Cheese Cake — Mark Kurlansky

From New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky, a delectable novel about one Greek family's diner, its colorful ensemble of regulars, and the Upper West Side-wide race to interpret a perplexing historical recipe for Cato's Roman cheesecake amid a rapidly gentrifying community.The Katsikas have found a home in New York. A Greek cheesemaking family who immigrated fifteen years earlier, they've opened a small restaurant on the up-and-coming Upper West Side: The Katz Brothers. Close enough, they thought. The Katz Brothers' Greek diner becomes a neighborhood favorite, especially beloved for its fresh cheese-made from the milk of goats the family secretly keeps in its backyard in Queens.But the Katsikas family rushes to modernize, introducing a new “modern classical cuisine,” changing the diner's name to “Mykonos,” relabeling the greeter as the Maître D-and deciding to serve “Cato's Cheesecake,” known to be the oldest written recipe ever found. Yet the recipe proves enigmatic, calling for wheat flour and sheep's milk to produce a savory stodge rather than a rich, sweet cream. The family works to adapt it into something impressive enough for the New York Times restaurant critic-certain to show their face soon-and sure enough, it's a hit. But once the family uses their success to buy properties on the surrounding blocks and price out their inhabitants, the neighborhood is thrown into flux, and the Upper West Siders who were once diner regulars begin to interpret Cato's cheesecake anew. As the Katsikas family struggles to keep up with the pace of New York's food scene and the intertwined characters struggle to maintain the lives they've carefully built, a classic Manhattan food tale unfolds, sure to delight fans of Mark Kurlansky and food fiction alike.