Like a good flight of wine at the tasting room, Best Food Writing 2006 allows you to sample some of the finest writing about food from the year’s vintage. It may introduce you to new writers and publications. It will surely inform you about chefs, restaurants, and ideas you might have otherwise overlooked. And it includes lots of great entertainment.

Though this series of books edited by Holly Hughes began as an annual publication in 2000, this is the first time I have had the pleasure to sample it. Most of the book was new to me, though I did recall some of the contributions from earlier reading I had done. But that’s the great thing about this book. It truly does allow you to sample some of the best writers with the most interesting stories.

For instance, you can read Julie Powell in an excerpt from her memoir about cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She writes in Julie & Julia, “Over a period of two weeks in late December of 2002, at the exhortation of Julia Child, I went on a murderous rampage. I committed gruesome, atrocious acts, and for my intended victims, no murky corner of Queens or Chinatown was safe from my diabolical reach.” Of course, she was killing lobsters, not people.

And if Anthony Bourdain’s tale of a New Year’s Eve dinner service gone awry is typical of the other contributions in the book Don’t Try This at Home, then I can’t wait to get my hands on it. “I have seen an accidentally glass-laden breaded veal cutlet cause a customer to rise up in the middle of a crowded dining room and begin keening and screaming with pain as blood dribbled from his mouth,” he writes. But that wasn’t on the worst night he can recall. For that, he says of New Year’s Eve 1991 at an unnamed New York restaurant where he worked “was the all-time, award-winning, jumbo-sized restaurant train wreck, a night where absolutely everything went wrong that could go wrong, where the greatest number of people got hurt, and an entire kitchen bowed its head in shame and fear – while outside the kitchen doors, waiters trembled at the slaughterhouse their once hushed and elegant dining room had become.”

Of course, there are more thoughtful contributions as well. For instance, Robb Walsh of the Houston Press explored in an article for his paper whether being a critic really makes a difference in how you are treated and experience a restaurant. Some critics believe that even if you are known, a kitchen can only cook so well, so it is OK to be noticed. Walsh disagrees after conducting an experiment at the same restaurant with a colleague at the paper who went unnoticed. He concludes his column: “When I’m spotted, I can only describe what it’s like to be pampered. And unless you’re a celebrity, that kind of restaurant review doesn’t do you much good.”

Best Food Writing 2006 includes a wide range of articles and excerpts that explore ingredients, chefs, restaurants, the food business, life as a critic, and home cooking. More than 50 contributions are included in just over 350 pages, including articles from the pages of major food magazines like Gourmet, Saveur, and Bon Appetit, as well as regional publications like The New Yorker or Washingtonian. In addition, various newspapers, web sites, trade publications, and books make up the original material included in this excellent compilation.

This book is a great way to find new writers, publications, and books if you are a foodie or industry insider. Think of it as a Cliff's Notes for a whole year of food writing.  The variety and length of contributions ensure an enjoyable and quick read. It will find a place in my library and I look forward to catching up on the past few years that I missed and checking out the next edition when it appears in print.