Bio:
Max Shrem is a writer and translator. He received his doctoral degree in French literature from New York University where he wrote a dissertation on the first restaurant critic Grimod de La Reynière nicknamed Master Crayfish. He has published on the history of food criticism in France, and has lectured at top-tier universities, including Brown University, Bucknell University, and the University of Notre Dame, on topics ranging from terroir to the Michelin Guide (see list of conference presentations below).
At NYU, he developed from scratch a food-related course at the Paris campus that culminated in a round-table discussion on the connection between the culinary arts and performance arts. The participants included former Michelin restaurant critic Franck Pinay-Rabaroust and performance artist Emmanuel Giraud. In the fall of 2014, he created and taught a food literature class for Boston University’s Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) in Gastronomy program.
Currently, Max is writing Master Crayfish, a historical novel based on the tumultuous relationship between Grimod de La Reynière and his wretched mother Suzanne Françoise Élisabeth de Jarente de Sénac. He teaches French at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes where he shares his passion for French history and culture with his students.
Max is also a serious cheese lover. Before and even during his graduate studies, he worked with cheese in various capacities, everything from managing the first New York outpost of Formaggio Kitchen to writing about cheese for Men’s Journal. He interviewed over a hundred cheesemakers for his "Cheese Course" column at AOL’s food blog Slashfood. And most recently, he contributed to the Oxford Companion of Cheese.
Max worked as a seasonal fromager for five years at renowned Paris-based cheese shop Fromagerie Trotté where he helped brothers Pascal and Jean-Philippe Trotté age cheeses in their cheese cave. With his fluency in French and cheese expertise, he also had the rare privilege to be one of the few (if any) Americans to sell French cheeses in a Paris cheese shop.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Grimod de La Reynière: The Progenitor of Gourmand Dandyism in 19th-Century France,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, Charlottesville, Virginia, November 9-11, 2017
“Lady Gastronomy and Her Doxology of Terroir,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, Providence, Rhode Island, October 27-29, 2016
“La Cuisine Nationale: Louis Forest's Forays into Regional Foodways,” 20th/21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, New York, March 6-8, 2014
“The Gourmand and the Aesthete: Constructing the 19th-Century Meal as a Total Work of Art,” Cuisine and its Artification by Arts (16th-21st centuries), Montreal, November 13-14, 2013
“Gastronomic Decadence: Aestheticizing Foods through Feminine Mystique,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, Richmond, Virginia, October 24-26, 2013
“Gourmand Romance: Feminizing Topography and Mothering Terroir,” Journée d’études Doctorants en Littérature de NYU, Paris, France, March 8, 2013
“Grimod de La Reynière and the Myth of the Food Critic in 19th-century France” and “From a Survival Technique to a System of Luxury: Defining Gastronomy in Utopias from Mercier to Fourier,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, Raleigh, North Carolina, October 11-14, 2012
“Food Looks Like a Lady: Feminizing and Refining Foods in Grimod de La Reynière’s Almanach des gourmands,” Food Networks: Gender and Foodways, University of Notre Dame, January 26-28, 2012
“Grimod de La Reynière’s Almanach des gourmands and the Birth of French Gastronomic Literature,” The missing link / Le chaînon manquant, Brown University, April 15-16, 2011
INVITED LECTURE
“Gourmand Trickery and Grimod de La Reynière’s Famous Supper of 1783,” Bucknell University, February 27, 2014
When Max is not writing and teaching, he works at the ferme de Rochebesse in the Ardèche, herding goats, making cheese, and most importantly daydreaming.