Zahra Tangorra Author Talk • Extra Sauce: The Good, the Bad, and the Onions
A note about our in-store events:
We offer first come, first served seating in our shop. There will be overflow room outside if needed and the author will be mic'd. Everyone is welcome to attend.
You can pre-order a copy below for pick-up at the event or purchase copies on-site.
Zahra Tangorra is a chef, restaurant consultant, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the chef and owner behind the cult-favorite Italian American popup Zaza Lazagna and the beloved former Cobble Hill restaurant Brucie. Brucie and Zaza have been featured in multiple publications and TV shows including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, TIME, The Daily News, Eater, Grub Street, Glamour, MTV, The Martha Stewart Show, and ABC News. Zahra’s writing has been featured in New York Magazine, Lenny Letter, Speaking Broadly, and Epicurious.
Liz Prueitt is the cofounder of the San Francisco–based Tartine Bakery and Tartine Manufactory. She is also the author of three Tartine cookbooks, and is a James Beard Pastry Chef Award winner. Follow Liz on her Substack, Have Your Cake, for gluten-free recipes, and on Instagram @lizprueitt_tartine.
Extra Sauce: The Good, The Bad, and the Onions — At twenty-two years old, Zahra Tangorra was trying on adulthood and attempting to find herself when a harrowing, near-death experience stopped her in her tracks. It felt like a twisted version of a second chance. Who am I? She asked herself. What do I love? The answers started coming to her: stuffed shells and giant meatballs at J&J’s, the Italian red sauce joint of her Long Island childhood. Her mother's chocolate mousse pie and her father's sweet and savory pea soup. The loves of Zahra's life, the people and places and experiences that made her her, the relationships both loving and fraught—they were all, for better and sometimes worse, inextricably bound up with food.
As she reflects on life in all its delicious, messy, heartbreaking glory, Zahra reckons with the adrenaline-filled highs and devasting lows of opening cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant Brucie, and then closing it at the height of its popularity. She writes about cooking her father his last meal and the unexpected yet beautiful things she found at the bottom of her grief after he died. She also explores the relationships she couldn’t save through cooking, like her fractured family of origin and the lover she had to leave in Tuscany. Finally, she writes about the immense courage it takes to allow ourselves to be loved, extra sauce and all.
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