Review: Bread and Butter, Michelle Wildgen

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book on Netgalley from the publisher in return for an honest review*

Britt and Leo have spent ten years running Winesap, the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers; they don't sleep with the staff; and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant—a hip little joint serving an aggressive lamb neck dish—Britt and Leo find their own restaurant thrown off-kilter. Britt becomes fascinated by a customer who arrives night after night, each time with a different dinner companion. Their pastry chef, Hector, quits, only to reappear at Harry's restaurant. And Leo finds himself falling for his executive chef-tempted to break the cardinal rule of restaurant ownership.

Michelle Wildgen is a writer, editor, and teacher in Madison, Wisconsin. She works as an executive editor at the literary journal Tin House. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught fiction and nonfiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

I fell in love with this cover the moment I saw it. Reading the synopsis I expected a fun read. With my brother being a chef I do know little bits about the intrigue, rivalry and hard work in the restaurant business and I was curious how it would all work out.
The first fifty pages you get introduced how things look behind your nice dinner in a restaurant quickly. The hard work, trying to get the best food and prettiest plates and biggest surprises for the customers. A lot of the risks of setting up your own restaurant business passing by and a lot of tasty food descriptions. This book made me very hungry. There was just one problem. I did not connect to the characters. Am not sure if that was because of the multiple point of view style or the speed of the story. But they did not really came alive for me. I did spend some fun time with the book though.

Bread and Butter
Author: Michelle Wildgen
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages: 336
Format: eGalley
ISBN-10: 0385537433
ISBN-13: 9780385537438
Doubleday: eBook | Hardcover

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