Long before celebrity chefs, prestige food Instagrams, and “foodie” entering the social lexicon, there was M.F.K. Fisher quietly alchemizing food and literature in the wilds of Sonoma County.
This summer, the newly launched M.F.K. Fisher Foundation honors the pioneering writer with the inaugural M.F.K. Fisher Month, a nationwide celebration running from June 3 through July 3—what would have been Fisher’s 118th birthday.
The festivities began close to home at Fisher’s famed “Last House” in Glen Ellen before extending outward to restaurants and cultural spaces around the country.
Best known for classics such as The Art of Eating, Consider the Oyster and How to Cook a Wolf, Fisher elevated food writing beyond recipes and restaurant criticism into something richer and more philosophical. Her work explored not merely what people eat, but what hunger itself reveals about memory, companionship, longing and identity.
Though often mentioned alongside culinary figures such as Julia Child and James Beard, Fisher occupied a category entirely her own. Where others taught Americans how to cook, Fisher taught them how to think about eating.
Born in Michigan in 1908, Fisher spent much of her later life in California wine country, eventually settling in Glen Ellen at the now-famous “Last House,” designed for her by architect David Bouverie.
“This is a place where people like Julia Child and James Beard and Chuck Williams from Williams-Sonoma and Jacques Pépin, all these people visited her and had simple meals on the porch overlooking what is now Highway 12,” said food and hospitality consultant Clark Wolf, who has become closely involved with preserving Fisher’s legacy through the foundation.
That spirit of gathering sits at the center of M.F.K. Fisher Month, which has included special dinners, menu collaborations and literary programming at participating venues across the nation, including Glen Ellen’s Songbird Parlour.
On Thursday, June 18, the popular brasserie will present “An Evening with M.F.K. Fisher,” which will include a five-course dinner inspired by Fisher’s recipes and sensibilities. The menu features dishes with names nodding to her work and wit like “Consider the Oyster,” “Summer Wolf Slayer” and “Eggs Obstaculos.” $20 from every $125 ticket benefits the M.F.K. Fisher Foundation (reserve here).
The celebration will conclude on July 3—what would have been Fisher’s 118th birthday—with the announcement of the winners of the seventh annual M.F.K. Fisher Emerging Writers Contest.
“Our hope is, of course, that this becomes something normal,” Wolf said, “that from June 3rd to July 3rd will be the M.F.K. Fisher season.”
More information is available at mfkfisher.org.