The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City

Food writer Foster explores how food can serve as a catalyst for connection in communities ravaged by addiction, homelessness, and a global pandemic in this searing debut memoir. Relating her family’s move from New York City to Las Vegas in the 2010s, Foster describes encountering for the first time public drug use (“at the supermarket, at the corner store”), which motivated her, her husband, and their two daughters to find ways to support their new community, including by offering well-paid employment to day laborers, becoming foster parents, and, most crucially, offering meals to anyone and everyone. These efforts culminated in a “full on street pantry” being built in their front yard during the height of Covid-19. Throughout, Foster interacts with such down-on-their-luck figures as Charlie, a meth-addicted handyman whom she starts having over for lunches; and Mrs B., “a lifer on the streets” who shares with Foster her love of kimchi. Foster’s analysis of food as a social connector is incisive (she smartly observes the comforting role McDonald’s plays as a source of “consistency and permanence in [foster children’s] unpredictable lives”). Some readers may be troubled by Foster’s admission that the James Beard Award–winning essay she adapted into this book reveals intimate personal details of its subjects’ lives without their permission. Still, this glimpse of down-and-out America transfixes. (Oct.)