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Random House
Annotation: Lainey, a high school senior and aspiring celebrity chef, is forced to question her priorities after her best friend (and secret crush) runs away from home.
 
Reviews: 4
Catalog Number: #5232474
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House
Copyright Date: 2008
Edition Date: 2011 Release Date: 06/14/11
Pages: 281 pages
ISBN: 0-375-84306-X
ISBN 13: 978-0-375-84306-8
Dewey: Fic
Dimensions: 21 cm.
Language: Spanish
Reviews:
ALA Booklist

How many African American female chefs have their own vegetarian cooking shows? High-school senior Lainey, with help from her mom's gourmet restaurant and St. Julia (Child), is well on her way to being the first. Though she never wavers in her dedication to her culinary future, Lainey suffers a blow when her lifelong friend, Simeon, borrows $500 and runs away. Sim's departure leaves Lainey feeling alone and strains her relationship with her mother, who disapproves of Lainey's loan. When Sim finally returns, thoughtful, likable Lainey faces the truth about her friend's character and the role she really played in his life. Davis' first novel shows much promise for good things to come. Too few novels feature well-drawn, well-educated, middle-class African American characters like Lainey and her family. The text is seasoned with Lainey's original recipes, and Lainey's use of cooking as a means of meditation and self-expression may encourage readers to embark on their own kitchen experiments.

Kirkus Reviews

"The smell of gingerbread is the smell of a thousand afternoons with MaDea...it's always so amazing to me that I can re-create a time just through smell." Lainey, the only daughter of a California restaurateur, has only one ambition: She dreams of becoming the African-American, vegetarian answer to Julia Child—complete with televised cooking show. When her friendship with troubled Sim evolves into something more, Lainey's relationship with her mother strains to the breaking point. After Sim lies and takes advantage of her, her comfortable world is shaken. She learns that she must value the people she has taken for granted—her family and classmates—as much as she does her culinary career. First-person perspective, evocative language that draws readers into the sensuous pleasures of food and a seamless structure characterize Lainey's tale. The pacing is gradual, yet does not seem to drag down the flow of the narrative. Davis's debut offering is as delightful and fulfilling as the handwritten recipes-in-progress included at the end of each chapter. (Fiction. YA)

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Seventeen-year-old Lainey has an uncommon dream: to be the first African-American celebrity vegetarian chef. She shows promise, helping out in the kitchen at her mother's Bay Area restaurant and concocting mouthwatering dishes in her spare time. (Hand-written recipes are included.) Cooking is her salvation; she turns to the kitchen when things aren't going well, particularly in her precarious relationship with Simeon Keller. While she cares for him as a friend, she overlooks the way he uses her. When he runs away from a bad situation at home, she offers him brief sanctuary in her home, giving him $500 and food before he jets out of town. Lainey's mom hounds her for details about his disappearance, details that she withholds for weeks. When Sim returns, months later, she's more self-assured and certain of her own plans for success. While Davis's first novel at times suffers from awkward wording and slow moments, it's still a book with a lot of heart. Readers will relate to Lainey, who doesn't always say the right thing, who has a love-hate relationship with her mother, and who finds her dreams realized at the novel's end. Secondary characters, like Lainey's formerly dorky family friend, ring true and add depth to the novel. Jennifer Barnes, Homewood Library, IL

Voice of Youth Advocates (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

This reviewer admits to being a bit put off by this book when she briefly looked through it and saw that it included recipes. Could a novel about a teenage cook really be that interesting? Perhaps expecting light reading at best, the reader instead finds a well-rounded story about a young lady determined to live her life in a way that makes sense to her despite what others might think. While doing so, she finds she must also make unexpected decisions, cover for someone (her best friend) who just might not be who he seems to be; consider that maybe she has not been fair in her judgment of others; and learn that having a dream and making it come true requires an allegiance to oneself that is not as easy to achieve as it seems. Lainey, the seventeen-year-old main character, is realistic and likeable. Through her, the reader recognizes that adults often do not give enough credence to how teens think about their lives and their futures. Lainey has family who not only support her in her desire to be the first African American female television-show chef, but also believe in her enough to let her make her own mistakes while en route. The relationships and characters in this book are authentic. The actions and dialogue seem true to those represented. Even though it is a quick read, the story is a meaningful one.-Elaine J. O'Quinn.

Reviewing Agencies: - Find Other Reviewed Titles
ALA Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
Voice of Youth Advocates (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)
Word Count: 53,526
Reading Level: 4.5
Interest Level: 7-12
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 4.5 / points: 8.0 / quiz: 122909 / grade: Upper Grades
Reading Counts!: reading level:4.7 / points:14.0 / quiz:Q45678
Lexile: 780L
1

An empty plate hits the stainless steel deck in the kitchen of La Salle Rouge with a clatter.

“Order up!” somebody shouts from behind me, and the noise level in the kitchen climbs for a moment as sous-chefs and kitchen assistants step and turn in their quick-paced dance. Servers carrying plates to the dining room weave expertly in among the bussers wheeling trays of dirty dishes away. Along the prep counters, white-coated chefs bend to apply finishing touches to warm plates—a curl of deep green parsley, a swirl of roasted pepper coulis, a scattering of white peppercorns. La Salle Rouge has a reputation for excellent meals.

“Order up!”

“Let’s move it, people!” Even though she’s yelling at the top of her lungs, our executive chef, Pia Sambath, is in a good mood. I can tell, because none of the line cooks look like they’re trying to hide in their collars. Sometimes, when there’s a major rush on, the yelling turns into screaming and an awful silent concentration. It’s not a good time to be in the kitchen then.

“Order up, table six!”

