Everything Is Under Control

February 1, 2020
A chef and food writer debuts with a lean memoir that revisits seminal moments from her past through tightly composed vignettes. Beginning with her arrival in New York City from the West Coast as a young dance student at Juilliard, we follow Grant's struggles with demanding instructors and insecurities about her weight as well as attempts to establish her identity in the city. Parallel moments reflect on her mother's and grandmother's lives. Under their influence, Grant acquired an appreciation for cooking and good food, which inspired her shift from dancing to becoming a self-trained professional chef. She cooked her way through notable cookbooks such as Julia Child's The Way To Cook and volunteered at a French bakery, eventually landing in the kitchens of top-notch restaurants in the city. Grant is particularly adept at packing a lot of emotion and detail into a few brief lines, as in her summary of her early apprenticeship: "Six months in and I have experienced the obscenely long hours and witnessed the fire hazards, rampant drug use, and misogynistic everything. I have also learned that I am allergic to flour when it's in the air, which is constant in the pastry room. I sneeze a lot. I still want this more than ever." Following 9/11, the newly married author moved back to the West Coast. In rapid succession, we follow her through two difficult pregnancies and excruciating childbirths as well as post-partum depression. However, by the end, we've gleaned little about the important individuals in her life. Her husband, actor/director Matt Ross, is referenced only as "M," present throughout but peripheral to her story. In the last section, Grant offers a selection of favorite recipes, weaving in personal memories and confident advice and further confirming her talent as a food writer. Ultimately, her memoir, composed of brief paragraphs and chapters within ample white space, serves to showcase her writing style and inventive skills in the kitchen. While she fearlessly lays bare many of her personal experiences, the end result feels somewhat insubstantial. A promising yet excessively sparse publishing debut.

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March 1, 2020

Sometime the subtitle really does tell it all. In this case, "A memoir with recipes" is the most succinct yet accurate description of this work; an often raw, stream of consciousness effort, describing the difficulties of being a restaurant line cook and new mother in equally vivid detail. Chef and restaurateur Grant, known for her blog Dash and Bella, shares recollections of growing up, cooking with her children, and dining out with her husband. These anecdotes are intermingled with struggles with fertility and postpartum depression. Food ties it all together; feeding customers and family as well as herself. A somewhat idiosyncratic collection of the author's personal favorite recipes range from pesto to spicy beef stew to strawberry balsamic tart, written in a cozy, conversational style, encouraging readers to use up what's in the fridge. VERDICT A compelling memoir about cooking (at home and at work), life, and making it up as you go along. [See Prepub Alert, 9/30/19.]--Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020
Chef Grant's first book is the story of her life in food. In snapshot episodes, she proceeds through her early years and cross-country move to study dance at Juilliard. Anorexia and a frightful student kitchen shaped that hungry time, until love and the rekindled appetite that came with it put Grant behind the stove and in pursuit of a culinary career. Relating the adrenaline-surging hustle in restaurant kitchens, including nauseating moments of sexual harassment, Grant writes with bursting energy: "The first order comes in. My chest gets all warm and prickly. Sweat pools in my bra. I yank my ponytail up into a tight bun and fall off a cliff for seven hours." Grant captures life with her husband and growing babies in similarly spare and gripping images, to enjoyably entrancing effect. The book ends with recipes referenced in her essays, and more: tarte tatin, lamb popsicles, avocado bowls, a fridge- and pantry-flexible "California pesto." Narrative instructions match the rest of the book's feel for finding a solid base and then following one's intuition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)