About

Hello! I’m Luisa Weiss, an Italian-American writer and home cook based in Berlin, and this is my food blog.

You can also find me on my professional site, or on Instagram or Facebook.

Contact me at luisa(at)luisaweiss(dot)com.

How I got started

I was born in Berlin and grew up in both Berlin and Brookline, MA. A lifelong bookworm, I knew I wanted to work with books for a living. After college in Boston, six formative weeks at the Radcliffe Publishing Course and one lonely year in Paris, I went on to spend a decade in New York City, where I worked in book publishing as a literary scout and, later, as a cookbook editor. I started this blog in the summer of 2005 to work through a mountain of recipe clippings I’d obsessively saved from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times for years. But what started out as a fun little hobby ended up changing my life. In 2010, I left New York and moved back to Berlin to live with my husband Max (who I met during that long, lonely year in Paris) and write full-time. Our son Hugo was born in 2012, and our son Bruno followed in 2017.

My books

In 2012, I published my first book, a food memoir called My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes). In the book, I wrote about my childhood in Berlin, the homesickness I battled in the kitchen, trying to find my way as an adult, and how I finally came full circle by moving back home and marrying Max. I filled the book with my favorite recipes from my three countries: roasted Brussels sprouts and braised chicken from my years in New York, bracioline siciliane and chickpea soup from summers with my family in Italy, and Pflaumenmus and Rote Grütze from my kitchen in Berlin. The book was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and has been translated into Dutch, Portuguese, Polish and German.

In 2016, I published my second book, Classic German Baking, with Ten Speed Press. It’s a rigorously tested collection of my favorite German, Austrian and Swiss recipes, from classics like Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Sachertorte to lesser known gems like Swabian Seelen and traditional yeasted Gugelhupf, plus a full chapter of Christmas cookies, sweet breads and other holiday confections. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times called it one of the best cookbooks of 2016.

My work

I was the food columnist for Harper’s Bazaar Germany from 2014 to 2017. In addition to my writing, I work as a translator for companies like Netflix and Warner Bros. I’ve also worked as a freelance editor and proofreader and cookbook Americanizer, and have taught food writing and cooking and baking classes, and spoken at blogging conferences on memoir-writing, cookbook publishing and the transition from hobby to professional blogging.