A Side of Murder with Amy Pershing

 LUCY BURDETTE: Doesn't everybody love a strong debut mystery? I do! I was asked by my former editor at NAL if I would read and blurb a forthcoming foodie mystery and I agreed. To my relief and excitement, I loved the book. The new writer is Amy Pershing and A SIDE OF MURDER will be out on February 23. I welcome her to the blog today!

You’ve Been Served or How to Eat Really Fancy Food on Zero Dollars a Day 

(Photo by Lefteris kallergis on Unsplash)

LB: In A SIDE OF MURDER, your heroine, Samantha Barnes, is a disgraced New York City chef turned restaurant reviewer for the Cape Cod Clarion.  In the very funny opening scene, you describe Sam on her first assignment trying to get her friends to understand how it’s all going to work:

“Okay, so here’s how it’s gonna go down.”

I looked sternly at my dining companions, who were eyeing me warily over the rims of their wine glasses.  They were not used to me looking at them sternly.  

“We order one meat, one vegetarian, one seafood and one pasta entree. Appetizers can be anything you like…”

 “Well, hallelujah,” Miles said.  I ignored him.

“Anything you like,” I repeated, “but it needs to make sense with your entrée.”

“I’m lost,” said Helene, running a ring-bejeweled hand through her mane of silver curls.  “I’ve been eating out for 40 years and I never once worried if my appetizer made sense with my entrée.  I don’t even know what that means.” 

I sighed.  Well, no one had ever said writing restaurant reviews for the Cape Cod Clarion was going to be easy. Actually, I reflected, that wasn’t true.  I was the one who had said it would be easy.

I tried to clarify. “It means that if you’re having the hanger steak for your entrée...”

“That’s mine!” Jenny said, suddenly all in.  “I call I claim the hanger steak.” 

I call I claim? What is she, six? 

“And a half dozen Wellfleet oysters to start,” she added.

 “That’s fine,” I said.  “A classic pairing.” 

I turned back to Helene.  “If, like Jenny, you’re having the hanger steak,” I explained, “you don’t want to order the barbeque sliders as a starter.” 

She nodded thoughtfully.  At least Helene was taking this seriously.  But then she ruined it by saying, “Actually, barbeque followed by steak sounds yummy.”

I gave up. 

“I’ll order for all of you,” I announced.  “And once we get our food and you’ve had a chance to taste and consider your choices, I will discretely exchange plates with each of you, one by one, and sample each dish.  Then we’ll discretely switch back again. We’ll go clockwise around the table, starting with Helene.”  

“I’m lost again,” Helene fake-whispered to Miles.

LB: Those instructions sound like someone who has actually reviewed restaurants for a living…

AP: Well, not exactly for a living but I guess you could say I did it professionally.  My two-year stint as a reviewer was in New York City back in the late ‘80s when restaurants were theater and chefs were celebrities. So what do you do when you’re young and broke in New York City and love great food?  I mean, obviously, you can’t actually pay to eat in these restaurants.   But what if you got to eat for free in these restaurants?  And all you had to do was write about it?  Eating great food and writing about eating great food? That’s not a job.  That’s a dream come true. 

So how did you land this dream job?

I had just moved back to the city after two years living  -- and eating, oh, lord, how I ate! -- in Italy.  A friend invited me out to dinner with a lovely fellow named Andy Birsh, who would later go on to write the New York restaurant reviews for Gourmet magazine. At the time, Andy was the editor of the Restaurant Reporter, a subscription-only newsletter for corporate clients who needed reliable recommendations for where to take their VIP clients for lunch and dinner.  That night Andy needed a few tasting buddies for his visit to a very cool, very exclusive, very expensive new Italian restaurant in mid-town. The kind of place where you’d spot Robert DeNiro or Diane Keaton.  In fact, we actually spotted Robert DeNiro and Diane Keaton. That was very exciting. 

And the food? 

