Extra Sauce: The Good, the Bad, and the Onions

by Zahra Tangorra

A raw and raucous memoir from chef and writer Zahra Tangorra about the great meals and great loves of her life, reflecting on family, friendship, grief, and the solace that can be found through food

Extra sauce is how I like my pizza and also how I fall in love. Extra sauce is for sopping, dunking, and licking off your plate. Licking off your fingers. It is a tiny demand for freedom and hedonism. Life has told you this is the amount of joy you get, and you That is simply not enough.

At twenty-two years old, Zahra Tangorra was trying on adulthood and attempting to find herself when a harrowing near-death experience stopped her in her tracks. It felt like a twisted version of a second chance. Who am I? she asked herself. What do I love? The answers started coming to Stuffed shells and giant meatballs at J&J’s, the Italian red sauce joint of her Long Island childhood. Her mother’s chocolate mousse pie and her father’s sweet and savory pea soup. The people, places, and experiences that made her her, the relationships both loving and fraught—they were all, for better and sometimes worse, inextricably bound up with food.

In this memoir that celebrates both the delicious and the messy in life, Zahra reckons with the adrenaline-filled highs and devastating lows of opening cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant Brucie and then closing it at the height of its popularity. From cooking her father his last meal and the unexpected yet beautiful things she found at the bottom of her grief to the relationships she couldn’t save through cooking, like her fractured family and the lover she had to leave in Tuscany, Zahra writes about the immense courage it takes to allow ourselves to be loved, extra sauce and all.

Told with uproarious humor and tremendous insight, Extra Sauce is for anyone who yearns to embrace their whole self, who loves with abandon, and who eats with gusto.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Food, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Cooking, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

Published April 14, 2026

Reviews

[Jackie Sunday]

Zahra Tangorra buys fresh ingredients and then cooks savory dishes. That’s what she’s known for and one might guess it’s what this book is about. But there’s so much more: her personal thoughts of those close to her heart -- mom, dad, brother, neighbors and many friends.

It took a while to know what she was thinking. It was as though she was sitting with her best friend revealing everything that was on her mind at the moment. It was like an emotional response with ebbs and flows. She unveiled that her life hasn’t been easy with feelings of being lonely and sad.

Yet, what a life! At 24, she moved from NY to France to learn about the rich traditions of pastries. Two years later, she owned a restaurant in NYC which got rave reviews. Sadly, she admitted that there was much more to learn about the business and it closed six years later. But food was in her soul and she started a Brooklyn take-out place a few years later specializing in lasagna. It was so popular that it appeared on an episode of The Martha Stewart Show.

At the end of each chapter, recipes were included: Chicken Francese, Bouillabaisse, potato salad and pea soup along with everyone’s favorites spaghetti and lasagna with mouthwatering marinara sauces. And then there’s the decadent deserts: apple strudel, carrot cake and chocolate mousse pie. I am not someone who cooks regularly but with its clear directions, I could follow the steps. I just wish there were photos.

Everyone knows that fresh food that is wonderfully prepared and presented can be the best part of our day. But so is the experience of love in various forms. Zahra Tangorra wrote about both but she had a lot of disappointments along the way. Her memoir revealed her deepest personal thoughts from her ups and downs. In the Acknowledgments, I was pleased to see that she added a special thanks at the end to her readers – which is rare. It made me smile.

My thanks to The Dial Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of April 14, 2026. The views I share are my own.

[Denise Ruttan]

I find reviews of memoirs hard to write since it feels like you're judging a person's life. This chef-author has indeed led an interesting life and I loved her vivid, sassy writing style. But from the synopsis I was expecting the female chef's version of Kitchen Confidential, covering her time owning Brucie's. But that was only a small part of the book. Instead I felt as if I had a front row seat to her therapy sessions resolving her complicated relationship with her parents, and that I did not find interesting even if I like stories about complicated family dynamics.

Each chapter is based around recipes of dishes that have made an impact on the author's life. We get the bus crash that almost took her life, her aborted Eat Pray Love moment in Italy, her grief over losing her father, and Brucie's gets a short chapter, et cetera. It read like a love letter to New York and how food wove a path through their family's history.

But it felt as if the author was too painfully aware that her friends and family would be reading this and she tried too hard to get defensive about any possible criticism about her choices. Each time she was about to come up with a dark, gritty truth, it would be knocked down by a bland aphorism.

