Soup's Off?

One normally doesn’t associate the kitchen of a posh hotel with human trafficking, sex workers, and blackmail but maybe I’ve just been watching too much Top Chef and not enough CSI.

Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen serves up a cast of multinational night porters, sleazy managers, and working-class siblings. One of these siblings, Gabriel Lightfoot, is the executive chef at the Imperial Hotel. Gabe is biding his time at the hotel while he tries to pull the financing together to open his own place. He is also debating proposing to his nightclub-singer-girlfriend even while sheltering one of the above-mentioned sex workers in his apartment. As if that weren’t enough of a full plate, Gabe learns his father has cancer.

You may remember Ali from her previous book Brick Lane (or seen the film). Perhaps she’s bit off too much in her latest endeavor. Not only does Kitchen tackle Gabe’s present menu of troubles, but it doesn’t blanch at including numerous flashbacks to Gabe’s childhood as well as throwing in the back story of almost all of the immigrants who work in his kitchen. We read of Gabe’s visits to his father’s mill and his delights in the antics of his madcap mother. Well, the madcap turns out to be simply mad, as Gabe learns near the end of the book, just in time for his own mental tray of dishes to come crashing down.

Like the diners who clap at the sound of shattered plates, you may applaud Ali’s efforts. Will you be praising her examination of the breadth of human folly or simply pleased the last page is imminent? It all depends on your taste. This book has a little (or should I say a little too much) for everyone. Immigrant struggle, illicit sex, sibling rivalry, and fledgling entrepreneurship - you will be sated. Bon Appétit.