In the late 2010s, Alison Roman was the "it" person in the land of viral food videos and was queen of cookbooks. Her debut, 2017's Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes and the follow up, 2019's Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over, were NYT bestsellers and wowed EYB Members, with both landing in the top 70 books in the EYB Library by popularity. Nothing Fancy ended up as the "Best of the Best" in our 2019 annual rankings.

Then came 2020, but it was not the pandemic that caused heartburn for Roman, it was an interview in which she suggested that Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen had sold out by launching houseware lines at major retailers. This perceived denigration - aimed at women of color - was underscored by the fact that Roman herself was working on a line of kitchen utensils. She soon became persona non grata in culinary circles, especially as allegations of cultural appropriation also came to light.

After being "semi-canceled" following the interview - she lost her column in The New York Times - Roman didn't disappear; instead she pivoted to an online newsletter and slowly attempted to rebuild her brand. While she did offer an apology shortly after the interview, she didn't go on an extended apology tour in an attempt to rehabilitate her image. In fact, she remains rather blasé about the whole affair and is now getting ready to release another cookbook, this time returning to her pastry-chef roots. Sweet Enough comes out next week, and the author discusses her new book, along with the past controversy, in a recent interview with Time magazine.

In the interview, Roman explains why she didn't engage in a lengthy rehabilitation effort. “I had two choices: I could let it ruin my life or not,” she says. Later in the article she noted: “I’m not ashamed of who I am. I f-cked up. But I never wanted to have ‘a comeback.’ It’s like eating sh-t on the sidewalk. If you lay there, people are going to notice. But if you get right back up, you can rebound and keep moving.” How far she has rebounded might be calculated by how many books she sells this time around.