I enjoyed the kitchen and restaurant scenes - lots of dark humor, and the sadistic chef is horrifying and entertaining. The plot about the narrator's family and his personal woes did not engage me. I didn't finish the book because that became more prevalent the further I read. ( )

Fans of Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" will enjoy this fictionalized account of restaurant life in London. The protagonist stumbles into a restaurant job after he is unable to find work with his English literature degree. He is given menial kitchen tasks and christened "Monocle" by his crude coworkers. His boss is a sadistic tyrant who enjoys punishing his employees by locking them in the walk-in cooler or pouring scalding caramel on their hands. But Monocle has demons of his own, and struggles with his family relationships as he learns how to survive in the restaurant business. There are some dark and twisted moments, but also plenty of humor. The author captures all of the grit and glory of kitchen life, and at times the book seems more like a real-life account of kitchen life rather than a novel.

Kathleen K. / Marathon County Public Library
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Chop Chop by Simon Wroe is highly recommended for those who can appreciate a humorous (and realistic) look at the inside workings of the food industry.

Monocle, whose nickname is bestowed upon him based on his English Lit degree, is a recent graduate who is in desperate need of a job. He applies at The Swan, a London restaurant that is past its glory days, and is thrust into the world of professional chefs and the inner workings of a professional kitchen. Monocle learns to become a chef under very adverse conditions while also coming to terms with his past and his relationship with his father.

Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant kitchen (or a large-scale professional kitchen anywhere) is going to understand the cast of odd characters that populate this world and know that Wroe knows about which he writes.

I had to laugh about chopping up one onion and then reading:
“I don’t want one onion chopped,” he said. “What am I going to do with one f***ing onion? Do the whole bag.” The whole bag? It was the size of a turkey. I struggled to lift it. No one in their right mind needed so many onions. That day I realized I knew nothing about food or cooking. Also, more worryingly, nothing about people or communication. Months of fiction in that armchair, and years of studying it before that, had left me dealing with life at reading speed. Conversations passed me by while I was still formulating a response. People here dealt with one another so firmly, with no concerns for the nuances of situation.

Boy is that is the truth. You need to work fast and efficiently with little chance to finesse any situation. It is go-go-go until hours have passed and you don't have a clue where the time went.
There are so many great examples but I picked out a few more:

“Smoke?” He held out a cigarette. “You will,” he said when I refused. (Location 355)

"That was the first rule I learned at The Swan: Never challenge the person in charge. They could make your life more hellish than you could imagine. This, incidentally, is true of families as well as kitchens." (Location 436)

I also had to say "Isn't that the truth" when Monocle realizes that his hands are going to be permanently stained from his job, but even more so that it is your feet and legs that take the brunt of the abuse. After standing for hours there is no amount of rest that can make up for the pain.

But the truisms of working in a restaurant are just a part of the story. The cast of characters is an even more enticing component of this novel. They are weird and wonderful, including: "Racist Dave," chef Ramilov, Dibden the pastry chef, and a girl named Harmony, and the cruel head chef Bob. The story takes a dark turn and, although it is humorous, it is also gritty and not for the faint of heart.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes. ( )

This is a book largely set in the kitchen of a gastropub situated not very far from my home in Camden. It is a mixture of pathos and comedy littered with obscenities and literary allusions. Whilst I enjoyed reading it I hesitate to recommend it. ( )

This novel reads more like a culinary memoir. The narrator is a young, educated Millennial guy who finds himself down and out in London with no prospects, and accidentally finds himself at the bottom of a kitchen totem pole. The story is basically a character piece, building up the various personnel in the kitchen, and hinting at a calamitous event that pulls apart the tenuous fabric of the dynamic, the event that actually precipitates the writing of the novel/memoir. It is interspersed with the narrator's personal tale, his parents' dysfunctional relationship and a family tragedy. It is a successful book because of the characters and the story-within-a-story format, and also because I think most people who eat in restaurants or maybe once worked in restaurants have a kind of fascination with the mysterious behind the scenes activities. I'm a little afraid to know how realistic some of the depictions are, but I found the story entertaining nevertheless. ( )