Chefs, I sometimes feel, regard food writers mainly as a harmless form of stalker. But if you ever wanted to see a food writer—not a writer turned TV personality like Anthony Bourdain, but an actual, book-a-year making-his-living-at-it writer—treated as a rock god by a roomful of charcuterie-making chefs, you should have been at Balena last Tuesday at noon, when Michael Ruhlman came to talk, accompanied by cured meats from nine regional charcuterie makers such as Paul Virant (Perennial Virant), Cosmo Goss (Publican Quality Meats), and Chris Eley of Indianapolis's Smoking Goose.
In town to promote a revised edition of his and Brian Polcyn's 2005 Charcuterie, Ruhlman spent an hour in conversation with the editor of Plate, Chandra Ram, making food writing as down-to-earth, no-bullshit a craft as food creating.…
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