Tucked a little past the middle of Mimi Sheraton’s memoir, “Eating My Words,” a short chapter tells the former N.Y. Times restaurant critic’s side of a culinary brouhaha that predates all our techie generation foodblogging, Food Network mudslinging, and celebrity chef fawning. In 1979, the New Yorker published a piece by consummate essayist John McPhee that began, in true McPhee style, by describing his fifth-best, fourth-best, third-best, best and second-best meals, which all took place under the same roof, “a sort of farmhouse inn…in the region of New York City”. He was vague about the location as the chef-owner (“Otto”) and his wife (“Anne”) had agreed to cooperate if McPhee kept the restaurant anonymous. But by praising an unknown mom & pop operation into the realm of haute cuisine and by recounting Otto’s harsh criticisms of certain New York restaurants, McPhee sparked an investigative firestorm amongst journalists who, unlike McPhee, made their living writing mainly about food. Through wits and luck, Sheraton and her accomplices discovered Otto’s true identity and published the details in the Times. She was subsequently skewered by some publications for breaking the trust McPhee had established; Time magazine printed a pun-laden article titled “Devouring a Small Country Inn.” Now years later, Sheraton finally gets her side of the tale in print. (The McPhee essay is in “Giving Good Weight