Extra sauce: a memoir

"At twenty-two years old, Zahra Tangorra was trying on adulthood and trying to find herself when a harrowing, near-death experience stopped her in her tracks. It felt like a twisted version of a second chance. Who am I? She asked herself. What do I love? The answers started coming to her: stuffed shells and giant meatballs at J&J's, the Italian red sauce joint of her Long Island childhood. Chickens roasted with the feet still on, eaten in a tiny bistro in Provence. Her father's potato salad, laced with gruyere and tasting as complex and surprising as he was. The loves of Zahra's life, the people and places and experiences that made her her, the relationships both loving and fraught-they were all inextricably bound up with food. As she reflects on life in all its delicious, messy, heartbreaking glory, Zahra reckons with the adrenaline-filled highs and devasting lows of opening cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant Brucie, and then closing it at the height of its popularity. She writes about cooking her father his last meal and the unexpected yet beautiful things she found at the bottom of her grief after he died.