazine), she wrote more than 800 stories for the Times. She also published another book, Cooking for Mr. Latte, based on a monthly column she wrote about her courtship with her husband, and, to her great pleasure, was deemed the “evil foodie darklord” by Gawker. Her third book, Eat, Memory, was published in 2008, and the New York Times cookbook is coming out in 2010. Merrill Stubbs was raised not on Gerber but coeur à la crème, made by her mother, a phenomenal cook who fed her Parmesan chicken fingers as snacks and vitello tonnato for dinner. Merrill, who grew up on the Upper West Side, inherited the cooking gene herself. After graduating from Brown (with a degree in Comparative Literature) and Le Cordon Bleu in London, she learned all about recipe testing and perfectionism at Cook's Illustrated -- she can chop any vegetable into precise angstrom-size dice -- and mastered high-speed sandwich making behind the counter at Flour Bakery in Boston's South End. In addition to working with Amanda on the cookbook for the New York Times, Merrill also writes for the Times’ T Living, Edible Brooklyn, Body+Soul and Culinate.com, and she's the food editor at Herb Quarterly.


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FACT SHEET Food52 We've been food editors and writers. We've written cookbooks. We've eaten foams at El Bulli in Spain, street food in Calcutta and homemade pie in North Dakota. We've worked in restaurants and written restaurant reviews. We've tested more than 1200 recipes together. And now we've taken this experience and created the ideal food site where people who love cooking and eating can find excellent recipes, as well as artisanal foods and kitchenware, wine and cooking tips. At food52, we’ve created the only website of its kind — and the only food site home cooks need. People submit their favorite recipes, and we cook and vet them along with our community, creating the first curated user-generated recipe database. As food52’s editors, we write about our food and cooking discoveries every day, and we’ll soon offer a thoughtful selection of the best food and kitchen products in the country. The food52 Cookbook To bring our community together, we're creating the first user-generated cookbook using the best recipes from food52. We do this by hosting weekly recipe contests: we choose the finalists and post slideshows of us making the recipes; then everyone votes and the winners go into the book. Our users will also help decide the title, cover design and photos. In 52 weeks we'll have our first cookbook, published by HarperStudio. Our Blog In our daily blog, we keep tabs on the cooking contests; discuss current food fixations; share our own recipes; invite others to give their two cents on food issues; showcase the creativity of young chefs; and feature highlights from some of our favorite cooking blogs. The Shop Soon, we’ll feature a selection of our favorite foods, kitchenware and cookbooks to support small producers who care, as we do, about the food we eat and how we cook it. The Piglet Our first food52 event will be the Tournament of Cookbooks, an NCAA basketball-style competition in which 16 of this year's best cookbooks go head-to-head to win the grand prize: the Piglet trophy. Starting in October, 17 well-known writers and chefs will judge the competition, and at the end we'll host a celebratory dinner, which will be open to the public.


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FOOD52 RECENTLY FEATURED IN:


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AMANDA HESSER RECENTLY FEATURED IN: New York Magazine: "The Twitter Approval Matrix"


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New York Times: “Commander in Chef”


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Austin American Statesman: "A New York food writer who's all a-Twitter"


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Tweetcrunch: "Tag and Analyze Your Tweets With Plodt"


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Institute For Politics Democracy & the Internet: 2009 Golden Dot Award for Best Mash-Up

amanda hesser: 718.594.7180 or [email protected]/food52/presskitfinalaug2.pdf ·...

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