I did find this fun to read and I loved the way the recipes were written. I guess I was just hoping for a bit more extra sauce and a narrower scope.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Georgia]

zahra's ethos of 'extra sauce' definitely applies to her writing style- it's big, vivacious, and sometimes a little bit too much- but you can tell she's being very true to herself and damn if I don't want to taste some of her lasagna. brucie sounds like exactly the kind of restaurant I would've loved to roll up to. the way she writes about food and restaurant life is extremely fun, but it actually didn't make up as much as the narrative as i expected. i found her musings on her relationship with her mother unexpectedly moving and that's something that'll linger with me

[cynthia]

I wanted to like this so badly! It started so strong! I thought there were too many moments of “ok get ready for me to say something profound” when I really wanted to explore at the ins and outs of her life. But maybe that’s on me for not knowing anything about the person I’m reading the memoir of

[Michelle W. - Sweaters & Stilettos]

Before I finished this book, I was very unhappy reading it. I appreciate the e-arc from NetGalley and the publisher, but this memoir was not for me. I don’t like rating books poorly. I know it takes a lot of time and effort to get a book into the world. Moreover, when it is someone’s life and they are sharing the deepest wounds of that life, it feels rude to say, “I didn’t enjoy this”.

Yet, I didn’t enjoy reading this memoir. The descriptions are lovely; a bit too much but it’s on brand for a book titled “Extra Sauce”. I had never heard of the author or her restaurants, I just like memoirs and books about food. The recipes were a lovely addition.

The whole book to me was centered on the author’s tragic accident. It is tragic. It is an accident. But, then she is forever the victim because of this.

I feel badly for her. I don’t love reading her obviously therapy-speak “I am the victim, but I will not be the victim” descriptions of her traumas over and over and over again. While that is admirable, and she does talk about taking ownership of her mistakes, it feels like talk and not belief. It doesn’t ring true.

Another problem is that constantly adding layers of unnecessary description made me close this book way sooner than I ought to have been. It feels like slogging through mud because she can’t accept her wins and her version of accepting her losses sounds disingenuous and rehearsed. So now I believe she is a perpetual victim in her own head and I feel badly about it because she details her trauma about feeling worthless. No one is benefiting from this story.

I thought the point of memoirs was that someone had a rough experience and got through it and can now share their success so the rest of us can maybe learn and grow too?

I like hearing about how people overcame their negatives. I have no issue with therapy. This book just felt pre-mature, not because there wasn’t a ton of story. The author didn’t seem emotionally ready to share. It’s written well.

I am making a lot of assumptions, but I did get this book via NetGalley and I am leaving a review. I didn’t enjoy the story. I hope someone will.

[SueK]

If Zahra Tangorra’s cooking is as lush and evocative as her writing, I hope I get to experience it someday. This memoir feels open, honest, and full of life - almost to the extreme. The chapter on Tangorra’s behavior as the force behind the restaurant Brucie almost felt like a loud public apology to the staff who supported her. She clearly is all in no matter what she does - love, cook, loss, taste. More than any other chapter, the one that moved me was the love letter to her neighborhood, her community, and the way we can all reach out in small ways and make a big difference. The other thing I appreciate is the inclusion of recipes that are approachable and doable, and the realization that this particular chef can cook the exotic, and indulge in mundane comfort food. This gave a realness to the entire story.

My entire reason for holding to four stars is my feeling that the introvert me, would be a little uncomfortable or overwhelmed with the lushness (and neediness?) of Tangorra, if we ever met in person.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher (Dial) for the ARC ebook. Opinions are my own.

[Leila]

I really hope people find this book, it deserves so much love!!! For lovers of food and girlies with big feelings.

[Catie DeTullio]

Stunning. Gorgeously written and the only reason I didn’t ball my eyes out at the end was because I was in a public place not really meant for ugly crying.

What a way to discuss life and food. a book I’ll see myself coming back to time and time again when trying to find the words and obviously because I need to make these meatballs

[Geekia]

Move over, Eat, Pray, Love. I think I’ve found my new favorite memoir.

Extra Sauce is a love letter to New York, to food, to family, to complicated people, to grief, to love, and to the messy business of figuring out who you are. It is funny, heartbreaking, nostalgic, brutally honest, occasionally jaw-dropping, and punctuated by food in all its glorious, messy, deeply personal forms.

