Dinner: A Love Story

Good morning friends. Today I am going off script a bit because I’ve been keeping something from you and I finally feel like I’m ready to talk about it. It’s been an eventful spring here in Dinner: A Love Story Land, trips to Ireland and Italy, book parties and author conversations and work conferences, New York restaurant adventuring, and so much good home cooking if I do say so myself — so you’d be forgiven if this next part sounds like it’s coming out of nowhere.

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Greetings friends. I’ve returned from Ireland and though I’m always happy to come home, I am now acutely aware of how few sheep-dotted pastures there are in my everyday life, and how decidedly not-green New York can feel even during the first week of summer.

Greetings from Ireland, friends! I simply cannot believe how beautiful it is here — so far we’ve hiked over rolling hills and rugged cliffs, gone swimming in Dingle Harbour, eaten fried hake and chips while watching the World Cup on one side of the pub and Irish musicians on the other. I also tried (and failed) to “split the G” when drinking my first-ever Guinness, but I believe this challenge qualifies as a Noble Vacation Pursuit, so I hope to report back with progress on that front next week.

Greetings friends and food lovers! I’m thrilled to invite you to join me for my next culinary adventure in Sicily, which will take place next year, May 9-15, 2027. Like the previous tours I’ve hosted in Italy — Puglia, Parma, and Ortigia — the tour will be run by on-the-ground local guides, and curated by Via Rosa, the boutique tour company run by Italian food expert, Elizabeth Minchilli and her two daughters.

Andy Ward is the Publisher of Random House. He is also a martini lover, an ESPN FC addict, a Merlin app junkie, a standing-desk believer, a Bob Dylan devotee, and the family Enthusiast in Chief. His superpowers include: Mincing herbs, grilling meat to perfect doneness, remembering every friend’s cocktail preference, queueing up exactly the right song for the vibe, skipping stones, storytelling with sound effects. Wet-vac-ing.

As promised, here is the recording of today’s Substack Live with Random House Publisher, who some of you in this space might know more familiarly as “the pork ragu guy” or maybe even “my husband.” We went deep on what Andy’s day-to-day looks like as a book editor, what it’s like to work with writers as wide-ranging as Elizabeth Strout, George Saunders, Imbolo Mbue, Yuval Harari, Lena Dunham, and Samin Nosrat.

Greetings friends, and please join me as I attempt to stay focused on this stracciatella sandwich and the absolutely electric blue-and-orange-spiked energy coursing through the city right now, instead of thinking too catastrophically about the Knicks’ loss last night.

Last week, a subscriber named Abby commented on my newsletter “Would you ever consider writing about your reading schedule?

Greetings friends! Hope it was a good weekend. We were at my sister’s house on Long Island and even though it felt more like March than May, we took an invigorating walk to the water and my brother-in-law grilled up a fish taco feast* for nine, complete with mango salsa and foil-wrapped sweet potato halves charred right in the coals.