How To Write About Food: My Three Top Tips!

My top tips for how I write about food!

Hi, friends, and welcome back to The Kindness Cafe! Today, we’re talking about something very near and dear to my stomach: food! Or, more specifically, writing about food.

I’ll be taking you through a few key components of writing about food, a few examples, and how I specifically write about food! Of course, everyone is different, so my suggestions may not work for the way you write, but I hope they at least give you a starting point.

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get into it!

#1: Use words for the audience you’re going for.

To get your reader invested in the food like your characters are, use captivating sensory images, especially words that your audience knows. For instance, in this excerpt from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, most of the words are very simple because Lewis is writing for a young children’s audience.

“...And when they had finished the fish Mrs. Beaver brought unexpectedly out of the oven a great and gloriously sticky marmalade roll, steaming hot, and at the same time moved the kettle on to the fire, so that when they had finished the marmalade roll the tea was made and ready to be poured out.”

- The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, chapter 7

In this description, Lewis uses rich descriptive words to elevate the food, specifically “sticky,” “hot,” “steaming,” and “great.” As I mentioned above, these are all common words that his audience (young children) would be familiar with.

For contrast, this description from The Hunger Games is a bit different. For one, the target audience is young adults. And since Katniss is talking about Capitol food, which is usually a bit fancier than District 12 fare, the words are a little more opulent.

“Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.”

- The Hunger Games, chapter 5

#2: Draw on the senses (and other obvious contrasts).

When describing food, we use sight the most often, because that’s the easiest way to explain what characters are eating. But once in a while, using a different sense makes the food description that much better. In this excerpt from Greenglass House, Milo isn’t in his family’s kitchen, so he can’t physically see the food. But Kate Milford uses the sense of smell to give us a window into that food anyway.

The smells of baking ham and pies and bubbling cranberry sauce with orange drifted through the first floor to mingle with the pine and bayberry and scents of the peppermint candles.

– Greenglass House, chapter 12

In this excerpt from The BFG by Roald Dahl, he describes a snozzcumber, which is a slimy, gross food not unlike a cucumber. You’ll notice here that the description here makes us cringe at the snozzcumber. Even though it isn’t a sense, Dahl uses size to emphasize the difference between the gross snozzcumber and Sophie, the main character. It makes the food seem intimidating – even threatening – even though we know it’s an inanimate object.

“The BFG flung open a massive cupboard and took out the weirdest-looking thing Sophie had ever seen. It was about half as long again as an ordinary man but was much thicker. It was as thick around its girth as a perambulator. It was black with white stripes along its length. And it was covered all over with coarse knobbles.”

– The BFG, chapter 8

Likewise, in Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George, Celie describes much of a meal using size terms.

“Lunch was an excellent cheese and cauliflower soup, with bacon and tomato sandwiches to dip in it, and bunches of enormous grapes.”

-Tuesdays at the Castle, chapter 7

#3: Use the characters’ experiences to describe the food.

Sometimes the best way to set the scene is showing us what the character is feeling and seeing while they’re eating the food. This snippet from Love and Other Great Expectations by Becky Dean shows Britt angry, so obviously she’s going to eat that way too:

“I poured a cup of tea, added four sugar cubes, and downed the tea in three swallows, scalding my throat…I shoveled food onto my plate – fried eggs, toast, bacon that was a cross between normal bacon and Canadian bacon. I stared at a pot of baked beans.”

- Love and Other Great Expectations, chapter 27

In A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Barrett, Sara and Becky are ravenously hungry. This comes out in the way Ms. Barrett describes the food!

“How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made so much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them. The mug from the washstand was used as Becky’s tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea. They were warm and full-fed and happy.”

-A Little Princess, chapter 16

My Own Description:

For fun, here’s one of my food descriptions from a short story I wrote this year. Do you think I did a good job describing the food?

“(He) whipped back the cloth covering to reveal six pastries with gleaming, golden crusts. Sandwiched in between the crusts was raspberry filling and a dollop of whipped cream. Sylvie had to keep from drooling with delight.”

I personally feel I did a good job: I used words that an older middle grade/younger YA audience would know (golden, dollop, etc), I drew on Sylvie’s sense of smell, and I connected the sense of smell to her being hungry – the beginning of the scene is morning, before she’s had breakfast, so this is her first meal of the day.

If you’re a writer, how do you describe food and is it different from me? Do you have any good book recommendations with yummy food? Let me know in the comments below!

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Would you like more writing resources? Check out My Writing Compilation Post!

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