Max Shrem
If Grimod de la Reynière had not had the youth that he did, would he have been inspired to write the Almanach des Gourmands? Would Brillat-Savarin then have ventured into the light-hearted world of gastronomy? In that case, could gastronomy as a field of reflection and writing have blossomed and given the pleasures of the table its letters of nobility? This is one of the mysteries that Max Shrem has explored, and we hope to see him reveal it during the conference.
Bio
Max Shrem is a writer and translator. He received his doctoral degree in French literature from New York University where he wrote a dissertation on the first restaurant critic Grimod de La Reynière nicknamed Master Crayfish. He has published on the history of food criticism in France, and has lectured at top-tier universities, including Brown University, Bucknell University, and the University of Notre Dame, on topics ranging from terroir to the Michelin Guide.
At NYU, he developed from scratch a food-related course at the Paris campus that culminated in a round- table discussion on the connection between the culinary arts and performance arts. The participants included former Michelin restaurant critic Franck Pinay-Rabaroust and performance artist Emmanuel Giraud. In the fall of 2014, he created and taught a food literature class for Boston University’s Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) in Gastronomy program.
Currently, Max is writing Master Crayfish, a historical novel based on the tumultuous relationship between Grimod de La Reynière and his wretched mother Suzanne Françoise Élisabeth de Jarente de Sénac. He teaches French at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes where he shares his passion for French history and culture with his students.
Max is also a serious cheese lover. Before and even during his graduate studies, he worked with cheese in various capacities, everything from managing the first New York outpost of Formaggio Kitchen to writing about cheese for Men’s Journal. He interviewed over a hundred cheesemakers for his "Cheese Course" column at AOL’s food blog Slashfood. And most recently, he contributed to the Oxford Companion of Cheese.