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Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit
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Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit
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Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit
Ebook401 pages6 hours

Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

Full of wit and mouth-watering cuisines, Jessica Tom’s debut novel offers a clever insider take on the rarefied world of New York City’s dining scene in the tradition of The Devil Wears Prada meets Kitchen Confidential.

 Food whore (n.) A person who will do anything for food.

When Tia Monroe moves to New York City, she plans to put herself on the culinary map in no time. But after a coveted internship goes up in smoke, Tia’s suddenly just another young food lover in the big city.

But when Michael Saltz, a legendary New York Times restaurant critic, lets Tia in on a career-ending secret—that he’s lost his sense of taste—everything changes. Now he wants Tia to serve as his palate, ghostwriting his reviews. In return he promises her lavish meals, a bottomless cache of designer clothing, and the opportunity of a lifetime. Out of prospects and determined to make it, Tia agrees.

Within weeks, Tia’s world transforms into one of luxury: four-star dinners, sexy celebrity chefs, and an unlimited expense account at Bergdorf Goodman. Tia loves every minute of it…until she sees her words in print and Michael Saltz taking all the credit. As her secret identity begins to crumble and the veneer of extravagance wears thin, Tia is forced to confront what it means to truly succeed—and how far she’s willing to go to get there.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateOct 27, 2015
ISBN9780062387011
Unavailable
Food Whore: A Novel of Dining and Deceit

