Well-Read: Cat Sarsfield

A food writer with a weaknesses for Angeleno women and dark academia.

Here we are again: time for Well-Read. I’ve subscribed to Cat’s Substack, Since No One Asked, for a while now and am always in awe of the her thoughtful approach to cooking, writing and ability to mix the two together and cook up (pun!) something so unlike anything else I read online.

Cat kindly lists the “books [she’s] read at least 10 times” and the Angeleno women she reaches for most often.

Tell me a little about yourself and what you like to read

I’m Cat Sarsfield, a food writer, strategist and lonely kitchen enthusiast. I’m the most Taurus Taurus you’ve ever met, which means I like to be horizontal (or as close as I can get) at all time, luxuriating at home, being close to nature and sadly, will hold a grudge until my anxiety tells me to apologise profusely with a series of 100 needy messages. My dreams mainly consist of returning to the forest, building a cabin in the woods, growing all my own vegetables, lying in the sun with a German Shepherd and setting up my own food and design community so I can feed the general public buttery, crispy rice, cheap filter coffee (frothy coffees are 86’d), miso vinaigrette soaked salads and roast chickens on a Saturday. My reading weaknesses are Angeleno women who write about food, sex, politics and death: Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, Stephanie Danler. The East Coast side of me feeds on dark academia campus novels and anything by Raven Leilani. 

What are your must-read books?

These are all books I’ve read at least 10 times. I return to them two or three times a year because I’m a Taurus and I like the expected. 

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan

A Pulitzer Prize winning memoir that spans The New Yorker journalist’s surfing life spanning coastal discoveries across the South Pacific, Australia, Madeira and New York. It makes me nostalgic for my own tropical, salt-soaked adventures and also makes me wish I was alive in the ‘70s. 

The Romantics by Galt Neiderhoffer

[This] is such an underdog hidden gem of a book. A group of Yale graduates reunite for two of their closest’s nuptials; except the groom goes missing on the eve of the wedding and the bride’s best friend is the only one who can find him. It sounds like a silly little rom com but Neiderhoffer’s writing is razor sharp and explores class, desire, perception and friendship so perfectly. 

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

The novel I wish I wrote, and it means I probably will never write a novel because my perfect narrative has already been penned. Tess is a twenty-something midwesterner who arrives in New York because where else is there? She enters the world of fine dining and discovers her appetite for food, wine and sex, and finds herself trapped in a strange obsessive relationship with Jake – the bad boy bartender we’ve all lusted after in our twenties – and Simone, his keeper and oracle of taste. 

What are you reading next?

Predictably I’m reading Hollywood’s Eve, Lily Anolitz’s biography of Eve Babitz next. But I’ve also got Minor Detail by Adana Shibli on my list, and I’m forever ploughing through the late, great LA Times food writer Jonathan Gold’s anthology, Counter Intelligence. 

Enoy!