Omelette: Food, Love, Chaos and Other Conversations

by Jessie Ware

Sunday Telegraph's FIVE BEST BOOKS FOR FOODIES this Christmas - 'a must read... packed full of nostalgic food memories, weaving in family, friendship and love.'

"Are you hungry darling, shall I make you an omelette?"

My mother's omelettes are slightly overdone but always generous in cheese and well-seasoned. My omelettes are just the same, though more often slightly underdone and less carefully considered. And like my stories, they come in many forms. You might get one late at night, after a little too much wine and alongside a little too much information. I might spend a long time on one that's just a touch extravagant. And many are for the people I care about most, thrown together and with more cheese than is strictly necessary.

Collected here are things I've done, things I've seen, things I've thought, and most importantly, things I've tasted. They're slices of parts of my life. Call them omelettes, if you like. I hope you enjoy them.

'Jessie's life seems to have seamlessly brought her forth on a magic carpet of food, peppered by lots and lots of laughs. Her stories are a joy to read, although probably not as much fun as they are to live. Deliciously entertaining'. - Yotam Ottolenghi

'Gobbled this up in 90 minutes. A dreamy food memoir which is stuffed full of warmth and feeling and fun. If you love Table Manners you'll adore this book by Jessie Ware. Now I'm gagging for some hot buttered toast.' - Bella Mackie

'Love it, laughed cried in parts.... I so enjoyed reading about Jessie's life through food .... Childbirth and Bolognese forever imprinted on my mind.' - Angela Hartnett
'Joie de vivre is the bass note throughout the pages of Omelette' - Harper's Bazaar
'A delicious fusion of memoir and ode to food.' - Grazia
'A charming and funny memoir ... you want to eat everything she describes' - Daily Mail
'A must read' - Stella Magazine
'A great one for foodies who live for nostalgia' - GQ
'A charming and funny memoir' - Irish Daily Mail
'A love letter to friends, first loves, faith and family, but most importantly - to food' - Reaction

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Audiobook, Contemporary, Food and Drink

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 10, 2021

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Jessie Ware fan, from her music to her podcast, I was very excited to read her ‘foodoir’. It’s a short but sweet read made up of very short vignettes, stories of love, family and career centring around food, from different ingredients to international cuisines. Warm and comforting, reminded me a lot of Claudia Winkleman’s book which I also read recently.

[Helana Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stop telling me Felix was in the Maccabees

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Guys did you know that Jessie Ware has lots of famous friends ?!

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy enjoyable read. However the pretentious name dropping and obvious rich lifestyle brought it down.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omelette is, by Jessie Ware’s own admission, a reluctant ‘foodoir’ (a memoir about food memories). It is however so much more than a book about food. It is a sparky, warm and throughly engaging set of vignettes which are loosely bound together by meals and ingredients, but more richly united with the family and friends who appear.

The recollections are diverse. From spag-bol to her father-in-laws recipe, to dinner (with copious amounts of Whispering Angel) at Chateau Marmont with an old temping pal (now mega selling author) and back via M&S curry at her grandmas. The book is perceptive and the prose flows easily. It feels a little like Grace Dent’s fantastic Hungry but based in the 90s (rather than the 70s) and a lot more middle-class.

Full of anecdotes and with plenty of nods to the wider Ware family that will thrill fans of Jessie’s podcast Table Manners. This is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thanks to Hodder Books and Netgalley for the advance copy.

[Mads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, easy and breezy read for lovers of food. Some poignant moment, but also some filler and fluff, with a dash of name dropping.

[Kate Batley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super easy light hearted read. Don’t recommend reading before bed unless u want to contemplate getting out of bed for snacks

[Nora Suntken · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I might actively kind of dislike Jessie Ware as a person. I saw this at the library the other day in the nonfiction section and picked it up because I like a few of her songs. Similarly to Marina, though, that didn’t translate to the written word. Half of this book was just an excuse to name drop as many celebrities as possible and the other half was honestly pretty uninteresting anecdotes about how interesting she is. Idk maybe I was just in a mood while reading this and feel incredibly uninterested in fun things wealthy celebrities are doing (for example, summering in Greece for 30+ years?!!!). Some stories were better than others, but I generally left this read with a worse impression of the author than I started. She’s a decent writer though.