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Reviews for Food Whore

Rating: 3.723684210526316 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

38 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How far would you go to further your career? This is what confronts Tia Monroe during her first year in New York City. She's a graduate student in the food studies program and hopes to land an internship with Helen Lansky. Instead, she gets coatroom clerk at a 4 star restaurant.Heralded NY Times restaurant critic, Michael Saltz, approaches Tia at the restaurant to test her culinary senses and soon proposes that she clandestinely help him review restaurants since he's lost his sense of taste. Saltz claims he will help Tia get in with Lansky in return. But it all has to remain a secret.The secret distances Tia from her roommate Emerald, her boyfriend Elliott, her coworkers at the restaurant, and her advisor. Tia finds herself swept up into a romance with a chef whom she thinks loves her but finds out later he just used her to get a good review because the upscale restaurant world knows she's been going to restaurants with Saltz. Tia does find out who her true friends are. Most of her day-to-day coworkers stand by her and even help her expose the truthfulness of the review scandal. Emerald also stands by Tia. Melinda--I'm not sure about her character's loyalties. She wasn't a true friend, but she wasn't in the enemy section either. The ending is a bit fairy-taleish with Tia ending up getting exactly what she'd wanted when she first came to New York (with the help of her restaurant manager Pete and co-student Kyle, who'd landed the original internship with Lansky). I'm glad Tia eventually did the right thing, but sometimes you have to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. In life, you can't expect that you'll get everything you wanted just because you do the right thing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book appealed to me because of my love of cooking and baking. I also love to eat out but just don’t do it as much as I used to when the hubby and I were both working and we had much more money for such things. I do enjoy reading about food almost as much as I enjoy eating it. In this novel Tia Munroe is pursuing her dream internship in grad school with a cookbook author she reveres. She hopes to plead her case at “meet and greet” where she will gift her famous cookies but things don’t go as she plans. She ends up missing her idol but does run into the famous restaurant critic for the New York Times. That meeting will end up altering her life in ways she can’t begin to imagine.She thinks Michael Saltz, the critic wants to help her with his offers of free clothing, dinners out and “training.” What she fails to recognize is what she will be giving up to take his offer. She can’t see beyond his offer to help her get to her idol, Helen Lansky. In this Tia is blingingly naive. She and her boyfriend come to New York to pursue post graduate education but in such separate disciplines you wonder how they ever came together. As Tia undertakes her secret life with Michael Saltz it put a strain on all of her relationships and really keeps her from forming any new friendships.I did enjoy this book but I do have to note that it does take a bit of a suspension of reality to fully embrace. If you just chuck any semblance of real life and go with the flow, you’ll enjoy it too. I’m not a real city girl either but I find it hard to believe that this story could take place on many levels – but that is why we read FICTION. To be entertained. And I was.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. I had a great time reading about the food descriptions and definitely wished I could try some of the food that the author was writing about. I left the book kind of feeling sad though. I feel like the main character got pretty screwed but also didn't necessarily take complete responsibility for her actions. Overall, definitely worth the read, especially if you love reading about food and restaurants.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I would not call myself a "foodie" but I am open to trying new foods. However I like to live vicariously through the characters in "foodie" books. The best part about these types of books are the descriptive details about all of the yummy food. It is almost like I can taste and smell the food in the story as it is being described. Which there was not a lack of details or food in this book. Tia really does have a good talent for being a food critic. Although I grew annoyed with her lack of backbone. She really was a push over. Michael was a jerk and he may have been a hot shot at one point but he did not impress me. There is no surprise to the storyline as the reader will know how the story ends but it is how the story is told until the end. Which Tia did grow towards the end. I just felt that if it was not for Tia and the food that this book would have been "just alright". Yet, I have to say that this was a nice introduction to a new author and I am curious as to what the author has in store next. I would be willing to give this author another chance.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. The premise is a little ridiculous (a restaurant critic losing their sense of taste and hiring a college student to eat and describe food), but it was a fun read. I think that was due to the food descriptions. I didn't think any characters but the main one were really fleshed out. All the characters were background to the food anyway. It was a little scattered, but I did enjoy it. Fun read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This novel, with the title Food Whore splashed across the front cover, was probably not the best choice to take with me to curriculum night at the high school to read in between my daughter's teachers' presentations. Then again, I probably already have a reputation amongst other parents and the teachers for being an ornery oddball so this shouldn't have changed much. Despite the flagrantly confrontational title, this food-centric tale was right in the wheelhouse of my favorite reading subjects: food and the food industry, insider