This memoir follows a young female chef as she makes her way and holds her own in a male-dominated industry. From a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family situation and early entry into the work force, to learning from a variety of chefs in the United States and around the world, to starting a family and leaving the kitchen, readers see how each stage of Marisa's life came with new opportunities and challenges. I loved the anecdotal stories and the vivid descriptions she used to really help immerse the reader in the time and place she was in at each stage of the memoir. I enjoyed learning about New Orleans and some of the history that led to the food and culture that makes it unique. Overall it was a really enjoyable memoir and one I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in the culinary life. If you've read Wine Girl by Victoria James you should definitely check this one out! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read and review this book!

Loved this memoir about a kick ass female chef making it in a man's world. It's good reminder that you can do anything when you put your mind to it.

The author starts her book with life and growing up in what many would consider paradise Hawaii but her life there is anything but paradise as a child with a stutter and very few friends, a family who moves around a lot and one step in front of the bill collectors, a grandmother who thinks the girl is ruining the family or at least the grandmothers reputation and worst of all a stepfather who is molesting her and a mother who cannot or won't see what is happening as she is trying to find herself. At the age of 6 years old in her own words she became a food snob, and this probably helped lead her into a career as a Chef and one of her early highlights was baking a cake for Stevie Nicks.
Story follows along as she progresses literally around the world in gaining knowledge of being a chef at a time that it was a so-called man's world. About of a third of the book is concentrated on her time working at and then overseeing the kitchens at three world's fairs. Through her story you also see her ups and downs in her personal relationships and having the desire to find a man who would read to her, you will understand if you read this book. You will no doubt see that many of these relationships were dysfunctional a best. For a person who wanted to be a comedian or famous. Even though she struggles in life with personal relationships in the kitchen she finds confidents and passion as this was an area that she could relate to her peers.

Thank you NetGalley and River Grove Books for accepting my request to read and review Mise en Place. My sincere apologies for having this on my shelf for so long.

Author: Marisa Mangani
Published: 08/09/22
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs

There is a flavor in Mangani's writing (pun intended). I read on my Kindle, and laughed at one point, imagining all the tabs if I had the physical book. I was so drawn by the poetic phrasing, I lost track of my highlight color codes. There are just so many beautiful and appreciative descriptions of food by the author at age 6. I was tickled. She was grateful for decent food, and could recognize quality; that could be in the form of cookware or ingredients. (I like pepper on my corn.) The moments when she was growing up to every new job she picked up were my favorite parts of the book. She was a child who lived off cheap fast food and packaged sauces.

She does allude to her mother's husband, Marisa's stepfather, being too friendly at night and other times during the day. I commend her for not giving him space on her pages. Albeit her childhood formed her adult years. The referencing that she makes is done, and not the showcasing in this book. I imagine she could write another book on the familial dysfunction she got away from.

Mangani worked hard every day she wrote about, roughly ages 6 to 50. While she did not attend culinary school, she studied cooks and chefs every where she worked. I did find some of the job details daunting; however, I understand, why some of it is written. Being young, a female, and not professionally trained brought animosity around her.

I would recommend this for anyone who needs an example of success through hard work and desire for better in spite of the hand they were dealt.

Please don't misconstrue the 3.5 stars, not rounding up. She had a lot of jobs, and the kitchen talk was slow.

I enjoyed this book from first to last page .A memoir of the authors life her struggles her love of cooking.I particularly enjoyed the pages about the food she cooked her style in the kitchen.A wonderful read highly recommend.#netgalley #MiseenPlace

(2.5 stars)
"My best food memories are of restaurants. On open-air Lanais, smiling Hawaiian ladies in colourful muumuus served up frosty Shirley Temples topped with a maraschino cherry, speared with pastel umbrellas and purple orchids." Mise en Place is not your traditional chef memoir. I picked it up because of the connection to Hawaiian food, something I had been introduced to as a child through my mother's love for the islands. She died as I was reading it, which is interesting in the sense that it's more about fractured family relationships, including surprise incest, mothers dying, alcoholism, and struggling to find your place in the world, as it is about what goes on in kitchens.

"This dining room was so perfect, it was like being inside a television show, this atmosphere for people created to be a certain way — happy!" The theatre of restaurants, which Marisa Mangani describes in her memoir above, provides moments of respite from the complexity and difficulty of every day life. That is something we have in common, and I liked the elements of the book that explained her connection to food: "good food always gave me hope for better times, in spite of the judgements, scowls and shenanigans of the grown-ups."

In terms of foodies, I feel like this book has only pockets of interest if you're looking for exciting descriptions of cuisine. Hawaiian food is not the focus, rather the Cajun and Creole (and fusion) cookery of New Orleans. A lot of the author's jobs were in very average kitchens, or managing outlets at expos where it isn't food that's inspiring but volume: "7,335,279 people in six months". The writing is pedestrian (it drags on a bit), and stigmatising in places, particularly in descriptions of people of colour and gender non-conformity "because you thought men in stacked heels were gross". It's no Kitchen Confidential, though there are some in-kitchen antics from "workers prone to drug abuse and alcoholism" like "pouring out the Worcestershire sauce from his bottle of Lea and Perrins and replacing it with vanilla extract" and heating "every dinner plate to singe-the-fingers" for waitstaff you hate.

Much of the book focuses on Mangani's dysfunctional relationships (like with a "dull-brained alcoholic" and poor self-esteem which eventually drive her from the hospitality industry into installing commercial kitchens. In fact you could say she became a chef because the job was so demanding, she couldn't focus on her internal misery: "In the kitchen the pause button is depressed, and the distractions of the kitchen do everything to justify my existence." With therapy perhaps she would have been a better chef. With a good edit, maybe this could have been a better book. I mean what editor leaves in lines like "Other Maui stories from 1985 include the following"? Work them into the narrative or drop them...

In the end, I suspect I came to this wanting to celebrate food, and found a chef who wasn't all that inspiring about her former bread and butter: "sea urchin is another food I don't eat. I tried it at a sushi bar once and found it to be rank and stinky."

Now this is a book any lover of food will enjoy. A memoir, a story of life in the food industry, an adventure.

I devoured this book as it was so interesting and well written, you could feel it, you were there and you could taste it. As with any good book, fiction or non-fiction, there were some twists and turns, there were moments of emotion and there were moments that took you to a place, a meal that you loved and enjoyed.

A great book of food, travel, people, places, life, good times and bad times. It is a story of real life in a tough industry but it was also a very entertaining read.

I enjoyed this book about an ambitious young woman who was determined to escape her not great home life and use her passion for cooking to become the best chef she could.

I especially enjoyed the portions of the book where Marisa described the food she was making, and eating. Spanning from Hawaii, to New Orleans, to Australia, this was an interesting look into restaurant life.

Thank you Netgalley, and River Grove books for the ARC!

I enjoy restaurant-related memoirs and the name of this one jumped out at me. More the story of an abused, anxious girl who grew up to become an accomplished woman than purely a food-centric memoir.
Food, cooking, and dining in restaurants were an otherworld experience for Marisa, who grew up in poverty and neglect in Hawaii in the 70s. She was driven to get out and she found confidence in often-misogynistic kitchens.

Certain sections dragged when they were all narrative without any of Marisa’s insights or reflections. She was ambitious yet drifted through life for a long time. My favorite section was the ACF competition and I felt the pace and the focus of the narrative pick up after that.

As an aside, I’m disappointed her editor didn’t correct her visual descriptions of people of color. Who in 2022 is still using coffee and chocolate to describe skin color? The white characters didn’t have their skin described, so we’re meant to default to white? Not a good look.