Rating: 
Summary: cafe tsil: a great story w/recipes as a bonus...
Review: cafe tsil: a great story w/recipes as a bonus. a very well written, touching, and moving story. i needed a kleenix a couple of times. i found the inclusion of the recipes a nice touch, although i wonder how readily available the ingredients are--like the llama blood, guinea pigs, and dog... :-) get the book and read it...it's worth it!
Rating:
Summary: cafe tsil: a great story w/recipes as a bonus...
Review: cafe tsil: a great story w/recipes as a bonus. a very well written, touching, and moving story. i needed a kleenix a couple of times. i found the inclusion of the recipes a nice touch, although i wonder how readily available the ingredients are--like the llama blood, guinea pigs, and dog... :-) get the book and read it...it's worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Yummy!! i am hungry now...
Review: Here's another good one I lapped for the month of
June...This one is a feast for the Stomach and the
Soul. The product of a cross-cultural family obsessed with
food, Weston Tito begins his story by saying he was a
seed in his parents' kitchens‹plural in both cases.
Weston's mother is Italian and works the successful
catering business BuenAppeTito upstairs; downstairs,
his father, who is fixated on cooking only indigenous
foods "Santa Fe style" (they live in Kansas City),
runs the Tsil Cafe, a restaurant as it is
tear-inducingly spicy. Wes' crib and later his cot are
literally in his mother's kitchen (in the cabinets,
for a while), and she teaches him her "vocabulary,"
the names of foods, by letting him taste them. His
father refuses him entry into his own obsessive
domain, almost a holy order, until he can claim to
enjoy such un-childlike flavors as habanero and
anchovy. After that, like a knight's apprentice, he is
allowed to help slice and chop ingredients -- carry
his own sword, in effect. One of the points of contention between Wes'
hot-blooded parents is the local restaurant critic, an
old admirer of his mother's. Nevertheless, the critic,
who acts first as a teeter-totter between the two
adults, ultimately becomes a sort of bridge, giving
Wes his first opportunity to critique -- to see the
food of both parents objectively -- and start to
develop his own concept of food. Over the years, Wes absorbs a rich stew of influences
and emotions from his mixed-ethnic family, along with
the various Mexican employees of the cafe who serve as
surrogate relatives and even a Native American
graduate student who takes him foraging for cactus and
cattails and invites him to a corn dance. Ultimately,
he will even marry the critic's female successor. So pervasive is food in this coming-of-age novel that
the recipes become a reflection of life's shifting
flavors in Averill's kitchen novel. The almost magic-realism intensity of the flavor descriptions and
the author's habit of dropping in dictionary
definitions of various terms such as "turkey,"
"mescal" and "maple" re-emphasizes the native quality
of the ingredients. The narrator's entire life is
lived in the study, anecdotal and later academic, of
foods; ultimately he will become a chef as well,
melding his parents' Old World and New World cuisines
into a One-World cuisine. A great fascinating read!!
Rating: 
Summary: You see it coming, but it still tastes good.
Review: I wouldn't want to "give away" the ending, but I think one would have to be asleep throughout to miss it on the horizon. As Wes Hingler makes his way from childhood to young adulthood, he learns the necessary but unremarkable lessons that all must learn: parents are imperfect, life isn't fair, people and pets die, hard work has it's rewards, etc. Eventually, he finds himself. There is a cast of enjoyable, if not always well-developed, characters, from whom Wes learns various lessons along the way, culminating in a rare meeting with his maternal grandfather. As a piece of writing I would have given this only 3-and-a-half stars. However, it is the context of the story that makes it a fun read. The narrative is interwoven with unique, adventurous recipes, which mark the protagonist's life lessons. What Thomas Averill's book lacks in the way of dramatic tension it more than makes up for in the inventiveness of his recipes and his use of them to move the story along.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun Read
Review: If you think a coming of age story with food as a central character and recipes included sounds like fun, give this a try. It's enjoyable to read, and the recipes I tried are good too.
Rating:
Summary: Sensuous, sensual, and sensitive.
Review: In a novel which is as powerfully sensuous as Suskind's Perfume and as imaginatively tasty as Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Averill finds his own voice, creating a unique and thoughtful coming-of-age story which, while rich in imagery, is remarkably simple and direct in its message. Food is life here, and the preparation of food and the ingredients one uses reflect the attitudes and spirit with which one approaches life and relationships. Weston Hingler is the son of two cooks with totally different viewpoints. His father, Robert Hingler, owns the Tsil Café, where he uses robust, New World ingredients and spicy chiles and seasonings to bring the heat of southwestern cuisine to Kansas City. His mother, Maria Tito Hingler, part Italian, is a caterer who uses cultivated, Old World ingredients in a more subtle and traditional way. Stubbornly independent and wildly passionate, Robert and Maria communicate best when talking about food, marching to different drummers in the conduct of their personal lives, thereby creating innumerable challenges for their growing son. As Weston grows up, exposed to both cuisines and working, at various times, for both his parents, he must decide who he is, where he fits, who his parents really are, where each of them really comes from, and, ultimately, who he will become. Filled with recipes which go way beyond anything most of us have ever imagined (and which, according to the acknowledgments, have actually been tested!), the book is hugely fun to read, even for someone who might not have a great deal of interest in cooking. I'll take a pass on the Dog Tamal, Roasted Maguey Worms, and Guinea Pig Stuffed with Marigolds, but I do understand why they were so important to Robert, and the Crab Cakes with Pineapple-Mango Salsa and the Jicama Salad sound absolutely delicious. This is a delightful novel, intriguing on all its many levels, and full of new insights into how and why we are what we eat.
