Love ‘Tony’? Dig Into Karen Stabiner’s Food Memoir ‘Try One Bite’ — Read an Excerpt! (Exclusive)

Karen Stabiner’s memoir ‘Try One Bite’ explores her journey of self-discovery through dining after her marriage ended. PEOPLE can share an exclusive excerpt from the book, out in spring 2027.

Patricia Williams; She Writes Press

NEED TO KNOW

Karen Stabiner’s memoir Try One Bite explores her journey of self-discovery through dining after her marriage ended

“It would’ve been all too easy to disappear. I chose instead to stage a comeback, menu in hand,” the author and food journalist says

PEOPLE can share an exclusive excerpt from Try One Bite

Karen Stabiner’s upcoming memoir is sure to be delectable. The author and food journalist has been a lifelong restaurant-goer, finding community there through food and camaraderie. But after her decades-long marriage ended, inspiring a move from Los Angeles to New York, she reconnected with her longtime love of eateries.Try One Bite, out from She Writes Press next spring, recounts the author’s journey in dining and self-discovery. To cope with her sudden life changes, Stabiner took up a new routine, where she went on all kinds of restaurant outings: by herself, with friends and family, and with a man she’d known for years, per the book’s synopsis.“Try One Bite was my dad’s rule when I was a little kid, because he sold restaurant supplies and we often ate food I’d never seen before at places that owed him money,” the author tells PEOPLE. “When my life collapsed and I had to figure out a new one, in my sixties, ‘try one bite’ came back to me.”

Amid her personal journey, Stabiner also wanted to recognize the people working behind the scenes in the restaurant industry.“We hear so much about restaurants’ backstage chaos and challenges,” Stabiner says. “I wanted to add a voice to the chorus, one that says thanks to the restaurant people who work hard every day to do it right.”

“It would’ve been all too easy to disappear. I chose instead to stage a comeback, menu in hand, in a public space that had welcomed me before and was glad to see me again,” Stabiner continues. “Everyone has a place like that. The important thing is to get up off the couch and go to wherever it is.”Hungry for more? Read an exclusive excerpt from Try One Bite below.

My daughter called from California on my birthday to make me promise I would take myself out to dinner. Yes, it was November, yes, it was cold, but if I bundled up right now it was a brisk 20-minute walk to Via Carota, where a single person could eat at the bar and not feel guilty about taking up a table for two. There was a subway stop across the street, so the weather was no excuse if it was too cold to walk home after dinner. She asked me to call back from the street to confirm that I was on my way.

I had no better idea, so I changed out of my stay-at-home slouch-wear, tossed a book in my bag, and headed off to wander the neighborhood for 20 minutes, pretending that each detour was simply a way to make time for that second call to Sarah. In fact, I was not at all sure I wanted a public meal, until my fingers and toes started to complain and I switched direction one last time to head for the restaurant. Being a singleton in a busy restaurant took energy, but I was sick of my dinnertime rationales. It was time to let people take care of me, even if they were strangers, even if I had to pay for the privilege.

Need your next page-turner? See which books our editors can’t put down with our People Who Read newsletter — plus get PEOPLE News.I knew I’d made the right move as soon as I stepped inside. The seat at the end of the bar was open — and while some people might not want to be wedged between the wall and various pieces of bar equipment, I had always liked that spot, in part because it guaranteed that only one person, to my left, would ignore the older woman sitting on the next stool. I could dismiss one uninterested neighbor for having a limited worldview, but two would feel like a trend. The wall was always glad to see me, no matter how many birthdays I’d had.To be clear, that wasn’t self-pity or bitterness talking. Self-pity is when I think I’m old and irredeemable, usually in the middle of a 3 a.m. crossword puzzle that isn’t going my way. Bitter, maybe even angry, is when you think I’m old and irredeemable, because who gave you the right to judge? I don’t wallow, much. I do bristle from time to time.I’m not in denial. I know how old I am. But I resent the limiting ways people think about me, if they notice me at all. I can ride my bike no hands, for miles, and frequently too fast. I can hold up my end of a conversation, aside from a tendency to refer to movies younger people haven’t seen but really should. I have traveled alone to countries where I do not speak the language well enough to explain a sudden illness, should I develop one, and somehow managed not to worry as I hiked six miles around a little island by myself. Dismiss me at your peril. You’d hardly be alone, but it’s a mistake, and unkind, and someday it’s going to come back to haunt you.The first time I said what I’m about to say it felt like a fresh idea, and got a laugh, but it’s started to approach cliché because women who want to keep acting in film say it, frequently, for publication. I’ll repeat it for those of you who’ve missed or deflected it: Either you’re going to grow up to be me, someday, or you’re going to die young.

Related Stories

You might want to reconsider just how peripheral my life is, given the alternative.I smiled — the bartender must’ve thought I was enjoying my dinner — and for the first time in a long time, I felt a little bit bold, almost like the old me, so I gave myself a secret birthday present, secret to protect it from inquiries, from the well-intentioned how’s it going.This, I decided, would be my last birthday in New York. If life was going to be messy, at least I would face it in Los Angeles. I would get back to California on my own terms, I told myself, find my life again on my own terms, channel anger into who knows what, on my own terms.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.A brave move, I thought, to make that promise to myself. Or an idiotic one, my self replied, given the utter lack of a practical strategy. The downside to being determined at my age is proportional terror: It might already be too late to change my life, no matter how hard I try. I don’t have forever to reclaim my identity before it becomes a memory. I might live another 33 years like my maternal grandmother, who passed the century mark, but if I fall over tomorrow my obituary won’t make people gasp and say, “Oh, how sad, so young.”It’s going to be an uphill slog, I fear, because I’m not sure people will agree that I occupy a meaningful space in the universe. Older women are that last ant-sized line on the eye chart — the one they don’t even ask you to read because it’s beside the point. You don’t need it to function.Excerpted from Try One Bite by Karen Stabiner. Copyright © 2027 Karen Stabiner. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.Try One Bite will be published on March 16, 2027 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.

Entertainment

Books

Memoirs