Customer Reviews

Secrets of the Tsil Cafe

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thomas Fox Averill's first published novel (following several collections of short fiction, two anthologies, and the O'Henry Prize selection) is a real gem which will appeal to all readers -- literature lovers, cooks, students, and teachers. A coming of age story, set in Kansas City, the novel traces Wes Hingler as he grows to know and understand himself against the backdrop of his mother's old world catering service and his father's new world "Tsil Cafe." Interspersed in the engaging narrative are the recipes of both worlds, recipes which are clear and educational and accessible for most cooks. Although most readers will not choose to cook with dog (when available), the ingredients will be readily available for most readers. Those who appreciate spice will revel in the recipes, but for the more delicate palates Averill shows how chile peppers can be sweet and subtle. Written with tenderness and affection while not holding back on life's realities, "Secrets of the Tsil Cafe" will be a perfect selection for teachers in universities and secondary schools. The clear definition of two cultures, the search for identity, and the joy of life fully lived permeate this work and make it an ideal vehicle for classroom discussion and for the exploration (by students and readers) of the importance of family and cultural heritage. Although I am the author's brother and have to acknowledge the "conflict of interest" in writing this review, I objectively see this as a great novel. I will be using "Secrets of the Tsil Cafe" in my own AP English classes in Manchester (MA) and in my kitchen at home with my family. I recommend this novel with pride and enthusiasm.

cafe tsil: a great story w/recipes as a bonus. a very well written, touching, and moving story. i needed a kleenix a couple of times. i found the inclusion of the recipes a nice touch, although i wonder how readily available the ingredients are--like the llama blood, guinea pigs, and dog... :-) get the book and read it...it's worth it!

With prose as rich and flavorful as the southwestern cuisine his characters prepare, Averill has penned for us a wonderful coming of age story. Wes Hingler is out of place. His culinary tastes and culture don't fit into the urban life of Kansas City. Not at home with either his peers or his father, who wears his cultural differences like a badge, Wes endures a lifetime of adjustment. It's a lifetime centered around his family. His parents and their troubles swirl around him in an ever enlightening mix of secrets, betrayals, and love.

For Wes, it means a constant reconciliation with his parents' pains and desires. And like individual ingredients in the whole, these are just pinches of what makes Wes Hingler's life worth tasting.

Averill is a literary writer. He is an award-winning short fiction writer, and a teacher. It shows in his prose. The story is authentic in both emotion and detail. It is written with an authoritative and honest voice that developes the characters so realistically you'll begin to see pieces of them in the people around you. We know these people. We'd swear we've met them.

Enjoy this work. Read it and escape for a while, if not to a world less complex or difficult, at least more flavorful.

I wouldn't want to "give away" the ending, but I think one would have to be asleep throughout to miss it on the horizon. As Wes Hingler makes his way from childhood to young adulthood, he learns the necessary but unremarkable lessons that all must learn: parents are imperfect, life isn't fair, people and pets die, hard work has it's rewards, etc. Eventually, he finds himself. There is a cast of enjoyable, if not always well-developed, characters, from whom Wes learns various lessons along the way, culminating in a rare meeting with his maternal grandfather. As a piece of writing I would have given this only 3-and-a-half stars. However, it is the context of the story that makes it a fun read. The narrative is interwoven with unique, adventurous recipes, which mark the protagonist's life lessons. What Thomas Averill's book lacks in the way of dramatic tension it more than makes up for in the inventiveness of his recipes and his use of them to move the story along.

Midway through Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, the protaganist, Wes Hingler, wakes to find his beloved dog, When Available, has died in his sleep. The dog is quietly buried, in a simple family ritual, in the garden where most of the spices and vegetables for the Tsil cafe are grown.

"We didn't eat him, Wes," says Wes' father, the cook and proprietor of the the titled restaurant, pointing to a joke about the dog's name. "But as he becomes earth, and as we live off this small patch of earth we've made ours, he will nourish us in his death as he did in his life."

And here, briefly, is the crux of the novel, which uses food as a metaphor for life -- the blending and mixing of spices and ingredients that make it interesting or bland. And as in life, there are comings and goings, births and deaths, tragedies and triums to remind us of our own place in the world.

Thomas Fox Averill creates characters you connect with. His story has been almost universally described by reviewers as a "coming of age" tale, which I guess is technically true.

Yet more importantly, it is a book about life, as told through young Wes' eyes, and it points at all the traditions, secrets and passions that run through a family. Scattered throughout are recipes -- which I have not yet challenged -- along with brief descriptions of the ingredients. And we're given engaging histories of the New World meats, vegetables, spices and fruits that appear throughout Averill's engaging little book.

This is a book that quietly draws you into its pages, keeps you there for a few hours, and when you leave, you are as satisfied and as filled as any of the customers of the Tsil Cafe, and just as eager for another entree.