[Ellen Fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big Jessie Ware fan and I absolutely loved this book. I listened to the audiobook and I really enjoyed listening to all her wonderful food memories from her life. Brilliant

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

well lets just say i love jessie as a popstar and not so much a memoirist

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've listened to the Table Manners podcast a few times on the recommendation of my daughter and liked it very much. I enjoyed this gallop through Ware's personal food memories. I liked the fact it wasn't all fancy food in hard to get to restaurants and I always enjoy people who remember their lives through the food they've eaten in the places they've been to. It's a little on the short side and is more like a collection of essays than anything else, but none the worse for it. I could have done with more, and perhaps a little more cohesion, but it was an enjoyable read.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like I read a different book to others in here as I just did not understand or connect with this on many levels. I don’t know of the author so that really doesn’t help. It was a book club pick so sometimes we just get matched with books that aren’t for us.

The premise was great, a really good idea for a novel telling your memoir around different foodie experiences. However, some of these experiences were things like eating toast, having some nice white bread round a school friend’s house, going to EAT or NANDOS. It felt like the author was trying to attribute something deep and meaningful to very ordinary foods, which is fine but… it needs to be done well to be able to pull it off.. Then there was the issue that the stories didn’t always go anywhere- like meeting a friend for a drink in a hotel bar. She enjoyed the drink, the friend is E.L. James and then the story ends. So that page was just to tell me that you know E.L.James? Or did I miss something? Like I said, I just didn’t connect with it at all and there was far too much name-dropping at the expense of actually writing stories.

The recipes also made no sense to me. A recipe for cream on ice-cream? For sardines on toast? For trifle using custard powder? I have no idea what to do with these or what they are doing in a foodie book. I definitely missed the point on this one!

Would recommend for fans of the author as it gives some nice little insights into her upbringing and her personality really comes through. Additionally her podcast is highly recommended and I can definitely see how this kind of work presents well in a podcast format so that would be worth checking out. I also recommend it as a book club pick because we had an interesting discussion and some in the group scored high, some very low. It’s a polarising one!

[Katie Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really enjoyed this book. It’s really a memoir told through food. From white bread enjoyed with a schoolfriend to the perfect spaghetti bolognese, that first G&T on a plane to a home-cooked Omelette. I love the way Jessie weaves in memories of family, falling in love, friendship and travel with some of her most memorable meals. It made me nostalgic and thinking of my own food memories from years gone by. I really love the Table Manners podcast Jessie and her mum Lennie have created and this book feels like an extension of that. A wonderful, nostalgic read. Thank you NetGalley and Hodder Studio for the opportunity to review.

[Sandrine V · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a funny and clever book! In Omelette, Jessie Ware writes about memorable food moments (basically it’s a memoir told through food) and shares recipes that have influenced her life. I really enjoyed reading this, especially as I’ve listened to a few episodes of the Table Manners podcast. The best parts for me were her travel anecdotes and her life advice list. Everything felt relatable: she talks about a wide variety of foods, from oysters to bolognese, natural wine and everything in between.

[Alice 🕸 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't love this as much as I wanted to. I love food memoirs - I love food - and I love Table Manners with Jessie Ware. To be honest, Jessie comes across as warm and lovely and someone who is an absolute joy to be around. I enjoyed her stories and this felt fun and frivolous. It made me long to go on holiday. However, this collection just didn't feel cohesive enough. The stories ended abruptly or I didn't really see the link the theme that supposedly they all fell under. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't read again.

[Charli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big revelations - childhood friends w Maccabees Felix and wildest moments written about a food fight

Jessie is a star

[Gabby Humphreys · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was consumed only in a vest and knickers and during the last 24 hours. You may be questioning if this is a crisis, but it’s actually the opposite. Reading in silence, or with a background of generous Manchester rain, usually with knickers only on my bottom half, is my idea of “self care”.

There are certain books which fit with this plan perfectly. Those that are nostalgic, those that are personal. Those that are about family and friendship and some great and some not so great memories.

And that, reader, is why I have devoured Omlette.

