Secrets of the Tsil Cafe: A Novel With Recipes

A bittersweet and often funny coming-of-age story set in a cross-cultural and extended family that lives between two kitchens - one traditional, the other New World. Weston Hingler's crib was in the kitchen of BuenAppeTito, his mother's catering service. There, he learned to read while tasting all the flavors of his mother's culinary alphabet. But before he was allowed to enter the Tsil Café, he had to pass his father's taste tests. Anchovies. Habanero chiles. Chipotle peppers. Food to purge body and soul. Food his loving but sometimes volatile father uses as a measure of family, friends, and enemies. Caught between these two kitchens, Weston quickly learns that he's also trapped by his wayward parents' secrets and histories, infidelities and gaping needs, as well as by the Café customers and employees who are privy to his growing up. When Thomas Fox Averill serves us the family's feasts of reconciliation, complete with recipes, readers everywhere will want to raise a toast.