A three-star cook presents a hilarious roman a+a6 chef about the cliquish, competitive world of the New York restaurant business, as seen by a young artist who decides to open her dream restaurant. A first novel.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Anyone who loves to cook and entertain has probably, at one time or another, imagined being in charge of the perfect restaurant. The menu is eclectic, the ambience charming, the clientele appreciative, and the reviews uniformly glowing. In How I Gave My Heart to the Restaurant Business, author (and restaurateur) Karen Hubert Allison serves up an amusing cautionary tale about the downside of this culinary dream. Her main character is Kitterina Kittridge--Kitchie, to her friends. Her parents would like her to be a painter, but Kitchie prefers cooking, and when she meets Gunnar, a man who could sell sand dunes in the Sahara, her dream of opening a restaurant seems possible at last.
At first, all is dreamy. Kitchie and Gunnar operate their business on weekends only out of an apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Then they move to a better location in lower Manhattan and Kitchie's restaurant becomes wildly successful. But as business takes off, Kitchie's personal life dwindles to practically nothing outside the four walls of her restaurant. How I Gave My Heart to the Restaurant Business is a sweet-and-sour insider's view of the food business. After reading it, most of us will be glad we're only visiting our favorite restaurants and not running them.
From Library Journal
Allison, the former owner of a three-star restaurant in Manhattan, introduces an appealing heroine in "Kitchie" (short for Kitchen), who gives up a promising art career (her paintings include "Figs Seducing Baked Apple" and "Napoleons for My Mother") to embark on a life devoted to food. Kitchie soon meets and falls in love with Gunnar Gunnarson, with whom she opens a successful restaurant (all of its attendant administrative and labor problems are gamely described). But when it becomes clear that Gunnar is more devoted to expansion than to her, Kitchie makes the difficult decision to get back to what she loves best: cooking. The first quarter of this first novel is impressively promising; both funny and charming, it recalls early Susan Isaacs. Unfortunately, Allison unaccountably changes tone and throws in everything but the kitchen sink, including numerous subplots and undifferentiated characters, and ends up with a novel that can't quite decide what it wants to be. For large fiction collections.?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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