Kirkus reviews the book in its September 15th issue:
The lives of immigrants, in their own words.
Editor Meyer runs the Bowery Group, a collection of New York City restaurants that includes Cookshop and Rosie’s. After dropping out of college, Meyer found his way to the restaurant industry by trying out a series of recipes in an Italian cookbook and deciding, based on this experience, to move to New York to work in kitchens. In a preface, Meyer says that his is just one of a vast array of reasons why people flock to New York City’s restaurants. “There is no single explanation as to what has moved countless people to seek jobs in the restaurants of New York,” he writes. “Some of us were social misfits, ill-suited for the conformities of the corporate world. Others sought to escape dangerous social conditions. All of us had something that we needed to leave behind—a need to hide, to escape, to break the patterns of the past.” In the pages that follow, Meyer includes interviews with people from around the world, including Elena, a Colombian mother who journeyed to the United States to escape domestic abuse; Phillipe, who was raised in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast; and Isabell, a gay Honduran who moved to the United States for love. These stories provide a compassionate, intimate, and at times humorous glimpse into New York’s diverse immigrant communities. Each narrative is thoughtfully edited to convey a specific emotional trajectory and to reflect the resilience of each interviewee. One of the voices is that of Santiago, who fled Venezuela, where he had been kidnapped for his activism. Trained as a lawyer, he has been working in New York restaurants for several years. “I love New York City,” he says. “Long-term, I want to have a small restaurant where I can show people all the good things I remember from my grandmother—a good, small family business, nothing too big….I guess the restaurant business got under my skin.”
A touching collection of immigrant life stories.
Voices from the Kitchen: Personal Narratives from New York’s Restaurant Kitchens will be published in the English language by Beacon Press in North America in November 2025.
Marc Meyer is a longtime New York City chef, specializing in Mediterranean-inspired cuisine and known for his commitment to sourcing locally, seasonally, and sustainably. He and his partners at the Bowery Group operate 5 restaurants in New York City: Cookshop, Vic’s, Rosie’s, Shuka, and Shukette. When not in the kitchen, Meyer donates his time to an Indigenous community center in Mexico.