Review: Food Whore by Jessica Tom

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.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of the book to review