“Good food is not ubiquitous, it is emotional and highly personal.”

Hear, hear.

I came into this completely blind. I knew nothing about Zahra Tangorra. I added it to my TBR because I love food, I love memoirs, and, frankly, I loved the cover. I did not realize I was signing up for a memoir-slash-cookbook-slash-family saga with a few plot twists thrown in for good measure.

And what a meal this turned out to be.

I found myself laughing out loud and moments when I was absolutely wrecked. The ghost story she tells after her father’s death was haunting. Her memories of her family were tender and painful. Her references to the pop culture of my time made me ridiculously nostalgic. And Brucie had me thinking, Ummm… the way she would snap at her crew in the kitchen, yikes!

The tagliatelle section made me uncomfortable. The lying itself wasn’t even the most unsettling part. It was realizing how naturally lying had become a defense mechanism for her, something she could reach for to get out of a sticky situation or perhaps make a culinary creation seem a little more impressive. But being the captain of the ship means your crew has to trust you. You can’t turn into a kraken in the kitchen and expect everyone to sail happily along.

So yes, I had thoughts.

But my heart really broke for her father, John Tangorra.

This man was an extraordinary cook and pastry chef. Zahra describes his food with such high reverence that it makes you want to reach through the pages and taste it yourself. His carrot cake. His chocolate chip cookies. His walnut torte. His coffee cake. His potato salad. The way she describes his cooking and baking makes everything sound almost otherworldly, toe-curlingly, eye-rollingly delicious.

Zahra calls him a “savant in the kitchen,” and that description feels exactly right.

What makes his story so painful is that a man with his creative and culinary gift eventually lost his way. Zahra describes his misguided attempt to become ordinary, regular, when he seemed born to live a wildly creative life. I loved how highly she wrote of him, not simply as her father, but as an artist and a gifted chef whose work deserved to be celebrated.

I found myself wishing he had been able to hold on to that courage.

While I teared up a little when Zahra spoke to her crew and customers on the last night of Brucie, John’s story gave the entire memoir another layer of heartbreak for me. Closing the restaurant and the end of his marriage were devastating, but what haunted me most was the sense of a man losing faith in his own extraordinary gifts.

And oh my gosh, the recipes!

I genuinely did not know this book came with recipes, so when Zahra started talking about her father’s carrot cake, I became increasingly distressed because the chapter wasn’t called “Carrot Cake” and I thought I was going to have to search the ends of the earth for this recipe. I love carrot cake. Well, at least my version of it. I developed my own recipe after doing a little research through cookbooks, my cousin’s personal cookbook, and online recipes, then reading through the comments and reviews before bake-testing several batches until I landed on the version my palate loved. And mine is always sans the cream cheese frosting because, apparently, I have strong opinions about what belongs on my carrot cake.

Lo and behold, there it was at the end of the chapter.

JOY.

Then she mentioned her father’s legendary chocolate chip cookie, his divine walnut torte, and a COFFEE CAKE that could bring you to your knees.

Ma’am.

I have enough problems.

Now I have sleepless nights wondering about these desserts.

The recipe for John’s Carrot Cake immediately made this a five-star book. Add Coffee Butter and I would like to formally request a sixth star.

I will honor John by making his potato salad and baking his famous carrot cake.

See what she did? She fed me stories until I was emotionally invested in people I had never met, then casually handed me recipes and sent me into the kitchen.

This memoir has so much appetite in it, in every sense of the word. It explores love, loneliness, ambition, failure, family, grief, identity, and the complicated ways we try to find connection. Food is woven through all of it, as comfort, as memory, as a source of conflict, and as the purest expression of love.

Underneath all that food and all those tangled stories is a woman learning what it means to live honestly and to choose a life that feels like her own.

“There is a distinct power in loving yourself enough to do something that makes you lonely.”

That line hit me.

Extra Sauce made me laugh, made me ache, made me nostalgic, made me hungry, and made me seriously consider whether I need a separate notebook for all the recipes I apparently now need to make.

Five stars.

Six if we’re counting the Coffee Butter.

