Warn­ing: do not read this book while hun­gry! The food descrip­tions are scrump­tious, unique, and irre­sistible. Culi­nary exper­tise and inno­va­tion over­flow through the pages.

A gen­der-flipped retelling of the musi­cal My Fair Lady and its pre­de­ces­sor, the play Pyg­malion by George Bernard Shaw, My Fine Fel­low fol­lows the intense efforts of two young Eng­lish women, stu­dents at a culi­nary insti­tute called the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Culi­nar­ia Artis­ti­cus, to remold a scruffy young man sell­ing empanadas on the streets of 1830s Lon­don into a gen­tle­man food chef. One of the young women intends this trans­for­ma­tion to be her culi­nary school grad­u­a­tion project. Work­ing against the clock on upgrad­ing his cloth­ing, speech, man­ners, and food prep skills, they encounter chal­lenges both imag­ined and unex­pect­ed. Romance sweet­ens the air and adds an intox­i­cat­ing spice to every aspect of the book.

The char­ac­ters are delight­ful and the prej­u­dices, includ­ing anti­semitism, as well as the his­to­ry of the times, are as skill­ful­ly por­trayed as the instruc­tions for prop­er ways to cut straw­ber­ries and onions.

The author shares one recipe at the end of the sto­ry, as sweet and deli­cious as the book itself: choco­late coconut empanadas!