The World's Greatest Chocolate-Covered Pork Chops

April 10, 2017
Twelve-year-old Zoey Kate—“culinary prodigy, gourmet innovator, child chef extraordinaire”—secures a $50,000 loan to start her own restaurant in this madcap but off-putting adventure from debut author Sager. With the help of her jazz musician parents, best friend Dallin, and a tattooed biker/foodie named Knuckles, Zoey opens her restaurant in three connected cable cars to great acclaim. But someone is out to sabotage her: Zoey is certain that the culprit is rival Chef Kung Pao, six-time winner of the coveted Golden Toque, and longtime colleague Chef Cannoli agrees. Now all three chefs are up for the award, creating even higher stakes as the story careens to its conclusion. Zoey’s cooking will inspire drooling (several recipes are included), though her overconfidence—while infectious—can teeter into entitlement. More problematic is the representation of Pao and Cannoli (starting with their reductive names). From their faulty English to tacky jokes about Asian culture (“Zoey bowed because that was what you were supposed to do when you meet a Chinese person, right?”) both characters veer into stereotype and caricature. Ages 8–12. Agent: Sara Sciuto, Fuse Literary.

April 15, 2017
Twelve-year-old Zoey Kate is an ambitious culinary prodigy who's out to prove that she's San Francisco's best chef. After Zoey miraculously secures a $50,000 bank loan, she hunts down the perfect space for her restaurant. But finding a good property is harder than she'd thought. Then the white girl with "cheesecake-colored hair" has a vision. Zoey converts a three-car trolley into her restaurant, Zoeylicious. From Zoeylicious' mobile kitchen, Zoey concocts zany dishes only a kid could dream up: S'meesecake, Maple Cinnamon Crab Fajitas, her signature Chocolate-Covered Pork Chops, and so on. Word spreads, and Zoey quickly becomes the darling of the S.F. dining scene. However, she also learns how competitive the restaurant industry can be and unwittingly makes enemies who will stop at nothing to see her fail. Injected with lots of humor while moving at a good clip along a twisty plotline, the story can hardly be called boring. Unfortunately, the many parenthetical asides and over-a-preteen's-head references (how many actually know who James Beard is?) are annoyingly cutesy and forced. Plus, the diverse cast of secondary characters, instead of being a welcome addition, only helps to reinforce stereotypes: the Asian bad guy with a queue who speaks broken English and the apathetic Indian realtor who runs Happy Curry Real Estate, to name just two. Only for the most die-hard of Food Network fans. (recipes) (Fiction. 9-12)

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