My Drunk Kitchen

August 15, 2014
Transplanted New Yorker Hart's idea of creating a fake cooking show began as a joke for a friend in California. At last count, her YouTube channel, "My Drunk Kitchen," had tallied more than 66 million views. Hart's "cookbook" will surely enlarge her audience and please her fans. The author, who dedicates the book to "reckless optimists," has been featured in numerous magazines including Time, LA Weekly and Marie Claire, as well as on CBS News, and her 2012 YouTube documentary "Please Subscribe" won the 2013 Steamy Award for Best Female Performance in a Comedy. Hart's wacky sense of humor carries on in this collection of drink suggestions, which includes fun recipes, cooking tips, photos, quotes and life lessons. Whether the author is elaborating on the basics of kitchen improvisation and "filling your heart as well as your stomach," embracing the bumpy journey toward adulthood, or exploring the boundaries of love and sexuality, Hart remains entertaining. In the section entitled "So This Is Love," the author includes recipes for Hot-Crossed Bunz, Heart-Beet Salad, Brothel Sprouts and Sad Thai. "I feel like the people we find ourselves drawn to are somehow reflections of the love we were given (or denied) as children," she writes. "And this could manifest as unconditional loyalty or devotion to people who don't necessarily classify as healthy and/or functional human beings." Hart devotes another section to coping with family during the holidays. The author's recipe for Trifle Troubles alludes to the trauma of leaving the comfort of your adult life and revisiting "the emotional baggage of your childhood," while Let's Get Grilled (About Your Life Choices) traverses the troubled terrain of communicating with a less-than-understanding father "who never achieved his goals." A rollicking, tongue-in-cheek guidebook to discovering one's own route through life.

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October 15, 2014

Started as a joke, the web-based series My Drunk Kitchen became a full-blown YouTube sensation in 2011, and now the popular videos has spawned a book. Similar in tone to Amy Sedaris in her I Like You, debut author Hart uses humor, creativity, and food to guide her readers through life, love, and laughter. Hart's friendly and inviting style lends itself to a volume full of drunk humor, puns, rambling monologs, and small pearls of wisdom. This work does have recipes, but being the product of a tipsy cook, they range from just edible to comforting ("pizza cake" is created by stacking four or five cooked mini pizzas to form a "cake")to rambling nonrecipes. VERDICT Although the jokes don't always hit, humor fans, especially those of the YouTube series, will find plenty here to laugh at.--Ginny Wolter, Toledo-Lucas Cty. P.L.

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