Food Snob n: reference term for the sort of food obsessive for whom the actual joy of eating and cooking is but a side dish to the accumulation of arcane knowledge about these subjects From the author of The United States of Arugula --and coauthor of The Film Snob’s Dictionary and The Rock Snob’s Dictionary --a delectable compendium of food facts, terminology, and famous names that gives ordinary folk the wherewithal to take down the Food Snobs--or join their zealous ranks. Open a menu and there they are, those confusing references to “grass-fed” beef, “farmstead” blue cheese, and “dry-farmed” fruits. It doesn’t help that your dinner companions have moved on to such heady topics as the future of the organic movement, or the seminal culinary contributions of Elizabeth Drew and Fernand Point. David Kamp, who demystified the worlds of rock and film for grateful readers, explains it all and more, in The Food Snobs Dictionary . Both entertaining and authentically informative, The Food Snob’ s Dictionary travels through the alphabet explaining the buzz-terms that fuel the food-obsessed, from “Affinage” to “Zest,” with stops along the way for “Cardoons,” “Fennel Pollen,” and “Sous-Vide,” all served up with a huge and welcome dollop of wit. DAVID KAMP is a writer and editor for Vanity Fair and GQ , and the author of The United States of Arugula , The Film Snob’s Dictionary , and The Rock Snob’s Dictionary . He lives in New York City. MARION ROSENFELD, a writer and producer, has spent her entire career in media, much of it food related. She lives in New York City. ROSS MacDONALD’s illustrations have appeared in many magazines, from The New Yorker to The Wall Street Journal. He illustrated The Film Snob’s Dictionary and The Rock Snob’s Dictionary . Acme Bread Company . Gold standard of ARTISANAL bread baking in the United States, based in Berkeley, California, and founded in 1983 by former CHEZ PANISSE busboy and house hunk Steve Sullivan, who was inspired to try his hand at baking while reading ELIZABETH DAVID’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery during an overseas bike trip in his college years. Ferociously devoted to hand–formed loaves and organic ingredients, Acme has a lower profile than the corporate–artisanal brands it inspired, New York’s Tom Cat Bakery and Los Angeles’s La Brea Bakery, but it enjoys a greater mystique, largely due to Sullivan’s ponytailed, shamanistic presence and refusal to sell his wares much beyond the Bay Area. Picked up an Acme herb slab at Monterey Market en route to the Orville Schell lecture . Adrià, Ferran . Spanish chef of appropriately surrealist, Dali–esque mien who functions as a lightning rod in the Food Snob debate over whether MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY is bracingly innovative or overwhelmed by gimmickry. The popularizer of the vegetable FOAMS that reviewers loved in Spain in 1998 but jadedly condemn in America now, Adria, who operates out of a coastal Catalan resort called El Bulli (The Bulldog), combines a DayGlo aesthetic with a FERNAND POINT fealty to getting the most flavor out of his ingredients, resulting in such weird–ass but surprisingly edible creations as a sardine skeleton enshrouded in cotton candy and skinless green–pea raviolis that look like Dr. Seuss egg yolks. I clocked some Ferran Adrià influence in those fruit soups that we sucked down from medical syringes . Affinage . The process whereby young cheese is refined and matured, usually in a cave or climate–controlled chamber. The anointed cheese-coddler, known as an affineur, rotates the cheese and beats, brushes, and/or washes it until it is a point and ready to be savored. In the latest manifestation of cheese–course mania, some American restaurateurs now employ their own affineurs, though no one has yet made the logical, inevitable step of marketing home affinage units in the vein of SUB–ZERO wine–storage units. Asian street food . Increasingly chic trope-inspiration among chefs and restaurateurs (e.g., Jean–Georges Vongerichten and Anthony Bourdain) who have eaten their way through Saigon, Rangoon, Singapore, Bangkok, and Jakarta, and have somehow decided that they have seen the future of all cuisine. My new place will combine Viennese-bordello decor with a menu inspired by Asian street food —pho, satays, potstickers, all that shit . Bain-marie . Overwrought term for “double boiler,” deployed especially by retailers trying to sell expensive, purpose–built double–pot sets to status–hungry home cooks, even though it’s easy to improvise a bain–marie with garden–variety roasting and sauce pans. Oddly, the marie part of the term ( bain is simply French for “bath”) comes from an ancient alchemist known as Mary the Jewess, who believed that using a double boiler’s indirect heat simulated the natural processes by which precious metals formed. Baum, Joe . Brash, cigar–chomping aphorist–restaurateur (1920-1998), beloved by restaurant professionals, unknown to laypeople, and