The Bottle on Every Table This Season Has a Biographer

Florence Fabricant, the food critic whose verdicts have long carried weight at the table, has written a memoir called *Salty Not Sweet*, and one of its chapters follows balsamic vinegar from obscurity to every lunch table. The book also gathers other stories from her career. Anyone who has watched a dark ribbon of it land on a salad between Worth Avenue and the North End will want to read how that habit began, as told by someone who saw it happen. *Salty Not Sweet* belongs on the nightstand this season, next to the reservation book.

With reporting from Town & Country.