Book Ends & End Tables - The Best of 2025

Oh, the weather (and just about everything else) is frightful...but the table is set for a hopeful New Year just the same. 

Here, I try to stick to what feeds my heart, whips up my consciousness, and stirs my soul: good food and books. As I’ve always maintained, reading is fundamental and a fella’s gotta eat. So let’s dig in!

OMG! Oyamel by José Andrés! This summer we swooned over the staggeringly fresh, icy cold ‘gaspacho’ salad of pineapple, orange, jicama root, cucumbers, mango, and queso fresco bathing in lime juice with a dusting of chile pequin.

Marsanne is a fairly new Mediterranean entry in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. We stopped in for the Veal Agnolotti, veal-stuffed dumplings in veal jus with potato puree, beech mushrooms and Parmesan—several times.

A dear friend took us to Osteria della Tre Panche tucked away in The Hermitage Hotel, a few steps away from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. She had raved about the Chicken with Truffled Cream Sauce and rightly so. The dish was done to perfection. And I mean, truffled cream sauce, right?

Making my way to visit the tiny British food shop Myers of Keswick in the West Village is annual tradition for me every December. I purchase a little pork pie and scuttle home to heat it up, then close my eyes and think of England with each savory bite. For a pork pie recipe (that probably trickled down from French Canada), click here.

I love vegan Planta Queen and have enjoyed the inventive fare (you won’t miss the meat!) on every visit to the NoMad location. The staff is super friendly and the atmosphere brims with festivity, making it the perfect venue to entertain out-of-towners, too. I was, however, unprepared for the absolutely delcious alcohol-free Not-A-Rita made with Seedlip notas de agave, cranberry, lime, agave, damiana flower, and antioxidants. Sip it slowly...

And of course, I read, finding sustenance in the following books that topped my list for the year out of the 60-some that I finished:

The Cider House Rules by John Irving. The book deliberately parallels David Copperfield (and Great Expectations) as we follow Homer Wells’s journey—and indeed wonder whether or not this particular orphan (our “Prince of Maine,” our “King of New England”) will become the hero of his own life. What a joy to read!  

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. Florence, the 1550s. I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, but...the story about the ill-fated Lucrezia di Cosimo de ’Medici marrying into the Ferrarese dynasty is absolutely riveting. Maggie O’Farrell is a spellbinder for sure, as evidenced by that other book you might have heard of, Hamnet! Gorgeous and tragic, the final twist is a stunner.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Reading this dazzling novel felt like being plunged into a tub of Champagne—at once perilous, heady, and delicious. There’s a definite nod to The Great Gatsby, I think, as we follow Katey Kontent (Kontent) and her witty chums (particularly the seductive, mysterious Tinker Grey) around a glorious, fizzy Manhattan in 1938.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. A sweet (and yes, diminutive) heroine struggles to free her father from the Marshalsea debtors’prison as a pair of suitors look after her heart in the midst of numerous Dickensian knots, while the master himself skewers British bureaucracy. “Five and twenty, Tatty. Five and twenty!” 

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. Patrick Bateman, all misery amid the rustle of long black skirts? This spin on the Gothic novel is not exactly American Psycho either perhaps, but the peverse bloodletting is much the same. A wicked tale of revenge, so gorgeously written. 

Venetian Vespers by John Banville. One of my all-time favorite authors, his latest transports us to Venice in 1899. A struggling writer’s wife disappears and as the floating city feels like it’s sinking under his feet, he begins to suspect that he might have killed his betrothed. Nothing is what it seems as we are swept away by Banville’s depiction of the haunting, ancient splendor that is Venice.

BOOK/A TABLE - This Applesauce Rules!

                   

A Prayer for Owen Meany* by John Irving was the first book that ever made me cry. Books had been making people cry for years, of course, but I never quite understood it growing up. Crying during a movie made more sense to me, the passivity of watching the drama unfold, you know? Reading is active—if distracted, you turn away, the reel jams, the celluloid melts, the story stops! Hardly a time for tears. Oh, the impatience of youth!

But when I read the extraordinary A Prayer for Owen Meany, I finally understood. Oh, the tears fell down like autumn windfall apples! 

I suppose it wasn’t surprising then that I cried again over Irving’s The Cider House Rules only a few months ago. The story centers on events surrounding an orphanage and hospital in the fictional town of St. Cloud’s in Maine (my homeland). There, women deliver unwanted babies (those ‘Princes of Maine’; those ‘Kings of New England’) or the women themselves are delivered from unwanted pregnancies. The book deliberately parallels David Copperfield as we follow Homer Wells’s journey—and indeed wonder whether or not this particular orphan will become the hero of his own life. 

There are also many pages devoted to apples, their cultivation (and rules of operating the cider house), as you might well imagine. But here, let’s start with the basics. Applesauce!

Following the loose instructions torn out of an old Bon Appétit, I have made Carla Lalli Music’s practically effortless recipe for perfect applesauce many times. She says, “As the apples transform, their skins surrender tannins and color to the sauce, and the fruit steams in its own juices, concentrating the flavors as the liquid simmers.” Doesn’t that sound just fantastic? 

And as Homer (our Prince of Maine and King of New England) observes, “...people will always eat apples...it must be a nice life.”

Applesauce
Adapted from a recipe by Carla Lalli Music, featured in Bon Appétit

Ingredients
A few apples; any kind that suits your fancy
A stick of cinnamon
Juice from 1 lemon
A scraped-out vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

Method
Halve the apples and add them to sturdy pot (enamel Le Creuset pots are great) with all the ingredients on medium-low. Add a 1/4 cup of water and let them be. When the rich aromas begin filling the kitchen, stir your apples to make sure they aren’t sticking—if they are, add a little more water.

The total simmering time should be about 45 minutes to yield a rosy, tender flesh. Transfer your batch to a food mill to catch any seeds or stems.

Serve warm. Or chilled!

*(For a deeper dive into A Prayer for Owen Meany, check out Fifth Business by Robertson Davies—Irving based Owen Meany on it.)