Weston Hingler's crib was in the kitchen of BuenAppeTito, his mother's catering service. There, he learned to read while tasting the pleasing flavors of his mother's culinary alphabet. But before he was allowed to enter the Tsil Café, he would have to pass his father's taste tests. Anchovies. Habanero chiles. Chipotle peppers. Food to purge body and soul. Food his loving but sometimes volatile father uses as a measure of family, friends, and enemies.

Caught between kitchens, one traditional and the other New World, Weston quickly learns that he's also trapped by his wayward parents' secret and complicated histories as well as by the café customers and employees who are all too privy to his growing up. Although Weston chooses his escapes intuitively, he discovers that it isn't easy to get away.