Free Press restaurant critic to moderate Ann Arbor book talk

With write-ups in The New Yorker and The New York Times, Laura Tillman’s “The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia,” (2023 W.W. Norton and Co.) is poised to top booklists among avid readers and everyday food enthusiasts.

Zingerman’s Roadhouse, the 20-year-old restaurant serving up barbecue classics, has designed an event that caters to both audiences. The special book talk invites guests to enjoy dishes prepared by the Roadhouse and a rich conversation between Tillman and the Detroit Free Press’ own James Beard Award-winning dining and restaurant critic Lyndsay C. Green.

Sept. 28 at 6:30 p.m. at the popular Ann Arbor Literati Bookstore, event-goers will have an opportunity to sample bites from a menu curated by Roadhouse chef Bob Bennett and inspired by “The Migrant Chef.” Included in the $40 ticket price will be sopes, corn-based dough topped with black beans and Cotija, gazpacho and chips and salsa verde, as well as Roadhouse mocktails. Cocktails blended with Detroit-based, Black-owned Anteel Tequila for an additional purchase.

In “The Migrant Chef,” Tillman goes to great lengths to detail chef Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán’s biography, from his childhood as a farmworker in rural Mexico and an immigrant acclimating to life in Michigan to his years as a rebellious teen in the Atlanta area to his days as a deportee forging a new path as a chef in acclaimed restaurants in Mexico City.

The book traces world history events that contextualize Lalo’s heritage and personal experience, such as the exchange between the Spanish and Indigenous Mexican peoples in the 1500s and the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican men to the U.S. on short-term labor contracts during World War II. It also, of course, paints mouthwatering portraits of the meals that represent each phase of the chef’s life.

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At the special book event, guests will have an opportunity to listen in on a conversation about “The Migrant Chef” between Tillman and Green, which will detail the author’s writing process and the chef’s unique story. Attendees will also have an opportunity to ask questions of their own, and will earn a $10 discount off the purchase of “The Migrant Chef” if ordered at Literati the day of the event.

Visit zingermansroadhouse.com for event tickets, $40 per person.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Zingerman’s Roadhouse hosts author for book talk and dinner