The cult novelist: Douglas Coupland.
The author of Generation X and JPod tells Rebecca Seal why he hates warm plates - and Texan food.

I am not a foodie. However, one of the funnest things is to be the guest of someone who is a foodie, and all you have to do is sit at the counter with a glass of something and watch them cook, and say things like, 'Ooh that looks interesting...' and they don't even make you take the peas out of the pods. The real art is being a good audience. Cooking I appreciate, but I've always felt, why put that much effort into something temporary when you could put it into something permanent? I only cook for myself at home at a level just above subsistence.

My impulse would be more about going out for dinner. I live in West Vancouver which is pretty dense with restaurants, and all the staff tend to know me. I don't like hot plates and so they will put my plate in the freezer. And last year I lost half the hearing in my ear while I was flying. So where I sit to eat is dictated by my ear - I feel like I'm 400 years old - and my favourite restaurants know where to seat me so that I can hear better.

Bishops is named after John Bishop who founded it and still runs it, and it's been here forever. It's fantastic. If you found somewhere as good in New York or London, it would be three times the price. I come here about 10 times a year. This is the Sydney, Australia part of town - everyone's got a tan and is cycling or in-line skating. Then there's the whole coffee thing, which I don't get at all - I consistently underestimate this city's saturation point for coffee houses.

I grew up here and my mother is a fantastic cook. We get spoiled for food in Vancouver. Everything's fresh, it's cheap, we have all the ethnicities and they all do it properly. There's a Korean superstore, a Japanese supermarket. How lucky we are only sinks in when you go to Seattle or Calgary or Denver, and you look for a good restaurant and there aren't any, and you look for a good grocery store and it's all corporate.

Growing up, our neighbours were Japanese and they had all these amazing Japanese magazines even back in the 1970s and I could see it was the future. I really wanted to work in magazines as a designer there, so I worked really hard and I got into art school and then I got to study in Sapporo at Hokkaido College of Art and Design and then I got work in Tokyo. But I'd never experienced a summer in Tokyo. Summer in Tokyo is like a science experiment: so hot and humid. One day I went to this restaurant and leaned back in my seat and I was like, Ow! I had gotten sheet acne on my back from the heat and the humidity. I went to this doctor and he took one look and said, 'Oh you've gotta leave.' He asked me, 'What are you, Scottish?' which I am, and he said, 'Well your body's not built for this heat.' And so after working like a dog, and getting a real job on a magazine, I was reluctantly going back to Vancouver. Fortunately, while I was in Japan, I'd sent a postcard to the wife of a guy who worked in the magazine world in Vancouver, and she liked what I had written on it and her husband read it and was like, 'He should come and write for me!' So I was like, OK, and so I came back to work for him on Vancouver Magazine as a journalist.

At around that time, I ended up living across the street from this nightclub called Amnesias. Every night at 2.05am everyone would get dumped out on the street and all the guys who didn't get lucky would get into fights and they'd all scream at each other: 'F*** you!' 'No, f*** you!' I lived in a building co-op and we were all like, what are we going to do? We went to the Sunrise grocery two blocks away where they left all their woeful unsold vegetables on the sidewalk, loaded up and then went up to our roof and at 2.05 we started pelting. And the guys would suddenly realise they were covered in lettuce and they'd be, like, 'Oh man, this is so embarrassing, I'm so sorry'.

I only drink white wine and sake. I can't drink red wine. The first time I got drunk was on the world's worst red wine and even if there's a glass on the table I have to look the other way. Rum: the same thing; crème de menthe: the same thing. Crème de menthe is disgusting though. The devil had too much free time on his hands when he invented that one, let me tell you.

The worst place to eat is Texas. It's not just bad food, it's so bad for your health - pork and beef and beef and pork and then deep-fried stuff and then everything gets covered in glaze. Montreal is really good - in the posh restaurants it can be finicky French, but the good French bits filter down to all levels. I'll eat anywhere in Japan. That's a given. One of the things I love is places that are basically just family houses. You walk in and there's laundry lying about, and you sit down and they serve you some braised daikon and then the kids get home and chat with their mom. It's the same mentality that means there are still shops selling calligraphy brushes and ink that have been open since 1602 and have stayed the same while the rest of us fought wars and had industrial revolutions.

· The Gum Thief is published by Bloomsbury, £10.99. Bishops Restaurant, 2183 West 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 604 738 2025.

