Pots and Plumes

Anne Engammare McBride writes for consumer, trade, and academic media on a variety of topics that range from entertaining to experimental cooking. She co-authored Les Petits Macarons: Colorful French Confections to Make at Home, with Kathryn Gordon (Running Press, October 2011, now in its seventh printing) and Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food (Clarkson Potter, May 2010) with Institute of Culinary Education President Rick Smilow. With famed pastry chef François Payard, she wrote Chocolate Epiphany: Exceptional Cookies, Cakes and Confections for Everyone (Clarkson Potter, 2008) and Bite Size: Elegant Recipes for Entertaining (William Morrow, 2006). She is the culinary program and editorial director for the Strategic Initiatives Group at the Culinary Institute of America, working on program development for industry leadership conferences that include Worlds of Flavor, widely acknowledged as our country’s most influential professional forum on world cuisines, food cultures, and flavor trends. McBride was the editor and writer of ICE’s tri-annual publication, The Main Course, for seven years, and the director of the school’s Center for Food Media between 2008 and 2011. She has written and edited in several capacities for magazines such as Food Arts, Gastronomica, and Fine Cooking.

McBride is the director of the Experimental Cuisine Collective, an interdisciplinary group of more than 2300 scientists, chefs, media, scholars, and food enthusiasts that examines the connections between food and science. The ECC is based at New York University and hosts monthly seminars with speakers who have included Ferran Adrià, Hervé This, Wylie Dufresne, Michael Laiskonis, Johnny Iuzzini, David Arnold, Bill Yosses, Michael Ruhlman, and Colman Andrews.

She is working towards a Ph.D. in food studies at New York University, where she also teaches courses on experimental cuisine, food media, communications, contemporary food issues, and careers in the food industry. Her research focuses on the evolution of professional cooking in the United States, to better understand how we have come to think of the American chef the way we do today—someone who typically has a degree, is media savvy, and whose reach goes much beyond that of a dining room.

McBride sits on the board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and was a two-term board member of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, the American Popular Culture Association, and the National Restaurant Association, among others. She serves as a James Beard Awards judge and is a frequent presenter and moderator at scholarly and trade conferences.