Tastes Like Seeing God

The Bear meets Real Americans in this coming-of-age story that’ll make you hungry—for food, for life, for forging your own path

In the days following the accidental death of her brother, an up and coming chef, Jessie Wong is adrift and angry: at Tommy, for dying; at her parents for their silence; and at the confines of her conservative Christian Chinese upbringing. Then Jessie finds a list in Tommy’s handwriting of the five meals that “taste like seeing God.” Was his phrasing blasphemy, or a nod to some hidden belief? Is fate offering her the chance to know her brother in a new way?

Breaking from her parents for the first time, Jessie decides to take up her brother’s challenge. With a one-way ticket, she embarks on a whirlwind pilgrimage to taste the five foods on the list. From the gritty bars of New York City to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant on a tiny German island in the North Sea, from the art world of Paris to the markets of Dakar, Jessie meets the people who loved and inspired her brother, getting to know the sibling she lost and the life he’d built. As Jessie realizes how much more of the world is out there, a future she’d never dared to envision for herself is now within her grasp.

Flavored with illegal French delicacies and famed Senegalese dishes, Tastes Like Seeing God explores the transcendent power of food, life’s sorrows, and its sublime joys with poignancy and surprising humor.