The romantic: Barbara Taylor Bradford.
The blockbustress tells Andy Barker how a Moroccan butler and a suite at the Dorchester go a long way to satisfying her gastronomic needs.

I like to be in control in life and that's why my husband Bob calls me Napoleon. When we stay home (in New York) Mohammed, our butler from Morocco, will do a chicken on the rotisserie, or a wonderful hamburger. If we're having people to dinner I'll get someone in to help him serve something like a lamb stew, but any more than six or eight and I'll call the chef. My chef does almost anything - carrot soup, crab cakes, but I always choose the menu.

All the things I like were acquired tastes from my childhood in Leeds. Grandma Taylor cooked a lot. One of my favourites was bacon-and-egg pie, which, now that I look back, was a quiche Lorraine, but it had a pastry top. When I went to Paris in my early twenties, I remember thinking, 'Oh, it's my grandmother's pie without the lid on it'.

In London we always stay in the same suite at the Dorchester. Immediately I arrive I have fish and chips. It's haddock in batter, with rather fancy mushy peas, and vinegar. I hate fussy food where they've made a picture on the plate and it's more about that than what you're eating.

At Christmas people like to send me champagne but I normally buy Billecart-Salmon pink champagne. My favourite is pink Krug but I don't buy it because it's $500 a bottle. I went to the Krug place outside Paris and saw how they stacked the different barrels on their sides into a pyramid using wooden wedges. I said to Rémi Krug, 'What would happen if somebody pulled out a wedge?' Obviously, they would roll forward. So I said to him, 'I've got my murder for the next book.' And I used it in Heirs of Ravenscar

There are certain things the British excel at: roast beef, roast lamb, stews, fish in batter and Yorkshire pudding. I've never been able to say that a restaurant does a good Yorkshire pudding because a Yorkshire pudding made by a Yorkshirewoman goes on to the plate as the first course with gravy. It's got to be light as air.

If I'm having a business meeting then let's talk business. I'm not a great believer in having lunch over a meeting. Sometimes I have lunch with my editor but it's never to discuss anything. It's that she feels she must drag me out occasionally when I'm over here. She's been with me for 27 years after all.

Our apartment was built in 1931 and I don't think the kitchen had been touched in 30 years when we got it. We ripped out the counter tops and cupboards, ovens and refrigerators. The floor and counters are now a dark-green spinach granite, almost black, with lighter veins running through. In the middle there's an island and up on the wall are white cupboards with my collections of teapots, coffee pots, tureens and copper. In the butler's pantry there's a big refrigerator and glass cupboards with my wonderful china. On the other side it's all crystal dishes and bowls. I don't want to eat off any old plates.

I do very fancy tables sometimes. I did one with saris and Indian elephants. I once did a crystal table, full of Baccarat and Steuben. The dining room has Venetian-stucco red walls and at Christmas I do a lunch for 18 women.

We have two Bichon Frises, one of which, Beaji, is on a diet with mummy (me). They come in from their afternoon walk, sit in their bed and their noses go up, because before he takes them out, Mohammed puts a chicken breast in the oven. They're only small so they get a tablespoon of chopped-up chicken on their dry food, and sometimes boiled carrot. Once a week they might get a lamb chop. If you give them too much human food they get upset tummies. They walk 20 blocks twice a day so they're very fit.

On a typical day I'll wake up at 5am because I'm thinking, I'll never do this, I'll never make the deadline. I take Bob's juice - squeezed by one of the housekeepers - to his den. Bob will have corn flakes, or toast himself an English muffin. I'll have coffee and two hard-boiled eggs without the yolk and half a grapefruit. We don't eat much in the morning. My main meal is at night.

I'm in my office by six and the dogs are in the bed under my desk. They like the click-click-click of my typewriter. At noon I'll have a tomato salad or some hot spinach and a bit of the dogs' leftover chicken. Or I might have a can of sardines because I'm always reading about the Omega 3s. I don't want to feel sleepy after a big meal at lunchtime because I'm usually still writing or editing. When I finish a chapter I fax it to Liz, my typist, who puts it on a disk. Then she prints it out and faxes it back, and then I edit it. My publishers tell me absolutely nobody sends in a manuscript like mine - perfectly typed and set out with not a drop of ink on it.

