Extra Sauce

“Extra Sauce is a memoir that feeds both body and soul; lush, fearless, and tender, with sentences as rich and flavorful as the recipes that accompany each chapter. Zahra Tangorra writes about all the things we carry to the table—the loves and losses that transform us—with rare honesty and nerve, reminding us that we should live and eat with appetite and abundance.”—Ruth Reichl

“A pleasure to read . . . Tangorra’s prose is fizzy, conversational, and perceptive, and Extra Sauce is an endearing tale of food, family, and finding your own place in the world.”—Eater, Best New Food Books

“Extra Sauce is the exact right title for Zahra Tangorra’s debut memoir, which is big-hearted, funny, tragic, and bursting with juicy, messy stories. Her compelling voice, her lacerating self-awareness, and her total embrace of all life’s beauty and heartbreak add up to one of the best food books I’ve read in years.”—Laurie Woolever, author of Care and Feeding: A Memoir

“Zahra Tangorra’s memoir is zesty, gutsy, and fully engages all the senses. I was riveted by her potent story and hungry to make her recipes to get a taste of the life she’s led.”—Dana Cowin

“Zahra Tangorra sits us down for a meal of nostalgia, heartbreak, grief, love, and selfhood on her way to a present life of satiety that is about so much more than food. This memoir felt like a seat at an old friend’s table, where wine is poured and stories are told until two in the morning, all of us picking at the remains of Zaza Lasagna, Not My Grandfather’s Meatballs, and Chocolate Mousse Pie while cracking open one more bottle of Lambrusco. Extra Sauce is a book that sates the tongue and the heart.”—Jill Damatac, author of Dirty Kitchen

“Extra Sauce is both a love letter and map to understanding how food, family, and finding yourself go together. Wearing her heart on her sleeve for every sentence, Zahra Tangorra shows there’s still room for scrapers and strivers who want to keep the very human experience of eating a nice meal fun.”—Jason Diamond, author of Kaplan’s Plot

“A nourishing self-portrait . . . Chef Tangorra debuts with an appetizing memoir-in-essays about love, loss, and lasagna, [and] writes of food as a force that connects her to loved ones. Readers who get palpitations at the thought of making the perfect marinara will savor her reflections.”—Publishers Weekly

“Chef, restaurateur, and writer Tangorra dazzles in this personal memoir-with-food. Part humorous storytelling, part ode to very complicated parents and other important people in her life, Tangorra’s writing doesn’t shy away from the messy, painful chapters in her life. Rather, she acknowledges the ‘feral gaucheness’ common to humans, which hopefully points the way towards grace for self and others.”—Booklist