Toast

Now with an updated foreword by Elizabeth Day and afterword by Nigel Slater, twenty years later Toast has become a classic food memoir, detailing all the food, recipes and cooking that have marked Nigel’s passage from greedy schoolboy to great food writer.

‘Toast’ is Nigel Slater’s truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. Whether relating his mother’s ritual burning of the toast, his father’s dreaded Boxing Day stew or such culinary highlights of the day as Arctic Roll and Grilled Grapefruit (then considered something of a status symbol in Wolverhampton) this remarkable memoir vividly recreates daily life in sixties surburban England.

His mother was a chops-and-peas sort of cook, exasperated by the highs and lows of a temperamental AGA, a finicky little son and the asthma that was to prove fatal. His father was a honey-and-crumpets man who could occasionally go off ‘crack’ like a gun. When Nigel’s widowed father takes on a housekeeper with social aspirations and a talent in the kitchen, the following years become a heartbreaking cooking contest for his father’s affections. But as he slowly loses the battle, Nigel finds a new outlet for his culinary talents, and we witness the birth of what was to become a lifelong passion for food.

Nigel’s likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses form a fascinating and amusing backdrop to this incredibly moving and deliciously evocative memoir of childhood, adolescence and sexual awakening.

Reviews

'Acutely observed, poignant and beautifully written…Slater tells his heartbreaking story with great subtlety. The theme of food and love is a fascinating one and I have never seen it better handled.' Daily Telegraph

'Few, if any, food writers engender such affection as Nigel Slater. He evokes time, people and place with…unmatched sensuous energy…Extraordinary.' Observer

'Toast is a magnificent reminder of…food in family life.' Lynne Truss, Sunday Times

'A talent for prose as simple and pleasurable as his recipes.’ Sunday Telegraph

'Moving, funny and finely crafted, it's a real gem' Independent

'It achieves a remarkable freshness…[and] reveals a gift for doleful, Alan Bennett-like comedy.' Guardian

About the author

Nigel Slater is an award-winning author, journalist and television presenter. He has been the food columnist for the Observer for over thirty years. His collection of bestselling books includes the classics Appetite and The Kitchen Diaries and the two-volume Tender. He has made cookery programmes and documentaries for BBC1, BBC2 and BBC4. His memoir Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger won six major awards and became a film and stage production. His writing has won the James Beard Award, the National Book Award, the Glenfiddich Trophy, the André Simon Memorial Prize, the British Biography of the Year and the Fortnum & Mason Best Food Book. He lives in London. He was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours in 2020 for services to cookery and literature.