Liquor

The Liquor series of novels will make you feel hungry a lot, want to visit New Orleans, and make you fall in love with G-Man and Rickey. Food features heavily throughout the series as the chef couple at the heart of of the novel open their own restaurant with the conceit of every dish containing some kind of liquor - hence the title. But naturally, there's obstacles - from local cranks, ex-bosses, and the corruption that thrives in the city. The fact that the two main characters are a gay couple is almost incidental, in a really pleasing way. It's not made the focus of the novel, nor is it ignored and passed over. Well worth reading.

In the past few years, Poppy Z. Brite has taken her writing in a new direction. Previously known mostly for horror fiction of a particularly gory kind, Brite has turned to writing about a pair of restaurateurs in pre-Katrina New Orleans. While there is a mystery aspect to these stories, mostly they are tales of two young men in a committed relationship who work and play together, mostly with food. These are books for foodies to delight in, fiction for cooks, gourmets and gourmands.

Rickey and G-man make their debut in Liquor. Rickey and G-man are best friends and lovers of long standing, as well as cooks who began their careers washing dishes and are now at the top of the cooking game. Despite their skill, they find themselves living in show more near poverty, and have both recently been fired. Rickey comes up with a gimmick that seems made for New Orleans: liquor in every dish. They start serving up meals and snacks in a friend's bar, yummies like tequila chicken wings, artichoke dip with a touch of cognac and prosciutto-wrapped figs marinated in Calvados. The bar is overwhelmed with locals who love the gimmick.

Then Lenny Duveteaux, a celebrity chef who seems like an amalgam of every celebrity chef you've seen on The Food Network, steps into the picture, offering to bankroll Rickey and G-man if they'd like to open their own restaurant. And thus is Liquor born, an old-style Creole restaurant with a new taste, and alcohol in every dish. Rickey and G-man gather a staff of cooks from around the city, create their dishes, and move towards opening day.

There are problems at every step. It seems as if there's some force at work trying to destroy the restaurant before it even opens. Lenny's dollars help resolve most problems, but some seem intractable. Here's where the mystery comes in, though frankly it isn't much of one despite the dramatic denouement. And that's not the point, after all. The fun of this book is in reading about the food and the trials and tribulations of running a professional kitchen. Anyone who has read Anthony Bourdain's nonfiction, or Ruth Reichl's, or who subscribes to Gourmet or Bon Appetit is likely to love this book.

Fortunately, Liquor is only the beginning. The adventures of Rickey and G-man continue in Prime, in which Rickey is hired as a consultant for a Dallas restaurant that isn't pulling in customers despite its exquisite cuisine. The chef there is a man with whom Rickey had a run-in during his short time at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, Rickey's only time away from New Orleans until this Dallas trip. Rickey labors to come up with a new concept for the restaurant while ignoring the sexual attraction between him and the chef, and missing G-man with a depth of longing anyone truly in love knows well. Once again, however, trouble makes an appearance as a politician in New Orleans is out to get Lenny and wants to use Rickey and G-man as weapons. Again, the mystery isn't the point; it's the food and the restaurant life. And reading about them is great fun.

Soul Kitchen is the third and most recent entry in the series, and was finished literally the night before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The book is dedicated to a group of restaurants and food providers who may or may not return to the city, which has still not come close to recovering. Readers who have paid attention to precisely where Liquor is located will have concluded that the restaurant has to have fallen on very hard times since Katrina, and I’m guessing that that's the tale that will be told in the next book.

This book, on the other hand, is about Rickey opening a second restaurant on a gambling boat. He is once again a consultant, but this time he has had the opportunity to appoint the chef de cuisine himself. He chooses Milford Goodman, a man who was an excellent chef until he was wrongfully convicted of murdering the owner of his restaurant and served a decade or so in prison. Now DNA evidence has cleared him of the crime, and Rickey wants to give him a chance.

But everything is going wrong. Rickey wrenches his back badly and develops a bad Vicodin habit to keep the pain to a low roar. The kitchen at Liquor is understaffed and the dishes have lost their creativity because Rickey's not paying them sufficient attention. The owners of the new restaurant, called Soul Kitchen, want Rickey on duty there as much as possible despite the fact that Milford is doing a fine job and doesn't need -- or want -- the help that Rickey is supposed to be giving him. And something is badly wrong between Milford and the Soul Food's owners.

Once again, the mystery takes a back seat to the food talk; it's almost as if Brite has to get the suspense out of the way so that she can tell her real story. It remains a delight to read about innovative food, restaurant gimmicks, and life in the kitchen. The relationship between Rickey and G-man continues to grow, and their devotion to one another, despite temptation, is a pleasure to watch.

The foodies in your life would jump with joy to receive a package of these three books under the Christmas tree this year. They are pure fun. I recommend them highly. show less

I read a lot of Poppy growing up. Back then, it was all extremely visceral horror that was sometimes referred to as “splatterpunk.” Vampires, ghosts, cannibals and serial killers with HIV, it was all rather grotesque and very, very dark.

I loved it. It influenced me quite a bit, and what pieces remain from my early writing portfolio show this rather shamelessly and explicitly. During my teenage years and through my vampire fiction phase, nobody influenced me more than she did, including Anne Rice and all the bizarre, fucked up authors who penned books in the Dell Abyss line. Nobody.