In this, Jessie Ware, yes, as in superstar singer and podcast host Jessie Ware, details her experiences with food and how it has tied her life together. As this is Jessie Ware, I must say that some things felt ridiculously lavish. For example, I haven’t eaten an oyster. Similarly, there were some things I had little knowledge on, like Jewish traditional food. Oh there’s also talk of meeting the Beckham family.

Despite this, Jessie also managed to signal some deeply buried memories like trifle and my grandma and I’s love for baking, from which I gained a title of the pudding queen. Fake guylain choc shells from Lidl, that strange gold flecky, cinnamonny alcohol, goldschläger, which you whispered about as teens, and the other person’s fluffy white bread packed lunch that you eyed up. All the other bad drinks, or dangerously good drinks, the traditional nandos, and the even more traditional Sunday roast which you were always regrettably rude about as a child.

This paper omelette was DELICIOUS. For some I imagine that it’ll be nothing special, but for others, like me, it’ll be a treasure chest of unlocked memories and comfort. Bloody lovely. Thanks for what feels like a good brew and knee squeeze, Jessie.

[Jacob Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been a fan of Jessie Ware since I stumbled across her song Strangest Feeling and decided to blog about it as a teen in 2011.

Decided to give this reluctantly-described (by Jessie herself) food-oir a read during the heat of the summer, after finding it for 50p at a charity shop in Bangor.

It’s a mostly light read that describes pivotal memories of Jessie’s life through memories of food; from love and friendship, to heavier topics such as a post-natal depression and difficult family dynamics. However it never feels weighed down by the more serious topics, as Jessie’s wit and humour comes across in print just as well as during her concerts/music/podcast.

The book perhaps ended a bit abruptly, but all-in-all this was a funny yet reflective read that never overstayed its welcome.

[Ceyrone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have become a huge fan of Jessie Ware, after the release of her last album, What’s your pleasure?, which is a perfect album and I am also a fan of her podcast. I loved this, it made me nostalgic and think about the fond memories, and the bad that involve food. I love the way Jessie weaves in memories of family, falling in love, friendship and travel with some of her most memorable meals. Her ability to remember the meals that she had is quite impressive. Also like the idea of “live to eat, not eat to live” I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I did have to skim over a section of this book towards the end that didn’t really speak to me. This foodoir was a pretty good read.

[Josh Bokor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just like the breakfast dish this book is named after, Jessie Ware's "Omelette" is light, fluffy, and delicious. The British pop singer details her love of food and how food connects people and helps build relationships, memories, and bonding. She shares short stories and experiences from her life that can be hilarious, heartwarming, and also heartbreaking at points. I also really commend Jessie for touching on numerous difficult points in her life and the section where she writes about embracing her Jewish heritage and standing against antisemitism is very touching. This book was in fact so fun, breezy and easy to digest that I finished it in one day (a rarity for me). I wish it was a bit longer but like all omelettes, they're consumed graciously and quickly.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve loved Jessie Ware ever since my best friend Emma introduced me to her, so when I found out she had written a book I was thrilled - and even better a food memoir.

This book was a very pleasant and easy read. I love the way Jessie writes about food, the celebration of it. This book will make you chuckle, it feels so very warm as well.

Omelette has taught me that food is important and it is to be cherished

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jessie Ware is one of the only celebs I genuinely like these days, so reading this was a treat! However: do not read this delicious book on an empty stomach like me… you will want to eat absolutely everything in sight!

[Esther Batt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this and I love Jessie Ware. Such a sweet book about all the memories that come with food.

(forgot about this audiobook and finished it off over some Christmas dog walks so pls don’t look at the dates started and finished)

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

love love loved it!

[Elspeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continue to have a lot of time for Jessie. This series of snap shots into her life doesn't shy away from wobbles but also is full of being able to not take herself too seriously.

[Luis Vallejo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Librito lleno de anécdotas y vivencias a través de la comida. Amaba a Jesse antes, pero ahora la quiero más. Se lee rápido y algunas anécdotas te dejan con la boca abierta. Muy recomendable si quieres leer algo ligero.

[peter :D · Rating 5 out of 5]

we all know i love a foodoir (or whatever the hell theyre called) so much escapism in a book!!! it was v nice to live in jessies world for a bit :)

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly too much name dropping and too little food for what I wanted it to be

[Emma Tissot · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Lil

[Rebecca Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did not expect to like this books as much as i did, super comfy read