Guest post written by The Waves Take You Home author María Alejandra Barrios Vélez
María Alejandra Barrios is a writer and educator from Barranquilla, Colombia. She has an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her novel THE WAVES TAKE YOU HOME is forthcoming from Lake Union Publishing, Spring 2024.
The Waves Take You Home is a heartfelt story about how the places we run from hold the answers to our deepest challenges, the death of her grandmother brings a young woman home, where she must face the past in order to become the heir of not just the family restaurant, but her own destiny.
In my book, The Waves Take You Home, Vi Sangouera, a 28-year-old woman who loves cooking but is not as experienced as she wishes she was, learns that she has inherited the family restaurant, the place her Abuela told her to run from her whole life. Most of the novel takes place in the restaurant, Caminito. It’s a place that encompasses all the family stories and recipes that were passed down, generation to generation: Pineapple inverted cake, tamales, tortilla española, paella, and more! I hope readers will be left salivating and hungry for more!
As I thought about how to bring the restaurant to life, I reflected on the most important thing that a restaurant has: Food and how to write about it. I loved books that are deeply atmospheric and transportative, and I wanted readers to be able to imagine the food from Caminito and be transported to this restaurant on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
There are books that seamlessly achieve this goal, such as Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel that captivates with the magical family recipes that are so powerful they can avenge those who have wronged us or even evoke tears from diners reminiscing about a lost love. Or Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, a memoir about food and the loss of a mother, a powerful tale of how memory and taste are intertwined.
So how can we get readers interested in food? How do we transport them with each bite?
Senses
We eat with our senses. If you think back to a really lovely memory you had eating something you loved, I bet you can still savor the dish. I’ll go first. One of my most vivid memories from a trip is eating a dessert soufflé in France. I ordered a pistachio chocolate soufflé not really knowing how it was going to be. When I broke the soufflé with my spoon and dug into the bottom of the bowl, I saw the different layers of the dish: A flaky light brown top, a layer of jade green pistachio, and a melted chocolate center. When I took a spoonful to my lips, I could taste the perfect balance of the flakiness of the pastry and the hint of pistachio mixed with the rich melted chocolate. It was a perfect dance between salty and sweet.
It’s been more than ten years since I ate that soufflé, and still, I can conjure it in my head. The reason why this food memory is effective is because it engages different senses. When we write about food, food that our characters love, enjoy and remember, they need to incorporate several senses. Some useful questions to ask yourself as you write: How does the dish look? Can you describe it in detail? How does it taste? Is it salty, buttery, sweet? How does it make the person eating it feel? Does the salt make their tongue tingle? Is the chocolate so luxurious, it makes the characters exhale in pleasure? Does the dish evoke a memory so powerful they almost cry? And yes, smell. How does the dish smell?
A trick that is useful for this exercise is you don’t know where to start is a chef’s trick. Whenever you taste something, try to describe the flavor profile. What undertones do you taste? How would you describe it? Try and repeat until you feel comfortable describing flavors.
Food is never just ‘food’
With food comes drama. And power. And stories. And politics. And so many things! If you’ve ever been responsible for a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with family you’ll know exactly what I mean. Whenever there’s a lot of food to be cooked for an occasion, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, expectations that get attached to the food and a lot of drama that makes its way to the surface due to the amount of pressure that hangs over the evening.
Don’t underestimate how cooking and eating can hide a lot of complexities in the world of your characters. Reflect on the underlying tensions of a meal between two sisters that haven’t shared a meal since childhood, or a meal between a mother and daughter, after the daughter broke off a long engagement. What’s behind the long silences? The clinks of glasses, and cutlery? What family histories are hidden behind every dish? What expectations do your characters have after they cook a meal for someone they love or hate?
In my novel, there’s a scene where my character Violeta reflects on the tradition of eating Black Cake at weddings in her family. Black Cake is a cake full of dates and fruits that has to be refrigerated for a couple of days to soak up all the goodness from the fruits and the wine. Violeta eats this cake with her mother, who has had terrible luck with her several marriages, as they try to make the cake just for them to enjoy, not for a wedding. In creating this scene, I weave in family history, the tension between the mother and daughter and their notions about love.
Even not knowing how to cook has implications. Why were they never taught? What does this say about them? What are they scared of? What does this say about the way they have lived so far, or how they were raised?
Food provides us a rich, textured and delicious tapestry into the interior and exterior world of our characters. It provides a beautiful way to transport our readers to places and experience sensations they perhaps have never felt. Next time you’re writing a story consider the power that food has in transforming an ordinary world into one that’s vibrant, full of life and delicious flavors.