I stop at four, have a rest and we'll go out to meet friends at about 7.30pm. We know a lot of theatre owners, so we go to openings, and there's usually a party after that. Bob's in the film industry and we're often invited to screenings. We'll come home around 10pm and there'll be two trays ready and a roast chicken wrapped up in foil by Mohammed. It's still warm and we'll have it with a salad. After the theatre in London we always go to the Ivy. It's not an exciting life but I'm used to it and I enjoy it.

· Heirs of Ravenscar by Barbara Taylor Bradford is published by HarperCollins.

The adventurer: Sebastian Junger.
Blame it on the journalistic training but the author of The Perfect Storm knows a good pub when he sees one. Interview by Edward Marriott.

As a journalist who has worked a lot overseas, I've been the honoured guest in a household a few times. I remember sitting down to dinner in Bosnia once. The main course was a cow head. I was raised a vegetarian and - though I eat meat now - I'd certainly never eaten brain before. The host cut open the cow head with an axe, and scooped the brain out on to the plate. Slap. I just forced myself to eat it. There was nothing pleasant about it. It was an act of will. I learned afterwards that my friend, who spoke some Bosnian, had told the host, 'I don't feel well, but my friend here is starving'.

There are countries I've been where there's such poverty that it's difficult to stay adequately fed. In Afghanistan it's mutton and rice; that's it. And you can't eat enough mutton and rice to keep your weight on. And then comes the moment when the goat's head is put in front of you. I'm sorry to sound squeamish but, at breakfast, a boiled head on your plate is a tough assignment.

When I was a child we lived in France for a couple of years. During this time my mother went to a macrobiotic yoga seminar in the Alps for a month and just loved it. She came back and vowed that the whole family would be macrobiotic, so it was grains and vegetables from then on. My adolescence in the US was spent eating incredibly healthy food, and enormous amounts of it, too, because I was a long-distance runner. I was running 100 miles a week.

Growing up in a suburb of Boston, there was nothing distinguishing about the food in any way. Maybe there was a deli selling corned-beef sandwiches, but that was it. We were pretty unusual with our macrobiotic diet. And my mother is now in her late seventies and in amazing health. She has the health of a woman 15 years her junior.

These days I eat anything except eggs, which I can't stand. I got married two years ago and my wife, who's from Bulgaria, cooks wonderful food. Within my lifetime, American food has become much more international. But if you're on a lower income, pretty much you eat really bad food. One of the startling things about the Hurricane Katrina tragedy was that it was the first time we'd seen overweight refugees. I don't think in the history of the world that had ever happened. Refugees almost by definition are starving and bedraggled. But not in America.

Going to a pub and having a drink and a cigarette is surely one of the pleasures of the world. Seven years ago, a journalist friend of mine, Scott Anderson, and I were both bachelors and we had this idea that we'd find a building, take a floor each, and then have a bar on the ground floor. We wanted to build the perfect bachelor bar: pool table and beer. And then another friend, Jerome O'Connor, came in with us and it evolved. And thank God, because it's a really successful business now. The bar (in New York) is built out of salvaged wood from a barn in Pennsylvania. It's called The Half King, after a Seneca Indian chief. We do great events, and a lot of author readings. We do extremely good pub food: fish and chips, burgers, pasta. The chicken chilli is amazing. We have a pretty young crowd, literary and journalistic, a nice mix of people who want to have a drink, and others who are a bit more higher-minded.

Food doesn't figure in my day much when I'm working. I get up, have a cup of coffee, and go to work. I don't usually write at night. My office is in the same residence as the bar. For me, as a journalist, writing is not a mystical process. It's pretty straightforward. You do your research and you spread it out in front of you. If I have what's called writer's block it just means I haven't done enough research.

Researching the new book, I travelled down to Oxford, Mississippi, where one of the characters came from. The American South has a great tradition, a mix of rural American cuisine and French Cajun influence. Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the crew of the Andrea Gale came from - which I wrote about in The Perfect Storm - is very different. The bar I wrote about, the Crow's Nest, has a pool table, an oval bar, and on Sundays someone cooks a big pot of clam chowder for everyone to eat. A very nice tradition. It's not charged for, it's just there. The Crow's Nest got a lot of attention when the book and then the film came out, but now I think it's probably gone back to what it was before. OFM A Death in Belmont is published by Harper Perennial, £7.99. The Half King, 505 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011. 212.462.4300; www.thehalfking.com The Enterprise, 35 Walton Street, London SW3, 020 7584 3148.