[Margie Dewind]

Good writing can make up for a boring life. This book is not well written, and the author's life is not interesting.
My biggest criticism of the book is the author's decision to include the following sentence: "The deer ran off into the night, the front bumper of the rental was dented, and the pot of beans that David had placed on the backseat had exploded its leftover contents as if the Challenger had been made of cannellinis." This is one of the most tasteless things I've read in a book in years (maybe ever).

[Sue Em]

3.5⭐
Interesting memoir, but over packed with details that cumulatively wore me down. From the bus accident beginning until the restaurant opened, I struggled. After that, I enjoyed reading about the restaurant, the dishes and the folks involved. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

[Jen R]

4.5 stars. What a life and it's really only just begun.

[Ayah]

Food, grief & a lot of gratitude <3

[Genene]

When I started Extra Sauce, I was like, wow, this writing. Every beautiful sentence flys off the page or is perfected to make it seem so. And it's one after another. Like you can't believe your luck as a reader. But it's also like eating a stunning dish from your favorite restaurant only to become bored by its perfection. At some point, I skipped paragraphs because her telling was brilliant three pages earlier but the scene stayed too long. Still, I believe Zahra Tangorra's accident—you'll learn about it in the first chapter—rebirthed her as a writer, not the restauranteur or chef her friend Success wants you to believe. Her honest recounting of a messy life is masterful.

Tangorra also knows how to capture an Italian accent or way of doing or saying something that's so prescient it hurts. Without warning, I'd find myself in my grandmother's forgotten kitchen of cutlets or inside a loud family party with dynamics I could not know as a kid but see so clearly now. Extra Sauce includes warm recipes from Tangorra's beloved NYC Brucie restaurant; they are born of love and grief. She also puts in writing family recipes her divorced parents never wrote down but everyone knew from their own restaurant Lovin Oven. They, too, do not disappoint. Kind of like my own food and family favorites too. Extra Sauce is a delicious memoir of an unfinished life given to you with grace and gratitude and a whole lot of grit.

[Kathleen Luckey]

This book spoke to my soul; as a foodie ; fellow New York and cynic. Zahra’s accounts or her life her recipes and what made her into who she is was everything I needed to keep reading . Thank you for this diversion I so needed.

[Emily]

I laughed, I cried, I got really hungry.

[Liz]

4.25

If you need a delicious, juicy, searing look at a life filled with the most incredible sounding foods, this is for you!

Zahra grew up with a family of foodies. When her life takes a near death turn, she focuses her energy on bringing her incredible taste and passion for feeding others to insatiable crowds in Brooklyn, NY. The book focuses on the authors family, her heartbreaks, triumphs and failures and drenches it all in humor and love.

So many thoughts and feelings while reading this mostly in my belly because every dish the author describes sounds unbelievable. My Gen X heart also related to so much of Zahra navigating life in Long Island and New York in her youth and beyond. She’s the kind of woman who garners girl crushes and for good reason; she’s got that charisma that’s both warm and cool and it comes across with ease in her narration. That’s another thing, the narration was amazing! Honestly, sometimes an author narrating can be so cringe but this was chefs kiss! I literally listened in one day. It was perfection for a long day to help me unwind. Off to pretend I know how to actually cook anything now…🍕🌮🥓🍜

[Chad Griffith]

I only put this book down once, and that was to make the tomato butter recipe. From the very first chapter, I was completely captivated, and by the final pages, I was in tears. Extra Sauce is an honest, vulnerable, and deeply wise.

[Lily]

There’s a kind of dichotomy to Tangorra’s writing. When she really gets going, she has a genuine talent for pulling the reader into visceral experiences and emotions. The two chapters talking about Brucie are particularly good at this. I laughed out loud at Tangorra’s description of the molten octopus disaster dish. The chapter chronicling her love affair with an Australian man in Italy genuinely hooked around my heart. And I’m not even much of a romantic.

But then, there are the times Tangorra gets too far into her head. Those are the times I find her telling-not-showing her emotions. Saying, perhaps, that she felt heartbroken instead of illustrating it. And especially early on, before we get to know her as our narrator, this feels extremely flat and even melodramatic. She’s describing those really extreme feelings, sometimes even using what I call “therapy speak” to do it, without really letting us in to show her experience or the steps of how she got there.

In particular, I noticed her doing this a lot more with negative emotions or incidents. For instance, she straight-up names some personality disorders to describe her father. And she alludes to a couple of things he said or did, which, okay, yeah, I could see it. But she doesn’t go deep in describing any of those. Now, to be clear, it’s not that I disbelieve her, but because she doesn’t convey her negative experience, the extreme terms read, again, melodramatic and flat.

