WELCOME HOME TO CUBA, FRANK DELGADO!
SOFRITO
by Phillippe Diederich
A Cuban-American travels to Havana searching for a secret recipe but instead finds love and the truth about his father. Turns out that Cuba binds Frank together the way a good sofrito binds the flavors of a Cuban dish. A mystery novel for foodies.
“Sofrito has the sweaty seduction of Havana’s streets and the warm spirit of its food.” —Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
“In this entertaining debut novel, Frank Delgado tries to save his failing restaurant by returning to Cuba, his dead father’s homeland, to get ahold of a top-secret chicken recipe. But there is more than delicious chicken at stake here. Food is the road home—geographically, emotionally, metaphorically. Peppered with cooking advice from chefs, ordinary folks, and celebrities including Fidel Castro himself (an advocate of pork), Phillipe Diederich’s Sofrito is a love letter to the deepest recesses of nostalgia’s heart.” —Cristina García, author of the King of Cuba and Dreaming in Cuban.
“A moveable feast full of folkloric flavors, comical rhythms and magic. One man's quest for the perfect spice leads him towards love for a woman and for his lost Cuba. In heaven, I know Oscar Hijuelos is smiling.” —Ernesto Quiñones, author of Bodega Dreams and Chango’s Fire.
Frank Delgado is no thief. He co-owns a failing Cuban restaurant in Manhattan's Upper East Side. The restaurant, like Frank, is rudderless. Lost. He decides he'll save the restaurant by traveling to Cuba to steal the legendary chicken recipe from the famed El Ajillo restaurant in Havana. The recipe is a state secret, so prized that no cook knows the whole recipe. But Frank's rationale is ironclad—Fidel stole the secret from his family, so he will steal it back. He will triumphantly bring that recipe back to Manhattan and turn his fortunes around. Frank has no interest in Cuba. His parents fled after the Revolution. His dead father spent his life erasing all traces of Cuba from his heart with barbeques, television, lawn mowing and alcohol. So Frank is not prepared for the real Cuba. Sure, he gets beat up and almost killed, the secret service threatens him, but in the midst of the chaos, he falls in love with a prostitute and the city, and he unwraps the heroic story of his parents' life. Cuba begins to bind Frank together, the way a good sofrito binds the flavors of a Cuban dish.
Asked why he wrote Sofrito, PHILLIPPE DIEDRICH replied:
“This book is culmination of dozens of trips to Cuba in the 1990s. I had been trying to write a novel, but did not have a story and kept having a lot of false starts. One day, things just clicked. The book came together. Since I had spent a lot of time in the streets of Havana, I had an idea that I would make that the setting. But when I was finished, I noticed there was a lot about the complicated feelings people have when they’re exiles. People from my generation—men and women, Latinos, who grew up in the country of exile of their parents—don’t have as much interest in the ‘old country.’ I was surprised to see all this come out in the manuscript.”
Born in the Dominican Republic, PHILLIPPE DIEDERICH was raised in Mexico City and Miami. His parents were kicked out of Haiti by the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier in 1963. He spent his youth listening to his parents and friends talking politics and nostalgically dreaming of the day they would return to Haiti. In 1980, the family moved to Miami, where they joined a community of exiles from all parts of Latin America. Diederich traveled repeatedly to Cuba as a photojournalist throughout the 1990s. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of South Florida and lives in Florida. This is his first novel.
Sofrito
978-1-941026-14-4, paper, $16.95
978-1-941026-15-1, ebook, $16.95
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales / Publishes August 25, 2015
by Phillippe DiederichA Cuban-American travels to Havana searching for a secret recipe but instead finds love and the truth about his father. Turns out that Cuba binds Frank together the way a good sofrito binds the flavors of a Cuban dish. A mystery novel for foodies.
“Sofrito has the sweaty seduction of Havana’s streets and the warm spirit of its food.” —Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
“In this entertaining debut novel, Frank Delgado tries to save his failing restaurant by returning to Cuba, his dead father’s homeland, to get ahold of a top-secret chicken recipe. But there is more than delicious chicken at stake here. Food is the road home—geographically, emotionally, metaphorically. Peppered with cooking advice from chefs, ordinary folks, and celebrities including Fidel Castro himself (an advocate of pork), Phillipe Diederich’s Sofrito is a love letter to the deepest recesses of nostalgia’s heart.” —Cristina García, author of the King of Cuba and Dreaming in Cuban.
“A moveable feast full of folkloric flavors, comical rhythms and magic. One man's quest for the perfect spice leads him towards love for a woman and for his lost Cuba. In heaven, I know Oscar Hijuelos is smiling.” —Ernesto Quiñones, author of Bodega Dreams and Chango’s Fire.
Frank Delgado is no thief. He co-owns a failing Cuban restaurant in Manhattan's Upper East Side. The restaurant, like Frank, is rudderless. Lost. He decides he'll save the restaurant by traveling to Cuba to steal the legendary chicken recipe from the famed El Ajillo restaurant in Havana. The recipe is a state secret, so prized that no cook knows the whole recipe. But Frank's rationale is ironclad—Fidel stole the secret from his family, so he will steal it back. He will triumphantly bring that recipe back to Manhattan and turn his fortunes around. Frank has no interest in Cuba. His parents fled after the Revolution. His dead father spent his life erasing all traces of Cuba from his heart with barbeques, television, lawn mowing and alcohol. So Frank is not prepared for the real Cuba. Sure, he gets beat up and almost killed, the secret service threatens him, but in the midst of the chaos, he falls in love with a prostitute and the city, and he unwraps the heroic story of his parents' life. Cuba begins to bind Frank together, the way a good sofrito binds the flavors of a Cuban dish.
Asked why he wrote Sofrito, PHILLIPPE DIEDRICH replied:
“This book is culmination of dozens of trips to Cuba in the 1990s. I had been trying to write a novel, but did not have a story and kept having a lot of false starts. One day, things just clicked. The book came together. Since I had spent a lot of time in the streets of Havana, I had an idea that I would make that the setting. But when I was finished, I noticed there was a lot about the complicated feelings people have when they’re exiles. People from my generation—men and women, Latinos, who grew up in the country of exile of their parents—don’t have as much interest in the ‘old country.’ I was surprised to see all this come out in the manuscript.”
Born in the Dominican Republic, PHILLIPPE DIEDERICH was raised in Mexico City and Miami. His parents were kicked out of Haiti by the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier in 1963. He spent his youth listening to his parents and friends talking politics and nostalgically dreaming of the day they would return to Haiti. In 1980, the family moved to Miami, where they joined a community of exiles from all parts of Latin America. Diederich traveled repeatedly to Cuba as a photojournalist throughout the 1990s. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of South Florida and lives in Florida. This is his first novel.
Sofrito
978-1-941026-14-4, paper, $16.95
978-1-941026-15-1, ebook, $16.95
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales / Publishes August 25, 2015
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