info, and writing. Unfortunately, notwithstanding this promising fact, Jessica Tom's debut novel still fell short for me.Tia Monroe is a young woman just starting off her graduate school career at NYU in Food Studies. She wants to become a food writer and she's hoping to land an internship with Helen Lansky, a cookbook author and renowned food writer herself. In fact, the internship with Helen is Tia's entire short term goal in life. When Tia was in college, she had a brief moment of fame when the piece she wrote about cooking with her grandfather and the recipe for the Dacquoise Drops she developed for him when he was dying received acclaim, earned her a regular food column in the Yale Daily News, and even brought her a compliment from Helen Lansky herself. But life doesn't always go as planned and Tia doesn't get the internship she covets. Instead, she ends up doing her internship as the coat check girl at a famed New York restaurant. While at Madison Park Tavern, Tia re-meets Michael Saltz, the New York Times Restaurant Critic. After she secretly gives him her unvarnished opinion of the restaurant, she is startled to see her words in his review, a review that loses the restaurant two coveted stars. So begins her collaboration with Saltz, who has lost his sense of taste and needs someone with a discerning palate to tell him all he's missing on his plate so that he can continue to review restaurants. Tia has a moment's hesitation when she agrees to keep this partnership secret from even those she loves most, including her long time boyfriend and her parents, but she cannot pass up the chance for this unacknowledged, behind the scenes food writing position.Frequenting starred restaurants means an overhaul of Tia's wardrobe, a change aided by her new roommate, who seems to have her own secrets. And it also means a change in her relationship with Elliott. She starts breaking dates and generally being unavailable to him, something that doesn't bode well for their future. Her obsession with her position as Saltz's assistant takes over her entire life, even as she sees the havoc his reviews are wreaking in the lives of her new restaurant friends. The headiness and importance of getting to write NYT restaurant reviews, albeit uncredited, means everything to Tia.Tom has an obvious insider's knowledge of the food industry and restaurants. She really gets the cutthroat world of chefs and critics and has portrayed them well here. But main character Tia, who should be a sympathetic character, just comes off as callous, ridiculously naive, and horrid. Her desire to write trumps her knowledge of what is right and moral and she shows no redeeming characteristics to balance that. She has little to no remorse about writing an undeserved hatchet job, cheating on her boyfriend, or lying in a review to award unearned stars to another chef. The story lines with Tia and her roommates could have been interesting but they really just piddled out. There should be a dollop of intrigue here with all of the secrets just screaming to be uncovered and yet the narrative tension is low and the reader spends more time appalled by Tia's remorse-free choices than rooting for her to end up doing the right thing. There are a few descriptions of the meals Tia eats but the bulk of the novel is really about other things. And although the title might put some people off, the tale is about Tia prostituting her services as a food connoisseur and writer rather than about anything risque. A competently written novel with a good inside view of the foodie world this wasn't quite all I'd hoped but other food fiction lovers might want to give it a try.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the best foodie novels I've read in years! Tia Monroe moved to New York to go to one of the best food studies graduate programs. Her greatest passion in life is writing about food and all she has dreamed about is landing an internship with Helen Laskey, the greatest cookbook author and foodie in New York. Things take a turn though when she doesn't land her chosen internship and is approached by a New York Times food critic who want to do nothing more than exploit her. Backed into a corner and hoping that this unorthodox arrangement will get her closer to the Helen Laskey internship, she agrees to write and taste for the food critic who has recently lost his taste buds. It obviously has to remain anonymous, both their reputations are on the line, but she is dying to tell someone; her boyfriend, her roommate, her co-workers. The secrets keep adding up and she isn't sure how much longer she can keep leading a double life. Is writing about food worth it? Is she going about it the wrong way? Exquisite. The way she writes about food and relationships will make you insatiably hungry for more. A great debut novel. I received this book for free from Library Thing in return for my honest, unbiased opinion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Food Whore is a trip into the world of food writing and restaurants in New York City. Celebrity chefs, critics stars to be won and lost, ingredient-of-moment dishes and lots of intrigue. Tia Monroe comes to the city with her boyfriend, both graduates of Yale beginning Masters programs at NYU. Tia's dream is to become a food writer and she has her heart set on an internship with her idol, Helen Lansky, a former restaurant critic for the NY Times and best-selling cookbook author. Her internship assignment at the coat check of a 4-star restaurant comes as a shock. In desperation, she latches onto a possible back-door into Helen's world, offered by the current Times restaurant critic, a rather dubious man who may not have Tia's best interests at heart. For those who are put off by the title, I did not think that it was a particularly racy book. I enjoy watching Top Chef and The Next Iron Chef on TV and love to try to imagine how the food tastes. I also have particularly enjoyed reading the memoirs of Ruth Reichl and have just discovered the writer that inspired Ruth, M.F.K. Fisher. I am pretty sure that the character of Helen Lansky is based on Ms. Reichl. I enjoyed the book although I was not always happy with Tia's choices and some small parts of the story were hard to believe. The book had a very authentic feel that reveals Jessica Tom's knowledge of this world. Overall. a good read!