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Cole Crocker has worked in the hospitality industry since 1999. He has spent most of his life in kitchens but has also traveled extensively around the world with his wife. He enjoys discomfort and regularly seeks out new challenges. When he's not cooking, Cole can be found reading comic books, spending time outdoors, petting dogs, or contemplating the universe. Commi Kitchen is his first novel.
Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Commi Kitchen by Cole Crocker is a raw, funny, and profoundly human novel about grief, ambition, and the unpredictable theater of the culinary world. Brand is a young chef with vision, drive, and wounds he has not yet begun to name. As he throws himself into reviving a broken-down commissary kitchen with an eccentric crew of culinary misfits, the physical chaos of weddings and food trucks mirrors his own internal turmoil. The writing pulses with heat, exhaustion, dark humor, and a slow burn of grief that keeps flaring up between batches of barbecue and prepped trays. This is not a sanitized foodie story, but a sweaty, soulful account of survival through work, community, and unapologetic mess.
Author Cole Crocker excels at capturing the back-of-house madness that never makes it onto the menu. I was struck by the honesty in Brand’s character—how his perfectionism becomes both a weapon and a shield. Everyone in the novel has their own baggage and brilliance, and the brilliantly narrated portraits of the staff bring moments of comedy, tension, and unexpected tenderness just when you need them for a great balance of different emotions. The novel’s pacing mirrors the rhythm of the kitchen, too, with frantic, focused, and occasionally breathtakingly still moments that complement the drama perfectly. It's an unusually visual setting for a book, but it's brilliantly captured with cinematic description and multi-sensory moments to perfectly describe the chaos. Overall, Commi Kitchen is a searing, smart, and deeply affecting novel that serves up raw humanity with a side of dark humor and broken crockery.
