Deep Dish-Mary Kay Andrews

Deep Dish
Mary Kay Andrews
Harper, Feb 26 2008, $24.95
ISBN 9780060837365

Thirty years old Chef Gina Foxton is an expert on Southern style cooking, but with a healthy approach. She is highly regarded with her own cooking show Fresh Start on Georgia Public Television. However while filming her latest show, she notices a new crew who provide substitute products like Cheez-Ease. She goes berserk claiming it is “artificial cheese made out of recycled dry-cleaning bags”; her anger is because her reputation is built on healthy recipes. However her show becomes history when the CEO of the prime sponsor Tastee-Town Foods Wiley Bickerstaff III pulled out. Gina is stunned because Wiley has been her biggest supporter, but learns the truth that her producer and boyfriend E. Scott Zaleski was caught sleeping with Wiley’s wife.

Gina knows the Cooking Channel is seeking a new show. They are undecided between Gina’s Fresh Start and Tate Moody’s Vittles. To choose the brass decides a reality show cook-off contest between Gina and Tate will bring in viewers. However, under the TV lights, the two cooking spectrum opposites begin to simmer with an attraction that boils into love.

Although the romance comes in the latter half of the tale, readers will adore this amusing kitchen war. The story line is fast-paced as Tate and Gina compete through food fights and other embarrassing scenarios; the humorous plot stews between healthy and grill it. Readers will agree with Gina’s sister that this pair has chemistry, but there is only room for one in the kitchen even if Tate wants to take Gina on the table.

Harriet Klausner