(Review based on complimentary Advance Reader copy.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Take 1 cup chick-lit. Add 3/4 cup foodie facts. Whisk in a pinch of guilty, gossipy pleasure & you've got a fun read to enjoy. I could tell Jessica Tom has a strong background in F&B, and I appreciated how she managed to display this without showboating and alienating her readers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel offers a menu of scintillating secrets, shameless shape shifting, and unctuous description of delectable dishes. Tia Monroe, Yonkers born, twenty-something, recent Yale grad comes to the Big Apple to achieve her MA in Food Studies at NYU. Tia loses her cookies and is discovered by incognito food critic Michael Saltz.Excessively self conscious, “Food Whore” reads like another New York dreams-gone-awry story while the constant listing of designers clutters up the beautiful descriptions of menu items and distracts from the narrative. A welcome compensation for the Sex in the City mimicry is the interesting tension between protagonist and secret protege Tia, and antagonist failing food critic, Michael Saltz. The more they participate in their deception the less you pity Tia and end up disliking them both for their hunger for notoriety.For a palate cleanser, a subtle plot twist weaves key characters and back stories together and secrets are unburdened. Tia discovers something of personal resonance, no matter what a chef does to an ingredient, the best flavor is always itself. "Food Whore" makes it to my shelf, less for its story and more for the beautiful descriptions of the ever evolving epicurean estate.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book appealed to me because of my love of cooking and baking. I also love to eat out but just don’t do it as much as I used to when the hubby and I were both working and we had much more money for such things. I do enjoy reading about food almost as much as I enjoy eating it. In this novel Tia Munroe is pursuing her dream internship in grad school with a cookbook author she reveres. She hopes to plead her case at “meet and greet” where she will gift her famous cookies but things don’t go as she plans. She ends up missing her idol but does run into the famous restaurant critic for the New York Times. That meeting will end up altering her life in ways she can’t begin to imagine.She thinks Michael Saltz, the critic wants to help her with his offers of free clothing, dinners out and “training.” What she fails to recognize is what she will be giving up to take his offer. She can’t see beyond his offer to help her get to her idol, Helen Lansky. In this Tia is blingingly naive. She and her boyfriend come to New York to pursue post graduate education but in such separate disciplines you wonder how they ever came together. As Tia undertakes her secret life with Michael Saltz it put a strain on all of her relationships and really keeps her from forming any new friendships.I did enjoy this book but I do have to note that it does take a bit of a suspension of reality to fully embrace. If you just chuck any semblance of real life and go with the flow, you’ll enjoy it too. I’m not a real city girl either but I find it hard to believe that this story could take place on many levels – but that is why we read FICTION. To be entertained. And I was.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Food Whore by Jessica Tom is an interesting concept for foodie book. It’s a story about Tia Monroe and her goal of becoming a food writer in New York City. She and her college boyfriend move to NYC to pursue their individual dreams. Tia wants to be in the food industry while her boyfriend Elliott is involved with environmental studies. They support each other emotionally but don’t have a deep knowledge or passion regarding each other’s life work. This book is pack full of descriptions of meals and foods. It’s also heavily laced with brand names in the fashion industry as Tia becomes a shopper at Bergdorf Goodman.For Tia this is a story about growing up as well as the dashing and simultaneous realization of her dreams. She has some great experiences and even greater embarrassments. When Tia sets her sights on an internship with famed cookbook writer Helen Lansky she is sidelined by a famous restaurant critic, Michael Saltz. He shares a secret with Tia, one that could end his career – he has lost his sense of taste. Everything tastes like cardboard to Saltz so he needs Tia to eat at restaurants with him and describe the taste and textures of the food.She is more than annoyed that Saltz hijacked her internship with Helen Lansky but what is offered has its appeal. She will have unlimited shopping resources with an account at Bergdorf Goodman, the opportunity to learn from Michael Saltz and seemingly endless dining experiences at 4 star restaurants in NYC. Once she agrees to this her life changes dramatically. Her boyfriend Elliott was never glamorous but the newly styled Tia with designer clothes and fabulous experiences looks at him with less lust than she did before. Tia is also meeting well known chefs. One in particular is quite sexy, pursuing and flirting with her; Tia is beginning to believe the designer clothes and lavish life style will be a part of her life from then on.She is also dealing with seeing her words, describing the nuances of an elaborate meal, printed I the New York Times under Michael Saltz’ name. Will she ever get a byline, a credit or a jump start to a new career in the food writing industry?Since I don’t want to give spoilers I can’t vent on about certain characters that displayed despicable behavior. I will say that I liked Tia less by the end of the book than I did at the beginning. Food Whore is appropriately titled and while it spun a good tale, Tia Monroe isn’t someone I would ever be friends with. I would read more by this author unless it was a follow up to Tia’s story line. The writing is descriptive and rich. The food references and descriptions are out of this world. Very vivid.