John Malik

Another solo lunch.

I poked at my plate, mixing the green beans into the risotto and wished for my wife's company. For seven years we shared lunch at our tiny, dinner-only restaurant. I always cooked extra because even in a small restaurant, there were plenty of visitors: wine reps, food...

It's easy to hide inside fiction. We are inundated with genres and sub-genres, vampires and zombies, steam punk and alternative history. If a writer chooses to, he can move technology into an earlier era, create muscle out of skin and bones or conjure ghosts out of thin air. Summoning emotion...

New Orleans in August is damn hot, and the air-conditioner in this 40-year-old building was struggling. There were 45 of us crammed into a classroom designed for 30. Eager, arrogant, excited and cocky -- but most of all, we were sweaty. The first day of culinary school, dressed in our...

It's no surprise that the U.S. Postal Service is once again standing on the brink of a financial disaster; doesn't the USPS go through this crisis every five years or so? The problem is obvious; the Government Accountability Office has recently stated that the USPS can "can no...

I had my first book signing at a real bookstore last week. Fiction Addiction hosted me. Jill, the proprietor has been very helpful and has given me some good advice and even though I started life as a writer through Amazon, which sends ice-water chills through independent bookstore owners,...

A good marketing strategy can be compared to fishing. You can't let the hook just sit there, you've got to keep it moving and ideally have more than one in the water. So that's why I took my wife to a car race for her birthday.

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Recently I hosted a dinner and book signing at a friend's restaurant in Charlotte. Me and Tom Condron, the Chef/Owner go way back. So after everyone had a glass of wine and a few hors d'oeuvre in them they sat down. We were all in a great mood, it was...

One of my favorite scenes in Doughnuts for Amy is when the central character, a chef with a self-admitted "shoot first, ask questions later" management style, does something that perfectly suits his character and pulls off an ill-advised rescue of his love interest. He is rewarded not with a kiss...

As the plate was set in front of me I was stunned. Pork belly? Really? For Pete's sake I was at the Gramercy Tavern, in town for an appearance on Sara Mouton's Primetime, and this Colicchio guy is sending me out a piece of pork belly? Gee, thanks Tom. Got...

While I was an apprentice at the Culinary Arts program in New Orleans, I was fortunate enough to be hired by Chef Daniel (pronounced Dan Yell) Bonnot at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel. This was the original restaurant from the Eiffel Tower, the one in Paris. In the early...

Greenville, SC is the North American Headquarters for Michelin. In addition to manufacturing tires, all of Michelin's travel publications are edited and published here.

July 20, 2005

In mid-July I got a phone call from a good friend of mine at the Michelin Travel Guide. Some of the Michelin...

My Dad loved the underdog. Dad watched a lot of sports and he always rooted for the smaller or shorter team. He loved reading about cops that performed heroic deeds, pilots that happened to be amputees and flew with a prosthetic leg or small town attorneys that won big cases....