In a novel which is as powerfully sensuous as Suskind's Perfume and as imaginatively tasty as Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Averill finds his own voice, creating a unique and thoughtful coming-of-age story which, while rich in imagery, is remarkably simple and direct in its message. Food is life here, and the preparation of food and the ingredients one uses reflect the attitudes and spirit with which one approaches life and relationships.

Weston Hingler is the son of two cooks with totally different viewpoints. His father, Robert Hingler, owns the Tsil Café, where he uses robust, New World ingredients and spicy chiles and seasonings to bring the heat of southwestern cuisine to Kansas City. His mother, Maria Tito Hingler, part Italian, is a caterer who uses cultivated, Old World ingredients in a more subtle and traditional way. Stubbornly independent and wildly passionate, Robert and Maria communicate best when talking about food, marching to different drummers in the conduct of their personal lives, thereby creating innumerable challenges for their growing son. As Weston grows up, exposed to both cuisines and working, at various times, for both his parents, he must decide who he is, where he fits, who his parents really are, where each of them really comes from, and, ultimately, who he will become.

Filled with recipes which go way beyond anything most of us have ever imagined (and which, according to the acknowledgments, have actually been tested!), the book is hugely fun to read, even for someone who might not have a great deal of interest in cooking. I'll take a pass on the Dog Tamal, Roasted Maguey Worms, and Guinea Pig Stuffed with Marigolds, but I do understand why they were so important to Robert, and the Crab Cakes with Pineapple-Mango Salsa and the Jicama Salad sound absolutely delicious. This is a delightful novel, intriguing on all its many levels, and full of new insights into how and why we are what we eat. Mary Whipple

Here's another good one I lapped for the month of
June...This one is a feast for the Stomach and the
Soul.

The product of a cross-cultural family obsessed with
food, Weston Tito begins his story by saying he was a
seed in his parents' kitchens‹plural in both cases.
Weston's mother is Italian and works the successful
catering business BuenAppeTito upstairs; downstairs,
his father, who is fixated on cooking only indigenous
foods "Santa Fe style" (they live in Kansas City),
runs the Tsil Cafe, a restaurant as it is
tear-inducingly spicy. Wes' crib and later his cot are
literally in his mother's kitchen (in the cabinets,
for a while), and she teaches him her "vocabulary,"
the names of foods, by letting him taste them. His
father refuses him entry into his own obsessive
domain, almost a holy order, until he can claim to
enjoy such un-childlike flavors as habanero and
anchovy. After that, like a knight's apprentice, he is
allowed to help slice and chop ingredients -- carry
his own sword, in effect.

One of the points of contention between Wes'
hot-blooded parents is the local restaurant critic, an
old admirer of his mother's. Nevertheless, the critic,
who acts first as a teeter-totter between the two
adults, ultimately becomes a sort of bridge, giving
Wes his first opportunity to critique -- to see the
food of both parents objectively -- and start to
develop his own concept of food.

Over the years, Wes absorbs a rich stew of influences
and emotions from his mixed-ethnic family, along with
the various Mexican employees of the cafe who serve as
surrogate relatives and even a Native American
graduate student who takes him foraging for cactus and
cattails and invites him to a corn dance. Ultimately,
he will even marry the critic's female successor.

So pervasive is food in this coming-of-age novel that
the recipes become a reflection of life's shifting
flavors in Averill's kitchen novel. The almost

magic-realism intensity of the flavor descriptions and
the author's habit of dropping in dictionary
definitions of various terms such as "turkey,"
"mescal" and "maple" re-emphasizes the native quality
of the ingredients. The narrator's entire life is
lived in the study, anecdotal and later academic, of
foods; ultimately he will become a chef as well,
melding his parents' Old World and New World cuisines
into a One-World cuisine.

A great fascinating read!!

This is a warm, engaging, and eccentric novel, which gourmands will find captivating. Its focus on a Southwestern cafe, of uncompromising native American cuisine is set in the seemingly unlikely "wonder bread" mid-west. Averill devotes little time to the possible disconnect with the cafe's surrounding environment but focuses upon the clash of indigenous peoples and cuisines with European incursions, and the inevitable fusion of both.

Philosophical, insightful and profound, albeit in a very subtle fashion. The author makes many worthwhile observations and statements about the encounter of these two cultures without being pedantic, and while having fun. This is a delightful novel, one which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

SECRETS OF THE TSIL CAFE is a creative and refreshing novel which endears itself to anyone who enjoys experimental cooking, a deep sense of family, and an appreciation of New World culture. It presents the challenge of growing up in the world of a rather unusual restaurant with its own special food critic. Dotting the novel's pages are descriptions of New World foods and rather exotic recipes which might challenge anyone's taste buds! The story itself captures the essence of a young man who grows to more fully understand himself by learning about his parents and his extended family.

If you think a coming of age story with food as a central character and recipes included sounds like fun, give this a try. It's enjoyable to read, and the recipes I tried are good too.