I can understand the hesitation to get too raw in the details. These are real people Tangorra is describing, and ones she often has a complicated, multi-faceted relationship with. On the other hand, going deep on the bad as well as the good is the job of a memoir. And she doesn’t mince words in her declaratives. It’s clear from Tangorra’s text she wants to delve into the negatives as well as her positives. Her depression, her loneliness, some of her self-destructive tendencies. But something in her hesitates.

So my impression overall is that of a gifted storyteller who sometimes gets in her own way. Which almost feels thematically appropriate. And I will say again, what she’s trying to do is not easy. What she flounders at, most of us would flounder at. It’s hard. But as a reader, it’s still my job to notice.

What tips my rating over from three stars back to four, however, are Tangorra’s recipes. Informal, easy to parse, and clearly well-practiced, these recipes absolutely showcase love as the not-so-secret ingredient. And they are freaking delicious! It helps that Tangorra and I seem to have similar palates. I, too, think that “too much lemon juice” is just the right amount of lemon juice. Actually, let’s add a little more, just to be on the safe side. If I had lived in New York in the ‘teens and could afford it, I would have loved being a Brucie regular.

And at the end of the book, I’m left with the impression of an interesting, passionate woman. I’m curious about what Tangorra will do next, and hope to see more writing from her as well as more cooking. So those four stars stand.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions within are my own.

[Laurie]

When Zahra Tangorra, the author of the wonderful EXTRA SAUCE, gave a toast at her friend’s wedding, she ended it by simply saying, “I hope you have the best time.” Well, after finishing this memoir with recipes, I can unequivocally say that I, too, “had the best time.” She hooked me right away when talking about “extra sauce.” I immediately related because, like Ms. Tangorra (and her mother), I also like extra sauce or extra dressing on pizza, pasta, salads, you name it. But that’s just part of it. Extra sauce is also, per Ms. Tangorra, “a tiny demand for freedom and hedonism. Life has told you this is the amount of joy you get, and you say: That is simply not enough.” You need that extra sauce to dunk or sop up the sauce and the joys of life!

At 26, Ms. Tangorra opened up her restaurant, Brucie, to rave reviews, even though she had almost no experience working in restaurants, much less running one. The menu changed nightly, and her descriptions of how she and her team created each meal are both mouth-watering and fascinating because of the combinations they chose. Her passion for food comes through so clearly. I felt I had a front seat (but not on one of her extremely uncomfortable bar stools) to the creative process! Nearly everything she created was a success, except for one dish, and the way she describes that fiasco was, for me, laugh-out-loud hilarious. Once again, thanks to her writing, I felt I was there witnessing everything.

However, this book is way more than fabulous food descriptions and recipes. It’s about herself, her journey, love in all its forms, and some of the most important people and relationships who have come into, and gone out of her life: her parents (who were cooks/chefs), lovers, friends, neighbors, employees and collaborators. It’s a story about regrets and growth, sometimes recounted in heartbreaking detail. During this rollercoaster ride, the one through line is food, and how it also was such an important part of these relationships.

The words and stories are delicious, as are the recipes that accompany many of the chapters: marinara sauce, bouillabaisse, her dad’s potato salad, pea soup, and chocolate mousse pie, among others. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and The Dial Press for the opportunity to read the advanced copy. This book is scheduled to be released on April 14, 2026. I have voluntarily provided this review, and all thoughts are my own.

[Amy]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️My review: Zahra is very interesting. She is a risk taker, an adventurer, and a product of a not perfect childhood. She is a chef but never trained professionally. She opened a restaurant in NYC (Brucie) that was a huge hit in the early 2000's. Then she closed it because as we know, the restaurant business is ROUGH. Different chapters of her life are named after dishes and each chapter ends with a huge recipe. (I need to have someone make some of these for me).
Zahra is definitely someone to hang out with, she would entertain everyone and anyone. There were absolute funny and heartbreaking moments and fun pop culture references. The book did drag though. It was very train of thought which at times I enjoyed. Other times it labored on and I got lost.
But Zahra is right. Food is comfort and life and love. ‘Your last meal is not only your favorite food, it is the most important one. What would you eat to feel happy one last time? What edible matter made you feel love in your life? How did it make you love back, and who, and where were you when this all happened? We think of a last meal as being served to those who are tragically on death row. What could you eat in your final moments with a beating heart that could bring you back to the best times, the times before everything became such a mess? Almost everyone has a favorite food no matter how complicated this life has been. Something that transports them to a moment of unencumbered pleasure.’

