Deliciously complicated, Food Person examines the relationship between a food obsessed writer ghostwriting a cookbook for an egotistical (and skinny!!) celebrity. With massive egos on both sides, whose career and vision of the cookbook will win? Funny and unique, this book will have you hungry for more pages and for dinner. Oh, and there’s a very sweet romance too! Read below for my Food Person review!
My Food Person Review
The modern idea of a ‘food person’ is complex. I mean, we all need to eat, right? Aren’t we all ‘food people’ to an extent? But our modern world is populated with people who love food in different ways. There’s the restaurant chef, the food influencer, the cookbook writer, the food star, the food truck owner, the home chef, the farmer. There are so many different ways to enjoy and build one’s life around food. And all of these jobs and types of people may have food in common, but they all come at food completely differently. And when you add ego into the equation for any one of these, the results can be combustible. This is the conflict at the heart of Adam Roberts debut food romp and character study, Food Person.
Food Person tells the story of Isabella, a 20 something aspiring food writer who spends every dime she earns on classic used cookbooks and cooking ingredients. She gets fired from her job writing about food after a disastrous on-camera appearance and is offered a position as a ghostwriter for a has-been TV star, Molly Babcock. Molly is trying to make a comeback by selling a cookbook. Only problem is that Molly doesn’t really eat and she definitely doesn’t cook. Isabella struggles to navigate her relationship with Molly, who would rather be seen at a restaurant than actually eat at one. When Isabella learns that Molly’s deceased mother had a love of cooking and a binder full of recipes, Isabella thinks she’s found her way in to writing this cookbook. But the deeper Isabella gets into Molly’s mother’s recipes, the more Molly fights back about the direction of the cookbook. Will Isabella be able to survive her relationship with Molly and leave with her career in tact?
As a kind of ‘food person’ myself, there was so much I enjoyed about this book. The references to food writers and the New York dining scene were extremely specific. I found myself understanding and relating to the majority of these mentions, which I loved. This is also true of Isabella, who I could certainly understand as a character, even if I didn’t always relate to her choices. Isabella is the kind of person who would spend her last $10 on a vintage cookbook or spend extra money she doesn’t have on European butter. She cooks in a tiny apartment for the love of creating and bettering her skills. She isn’t a restaurant chef, and has no ambition to be one, but she does want to push herself as a home cook to make the most extravagant meals.
I also was intrigued by the relationship between Isabella and her mother, a woman who doesn’t value food at all. This was such an interesting backstory to have given to a ‘food person’ like Isabella. The concoctions her mother put together in her own kitchen sounded truly heinous and usually involve Cambell’s soup. Both women were driven by their relationships with food, just in entirely different ways.
The more challenging elements of Isabella’s personality revolve around her desire to be famous, to be a singular voice in the food field. This drives her ego and her decision making in ways that can be frustrating, particularly when she is judging Molly for her choices. Isabella’s lack of understanding about what the job of ghostwriting for Molly really entails felt understandably naive. The course of the book allows her to grow into a deeper understanding, but she can be a grating character on that journey.
Molly, on the other hand, can be so shallow that it’s hard to make any kind of turn with her to be a deeper person. Food Person asks the reader to feel compassion for her, which can be really difficult given Molly’s thoughtless behavior. I did not feel this was completely effective, but it didn’t put me off of being intrigued by Molly as a character.
Still, I enjoyed the push/pull of their dynamic. The question of who will win is always at stake, and both of their egos are so large that it is truly up for grabs. I did not really know where this book was going. Part of that is due to Molly’s unstable personality, which is constantly shifting.
While Food Person is not a typical romance as it’s more focused on Isabella’s arc and her relationship with Molly, it does have a lovely side romance in it for Isabella that I really enjoyed. She meets Gabe, a sous chef at a fancy restaurant early in the story, and Gabe is a really good, moral person, almost to a fault. He ends up being the anchor of this book, someone whose ego is always in check. He’s genuine in his interactions with Isabella, and their romance stands out as a bright spot in the book.
My biggest frustration with Food Person was really the ending. There is a natural ending to the book around 80%, but then it goes on in ways that did not entirely feel believable or necessary. I wished the book had wrapped up a bit faster and left the surprise of that natural ending be the way it was remembered.
I loved the world of Food Person, and felt like the book itself was a really enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys food culture. This one is not necessarily for romance lovers, but I do think it would appeal to romance lovers looking to try something a little outside the box (especially ones who also enjoy food culture like me!!). The romance here is still sweet, and I can see how a romance in this world would be really fun.
My Food Person Rating
4 out of 5 stars
My Romance Recipe Recommendation
Try making my Lemony Strawberry Biscuit Cake as a sweet companion to Food Person! This is my most complicated recipe (and trust me, it’s not complicated–I don’t do complicated food). Feel free to use European Butter and $26 Erewhon strawberries to really send up Isabella’s love for fine food and the best ingredients ;).
Summary of Food Person
Summary (from Amazon)
Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, and every inch of her tiny apartment teems with cookbooks, from Prune to Cooking by Hand to Roast Chicken and Other Stories. What Isabella is not, unfortunately, is a gainfully employed person. In the wake of a disastrous live-streamed soufflé demonstration, Isabella is summarily fired from her job at a digital food magazine and must quickly find a way to keep herself in buckwheat and anchovy paste. When offered the opportunity to ghostwrite a cookbook for Molly Babcock, the once-beloved television actress now mired in scandal, Isabella warily accepts. Unfortunately, Molly quickly proves herself to be a nightmare collaborator: hungover, flaky, shallow, and—worst of all—indifferent to food. But between Molly’s bizarre late-night texts, goofy confessions, and impromptu road trips, Isabella reluctantly begins to see Molly’s charms. Can Isabella corral Molly out of the gossip rags and into the kitchen? Can she find the key to Molly’s heart and stomach? Or will Isabella’s devotion to her culinary idols and Molly’s monstrous ego send the entire cookbook—and both of their careers—up in flames?
A mouthwatering, hilarious debut peppered with insider food world detail—the real writers behind celebrity chef cookbooks, the hot restaurants that run on the backs of their sous-chefs, the secret to perfect blinis à la Russe—Adam Roberts's Food Person is a literary soufflé—a deceptively light, deliciously rich, showstopping confection.
Buy your copy of Food Person for Kindle here
