Publishers Weekly
10/23/2023
Food writer Foster explores how food can serve as a catalyst for connection in communities ravaged by addiction, homelessness, and a global pandemic in this searing debut memoir. Relating her family’s move from New York City to Las Vegas in the 2010s, Foster describes encountering for the first time public drug use (“at the supermarket, at the corner store”), which motivated her, her husband, and their two daughters to find ways to support their new community, including by offering well-paid employment to day laborers, becoming foster parents, and, most crucially, offering meals to anyone and everyone. These efforts culminated in a “full on street pantry” being built in their front yard during the height of Covid-19. Throughout, Foster interacts with such down-on-their-luck figures as Charlie, a meth-addicted handyman whom she starts having over for lunches; and Mrs B., “a lifer on the streets” who shares with Foster her love of kimchi. Foster’s analysis of food as a social connector is incisive (she smartly observes the comforting role McDonald’s plays as a source of “consistency and permanence in unpredictable lives”). Some readers may be troubled by Foster’s admission that the James Beard Award–winning essay she adapted into this book reveals intimate personal details of its subjects’ lives without their permission. Still, this glimpse of down-and-out America transfixes. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"Bracing and tragic, infuriating and hopeful. Foster is a beautiful writer. If you’ve been missing Anthony Bourdain’s raw humanity . . . check out Kim Foster." —John Birdsall, author of The Man Who Ate Too Much
"Kim Foster has written a deeply moving account of people and their food. Not the usual suspects, but people who have been traditionally left out of the conversation...These stories are the invisible ones, and Foster tells them with empathy, boldness and connection. A must read for anyone interested in food, cooking and how people really eat in our communities."
—Andrew Zimmern, chef, and host of Wild Game Kitchen
“This book is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks of poverty merely in terms of welfare or the homeless…. If you're feeling frozen by the magnitude of the problem of poverty, Foster's clearsighted vision will help you tap your inner resources. As she says,’ We can do better.’”
—Catherine Gildiner, NYT bestselling author of Good Morning, Monster
"Foster writes sensitively, with percussive and observant prose, portraying herself as well meaning yet also conscious of her status . . . [an] engaging, urgent report from the front lines of social decline." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] searing debut memoir . . . this glimpse of down-and-out America transfixes." —Publishers Weekly
"Foster unflinchingly lays bare the reality of poverty and hunger in America, combining statistics with the true life stories of people in her own sphere . . . . Her meditations on community and caring for others encourage readers to consider the building of a world where everyone has a place at a full, loving table." —Shelf Awareness
"How can we know the people at our table and ourselves if we don’t go to the dark places and look around?" Kim Foster asks in The Meth Lunches. Through her, we get to know some of the many people she has welcomed to her table as she goes to those dark places and really looks around; more important, in getting to know each of these characters, we get to know the very systems that contain, govern, impede and destroy them…This isn't food writing as comfort; this is food writing as an urgent, riveting, beautifully composed, and necessarily eye-opening.” —Charlotte Druckman, editor and creator of Women on Food and founder of Food52’s Tournament of Cookbooks
“Kim Foster drives her culinary food truck to the intersection of poverty and criminal justice and introduces readers to the world around them that many never see. With a seat at her kitchen table, she opens our eyes to the injustice in the world in which our government sometimes works overtime to make life harder for those who need a hug, or a helping hand, or one lovingly made hot meal, to pull themselves out of darkness.”
— Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tony Messenger, author of Profit and Punishment
Kirkus Reviews
2023-08-01
A mournful exploration of the connections between food and community, set against the ravages experienced by the marginalized.
In her debut book, Foster, a James Beard Award–winning writer, details her family’s experiences after moving to Las Vegas to facilitate her husband’s work as a show producer. As she became attuned to the city’s bleak undertow of addiction and poverty, she tried to counter it with a passion for cooking and sharing, beginning with their meth-addicted handyman, Charlie, whom she invited for lunch daily until his decline prevented such gestures. “In just three months,” she writes, “we have seen Charlie and [his wife] Tessie through a lifetime of crises—temporary sobriety, meth binges, two stints in jail, three moves, one eviction, [and] several religious, end-of-the-world texts.” These caring instincts drove her to first foster and then adopt two severely traumatized children. They also started an at-home food pantry for the needy during the pandemic: “Trauma food is what I’m trying to provide.” Foster engages subtopics including the plight of the unhoused and the mentally ill, with the backdrop of the city’s ruthless service economy and the exploitative nature of low-end housing. The author’s deepening connections to the troubled individuals she encountered highlight both her empathy and frustration. Throughout, she contrasts her sensual, detailed depictions of food and the satisfactions inherent in the private act of cooking and collective solutions like food pantries and foster parenting with the intractably grim circumstances of those she befriends and assists. Foster writes sensitively, with percussive and observant prose, portraying herself as well meaning yet also conscious of her status. “Words like heirloom, organic, localmay exude certain privileges,” she writes, “but the joy of food is not a privilege.” Despite relishing the benefits of the hard labor of building social capital, her outlook remains hobbled by reality: “Poverty is a policy choice. We have poverty because we choose to have it.”
A disheartening yet engaging, urgent report from the front lines of social decline.
