“Relish: My Life in the Kitchen”

“Relish: My Life in the Kitchen,” Lucy Knisley’s celebration of food, family and friends, is a book I love to revisit, and since a new chocolate shop just opened up outside my building, I figure it’s time to crack it open again.

Written and illustrated by Lucy Knisley

Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe—many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy’s original inventions.

A welcome read for anyone who ever felt more passion for a sandwich than is strictly speaking proper, Relish is a graphic novel for our time: it invites the reader to celebrate food as a connection to our bodies and a connection to the earth, rather than an enemy, a compulsion, or a consumer product.

I remember well when I first read “Relish.” Chapter 10 ended with a section about pickles, and I was someone that’d only been exposed to pickles on a MacDonald’s burger, which was always a rather soggy and sad thing. I couldn’t fathom this enthusiasm for pickles, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Eventually, after much searching, I found an American-style burger place that served their burgers with a whole pickle on the side.

Oh… my… god. It was so juicy and crisp, like nothing I’d ever had before. And all of this is tangled up with memories of my group of fellow animators at university that went on this hunt with me. I can’t eat a pickle without being reminded of that group of friends.

“Relish” celebrates this way that food and memories are entangled. When I read it, I smell wafting scents of meals that aren’t there—I’m very suggestible like that. And as Lucy Knisley reminisces, I find myself reminiscing too. When she talks about tasting the perfect croissant and then attempting to replicate it later, I find myself thinking of my sister furiously trying to replicate an eclair she’d had (and like Lucy, eventually giving up).

Knisley’s book is an intensely personal work. The first time I finished it, I didn’t feel like I’d read a book, but rather had a conversation with a friend, one that had gone late into the evening because we’d lost track of time, swept away with the enthusiasm that comes with a memorable meal and those it’s shared with. In fact, everything about the book feels like a conversation. The book is entirely hand-lettered, and I’m so glad of that in every single panel, because Knisley wrings so much character from it. Sometimes small and densely packed; other times spread out, feeling like she’s languishing in a moment; switching to all caps for sections with shorter sentences, more abbreviated language, for lines that almost read like sound effects. You know those moments in a conversation when words utterly fail to describe a moment, but the quality with which they say, ‘Oh my god,’ says everything you need to know? Well, that’s Knisley’s lettering. It’s immensely personal, and in being hand-lettered, she removes the dilution of mood that occurs with digital lettering.

This is a book full of curated memories. Knisely’s very selective about what’s shown and what isn’t. This isn’t a book about being real, depicting a restaurant kitchen with all its many details, but rather reducing it down to the elements that made a lasting impression. There’s nothing extraneous in her art; everything that’s there needs to be there. This is a book the evokes the senses. When Knisley discusses her moment alone with a piece of art at a gallery, she lingers on it with large panels full of blank space that feel just like a gallery. When she draws a hot chocolate, the words waft out in the steam, because—as anyone that has had a proper hot chocolate will tell you—a hot chocolate truly speaks with that delicious-smelling steam.

Knisley also captures the way little things in memories are somehow crucial. The book is filled with a kind of annotation, small bits that add flavor to a scene, dropped in with an arrow pointing at a particular detail, highlighting it just for a moment. When Knisley and her father visit her mother after a trip overseas, Knisely has a small caption box pointing to a tree with a bricked-up hole in it shaped like a heart. This has no real relevance to the scene unfolding, and yet this fondness for little details of character speaks volumes about that feeling of coming home, of being connected to a place. Rather than derailing the story, this detail sells the moment. In much the same way, she talks about cookies in a way that’s wrapped up in memories of watching The Sound of Music. The feelings associated with these two things, both a comfort, are inextricably tangled together.

Most importantly, Knisley explores her shared experiences with food. This isn’t a book about her venturing off alone; it’s about the people she shared these meals with. It’s as much a love letter to these people in her life as it is to the food. It’s why the story of a disastrous meal still made it into the book, because that in itself was still a fantastic experience with that group of friends.

And in this way, again, the book feels like a conversation. These experiences are familiar and I find as I explore Knisley’s memories, they draw out my own. I think of my own cooking disaster, when I accidentally cooked chicken with wool mix—it took me a while to live that one down. (In fact, I’m still not sure I have.) So there’s a kind of back and forth with the book, Knisley brings up a memory, and I bounce one of my own back. It’s not deliberate at all, it’s just the mindset that the book creates.

Oh, and this book’ll create major cravings so set yourself up properly: I’d definitely recommend a good cheeseboard (cherry tomatoes are an essential for this); you’ll need a favourite wine; access to a good hot chocolate is also recommended; you’ll almost certainly need some Mexican food at some point; some kind of pastry or dessert (I went with an orange crème brûlée, which worked well for two separate sections of the book); oh, and a savoury dish of some kind, preferably with plenty of mushrooms, because as we all know, mushrooms are incredible.

And be prepared to whip up a storm in the kitchen too. Knisley includes recipes in each chapter, and at some point you’re likely going to be hit with the desire to cook, especially since she conjures up such delicious fantasies. I mean, unless you hate cookies, you’re pretty much guaranteed to attempt ‘the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies’ (I recommend a high-quality dark chocolate for the chips).

Lucy Knisley’s book has all the charm of the best comfort food. If you catch yourself in the mood to reminisce, this is a great book to disappear into for a while.