Not so much. My risotto was gummy and my saltimbocca (traditionally a thinly sliced veal cutlet sautéed in a buttery lemon sauce topped with a slice of prosciutto and one perfect sage leaf) was tough and didn’t even have a sage leaf.   I never would have had the nerve to say anything (after all, Andy had already very discreetly tasted all the offerings at the table), but when he asked me what I thought, I was honest.  He nodded and the next thing I knew he was asking me if I wanted to write the review.  

So your first review was a negative one?

Yup.  But it was the only negative review I ever wrote for the Reporter.  Our usual approach was, if you don’t like the restaurant, don’t review it.  We didn’t want any part of knocking someone’s dream.  But when a place is charging exorbitant prices for the privilege of being ignored by a snooty wait staff, being served awful food and being rushed out so they can turn the table, it’s time to call a rip-off a rip-off.  

So after that, it was all good?

It was great!  For almost two years I ate amazing food. At Arizona 206, the brilliant chef/owner Brendan Walsh introduced New Yorkers (including me) to “Southwestern” food like cactus pear salad and grilled salmon with corn pudding.  At Tavern on the Green, I had a rack of lamb so tender I could have cut it with a spoon.  

So it was all glitz and glamor?

Not at all.  A lot of the more adventurous chefs and restaurateurs were bringing a new informality and dedication to farm fresh food and fusion menus downtown.  I, like every other foodie in New York, fell in love with Danny Meyer’s unpretentious but perfect Union Square Café. David Bouley’s original Montrachet offered a $16 dollar prix fixe dinner!  And I loved a divey Cajun restaurant called Acme in Noho.  But my absolute fav was the tiny, funky French bistro/all night diner Restaurant Florent, plopped smack in the middle of the city’s meatpacking district, where ladies-of-the-evening in drag waved hello from the street corner as you walked in and you sat so close to the other diners that you always had a new best friend by the end of the night. 

Do you remember your favorite meal from those golden years?

I honestly remember every good meal I’ve ever eaten, whether at a friend’s house, my own table or at a restaurant.  Don’t get me started. But I have to say, Florent’s duck paté was a revelation.  And the mussels, oh my god, those mussels!  

Assuming that at some point we’ll be able to eat in restaurants again, what’s your best advice for having a great dinner out?

AP: I can’t wait until we are able to eat in our favorite restaurants again!  (And until that happens, please keep them going with take out service if they offer it.)  When that happy day arrives, be nice to your server.  Not just because you’ll get better service and maybe even a good tip on what to order, but because it’s the right thing to do. I’ve been a waitress (as we used to be called in the Dark Ages) and I’ve been a corporate executive, and, believe me, being a waitress was much more stressful.  

Thanks so much for being with us today, Amy!  And Red readers, tell us about your favorite restaurant meal below to be entered in a drawing for A Side of Murder, coming out on February 23.    

About Amy: Amy Pershing is a lifelong mystery lover and wordsmith. She was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before leading employee communications at a global bank. A few years ago (with the final college tuition bill paid), she waved goodbye to Wall Street to write full time (and spend more time sailing on the Cape!). A Side of Murder, the first of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries, is her debut novel.

About A Side of Murder: Beautiful Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is known for seafood, sand, surf and now … murder.

Samantha Barnes was always a foodie.  And when the CIA (that’s the Culinary Institute of America) came calling, she happily traded in Cape Cod for the Big Apple.  But then the rising young chef’s clash with another chef (her ex!) boils over and goes viral. So when Sam inherits a house on the Cape and lands a job writing restaurant reviews, it seems like the perfect pairing. What could go wrong? Well, as it turns out, a lot.

The dilapidated house comes with an enormous puppy. Her new boss is, well, bossy.  And the town’s harbor master is none other than her first love.  Nonetheless, Sam’s looking forward to reviewing the Bayview Grill—and indeed the seafood chowder is divine. But the body in the pond outside the eatery was not on the menu. Sam is certain this is murder. But as she begins to stir the pot, is she creating a recipe for her own untimely demise?

“Cape Cod provides a stunning background for a debut that offers the ideal combination of mystery, romance, and recipes.” Kirkus Reviews