James Nicoll Reviews

Interstellar MegaChef is the first volume in Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s Flavour Hacker series.

Primus is the heart and soul of the star-spanning United Human Cooperative. Among the planet’s popular exports is the entertainment show Interstellar MegaChef. Winning the Interstellar MegaChef competition guarantees fame and fortune.

The woman now known as Saraswati ​“Saras” Kaveri hopes that winning the contest will free her from her odious family.

Primus embodies lofty Nakshatran ideals (or so it believes). Saras’ native Earth, not so much. In theory, Earth is a united world. In practice, the planet is dominated by rival cut-throat autocracies. Saras’ last name used to be ​“Godavari.” The Godavari rule the Daxina Protectorate. They have limited tolerance for Saras’ culinary endeavors… and that tolerance is swiftly running out.

Saras’ plan is simple. Under another surname, she will apply for refugee status, travel to Primus, enter Interstellar MegaChef, win Interstellar MegaChef, and make a new life for herself far from the Godavari.

Saras’ plan fails to take into account Primus’ bigotry. Newcomers to Primus are expected to shed their barbaric customs in favour of doing things properly, the Primus way. Saras’ chances of winning were always low. The moment she lights an actual cooking fire, her only value to the judges is as an object of ridicule.

Having failed abjectly at Interstellar MegaChef, Saras eventually finds a job at Amol and Pavi Khurshid’s restaurant. Earth-born but Primus-educated, Amol and Pavi had the good taste to have abandoned barbaric Earth customs for civilized values. In the eyes of native-born Primus citizens, Amol and Pavi are almost people! Perhaps with their help, Saras might also one day become marginally second class.

Alas. Saras finds herself working with people who dislike her for her planet of origin, at least one of whom keeps a careful eye out for ways to get Saras fired. Furthermore, Saras has not, as she thought, fled far enough to escape the Godavari.

Salvation appears in the form of Serenity Ko. Ko is an immersive-reality sim creator. Having been suspended from her job (gardening leave), Ko has what she sees as a brilliant idea that could return her to her job and incidentally to fame and fortune: apply IR to food!

Ko cannot cook, but Saras can. If Saras can tolerate the abrasive Ko, and if Ko does not somehow sabotage the project, and if Saras can enter the Interstellar MegaChef competition again, and if Saras can win, then there will be happy endings all around!

But that’s a lot of ifs.

~oOo~

Yes, the Flavour in the series title is Flavour with a u, not Flavor. This is consistent across editions, wherever published.

Serenity Ko’s bold plan to disrupt the food industry with computer-generated illusions struck me as the sort of visionary proposal that should be killed with fire. On reflection, I think it would be better to nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

I once had a job working next to the boss’ favourite employee who decided pretty much on sight that she hated me. Working with someone bent on making work as unpleasant as possible, when that someone could not be fired, sure wasn’t fun. In fact, it was my worst work experience, much worse than the various jobs in which I only risked maiming and death.

I mention that because the kitchen scenes in Amol and Pavi Khurshid’s restaurant kept giving me flashbacks to working at RAFM. I find restaurant kitchen scenes often do, which is why I avoid paying attention to the TV show The Bear when it’s on.

Speaking of flashbacks, the relentless sniping at the Earthies, particularly with regard to food, reminded me of the Waterloo Region Food Facebook group, which is a hotbed of nativist settlers vomiting up bigotry whenever something not white-bread is mentioned. I really need to trim my social media presence.

The obvious parallel here would be the Great British Bake-Off… if I watched it, which I do not. The Mexican food debacle did manage to enter my consciousness, and I do see parallels between how the GBBO treats non-UK food in that case and how Interstellar MegaChef treats Earth food. On the other hand, I don’t think the UK prides itself on being tolerant and inclusive, what with the white supremist race riots and such, so while it seems reasonable that GBBO is among the inspirations for this book, it and the UK seem unlikely to be the only inspirations¹.

I have no idea where I got the impression that this was a light-hearted comedy. It’s not. But it’s not unrelentingly grim either. Lakshminarayan seasons the narrative with humour.

Saras is an engaging character; I cared about what happened to her. Ko was also an interesting character, if only as someone to enjoy hating². I cared what happened to her as well… but not in any positive sense.

It’s not clear where the story goes from here. Future volumes will no doubt answer that question.

Interstellar MegaChef is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Kobo)³, and here (Words Worth Books). Chapters-Indigo does not offer the physical book but does have the audiobook.

I could not find Interstellar MegaChef at Apple Books.

1: Canada could be a possibility, but the odds of an author not resident in Canada having heard of Canada seem slim.

2: I suspect we’re supposed to see Serenity Ko’s story as a redemption arc, or at least the beginning of one. However, as she is trying to do for food what LLM fans want to do for writing, redemption is out of the question. There are some things you cannot do and be a good person.

3: The Kobo code for this novel suggests that Kobo anticipates at least one other book in an Interstellar MegaChef series.