Philadelphia Weekly

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Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond's cookbook, "Almost Meatless," dropped last month.

Photo by Leo Gong

On a rainy day in Chinatown, trucks speed along Race Street, sending tsunamis onto sneakers as their tires tear through puddles. It’s the kind of day that makes you want to call out of work, wrap yourself in a Snuggie and get busy with The Wire DVDs you finally Netflixed, not trek to Nanzhou Hand-drawn Noodle House—even if it’s to meet local food writers Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond, whose cookbook Almost Meatless (Ten Speed) dropped last month.

It’s an ironic rendezvous point for discussing why eating less meat is healthier for body and planet. The Asian butchers around us sell chicken feet and duck webs, and the menu at Nanzhou advertises crispy pig ears and marinated cow intestines alongside their righteous noodle soups.

“I spent all day yesterday cooking pig tongue,” says Desmond between sips of lamb soup loaded with cilantro, kimchi and the wavy ramen pulled fresh in the back of the restaurant. The freelance writer and recipe developer was on assignment for Top Chef Stephanie Izard. “Later today I’m making Thai coconut soup with pork belly.”

Manning, a former vegetarian and Philadelphia magazine’s resident restaurant critic sighs. “That sounds amazing.” She points to her soup with a plastic Chinese spoon. “And wow, this broth is really delicious.”

Beefy and complex, simmered with fat and bone, it’s the ideal antidote to the dreary weather. But for a former vegan and a marathon runner who just spent a year writing about why America should eat less meat, the approval is unexpected.

After another spoonful, Manning sets the record straight: “People seem to think Almost Meatless is a book about vegetarianism, but it’s not. This is a book about celebrating the pleasures of eating meat.”

Rewind to a management training program at Comcast University. It’s 2001, and Desmond, working in the cable giant’s corporate communications department at the time, is participating in an icebreaker exercise. It’s not Comcastic. The group leader asks what everyone’s dream job would be. When it’s her turn, Desmond says without hesitation, “To eat food and write about it.”

The dude next to her: “To play for the Yankees.”

“Because of that guy’s response,” Desmond says now, “I always equated being a food writer to a pipe dream just as unattainable as playing major league baseball.” For Desmond, who grew up in the fertile Hudson Valley in a family that valued what she calls “real, homemade food,” cooking had always been a hobby, but never a potential career. “Like everybody else, the plan was to go to college and get a good, regular job. Once I had that, I realized I hated it.”

The Comcast retreat was the first time Desmond had uttered the notion aloud—and it stuck. She toyed with the idea of quitting and going to culinary school. “When [husband] Topher started talking about when I was going to do it as opposed to if I was going to do it, that gave me a lot of encouragement to quit my job and enroll at the Restaurant School.”

After graduating, Desmond interned at Food Network and later worked on recipe development for shows like Tyler’s Ultimate, Iron Chef America and Throwdown With Bobby Flay. Locally, she recipe tested for both Ellen Yin’s and Marc Vetri’s cookbooks and started freelancing for the local and national publications. One of those was Philadelphia Style, where she met then-food editor Joy Manning.

The idea for Almost Meatless was born over coffee at Red Hook in Queen Village. Desmond met Manning to discuss freelancing opportunities for Style, but “We talked about that for about 10 minutes and spent the rest of an hour or so jabbering about food, books, cookbooks, writing, cooking,” remembers Desmond. “Ten days later Joy called to ask if I'd consider collaborating on a book with her.”

“After writing the proposal, we just went back to our regular lives and waited,” says Manning.

“And waited,” echoes Desmond. “We actually collected enough rejection letters to wallpaper our bathrooms. We thought it was over.”