Does a meal belong to the person who makes it, or the person who eats it?
The Last Bites
In progress · First three chapters ready
“As I look down at the plate covered in splashes of sauces filled with acid, heat, and umami, I realize that as I am eating the food, the food is consuming me.” From the restaurant review that opens the novel
A man on death row has requested his last meal. He didn’t ask for a burger. He asked, by name, for a dish that only one chef has ever made, and he seemed to know things about her that no stranger should.
The Story
Five Days to Decide if He’s Worthy
Ella was supposed to be a Michelin-starred chef. Instead she cooks meals at an unremarkable steakhouse, keeps a binder of fifteen-minute recipes she can never get under twenty, and lets the phone ring.
The call she keeps refusing turns out not to be from him.
A warden is on the line. A man named Noah is scheduled to be executed, and for his last meal he has requested a dish with an elaborate name from a restaurant Ella was pushed out of a year before it won its star. The warden thought the prisoner was making fun of him. Then he looked it up.
Ella has five days. She has a kitchen that cannot make the dish, an owner who will not pay for the equipment, and no idea how this man seems to know so much about her while she knows nothing about him. As the days count down, the question that matters no longer becomes whether she can cook it.
It’s whether he deserves it.
If you like:
- Cooking shows that focus on the drama as much as the flavors: Think Gordon Ramsay in an expletive-driven rant, Anthony Bourdain traveling across the world, and the small cruelties of The Bear.
- Culinary thrillers where food really flavors the story.
- Crime novels that ask whether the sentence matches the crime.
- Narrators with a steady hand and something to hide.
Why This Site Exists
A Note From the Person Writing It
Hi, I’m Chris. I’m a patent attorney, which is one way of saying that I get paid to keep other people’s secrets.
The Last Bites started with a question I could not put down: if someone told you a stranger would eat your food as their last meal, would you ask what he did first? And if the answer changed your own answer, then what does that say about what cooking is for?
The book is not finished. This site is where I’m writing it in public. It’s got the first three chapters, the research that keeps ending up in the margins, and the free apps I keep vibe coding on the weekends.
The Research Pile
Guides, Read-Alikes, and Rabbit Holes
Writing this book meant reading a lot about kitchens, last meals, and wrongful convictions. Most of it did not fit in the novel, so it ended up here instead:
I Also Build Free iPhone Apps
Five of them, all free, none of them with an account, an ad, or a server that sees your data. They came out of the same preoccupations as the book: the past you can’t outrun, the people you think you know, and the meals you make for everyone except yourself.
One of them, Bookmark, is where the first three chapters live with my commentary running alongside them.