SOLD! MIAN (by Christopher St. Cavish)

I am still woefully behind on my deal announcements 🫠 While this deal closed in October, I’m thrilled to finally share the news that I have concluded a best-offer auction for Christopher St. Cavish’s story-driven cookbook, MIAN: Travels Through China's Noodle Culture.

There are hundreds of volumes dedicated to the nuances of Italian pasta, but serious English-language works on China’s vast wheat and grain noodle traditions have been almost nonexistent. MIAN finally does this subject justice.

Structured around the country's great noodle regions, MIAN journeys from the coarse-grain traditions of the Northwest to the national "noodle heartlands" of Shanxi and Shaanxi. It explores the famously spicy street bowls of Sichuan and Chongqing and the refined, seasonal noodles of Shanghai and Suzhou. The book will feature approximately 60 professional-caliber recipes—including the first detailed print explanation of the process for Lanzhou’s iconic hand-pulled noodles—paired with atmospheric, documentary-style photography by Graeme Kennedy.

A chef in China's most famous noodle province, Shanxi, demonstrating his noodle-pulling technique. Photo: Graeme Kennedy.

Chris brings rare credentials to this project. An American former fine-dining chef who has lived in Shanghai since 2005, he reports with both a cook’s technical eye and a journalist’s nose for a story. His work is already beloved; his video project saintcavish has grown to 118,000 YouTube subscribers since its November 2024 launch, and he was named the 2024 Best Food Writer by Food & Wine (China).

Matching great authors with great editors is every agent’s dream, and that is certainly the case here. I am particularly excited to announce that MIAN has sold to Francis Lam at Clarkson Potter.

I have greatly admired Francis for years. Back when I was an editor at Oxford University Press overseeing a food and drink reference list, I attended the 2017 James Beard Awards because The Oxford Companion to Cheese was a finalist (and winner!) for the Reference and Scholarship Award. I remember being in total awe of Francis, who seemed to be a permanent fixture on the stage that night. He took home a win in the Columns category for his work in The New York Times Magazine, as well as the Humor award for "Recipes with Roots: The True Meaning of Turkey" in Saveur, and then a book he edited, Ronni Lundy's Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, was a double-winner for Best American Book and Book of the Year. That year he also started one of my favorite podcasts,The Splendid Table, which is still going strong. I don't know where he finds the time!

I can’t wait to see this beautiful and long-overdue book on shelves. Congratulations to Chris and Francis!