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advance digital copy. These opinions are my own.

[charmette.books]

Extra Sauce is a memoir written by Zahra Tangorra, renowned chef of the popular Brooklyn restaurant, Brucie. The book opens with a terrible bus accident happening to Tangorra, who then questions her path in life as she heals from her injuries. She embarks on many adventures, from Italy to France to Brooklyn, and takes the reader along for a wild ride. The chapters are interspersed with her family recipes, which are simply laid out and accessible, with everyday ingredients. Her writing is very wordy, and sometimes felt repetitive, so I liked this memoir less than others I have read by famous chefs.

Tangorra had a complicated relationship with her parents growing up, and she explains many different memories with them through the recipes she selects for this book. Honestly, the recipes were my favorite part of her story. I am planning to try the chicken francese and homemade marinara sauce recipes first, and the chocolate mousse pie is on my list too. I had a harder time sifting through her writing and adventures to really form a clear picture of who she is. In many ways, her life felt as chaotic as her writing. While I felt a lot of sympathy for her, and the struggles she has overcome, the book did not really resonate with me.

Thank you to the Dial Press/Random House Publishing and NetGalley for an advance reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Lily]

In this thought-provoking and food-related biography, Zahra Tangorra delves into her life through the lens of a local Italian restaurant on Long Island she grew up going to with her family. Associating foods with people and memories, the book explores her relationships and experiences and how they shaped her into who she became. From opening and closing a cult-favorite restaurant and her grief over her father’s death, Tangorra offers thoughtful insights into the relationships people can and cannot save and the importance of having the courage to love at all. Entertaining, insightful, and emotional, readers will love the characters and details that bring her life to light, and the balance of seriousness and food keeps readers engaged with the narrative. The emotional tones are particularly well-handled, while the retrospective elements offer some advice to readers and highlight how food can be tied to people and memories. With its easy flow and engaging tone, readers will find this memoir to be readable and entertaining while the more complex tones balance the narrative out. Entertaining, reflective, and fascinating, readers will love this new memoir from Zahra Tangorra and her thoughts on the foods, places, and people that shaped her childhood and career.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House, and The Dial Press for the advance copy.

[Jan]

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about how Zahra presents herself in this memoir is her overwhelming need to be loved in a 'hey look at me way. 'The product of divorced parents who had trouble finding their own way, Zahra’s needs for love, acceptance, connection, and acknowledgement fuels her. (Who doesn’t want that??? But maybe with a dash of moderation…)

Everything she strives for is flavored with excess whether its expectation from friends, heaping bowls of pasta, or a five year chase of a man clearly not ready for her. She has accomplished a lot at her age to be sure. but that wounded girl inside the woman still seems alive and well.

At the beginning, I was mesmerized by her and found myself underlining her lush writing but I got tired and after a while lost patience with the many ways of saying the same thing. This book may appeal to someone who needs story such as hers, but I felt it required serious streamlining. One thing I will say is that the recipes she included do look wonderful and definitely worth trying. I have no doubt she is a fabulous chef.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Dial Press for the opportunity to read this advanced review copy and provide an honest review.

[Donna]

This book's title is fitting as Zahra Tangorra lives her life with "extra sauce" - throwing 0ut bold words and actions, cooking fiercely, and entertaining her readers/diners. Her writing is authentic and conversational, as if she is talking to her best friend, and she is quite the storyteller in addition to being a renowned chef and writer. Her story is not one of all sunshine and roses, but of struggles she has had personally and professionally which makes her readers what to keep going to see what unfolds next all the while knowing that in the end all will be well - or delicious!

A personal favorite of mine is when a chef not only talks about their creations, but also shares their recipes - and this book has several mouthwatering recipes included within its chapters. Having grown up with parents who loved baking, cooking, and tweaking recipes, Zahra is much like them - they are all creative, self-taught cooks/chefs. Unfortunately, none of them had a background in business and learned the hard way. She shares her own recipes like marinara sauce as well as spins on her mother's spanakopita and her father's maybe overly dense" carrot cake. Every recipe is mouth-watering and not overly complicated. I'm pretty sure I could smell the marinara cooking as I read the book!