Rating:
Summary: Fun Read
Review: Midway through Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, the protaganist, Wes Hingler, wakes to find his beloved dog, When Available, has died in his sleep. The dog is quietly buried, in a simple family ritual, in the garden where most of the spices and vegetables for the Tsil cafe are grown. "We didn't eat him, Wes," says Wes' father, the cook and proprietor of the the titled restaurant, pointing to a joke about the dog's name. "But as he becomes earth, and as we live off this small patch of earth we've made ours, he will nourish us in his death as he did in his life." And here, briefly, is the crux of the novel, which uses food as a metaphor for life -- the blending and mixing of spices and ingredients that make it interesting or bland. And as in life, there are comings and goings, births and deaths, tragedies and triums to remind us of our own place in the world. Thomas Fox Averill creates characters you connect with. His story has been almost universally described by reviewers as a "coming of age" tale, which I guess is technically true. Yet more importantly, it is a book about life, as told through young Wes' eyes, and it points at all the traditions, secrets and passions that run through a family. Scattered throughout are recipes -- which I have not yet challenged -- along with brief descriptions of the ingredients. And we're given engaging histories of the New World meats, vegetables, spices and fruits that appear throughout Averill's engaging little book. This is a book that quietly draws you into its pages, keeps you there for a few hours, and when you leave, you are as satisfied and as filled as any of the customers of the Tsil Cafe, and just as eager for another entree.
Rating:
Summary: Food as a paradigm for life
Review: Midway through Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, the protaganist, Wes Hingler, wakes to find his beloved dog, When Available, has died in his sleep. The dog is quietly buried, in a simple family ritual, in the garden where most of the spices and vegetables for the Tsil cafe are grown. "We didn't eat him, Wes," says Wes' father, the cook and proprietor of the the titled restaurant, pointing to a joke about the dog's name. "But as he becomes earth, and as we live off this small patch of earth we've made ours, he will nourish us in his death as he did in his life." And here, briefly, is the crux of the novel, which uses food as a metaphor for life -- the blending and mixing of spices and ingredients that make it interesting or bland. And as in life, there are comings and goings, births and deaths, tragedies and triums to remind us of our own place in the world. Thomas Fox Averill creates characters you connect with. His story has been almost universally described by reviewers as a "coming of age" tale, which I guess is technically true. Yet more importantly, it is a book about life, as told through young Wes' eyes, and it points at all the traditions, secrets and passions that run through a family. Scattered throughout are recipes -- which I have not yet challenged -- along with brief descriptions of the ingredients. And we're given engaging histories of the New World meats, vegetables, spices and fruits that appear throughout Averill's engaging little book. This is a book that quietly draws you into its pages, keeps you there for a few hours, and when you leave, you are as satisfied and as filled as any of the customers of the Tsil Cafe, and just as eager for another entree.
Rating:
Summary: A literary and gustatory delight!
Review: SECRETS OF THE TSIL CAFE is a creative and refreshing novel which endears itself to anyone who enjoys experimental cooking, a deep sense of family, and an appreciation of New World culture. It presents the challenge of growing up in the world of a rather unusual restaurant with its own special food critic. Dotting the novel's pages are descriptions of New World foods and rather exotic recipes which might challenge anyone's taste buds! The story itself captures the essence of a young man who grows to more fully understand himself by learning about his parents and his extended family.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but needs a little salt.....
Review: The writing is competent, even poetic in places. A couple of the scenes are wonderful: when Wes's mother teaches him about the only two natural foods; milk and honey, and when Wes prepares boiled calabaza (zucchini) for his two elderly parents using two different recipes, each in the tradition of the parents' cooking preferences. But the novel, as a whole, is a little bland. Most of the characters are flat. The three main characters go through a lot of action but with little emotion. We know what they do; we don't know how they feel. The most enjoyable character (and the best developed) is the food critic, Carson Flinn, who disguises himself when he goes to restaurants, eats like a pig, and has a not-so-secret thing for Wes's mother. I think there is a lot more story here than actually made it to the page. This book could have been twice as long if the necessary details had been included. As a reader, I want to understand why the characters did the things that they did. All I know is THAT they did them. The secrets are revealed; Wes's mother sleeps with the waiter, his father sleeps with the waitress, his grandfather fathered a son with the servant, his mother's mother committed suicide, on and on and on, but we don't understand the 'why' of any of these events. We don't see the motivation for any of it. The story/stories need to simmer a little. This is too much like fast food. And, there is no real climax in the book that gives you the feeling that it's time for dessert. It just ends. Wes grows up and runs his own restaurant....y colorin, colorado, este cuento se ha acabado. Oh, did I mention? Too much Spanish for no apparent reason.
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