JAMES VILLAS was the food and wine editor of Town & Country magazine for twenty-seven years. His work has also appeared in Esquire, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Saveur, The New York Times, and the Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. Two of his cookbooks have been nominated for a James Beard Award, and he has won a James Beard Award for journalism, and received Bon Appetit's Food Writer of the Year Award in 2004. Villas is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks and books on food.