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It was the best of jobs, it was the worst of jobs…

OK, mostly it was a blast. After all, only an ingrate could really complain about being a food critic. And yet, reviewing local restaurants for The Des Moines Register did come with some challenges. In my memoir, Love Is My Favorite Flavor: A Midwestern Dining Critic Tells All, I reveal both the pleasures and pitfalls of serving as the Datebook Diner (the Register’s restaurant reviewer) for 15 years. Amid the good times were a few bumps in the road: from being recognized by restaurateurs to being cornered by readers who disagreed with my reviews, from getting hate-mail to getting backlash on social media—indeed, from the dispiriting to the sublime, I tell all.

I also recount my work as a food and wine writer for national publications; I’ve been all over the wine-making world—from Chile and Argentina, to France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy—to learn about food and wines at their source. Sounds divine, right? Mostly it was, but as with anything you do in a glamorous-sounding field, there was quite a bit of weirdness, too. I tell all.

During my years reviewing restaurants, I spent long stretches of each summer in France. How did those trips influence my views on the Des Moines dining scene? When you read the chapter, “My France Problem,” you be might surprised. It’s not what you think.

For some of my favorite chapters, I look back to my own years working in restaurants, —from the strait-laced Baker’s Cafeteria to the hippie-run Soup Kitchen, from the beloved and tightly managed Younkers restaurants (the Meadowlark Room, Tea Room, and Parkade Pantry), to the bedlam of a long-gone Country Kitchen restaurant. After college I served in the formal dining room of a private dining club—the most joyless place I’ve ever worked. One chapter explores the disheartening reasons behind that.

Every job taught me something new about the heart and hard work that go into the restaurant industry; every job helped me approach my later work reviewing restaurants with a mix of high standards and genuine compassion.

Here’s what Booklist (published by the American Library Association) had to say about my memoir:

“To the cache of restaurant critics turned authors of well-loved memoirs, like Frank Bruni and Ruth Reichl, add Moranville, writer, cookbook author, and restaurant reviewer …. Reading these stories of food and people, both local and international, anyone who has wielded similar forks and spoons will giggle at Moranville’s descriptions of food junkets, snobs, and hierarchy. . . . There's also much worthy of applause, like Des Moines’s first [vegetarian] kitchen, a story of Christmas caroling with a lonely line cook, and a French bistro opening its doors for a U.S. couple sans euros….”

The book is being published by the University of Iowa Press, with a pub date of July 17. It’s now available for pre-order. In fact, pre-orders are great—they really help those algorithms get the word out about the book. To find out the best ways to purchase the book, click here.

Yes—I’ll be doing appearances here and there when the book is published, and of course, I’ll tell you about these. Keep in the loop by subscribing to this newsletter.

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I’m part of this great group of writers from across the state. Find out what we’ve been writing about recently in this roundup. Today, I’d like to highlight a recent post by Chris Jones of The Swine Republic. He tells of how best to prep and eat a variety of fish in regional rivers and waters. Even if you have no interest in prepping/eating regional fish, it’s a great read and some of the best food writing I’ve come across in a long time!

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