Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef

Slutty Cheff is an anonymous London chef who knows what it's really like to work in the capital's hectic restaurant scene.

From working sixty-hour weeks in windowless kitchens and being the only woman in the changing room to the pure thrill of a busy service, falling in love with other chefs and cycling home through a city bubbling over with potential, Slutty Cheff's misadventures in food and sex are about experiencing and embracing life to the fullest. The pleasure and the chaos included . . .

An exquisite broth of raw Anthony Bourdain-style honesty with a pinch of the sharp wit of Lena Dunham's Girls, Tart Is THE book for those who like to eat and f**k.

Review

I devoured this book like a ravenous customer and I love it wildly. It's the most visceral food and sex writing out there - utterly delicious and utterly new. ― Lena Dunham

A young Anthony Bourdain which we haven't seen in female food writing before - visceral, hedonistic and gutsy ― Dolly Alderton

A startlingly gripping and funny glimpse into what goes on behind the kitchen doors, with sauce of all kinds oozing from every page. Deft and confident writing as sharp as a chef's knife that made me gasp, laugh and blush all at the same time. In another imagined life, I am a chef and this book made me yearn for that and simultaneously very glad that I'm not. ― Ed Gamble

Slutty Cheff is an exhilarating new voice, as spiky and eye-opening as Fernet Branca. And her book is one great sweaty, sweary, sexy ride. ― Marina O'Loughlin

I don't know whether to be hungry or horny - I absolutely inhaled this book either way. ― Angela Hui

Tart is perfect. It's reminded me that, even though I've questioned my choice of working in kitchens after many tough shifts, I'll never leave the industry because it's where I feel at home. ― Max Rocha

A book every young cook should read ― Angela Hartnett

Women writing like this will surely save us from something terrible. Audacious yet vulnerable, Tart is like guts and bread with butter you can see teeth marks in. It is intimate, honest, painful, labour intensive, fizzy, both sweet & wild & honestly a much needed plaster for the yearn burn that life dishes out. I need this book. ― Kate Nash

Essential reading on chef life and London's food scene from, I am sure, the new generation's Bourdain. ― Mandy Yin

Tart superbly captures the emotional rollercoaster of the professional kitchen world, I feel very well represented as a female chef. ― Stroma Sinclair

I loved this, devoured in two days! What a love story! A love story of finding self and joy, through cooking, and all the complications that true love brings. It was so easy to get hooked. It is also a beautiful exploration of what friendship means - between old friends, new colleagues, and the city of London, a character in its own right. Funny, heart breaking, visceral, and so full of joy you are always rooting for Slutty Cheff. ― Anna Sulan Masing

A vivid and atmospheric read - her voice got inside my head while I was reading and I'm still living with it. It feels very timely, but also timeless. ― Tracey MacLeod

Captivating. Obsessed. ― Erchen Chang

A seductive, ballsy modern-day Jilly Cooper.
An intoxicatingly fun, unswervingly honest coming of age story that makes you greedy for every page.
A disarmingly frank tale of one girl's insatiable lust for life

― Thomasina Myers

Absolutely moreish. I devoured every page. ― Farrah Storr

Slutty manages to capture the seesaw that is hospitality and life within it. Her writing both demystifies the kitchen and sees the twisted glamour in it. At once vulnerable and brazen. It's excellent, it's sexy, it's a great romp of a read. ― Anna Tobias

Ms Cheff's new memoir offers a hedonistic glimpse into her life in the capital's gastronomical underbelly and is filled to the brim with fleshy, delectable sexual tales and unexpectedly sage romantic insights. -- Evening Standard ― Saskia Kemsley

Food. Sex. Great writing. It should come as no surprise that I f*cking loved this book. ― Flora Gill

Amazing writing, laugh out loud funny, filthy, delicious, relatable, like a Netflix series that you don't want to end and when it ends you feel bereaved and immediately Google if the next series has been commissioned. In fact, I hope this does become a Netflix series, please. ― Olia Hercules

About the Author

Slutty Cheff writes anonymously about sex, food and being a woman in the restaurant world. She first started writing on her @sluttycheff Instagram account, where she posted stories anonymously while cooking full time in London restaurants. She now has her own column in British Vogue, and has also written for the Sunday Times and been interviewed by the Financial Times, the Evening Standard and Interview magazine.