BOOK TALK: TARAJIA MORRELL, DESIRE FEEDS THE FEAST in Conversation With Dani Shapiro Lead Image

BOOK TALK: TARAJIA MORRELL, DESIRE FEEDS THE FEAST in Conversation With Dani Shapiro

Saturday, October 24, 2026 4pm The Ballroom Book pre-order ($28) is ticket to event

Open to All

Join Troutbeck's very own Tarajia Morrell for a pre-release book launch event at Troutbeck in conversation with bestselling author Dani Shapiro of memoir Inheritance and novel Signal Fires, among other books. The pre-order of Desire Feeds the Feast from Merritt Bookshop here is your "ticket" and you will receive the book upon arrival. Additional books will be available for sale at the event. Signing will follow the talk, at Troutbeck. Refreshments will be served. Book a table at Troutbeck for dinner after the event.

Note: Talk will begin at 4pm sharp!

ABOUT Desire Feeds the Feast:

Before she understood herself, Tarajia Morrell understood flavor.

Born to one of New York’s most celebrated wine families, Tarajia Morrell grew up at the table, where conversation was wine-soaked and food was the love language—a merchant’s daughter amid the Manhattan elite.

In this lush, lyrical memoir, the James Beard Award-winning writer traces a life shaped by hunger—for beauty, for love, for pleasure, and for belonging. From the electric excess of the late-’90s New York City club scene to Hollywood tables where she served celebrities, Tarajia moved through the world restless but hopeful, unsure of what would come next.

Wherever she found herself, the pleasures of food guided her. The brine and brightness of ceviche on a Uruguayan beach. The intoxicating sprawl of Barcelona’s food markets. A perfectly ripe plum eaten over the sink by her graceful mother. Through deep heartbreak and loss, it was food that kept Tarajia tethered and whispered of who she was.

Desire Feeds the Feast is a boldly written memoir about the ache of lost loves, the comfort of a perfect bite, and the hard-won victory of finding home where least expected.

PURCHASE TICKET/BOOK

“What begins as the story of ambition gradually reveals itself to be a meditation on love, grief, home, and the discipline of caring for others. I finished this book feeling less that I had read someone's life than that I had been reminded how to better inhabit my own.”

—Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want To Be

“A family memoir in its own right, Morrell excavates the places and people that made her while searching for a self entirely her own. Woven with humor and loss, adventure, uncertainty, and quiet joy."

—Griffin Dunne, author of The Friday Afternoon Club

"A deeply gratifying emotional feast of a memoir: poetic, dramatic, romantic, atmospheric, sensual, evocative, poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming."

—Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman

“I read it in a single sitting.”

—Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

“An exquisite book about appetite, motherhood, class, beauty, and the wild human need to be fed.”

—Victoria James, sommelier and author of Wine Girl: The Trials and Triumphs of America’s Youngest Sommelier

"From the very first page, Desire Feeds the Feast pulls you in with sparkling detail, emotional depth and effortlessly engrossing storytelling. Reading it was pure pleasure."

—Laurie Woolever, author of Bourdain and Care and Feeding

"Sexy and raw, Taraija Morrell's Desire Feeds the Feast tells of a bygone New York and yet is totally modern. The author's search for self, pleasure and love in this frenetic city is at once nostalgic and in keeping with Gen Z's analog-curious shift. Desire Feeds the Feast will make readers put down their smartphones, look around and live deeply."

—Alyssa Shelasky, author of This Might Be Too Personal

“A layered reminder that life is complicated and shiny and fun and messy, and that if you power through, the ending you need will, most always, meet you. It is a pleasure to be in Tarajia’s world—seeing, tasting, loving, suffering, and ultimately witnessing her gentle triumph. As a bookseller, this is a memoir I will press into the hands of readers, especially those standing at the beginning of something."

—Kira Wizner, Proprietor of Merritt Bookstore