Desire Feeds the Feast

Coming 2026-11-03

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$28

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Additional Details

Publish Date: 2026-11-03

Pages: 272

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Language: English

Format: Hardcover

Before she understood herself, Tarajia Morrell understood flavor.

Born to one of New York’s most celebrated wine families, Tarajia Morrell grew up at the table, where conversation was wine-soaked and food was the love language—a merchant’s daughter amid the Manhattan elite.

In this lush, lyrical memoir, the James Beard Award-winning writer traces a life shaped by hunger—for beauty, for love, for pleasure, and for belonging. From the electric excess of the late-’90s New York City club scene to Hollywood tables where she served celebrities, Tarajia moved through the world restless but hopeful, unsure of what would come next.

Wherever she found herself, the pleasures of food guided her. The brine and brightness of ceviche on a Uruguayan beach. The intoxicating sprawl of Barcelona’s food markets. A perfectly ripe plum eaten over the sink by her graceful mother. Through deep heartbreak and loss, it was food that kept Tarajia tethered and whispered of who she was.

Desire Feeds the Feast is a boldly written memoir about the ache of lost loves, the comfort of a perfect bite, and the hard-won victory of finding home where least expected.

Tarajia Morrell

Tarajia Morrell is a native New Yorker who grew up at the table. Her food and wine reporting and essays have appeared in WSJ. Magazine, T Magazine, Food & Wine, Departures, and Cherry Bombe, among other publications. Morrell is the co-author of James Beard Award-winner Savor: A Chef’s Hunger for More, with Fatima Ali, and author of Soul of New York: A Guide to 30 Exceptional Experiences. She lives in Manhattan with her daughter.

“A family memoir in its own right, Morrell excavates the places and people that made her while searching for a self entirely her own. Woven with humor and loss, adventure, uncertainty, and quiet joy."

—Griffin Dunne, author of The Friday Afternoon Club

"From the very first page, Desire Feeds the Feast pulls you in with sparkling detail, emotional depth, and effortlessly engrossing storytelling. Reading it was pure pleasure."

—Laurie Woolever, author of Care and Feeding: A Memoir

“I read it in a single sitting.”

—Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

“The surprise of this book is not that it contains beautiful writing, though it does on nearly every page. It is that its wisdom arrives so gently. Tarajia Morrell understands that the things which sustain us are rarely the things we spend our youth pursuing. What begins as the story of ambition gradually reveals itself to be a meditation on love, grief, home, and the discipline of caring for others. I finished this book feeling less that I had read someone's life than that I had been reminded how to better inhabit my own.”

—Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be

“An exquisite book about appetite, motherhood, class, beauty, and the wild human need to be fed.”

—Victoria James, sommelier and author of Wine Girl: The Trials and Triumphs of America’s Youngest Sommelier

"A deeply gratifying emotional feast of a memoir: poetic, dramatic, romantic, atmospheric, sensual, evocative, poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming."

—Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman

“A layered reminder that life is complicated and shiny and fun and messy, and that if you power through, the ending you need will, most always, meet you. It is a pleasure to be in Tarajia’s world—seeing, tasting, loving, suffering, and ultimately witnessing her gentle triumph. As a bookseller, this is a memoir I will press into the hands of readers, especially those standing at the beginning of something."

—Kira Wizner, Proprietor of Merritt Bookstore