Don’t Read These While Hungry: Foodie SFF

You cannot talk about foodie SFF without talking about Matt’s Sin Du Jour series, a set of seven novellas about a catering company that specializes in only the most fantastic of customers. This has some of the most loving descriptions of food and its preparation I have ever read in my life, and that’s not even touching the plot. (Full disclosure: Matt and I have the same agent.)

This is an adorable little romance where a trans man who is trying to come into his own as a brujo falls in love with the ghost he’s accidentally summoned and sets about solving the murder that created said ghost. It also takes place around Día de los Meurtos and there’s a lot of delicious food involved, including pan de muerto.

I yelled about how good this book is back in July, and that certainly hasn’t changed. But the reason this book is on the list is that the main character, Graciela, is La Bruja de los Pasteles, the “pastry witch” who can tell what kind of pastry everyone who walks into her shop needs. And there’s some amazing baking scenes in this book. It comes with an endless desire for pan dulce.

Another book about the magic of baking, with a minor mage whose magic only works on bread. Her familiar is a sourdough starter! (So is mine, as a matter of fact.) She’s happy to limit her magic to cookies and cakes until an assassin starts stalking the magic folk of her city, and she has to figure out how to survive being the next target.

This is a really cute book about a kid who does close up magic for fun and is really good at it because he can rip holes into parallel universes and steal their stuff. But what lands this book on the list is Sal and Gabi are both from families with a Cuban parent, and there is a ton of delicious Cuban food to be found in these pages.

Rupert Wong is a guy who is a chef by day, so he does plenty of cooking… it just involves human flesh that he’s serving up to ghouls in Kuala Lumpur. And then he moonlights as an administrator for the Ten Hells, as you do. Then, as a chef/administrator has to take care of occasionally, there are also murders to be solved.