Care and Feeding

Laurie Woolever's memoir traces her path through two decades as an assistant to two titans of the food world. Woolever moved to New York City in 1996, freshly graduated from Cornell, carrying a vague ambition to become a published writer, a desire for validation, and a love of feeding others. She worked first for chef Mario Batali and then for chef-turned-television-host Anthony Bourdain, known as Tony. Both men built careers on the glamorous appeal of wild excess, giving Woolever what she describes as "a plausible excuse to live the same way" (x). She binge-drank, smoked marijuana daily, and used pills and cocaine, yet rarely acknowledged these addictions because she always held a job.

At 22, Woolever worked as a $7-an-hour intern at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden while living in a flooded, pest-infested basement apartment. Her father was a pharmaceutical chemist; her mother was a registered nurse diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 19. After several dead-end jobs, Woolever became a private cook for a wealthy Upper East Side family she calls the Smiths, preparing fat-free meals in their penthouse for nearly two years. A magazine article about chef salaries convinced her to quit and attend the French Culinary Institute.

Culinary school cost $25,000 in non-refundable tuition, and Woolever, who had impulsively stopped taking her antidepressant medication, found the work punishing. After graduation, she was hired at a new restaurant as garde-manger, the cook responsible for cold preparations. When the sous-chef was fired, the owner promoted Woolever to pastry chef, but she was let go after three days for lack of skill. The school's career counselor mentioned that a chef named Mario Batali needed an assistant.

Woolever interviewed at Babbo, Batali's flagship restaurant, in late 1998. Mario offered her the job at $26,500 a year; she was the only applicant. On her first day, he tested her boundaries by telling her to slide closer to him in a cab. The work was exhilarating: She cataloged recipes for his upcoming cookbook, managed reserved tables, and ate dinner at Babbo every night. When a cook failed to show up, Mario put Woolever on the cold-prep station for six weeks. She found the cooperative intensity of kitchen work deeply fulfilling.

Mario's behavior toward women was a constant undercurrent. He grabbed Woolever's backside during the workday; when she told him to stop, he responded with a homophobic slur. She cried in the basement but told almost no one. She also witnessed him touching a young woman inappropriately. Yet his generosity with career connections and freelance introductions kept Woolever loyal. Near the end of her four-year tenure, Mario handed her Tony Bourdain's business card, saying Tony needed help writing a cookbook.

Woolever began editing and testing recipes for the Les Halles Cookbook and found Tony's warmth and reliability a stark contrast to Mario. Tony paid reliably, including a surprise $3,000 bonus. She met Alex, a soft-spoken television news technician, through online dating, and they moved in together after six months. She was hired as executive editor of Art Culinaire, a food magazine in New Jersey, where she interviewed chefs including Ferran Adrià at El Bulli, the celebrated Spanish restaurant.

While catering a dinner party, Woolever met Greg, a married photographer, and began an affair that contrasted starkly with her passionless relationship with Alex. At Wine Spectator, where wine consumption was normalized, her cubicle neighbor Rob became her drinking companion. A former colleague invited her to an AA meeting, but Woolever never attended and resumed drinking after six weeks. She and Alex married after a destructive pre-wedding binge, but the marriage quickly stagnated.

Woolever's son Eli was born by cesarean section just before Christmas. She experienced severe postpartum depression marked by intrusive visions and insomnia, and self-medicated with marijuana while breastfeeding. When Wine Spectator ended her part-time arrangement, Tony offered her the position of full-time assistant. Working from home, she managed his calendar, fielded proposals, and sorted fan mail. She coauthored Appetites: A Cookbook with Tony, accompanied him on Parts Unknown shoots abroad, and continued her pattern of infidelity. Her cousin Brian, who had an alcohol addiction, was found dead at 37, but Woolever did not yet connect her own drinking to the family pattern of loss.

She began an intense correspondence with Jack, a novelist who did not drink. He alternated between intimacy and cold withdrawal, and their relationship became another form of addiction. At a culinary conference in Louisville, Woolever drank so heavily that her hands shook and she missed her return flight. She contacted Rob, now two years sober, who directed her to a 12-step meeting. She began attending meetings but continued smoking marijuana and did not get a sponsor.

In September 2017, Woolever learned that the Washington Post was investigating allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Mario. Tony, whose girlfriend was Italian actress and director Asia Argento, encouraged Woolever to speak with journalists. She reviewed old journals and found forgotten entries documenting Mario's behavior. When stories broke in December 2017, Mario was fired from his show and banned from his restaurants. On a reporting trip to Sri Lanka, 75 days into her sobriety, Woolever resisted the persistent craving for alcohol. Tony's fixation on Asia grew consuming, causing turmoil when he hired her to direct a Parts Unknown episode. Woolever recognized that her relationship with Jack mirrored the same pattern.

In May 2018, Alex discovered a confessional document Woolever had written on a shared home server detailing her infidelities. He confronted her, and their marriage ended. Her therapist Joan canceled their session because Joan's husband had been murdered by a stranger. Tony offered support. She moved into a new apartment with an even custody split for Eli. On June 8, 2018, Tony's agent Kim called at 4:25 a.m. to say that Tony, on a shoot in Alsace, had died by suicide. Woolever's first thought was that they could fix it. She told Eli the truth, and he asked what she would do about her job.

Months later, Jack sent a Christmas email declaring he could not trust Woolever and proposing a clean break. When a life insurance broker warned that smoking would triple her premiums, she gave away her marijuana, found a sponsor, and restarted her sobriety count at one. Sober for the first time in decades, Woolever discovered she was far less anxious than when she had been self-medicating. She noticed hydrangeas for the first time and developed the attention span to read newspapers. Her mother's health collapsed through infections and seizures; in a nursing facility, her mother told Woolever she was ready to die. Her mother died in late autumn. Woolever's sister called with the news, and Woolever went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for macaroni and cheese.

In the epilogue, Woolever reflects on six years of total sobriety. She has begun a tentative prayer practice, defining god as shorthand for the human inclination to work together and care for each other. She notes that Tony's death enabled the oral biography Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, which, combined with World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, sustained her and Eli for several years. She acknowledges that if Tony were still alive, she would remain his assistant rather than the author of this memoir; if Mario had not been exposed, she would not have felt safe writing about her experiences; and if her mother were still alive, she would not have written these truths, having spent her life trying to protect her mother from knowing who she really was.