[Terry]

I'm a big fan of memoirs, even those of people I know nothing about. Before starting "Extra Sauce", I had no idea who Zahra Tangorra was, but she reveals herself beautifully in her book. As the only child of divorced parents, Zahra felt terrible insecurity because her warring parents were not always able to give her the love she needed as they grappled with their own demons. Yet she found the moxie after a devastating accident to teach herself to cook and open her own, wildly popular restaurant at 26. I am in awe of people who have the guts to do things like that. After the closure of the restaurant, she continued to reinvent herself and even repaired her relationships with her parents.

I like that she included several of her recipes and that they all seem very accessible. You'll definitely feel hungry when reading this book!

Cooking is a love language, and preparing and eating good food involves all the senses. It is about family, friends, and memories, and Zahra openly shares those here.

I received an ARC ebook edition of this book from Netgalley and The Dial Press.

[Firetruckmama]

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, for which I thank them.

“Extra Sauce” is a memoir (with recipes) by Zahra Tangorra. I regard this book as a more modern version of Ruth Reichl’s “Tender at the Bone.” Tangorra seems to be a big emotion person - she feels passionately, she feels a lot, and she’s not afraid to admit it. This book felt like a love letter to NYC but also an exploration of what made her, her. Where Reichel’s book is written tightly, Tangorra’s book is a lot looser - I would have liked an editor to remove some of the extra words (though, possibly, that would take away what makes this book feel more like Tangorra herself). There are recipes and although I didn’t make any of them, they did look promising. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book - and for the most part I was interested (I did end up skimming a bit here and there, I’ll admit). If you know nothing about this chef (like me!) but something about the summary grabs your attention, I’d say pick up this book and give it a try.

[Traci Hoffe]

Fascinating book- expect to be hungry!
I wasn’t familiar with Zahra before reading this memoir. She is extremely candid in telling her stories, which span across topics from food, running a restaurant, complex family relationships, love, and neighbors. The memoir also is a love letter to Brooklyn and to Italy.
It wasn’t an easy, light read. It was sometimes hard to see Zahra constantly search for love and ruminate on her complicated relationship with her parents. It was also fascinating yet hard to read about the mistakes she made while running her restaurant Brucie’s. But the complexities were so fascinating and nuanced.
Prepare to also get very hungry when reading this book. You’d better believe I snapped multiple screenshots of recipes I plan to try! And I really wish I could have tasted her signature pasta dish from Brucie’s and her ZaZa lasagna!
Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

[Lisa Huppert]

At about the 30% mark if this memoir, I found myself absorbed in learning about Zahra and her journey. Her writing style at the start seemed aggressive to me, but I fell into her rhythm of metaphor use and by the end could appreciate her work. Creating connection to memory, community, family and love through food is not a new concept, but the manner in which she represented those connections felt authentic and fresh. I am from Long Island and NYC will always be “the city” to me no matter where I live. I enjoyed the references to familiar locations and would have been a regular at Brucie and Zaza if I had lived there. My favorite parts of the book were about Brucie and her struggle as a restaurant owner as well as her found purpose with Zaza.

The inclusion of her family recipes makes this book so special. I know I will Trey many of them for my family. I wish photos were included, but perhaps a cookbook is in the works?

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and The Dial Press for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jean]

A memoir that is as raw, rare, and as full of emotion as is the food she describes making in the restaurant and stand-up shop where she and a few of her former employees produced for Friday night pickups during Covid (even though she cannot say the word.) A horrible bus accident (when I read this, my first thought of artist Frida Kahlo who survived a tragic streetcar accident and reflected much of that pain through her paintings) and this would appear to be what happened to Zahra plus an unhappy childhood. This is a memoir that might appeal most to anyone who had a meal at her restaurant Brucie which she was able to open with proceeds from a settlement from the accident and zero restaurant experience. For someone who had to close her restaurant because, I am curious about the large debt owed for sales tax. The recipes she does provide are easy to follow and sound absolutely mouthwatering. However, I am exhausted after reading this memoir. Thanks to NetGalley and Dial Press for a digital ARC of this book; the opinions stated are totally my own.