A red-jacketed server with a pepper grinder under his left arm hustles past with two orders of a creamy soup in white bisque bowls, the steam rising from them making my mouth water. I watch him pass through the chaotic kitchen, imagining him gliding into the dining room, where the walls are a rich, deep red, the floor is old polished hardwood, and the lighting is subdued candlelight in silver sconces on the walls. Maybe the server slides the soup onto a table for two in front of the long, narrow windows that look out onto the courtyard fountains. Maybe he takes the bowls upstairs to the rooftop seating and offers pepper to a young couple who are there to get engaged. It’s happened before. La Salle Rouge is just the type of restaurant where people go to propose or mark fiftieth anniversaries with fancy entrees and rich desserts.

From my stool in the back corner of the room, I watch clouds of steam rise to the high ceilings from the metal sinks under the window. Smoky fragrances from a heavy cast-iron grill sizzling on a gas range mingle with the pungent smell of garlic and onions and the deeper tones of coffee. The silvery crash of forks and knives hitting the heavy rubber sanitizer trays almost drowns out my mother’s voice calling me over the cacophony.

“Lainey? Lai-ney! Elaine Seifert!”

Sighing, I look up to see my mother standing at the far end of the kitchen, wrapped in a huge apron and wrist-deep in some kind of dough. Her close-cropped black curls are covered by a toque blanche, the white chef’s hat, and her deep brown skin shows a contrast- ing smudge of white flour on the cheek, just below her dimple.

“Homework?” My mother mouths the word exaggeratedly, eyebrows raised, and I roll my eyes. Frowning, she points with her chin to the side door that leads to the stairs. I roll my eyes again, mouthing, Okay, okay, not needing her to pantomime further what she wants me to do. I hate the thought of leaving the clattering nerve center of the restaurant to wrestle with my trigonometry homework in my mother’s quiet office downstairs.

“Order!”

The bright lights and swirl of noise and motion are muffled as the kitchen door swings closed behind me.

It’s hard to remember a time when the restaurant hasn’t been the center of our lives. Mom used to be a copy editor and wrote food features for our local paper, the Clarion, and she met Pia when she did a write-up on the culinary school Pia attended. Pia thinks it was fate that Mom wanted to invest in a restaurant at the same time Pia wanted to buy the old bank building.

La Salle Rouge doesn’t serve much in the way of “kid” food, since the menu doesn’t cater to people my age on a cheap date, but I’ve loved everything about it from the first. I started experimenting with being a vegetarian when I turned fourteen, but Pia still found things to feed me and taught me to be creative with vegetables and tofu. I like to think I’m the best-fed vegetarian in the state of California.

Pia’s been really good about teaching what she knows, and I decided early on that this is the work I want to do—get out of school and get into the kitchen for good. Mom and Pia have created a popular French-Asian-Californian fusion restaurant that has gotten great reviews from food critics. They took the best of each other’s tastes—Mom’s traditional Southern flavors and Pia’s French training combined with her vegetable- and spice-savvy Cambodian tastes—and pulled off what one food critic called “stylized food with unique flavor combinations in an intimate setting.”

Whatever that means.

Three years ago, when I started high school thirty pounds heavier than everyone in my class, Mom and I came up with a light menu for La Salle Rouge, and it’s been such a popular idea that Mom lets me come up with tasty, low-calorie desserts, which is one of my favorite things to do. It hardly seems fair that I have to walk away from all of that just to do trigonometry, but my mom says I have to finish school before I concentrate on cooking. She says it’s smarter to have a “backup plan,” and she’s made me apply to plenty of colleges and check out business majors just in case I ever want to do anything else with my life. I guess that makes sense if you’re anybody other than me. When I turn eighteen, I already know what I’m going to do.

First, I’m going to buy a plane ticket to D.C. and go to Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian and leave roses. They don’t let you walk through it, but somewhere—I don’t know where—I’m going to leave a bouquet and a little note for her. Julia Child is my patron saint. She’s the queen of all reasons people can do anything they want in life. Saint Julia didn’t start cooking until she was practically forty, and she went on to do TV shows and make cookbooks and be this huge part of culinary history. She never got too fancy, she never freaked out, and she was never afraid to try new things. I want to be just like her—except maybe get famous faster.

The second thing I’m going to do is buy myself a set of knives. Pia swears by this set of German steel knives she got when she graduated, but I’ve seen the TV chef Kylie Kwong use a phenomenal-looking ceramic knife on her show on the Discovery Channel. Either way, knives are what the best chefs have of their very own.

The third thing I’m going to do, after I get back from Washington and get my knives, is . . . get discovered. Somehow. I know I’m going to have to pay my dues, but I’m so ready for my real life to start. It’s not something I admit to a lot, but my real dream is to be a celebrity chef. Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t? And how many vegetarian chefs have their own shows? The field is wide open for stardom. Every time I watch old episodes of Saint Julia, I imagine that I have my own cooking show. The way celebrity chefs do it now, I could also have a line of cooking gear, cookbooks, aprons, the works. People would know my name, ask for my autograph, and try my recipes. All I have to do is finish my trig homework and get back into the kitchen.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpted from A La Carte by Tanita S. Davis
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD LAINEY DREAMS of becoming a world famous chef one day and maybe even having her own cooking show. (Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t? And how many vegetarian chefs have their own shows? The field is wide open for stardom!) But when her best friend—and secret crush—suddenly leaves town, Lainey finds herself alone in the kitchen. With a little help from Saint Julia (Child, of course), Lainey finds solace in her cooking as she comes to terms with the past and begins a new recipe for the future.
Peppered with recipes from Lainey’s notebooks, this delicious debut novel finishes the same way one feels finishing a good meal—satiated, content, and hopeful.


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