My Ackee Tree: A Chef’s Memoir of Finding Home in the Kitchen

My Ackee Tree is a “life in food” memoir that’s ready for a screenplay. Toronto chef Suzanne Barr has been through the wringer. That journey is expressed here in a cogent and entertaining narrative delivered at a level that few of her book-writing peers have managed. Good writing, good stories, heartfelt expressions… Want to know the hell of opening a restaurant in Toronto? Barr lays it all out. How about discovering you’re pregnant on opening night? Yep…it’s all here — and it’s funny, too, because that’s how she presents her life thus far. “I’m Canadian, Jamaican, African, Indigenous, naturalized American, with deep ties to the UK, under everything to the earth and seas where I find my flavours….” Barr’s writing is as sincere as her food, and her recipes — like Festival Dumplings and 100K Curry Chicken — come with useful tips and, of course, at least one great story to match. This is tasty stuff — delivered with no B.S.

—DICK SNYDER

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