Confessions of a food and sex addict

On Instagram Slutty Cheff dishes out food and sex stories, as if one were not possible without the other. It’s thus predictable that no sooner is her first book, Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef, out that a TV adaptation is in the works. One way to think about this memoir is to imagine that Bridget Jones’s Diary procreated with The Bear with the “chaos and delinquency” of Anthony Bourdain.

The twenty-something female chef who takes you into London’s hot, intense, exhausting kitchens by day and its urine-drenched streets by night, relishes the super highs in both her worklife and lovelife, each lavishly soaked in ciggy breaks like these never went out of fashion. Through it all, her go-go inner monologue has the reader sort of feeling the ketamine she recreationally partakes.

But like Carmy in The Bear, as high as she hits, it’s never too long before anxiety swings her super low. In this phase, her job feels monotonous and its hard labour thankless. She’s either up or down, all or nothing.
And lots of her co-workers seem to feel the same. A fellow twenty-something chef Finn says at one of their post-service drunkathons, “We work in kitchens because it’s never boring. You love it then you hate it then you love it again. It’s like a proper good romance.”

There’s a scene in which Cheff is rush-slicing some red onion for the pickles to go with pâté and slices her thumb right next to a scar that just healed over. She whacks on plaster and a blue plastic glove, which floods with blood within seconds. This little nick will mean weeks of her modifying every single movement to avoid the pain of lemon juice dripping into the cut. She thinks about how special this is, using her hurt to make nice things that bring pleasure to both herself and complete strangers.

It’s possible that only in anonymity is this female chef able to write with the earthiness of male authors. Like she describes sizzling a roux for béchamel sauce, heavily distracted by sex flashbacks that feel like a Hollywood-produced trailer of her recent, broad daylight booty call.

One major prism through which this book is being discussed is what distinct female perspective it brings to the traditionally male-dominated narrative of kitchen culture. Cheff is found working mostly with men. A few do turn out to be pervs. But most are driven by a passion for their craft just like her, working for the “check monster” beyond exhaustion, with razor-thin margins for error, struggling with anxiety and addiction.

One bitterness about the London restaurant scene is how its socialite chef circles are elitist, exclusive and often about who you know, not what you cook.

Slutty Cheff has main character energy. Her book agrees with the dramas starring men that chefs have a special power, there is so much passion and so many thrills in this service that it makes sense for people to be drawn to its leading actors. When she starts out, unsure if she belongs among the men, she wonders if women chefs have the same appeal. Yes they do, the book shows the reader.

But also yes, it ‘shows’ lots of lovely, lovely food. Like a Negroni, described as, “Oranges, booze, sticky lips, pink cheeks, bright lights, and warm pavements.”