Rnz: Afternoons With Jesse Mulligan

One birthday dinner at Melbourne's fanciest restaurant at age nine was all it took for Besha Rodell to get hooked on fine dining. She turned that obsession into a career, becoming a James Beard Award winning food critic for LA Weekly, The Age, and The New York Times. Besha Rodell's new memoir goes beyond restaurant reviews. It's an unflinching account of navigating a high-pressure, male-dominated world where every meal feeds deeper questions of self-worth, longing, and the drive to belong. It's called "Hunger Like a Thirst: From Food Stamps to Fine Dining, A Restaurant Critic Finds Her Place at the Table".