Somewhere along the line, young, cult horror phenom Poppy Z. Brite grew up. And, eventually, so did I. As I grew older, I became a bit of a gourmand, and show more I also lost some of my interest in horror. Not all of it, mind you. I’d like to think my horizons just broadened a bit, allowing me to include all manner of fiction (even “serious literature,” to my initial chagrin) on my reading lists.

It was with a bit of surprise that I found out a few years ago that Poppy Z. Brite had been writing books about New Orleans chefs. The New Orleans part didn’t shock me, nor did the sexual orientation of her characters, but leaving horror behind? I didn’t really want to believe it at first, and for several years I put off her Liquor novels, reading her older works or books by other authors. I wanted to go back and see if I was affected by the earlier horror novels as much as I was the first time I read them.

One thing I’ve found out over the past year is that nostalgia is an exceptionally powerful emotion, and that most things are stronger when viewed through the smoky looking-glass of time. Nothing I’ve gone back and reread has been as joyous a read for me as the first time I picked it up as a teen. Nothing. Some have come close and still stand up as powerful stories, but as I’ve aged the things that grip my heart and move me have changed a bit. I’ve come to accept this as a hard fact, and despite knowing that the magic won’t be as powerful or may not even be there at all, I’m still going to go back and reread some of the things I loved that influenced me. I’m just not going to have lofty ideas about reconnecting with the books in the way I had before.

Sometimes, though, you just need to move forward. Pick up new books you haven’t read, give new authors a chance. In this case, give an old friend a shot at something new. And I did.

Liquor is a tribute to food that borders on sexual fetishism. I love it. I read most of it in one day, unwilling to put it down before I got to the last page.

Rickey and G-man are lovers, have been best friends since they were in the fourth grade and have been working in the kitchens of New Orleans restaurants since they were fifteen. Bouncing around from employer to employer (not always due to their own planning), they grow tired of working for other people. They want freedom, control over their own culinary creations and a bit of money. Being poor and working sixteen hours a day six days a week for some rich asshole is no fun indeed.

Rickey is struck with an idea while drinking in the park. Dishes made with alcohol. A whole restaurant based on the concept of alcohol in food. In a city like New Orleans, where natives and tourists alike cruise the margarita stands, where people are encouraged to drink all they can, an idea like this could be their golden ticket.

But first, Rickey and G-man have to straighten out their own issues, shake off the people dragging them down and find the capital to make their dream come true, and it won’t be easy.

I will be tracking down the two sequels, Prime and Soul Kitchen, this summer. A previously published prequel of sorts, The Value of X, is a bit pricier and harder to obtain, but I will be tracking that down at some point as well.

http://alookatabook.blogspot.com/2009/06/11-of-2009-liquor-by-poppy-z-brite.html show less

I was lucky to score an early copy of Liquor by Poppy z. Brite this past weekend. The novel follows a young couple, John Rickey and Gary "G-Man" Stubbs, from the hot lines at various New Orleans restaurant kitchens to opening their own, a genius spirit infused joint called Liquor, where the alcohol is not only served at the bar but in all of the dishes as well. There aren't a lot of twists and turns, but I think the plot is secondary to her character work, which in my opinion is really well done.
For me the book moved like a steamroller, building momentum slowly, but once it got going it was hard to stop. Though most fans probably know Mrs. Brite for her horror novels, Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Exquisite Corpse, it's in Liquor where show more she truly shines. Liquor feels a lot more personal and involved, through her descriptions of her hometown and her well-drawn characters, than her previous novels.

I think this novel will appeal to those who enjoy Anthony Bourdain's writing or Gregory Mcdonald's Fletch series of novels, as well as anyone who has a love of good food and believable, interesting character work. show less

I was an early fan of Poppy Brite's early work, but I so hated, hated, HATED, _Exquisite Corpse_ that I wouldn't crack the cover of anything else she wrote for well over a decade. This book was out for a few years before I gave it a chance. But this is a very different Poppy Z. Brite from a decade ago. This is a much lighter and frothier work. So much so that I almost wondered if she was consciously condescending with this book. But I think she actually likes the characters here, and in consequence so do I. The story of a romantically involved pair of chefs trying to get a restaurant of their own off the ground is a nice sort of black semi-comedy soaked in liquor and garnished with loads of food. Not a great and involving book, but a show more pleasant one, and I was happy enough with it to go and get the next two of the series. show less

This is one of those books I find comforting somehow. I must have read it at least 5 or 6 times. It's near perfect. Nothing like Ms Brite's earlier stuff, so little like it in fact it could be a different author, but you can feel the love of the characters oozing through the writing. It's a pleasure to spend a couple of hours with Ricky and G-Man.

I hadn't read anything by Poppy Z. Brite in a while because she had written something about a serial killer and I wasn't interested. She has left the horror genre to write about gay men in a less sinister tone. Liquor turned out to be the second of a not yet complete trilogy about two young men in New Orleans who become chefs and restaurateurs. The descriptions of food are lovely and the story is lively and interesting. I've never been to New Orleans so it was nice to take a little trip there in my mind. She does veer back into creepy description, especially when describing how a chefs feet feel at the end of a busy night. (stinking rotting stubs... yummy!) (October 04, 2004)