By MIKE DUNHAM

We received a preview copy of "Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life" by Kim Severson (Riverhead Books, $25.95), which officially comes out on April 15.

Severson, who has been writing about food for the New York Times recently, was the first editor of 8 magazine, now the Play section, and restaurant critic for the Daily News in the 1990s. "Being the restaurant reviewer in Anchorage is not unlike being the best ballerina in Lubbock, Texas," she writes for the benefit of the greater non-Alaskan audience. "The town, with some 300,000 people, was not considered a nexus of culinary and journalistic greatness, though it was better than you might think on both counts."

Most of the book deals with her experiences and encounters with important figures in the world of cooking after (and sometimes before) her Alaska years. But Severson's writing is as appetizing and as compelling as the gumbo at Double Muskie; one of the things that made journalism in Anchorage better than you might think back when she was here, at least.