Time again for one of the most challenging recommendation features we have: READY, SET, GO!
Here are the rules:
We pick a specific sub-genre, trope, or type of romance, and we have to make ONE recommendation for that type.
And no more than two sentences as to why.
Just One.
And our theme this month?
It’s Thanksgiving in the US today, a complicated day that in the beforetimes might have been filled with complicated family (and possibly complicated food) but now, it’s even more complicated – or simple, depending on how you look at it.
So this month: what’s your favorite Food Porn romance? What romance has the best food-related content? What one book makes you the Most Hungry?
What Food Focused Romance Would you Recommend?
Any genre, but just one rec!
Ready, set, GO!
Sarah: Before I choose a book, I am betting which book Amanda will recommend. Let’s see if I’m right!
Amanda: If it’s Alice Clayton you’d be right.
Cream of the Crop. #TeamNightCheese
Sarah: I WAS RIGHT! #TeamNightCheese
Sneezy: Okay, just one!!!! I can do this!!!!
…now I want cheese
Sarah: I am torn between two and must ponder. PONDER.
Sneezy: Okay, The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan, I CHOOSE YOU!!!!
Sarah: I WIN AGAIN.
I was betting that book would be chosen, either by you or by Catherine.
Sneezy: You Sneaky Sorceress!!!! You completely have my number, please have mercy.
Jokes aside, the book isn’t just delicious, the relationship the characters have with food is a lot like the one I have. What the book said about place, about how the sauce is British on a molecular level, had me in tears. I can’t remember any other book that so starved me of body while feeding my soul.
It’s like if Alton Chinese Restaurant in Toronto had a book twin. The food there almost had me in tears too. My grandma on my mom’s side is from GuanDong (same as the hero and heroine in the book!!!!) and the food there was a lot like what my grandma would make. I had forgotten how GOOD food can taste until I went there.
And yes, they do take out.
Shana: Sneezy, you’re killing me. I really wish I could cross the Canadian border right now, that sounds SO good! I want a meal by Sneezy’s grandma’s food twin.
Ahem. Anyway, I choose A Taste of Pleasure by Chloe Blake.
Sarah: That’s a GREAT pick Shana – it’s on my short list for this question. So much food porn in that one.
Shana: And Italian food is my go-to for comfort, so that book makes me ravenous every time.
Claudia: Just one, you say, and Sneezy already picked one that I might have? I’m going to go with Delicious by Sherry Thomas.
Sneezy: Claudia, we can share! Although your pick has the punner title, given the circumstances.
Claudia: Right??
Tara: God, it’s hard choosing only one book, because there are books that I know I loved and made me hungry, but there’s one that takes place on a grilled cheese food truck that I think other people would love even though I hate cheese. So I’m going to go with that one. It’s called Perfect Pairing by Rachel Spangler.
Ellen: Ok ok ok this is kind of straddling the line between romance and women’s fiction but I would have to recommend Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber.
GORGEOUS ownvoices story about Arab American community in Los Angeles. Heroine works in a restaurant so there are amazing descriptions of food. Also a really interesting diversity of ways faith is depicted and understood. I’m 99% sure the book ends with an hfn but it has been a while since I read it.
Catherine: Sarah, this is TWICE MEAN, first because you started it while I was asleep AND ALSO because I have difficulty distinguishing between a book that is excellent and a book that is excellently full of food and all of my recommendations here have food in them.
(I actually felt something go sproing whirr pop in my brain as I attempted to think of just one book with food porn in it, and then tried to narrow it to one I hadn’t recommended in on here already and it all broke…)
Sarah: LOLOL. I had a feeling you’d be like DAMMIT SARAH and start marching across the Pacific Ocean fueled by enough ire to keep you entirely above water.
Catherine: Just ONE???
Not joking about the brain stutter. I was not programmed for this…
Ok, ok. Since you all know my feelings on Laura Florand and Jacki Lau already, how about I give you something new that puts Thanksgiving in the rear vision mirror and leads you to Christmas?
Sweet on You by Carla de Guzman is set in Manila and is full of desserts and traditions that are completely new to me, and I have no idea what most of the food would taste like but I really, really want to find out.
Features a rivalry between a cafe owner and the baker next door and is full of food porn. The coffee porn is also fairly extreme, and I don’t even like coffee.
Sarah: That is high praise!
For my pick, alongside Shana’s pick on my short list: the Kat Halloway series by Jennifer Ashley, starting with A Soupçon of Poison, a novella that establishes Kat as a talented chef who has masterful recipes matched by masterful smarts in sleuthing. The first novel is Death Below Stairs but I know enough of you are completists so you’d want to start the series in chronological order. The series is also, as I’ve mentioned previously, on the very short list of books I give to people who are bereaved.
There’s food p0rn AND competence p)rn AND a slow burn and class entanglements and so much food competence.
What about you? What book would you recommend as your favorite Food P0rn Romance?
Ready, set, go!
The Opposite of You — Rachel Higginson was about a chef who runs a 5 star restaurant and another who starts up a food truck for late night munchies.
Started the Kat Halloway mysteries and love them!
Another title: The Art of Inheriting Secrets by Barbara O’ Neal. I’m only one-third through but am loving it! The heroine is a Food Editor of a well respected food magazine and finds herself in England as an heiress of a an estate about to fall down that she had no idea about.
This isn’t a straightforward romance, more of women’s fiction maybe? But there’s definitely romance brewing, and the small English village setting along with the deep dive into food is deeply satisfying to read about!
Agree with the Jennifer Crusie recommendations. I remember reading Sunshine and wishing for a cookbook of what she cooked.
If you’d like some pron with your food, there’s an old Emma Holly, Cooking Up A Storm, set in a bed and breakfast in New England which somehow attracts a top-level chef.
I agree with a lot of the other posters, but I wanted to mention Dating Makes Perfect by Pintip Dunn. It starts off with sisters making spring rolls, and continues with lots of Thai food and the use of favorite foods as signs of affection.
Adriana Herrera’s got one in her American Dreamers series about a man who takes his Afro-Carribbean food truck up to upstate New York and the food descriptions were amazing.
Also The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish! One protagonist is a baker and there’s a lot of talk about Chanukah food. Yum.
All of the Barbara O’Neal’s books are beautiful and full of gorgeous Southwestern towns and amazing food. And competence porn. I just read her whole back catalogue this week since I took the next two weeks off and am in bliss.