Review: A Demon’s Chef Recipe For Fried Chicken by Ariana Jade

A Demon’s Chef Recipe For Fried Chicken (The Forked Tail Restaurant #1)
by Ariana Jade

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Cozy Fantasy Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: f/f

Blurb:
Every demon in the capital knows the Forked Tail restaurant. They serve delicious sinful food with the freshest of ingredients, away from prying human eyes. What they don’t know is that the owner and chef Lana has higher ambitions than just serving the masses. She has set her sights on winning the popular Demon Chef competition and she’ll do it with the help of her taste tester Demi, her ragtag crew, and her trusted recipe book.

Can Lana rise through the seven rounds of the competition and does she have what it take to battle against some of the most prestigious demon chefs in this realm? She’ll have to risk it all to have a chance at winning and convince the judges to crown her as the Demon Chef.
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A Demon Chef’s Recipe For Fried Chicken is the first book in the Forked Tail Restaurant series. It’s a cozy urban fantasy series about a determined and ambitious demon chef, a sapphic romance, found family, and mouth-watering food.

My Review

I received a free copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed it.

I already read the prequel to this series and was looking forward to reading book 1. I like this author’s books and I enjoy reading about food, so I was pretty sure I would have a great time reading this one. And that turned out to be the case. This was such a fun read, I liked reading about the characters, how the demons actually feel demonic and all the food ofcourse.

This book is written from the point of view of Lana who own the Forked Tail Restaurant, one day a food vlogger called Demi stops by to eat at the restaurant and due to a series of events they end up spending more time together, cooking for each other and then entering a cooking competition together.

I really liked reading about both Lana and Demi and I felt they made for such a fun couple. The two are different enough and their romance has a bit of a grumpy-sunshine vibe that works so well. I like seeing Demi from Lana’s point of view and there’s something about her excited bubbly personality that is so fun to read about. Demi’s love for food and discerning palate are great too. She’s a glutton demon. Then there’s Lana who owns a restaurant and fits the image of a chef screaming at their staff, but she does actually run a good kitchen and appreciates her staff too. She has some anger management issues as she’s a wrath demon. At first there’s a lot of grump and anger she shows, but I liked seeing more of her and some of the softer parts that lie beneath that grumpy exterior that shows she actually cares, like her passion for cooking, how invested she is in her restaurant and how badly she wants to go on the demon cooking competition show.

When these two meet it’s filled with fun banter, the combining of their different personalities and a lot of food ofcourse. It was so fun to see these two get to know each other and grow closer. Lana is very grumpy and wants nothing to do with the excited Demi at first, but slowly Demi breaks through her walls and they two grow closer. I really liked seeing these two get to know each other and look forward to seeing their romance develop in future books.

I liked reading about all the food in this book, from the way they cooked it and especially the why. I loved seeing the though processes behind the dishes and why they combined things or not and why things worked or didn’t. It was so much fun. Then there was all the food descriptions as well, which were great too. I also liked the cooking show competition bit and seeing Lana and Demi cook together for the first time.

Lana and Demi are both demons and I like how the author wrote the demons and added some world building about it. They come from Hell and stay in the human world for a while where they harvest sin. The demons actually feel demonic and while some of their actions like eliciting sins so they can harvest it might feel wrong, for them it’s just how their nature works and I thought part was written well. I also liked the way the demonic stuff worked into the cooking with how they use the sins to add to the cooking, almost like spices and how different types of sins taste different and even different types of the same sin taste different. I thought this was very interesting and added a fun paranormal aspect to the cooking.

To summarize: I had a great time reading this one. I liked reading about Lana and Demi, they were so fun together and I liked seeing them grow closer. Lana is a bit of a grump and doesn’t want to have anything to do with the bubbly Demi at first, but the two grow closer and end up on a cooking show together. I really liked their banter and the blend of their two different personalities. There’s also a lot of cooking and food in this book, which I loved. I liked reading about all the dishes they made and especially the thought processes behind why they cooked things a certain way or not. The cooking show was fun too. And I liked the way the demon element was done with the demons feeling actually demonic and different from humans, but it also feeling normal for them and just how they are. I liked how the sins could be used in cooking with different sins tasting different as well as different types of the same sin tasting different. This was such a fun read and I can’t wait for the next book!

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.