My Korean Deli
Risking It All for a Convenience Store

Quotes

“My Korean Deli is about a Korean deli, as I expected. But it’s also about love, culture clashes, family, money, and literature. Plus, it happens to be very funny and poignant. So buy a Slim Jim and a Vitamin Water and sit down to enjoy it.” A. J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

“I don’t know how else to explain My Korean Deli except to say that Ben Ryder Howe has made kimchi. As in that splendid staple dish of Korea, the mundane (cabbage/Brooklyn) is combined with the piquant (crazy spices/families) and pickled (natural fermentation/a job at the Paris Review). The result is overpoweringly good. But My Korean Deli will sweeten your reading rather than stinking up your house and will give you deep thoughts not breath that can kill mice in the walls.” P. J. O’Rourke, New York Times bestselling author

“[A] funny, poignant, true story.” O, The Oprah Magazine, “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now”

“It’s hard not to fall in love with My Korean Deli. First, it’s the (very) rare memoir that places careful, loving attention squarely on other people rather than the author. Second, it tells a rollicking, made-for-the-movies story in a wonderfully funny deadpan style.” New York Times Book Review

“Conveys what is absolutely the best of New York. Delightful.” Los Angeles Times

“Howe ably transforms what could have been a string of amusing vignettes about deli ownership into a humorous but heartfelt look into the complexities of family dynamics and the search for identity.” Publishers Weekly

“Poking fun at everything from his stereotypically WASP upbringing to his ‘tank’ (he said it) of a mother-in-law…Howe has created a smartly measured and propulsive read.” Booklist

“Fun! A crucial read if you’ve ever clerked checkout or are remotely entertaining the thought of buying a convenience store. Reads like a novel.” Library Journal

“In this WASP-out-of-water tale of a Paris Review editor moonlighting as deli owner, Howe plunges boldly into life’s ultimate mysteries: marriage, money, cohabitation with in-laws, the yin-yang currents of striving and slacking, and—perhaps the biggest mystery of them all—why the store can be empty of customers for hours and hours, and then twenty show up at once.” Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara

“Bronson Pinchot takes on the persona of the stuffy literary magazine editor for the first-person account. Between Howe’s wry phrasings and Pinchot’s slightly exaggerated reading, even a ramble on the profit margins of Doritos is amusing…There’s even a dead-on impression of Howe’s boss, the late George Plimpton.” AudioFile

Awards

• Amazon Best Books of the Year
• NPR Best Book
• Amazon Best Book of the Month
• O Magazine’s “Books to Watch”
• Audie Award Finalist