Why Not Have Stuffing All the Time?

Appetizers

In Memoriam: John Thorne 1943–2026

Last week, I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of the food writer John Thorne at the age of eighty-three. You can read Dwight Garner’s obituary of Thorne in the New York Times here.

It is no great exaggeration to say that Thorne is the reason I wanted to write about food in the first place. I was introduced to his work by two of my summer camp counselors—early culinary mentors, now dear friends—who worked at the Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton, MA alongside Thorne. Young, spiritually adrift, and grasping for meaning, I was entranced by his exhaustive, always-entertaining explorations of everyday foods. Beans. Oatmeal. Chowder. Gumbo. All written with a charming combination of erudition and an irascible point of view. Reading his collections of essays—Simple Cooking, Outlaw Cook, Serious Pig, to name a few, all of which credited his wife, Matt Lewis Thorne, as a co-author—something clicked. In every ingredient, every dish, there existed entire worlds. It seemed to me that the highest calling of the food writer might be the exaltation of the mundane, to find the holiness in the hominy. I liked the sound of that. Twenty-some years later, I still do. And for that, I owe Thorne a great debt of gratitude.

In addition to his books, Thorne (at times irregularly) published a print “food letter,” Simple Cooking, from the early 1980s to the early 2010s. I subscribed in time to get the final installment, which included, fittingly, a long meditation on celery. I was working at a dive bar in Philadelphia called 12 Steps Down at the time, and had used it as my mailing address. My newsletter arrived with a handwritten note that read: “It must have been a strange and winding path that led you to my door.” It was the closest I ever came to proper correspondence with my favorite food writer, something I regret very much.

Thorne was never a household name, perhaps for all the right reasons. He was never on social media. He largely stopped writing before anybody in food media had ever heard the phrase “pivot to video.” But I have a guess that there are more than a few Buffet readers who are feeling this loss as acutely as I am. If you have thoughts, remembrances, or favorite writings you’d like to share, please do email me at amiel@buffetmagazine.net—I’d love to collate these reminiscences into a more thorough tribute in the coming weeks. —Amiel