I was not alone in my section at Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Shrew this summer to gasp when Cush Jumbo’s Katherina laid herself flat on her stomach, holding out her hand for her husband Petruchio to step upon.

The Irish Arts Center’s Pen, Paper, and Palate literary salon this past May, a conversation among four food writers at The Half King in Chelsea, suggested two curiously opposite directions in modern food writing.