Deep End Dining's Eddie Lin's First Book Out In Stores Today

Photo Courtesy of Eddie Lin

​You may have seen, heard, or read Eddie Lin before. That was him you saw chomping pig's ear and nibbling crickets with the jolly-Buddha-meets-cueball Travel Channel host Andrew Zimmern on the Los Angeles episode of Bizarre Foods. That was him you heard regaling NPR listeners on "the pleasures and perils" of eating brain last Saturday on Evan Kleiman's Good Food show on KCRW. And that was him you read on the pages of our humble rag a few years ago, where he started his piece on pho with: "The first time I put a bull's cock in my mouth was about four years ago in Shanghai."

But those in the foodie community knew him when he started the blog that was the seed to his future fame: Deep End Dining. His was a food blog that existed like a dare to other food blogs. A dare not only to go beyond the usual, but one that upped the ante on actually writing something worth reading. He showed that food blogging can be entertaining, original, and uproariously funny. Eddie's prose is often so hilarious you'd do a spit take of what you were eating if you didn't already lose your appetite two paragraphs before.

One of my favorites was this blurb on stinky tofu:

It's like making a smoothie out of durian melon, Limburger cheese, kim-chee and nuoc mam then letting it fester inside a porta-potty for a month and then, as you have a taste, your dickhead big brother enshrouds a thick blanket over both of you and rips the worst fart ever.

And now you can find his musings in paperback form, too! His first book, called Extreme Cuisine published by the Lonely Planet folks, drops today. You can bet stinky tofu is in there. As is durian, and brain, and pig's ear, and bull cock!