Stackroll

Here are Substacks I enjoy, find useful or look forward to exploring. To see what I'm featuring this month, see my Recommendations page.

All are listed in alphabetical order within each category.

FOOD AND DRINK

Bartender In The Kitchen
Nick Mautone is a cocktail virtuoso who has been responsible for some of the top cocktail programs in the country. His bio may not mention this, but Nick is the genius behind the viral Honey Deuce. He's brilliant at talking about cocktails in a language that home cooks understand.

Belly Dancer in the Kitchen with Anissa Helou
Anissa Helou is a wonderful writer with a warm personality and engaging voice. The cooking of the Levant, North Africa and the entire Islamic world is her area of interest; her award-winning 2018 cookbook Feast: Food of the Islamic World (her eighth, I think) is stupendous. She lives in London and Sicily, was born in Beirut, has travelled widely and has many fascinating stories to tell. One of our Featured Five Substacks for Feb. - March 2025.

Broken Palate
Tasting Table in Substack form — the wide view of what’s going on in American restaurants.

Buona Domenica
Domenica Marchetti writes about Italian cooking with warmth and passion. Always a good read, and her recipes are terrific.

Call Me Dumpling
Frankie Gaw is a wonderful writer who creates excellent, soulful recipes. And isn't "Call Me Dumpling" the best name ever?

Chinese Cooking Demystified Substack
Authoritative and fascinating, Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas' Substack explores all the various Chinese cuisines — 63 by their count. Their travel writing about China is my favorite kind: They write very directly about what places actually feel like. They are the real deal. One of our Featured Five Substacks for Feb. - March 2025.

David Lebovitz Newsletter
The popular long-time blogger and author of the best book about ice cream ever always has his finger on the pulse of what’s delicious in Paris — including things to cook, bake or freeze, plus restaurants, pastry shops and more.

The Department of Salad: Official Bulletin
This Substack’s motto says it all: Eat more salad for a happier life. Its perpetrator, Emily Nunn, is worth reading (and definitely following) whether or not you need salad recipes. Her Notes consistently crack me up.

The Epestle
Leela Punyaratabandhu is one of the best English-language writers on Thai cooking out there, and her recipes rock. Her 2014 cookbook Simple Thai Cooking is where I’d start if you want to start cooking Thai from zero.

FoodStack Library
A valuable compendium of food writers and their Substacks, with engaging content such as writer Q+As/

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
Smart and provocative essays and criticism from one of our best writers on food and culture.

FoodStack Library
A valuable compendium of food writers and their Substacks, with engaging content such as writer Q+As/

La Briffe
Cool stories — often looks back at our gastronomic past — from Ruth Reichl, the grande dame of food writing and editing in America.

let them eat cake
Interesting, thoughtful posts from a TW Lim, a former restaurateur, who writes engagingly about Singaporean food and his life in Cambridge, MA.

Letter from Berlin
I first became acquainted with Luisa Weiss eons ago, when she had a terrific blog called The Wednesday Chef, where she tested recipes as they were published around the U.S. in newspaper food sections and magazines and wrote about the results. She has since published a couple of respected cookbooks and relocated with her family to Berlin. This charming Substack is about her experiences cooking there and traveling as well. One of our Featured Five Substacks for Feb. - March 2025.

Memorie di Angelina
I wish Frank Fariello, the author of this "online cookbook," were my grandma. Given that's not likely to come to pass, I love this Substack, where he gathers his nonna Angelina's recipes and cooking inspiration. One of our Featured Five Substacks for Feb. - March 2025. Here’s my April 14, 2025 Conversation with Frank.

Notes from Emiko’s Kitchen
Smart and interesting missives from an Australian-Japanese food writer and cookbook author who has been based in Tuscany for twenty-plus years. There she and her Italian sommelier husband run a small cooking school and natural wine bar.

Notes from Irina’s Kitchen
Award-winning, UK-based writer Irina Georgescu writes about the cuisine of her native Romania.

Pass the Fish Sauce
I'm a huge fan of Andrea Nguyen’s books and recipes from way back. In case you don’t know her, in the U.S., she is the preeminent authority on Vietnamese cooking. She has a great palate, her recipes rock and she has a talent for making the cuisine accessible and approachable for newbies. I wrote about her here and here, and interviewed her here. It's a great pleasure to be let in on her culinary (and other) adventures at Pass the Fish Sauce. One of our Featured Five Substacks for Feb. - March 2025.

Ruhlman's Newsletter
Relatable writing about cooking from the prolific cookbook author.

Simply Divina - My Tiny Tuscan Kitchen
Judy Witts Francini bought a one-way ticket to Florence in 1984, and never looked back. Her posts are a terrific mix of ingredient primers, recipes, cooking tips, stories about culture and more. Paid subscribers have access to downloadable market guides around Italy.

The Strong Buzz
I wouldn’t think of visiting New York without checking Andrea Strong’s restaurant writeups and recommendations.

Tap Is Fine
Smart, engaging and plugged-in missives from Khushbu Shah, the former Restaurants Editor at Food & Wine. One of our Featured Five Substacks for April 2025.

To Vegetables, With Love

Based in Sydney, Hetty Lui McKinnon is a James Beard Award-winning cookbook author with a breezy, appealing writing style and enticing recipes that often key into just what I’m craving. Really good (or addictive) cabbage. Or crispiest chickpeas and charred broccoli with gochujang tahini yogurt. (Her method for getting the chickpeas crispy is brilliant.) One of our Featured Five Substacks for April 2025.

xoxoDorie Newsletter
You do know Dorie Greenspan, right? If not, you must get to know her – especially if you like to bake.

POLITICS AND NEWS

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Contrarian
Jenn Rubin and Norman Eisen’s clear-eyed, fearless pro-democracy journal.

OTHER

Dispatches from the Road

Diana Spechler’s Dispatches is the best kind of travel writing: It explores what it means to travel, and the nature of things one can discover — about places and about oneself. As Diana puts it, she writes about “the weird, messy, mystical, human side of travel.” Read some of her work and you may feel you’ve found a new friend. One of our Featured Five Substacks for April 2025.

Ladyparts

Nominally, Deborah Copaken writes about women’s health. But really, she writes about everything: She’s a gifted, engaging and wise essayist about life, feminism, ageism and more. One of our Featured Five Substacks for April 2025.

Soft Crafts by Ella Emhoff

Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff has a charming voice, a fondess for knitting and crocheting and a knack for finding adorable things on Pinterest. Reading her posts makes me feel like I have a cool, young pal — it’s rejuvenating! One of our Featured Five Substacks for April 2025.

Your Integrative Physician | Tanmeet Sethi, MD
I wish Dr. Sethi could be my doctor — she has a beautiful approach to integrative, holistic medicine.

Story Club with George Saunders
I just think it’s incredible that you can join an online writing workshop from one of the greats. I like reading the posts because Saunders has such a generous spirit, and one day when I return to fiction writing maybe I’ll join in the exercises.

Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay
If you have a Substack and you want to understand how to be successful, this is for you.