Sweetbitter: A Novel by Stephanie Danler
Stephanie Danler’s debut novel Sweetbitter is as a much a coming-of-age story as it is a love letter to the sometimes grimy and sometimes dizzyingly intoxicating restaurant world of New York City.
22-year-old Tess enters NYC via the George Washington Bridge, lands in Brooklyn and snags a coveted job as a back-waiter in a fictionalized version of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe.
What starts as temporary gig for Tess quickly morphs into her life as she starts to both find and define her life by the sex, the drugs and the brittle friendships she finds within the walls of the restaurant – not to mention the foods she eats and the wines she discovers.
Danler brilliantly peppers in poetry throughout the prose to form the oft-staccato nature of overheard conversation in a restaurant. Tess navigates her new world and her early twenties in a clumsy flat-footed nature that Danler juxtaposes humorously against a backdrop of the deft precision of professional waiters and fine dining.
The author’s experience as a back-waiter at Union Square Cafe lends a feeling of authenticity; however, Danler has publicly stated that she prefers the novel format over a memoir as it allows her to take creative license, extracting and embellishing detail as she sees fit.
Captured within this novel, beyond the coming-of-age element that makes itself well known within the first pages, is a subtle yet lovely and rare characterization of New York City as a normal place where normal people live, work and eat.
You meet a cast of “locals,” which in NYC parlance typically means a transplant who has lived in NYC for ~5+ years. Danler characterizes the players in this story by their actions and reactions to each others’ habits and quirks.
Recommend? Yes! This is a fun “behind-the-scenes” account of fine dining in one of the best restaurant cities in the world with richly developed characters.
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