David Leite

David Leite, a Portuguese citizen, is a three-time James Beard Award–winning writer and the publisher of the popular website LeitesCulinaria.com, a hub for recipes and food journalism.

Cookbook Author David Leite

He has written for many publications, including the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet and the Washington Post. Although David Leite is the son of an immigrant Portuguese family, for the first thirty-two years of his life, he wanted nothing to do with Portugal, its food, or its culture. When his maternal grandmother died in 1992, so did many of her culinary specialties. Leite immersed himself in his mother’s “cookbook”—a battered green-leather telephone address book in which she had dutifully logged a few family dishes—hoping to recapture his grandmother’s recipes. But they were lost forever. So Leite launched upon a decade-long journey to preserve his culinary heritage and understand how it had changed since his family arrived in America in 1959. David explores his family’s food traditions in The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast.