“Adam and Eve on a raft and wreck ‘em! “ “Groundhog and fifty-five on number seven!” “Dough well done with cow to cover!” With pre-written dialogue like that, I don’t know why there are so few good books set in the restaurant world. The things should practically write themselves! But they don’t and there are precious few restaurant books — especially novels — that really get the rhythm of restaurants right. I guess writing about restaurants is a little bit like writing sex scenes: You really have to know your stuff or it sounds like you’ve never experienced it. I keep these precious few restaurant volumes on a little mental Odd Shelf and I’m always looking for more.

• Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
A lot of noir novels seem to have restaurant or bar settings and this is the greatest of them all. The smell of kitchens wafts over almost every page, from Mildred’s home-baked pies in the early sections all the way through her success as a restaurateur. Plus? You get a vicious mother-daughter face-slapping scene!

• Still Life by Noel Coward
Famously expanded to become the film Brief Encounter, the entire play takes place in the world’s saddest train-station refreshment room.

• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
Another sad one. What is it about restaurants that make them so melancholy? Anyway, here you get it all. And I do mean all. I mean! ... a hunch-backed dwarf who can fly through the air!

• Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan
Speaking of melancholy! This is a very tiny slice of restaurant life, the snowy last night of business for an under-performing Red Lobster. Lots of well-researched detail, all perfectly rendered. The saddest part of it is that after the Red Lobster closes, the main character has to go work at an Olive Garden.

• The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Boulud’s Celebrated New York Restaurant by Leslie Brenner
The title says it all and the book should keep anybody who has the impulse to open a restaurant from doing so. I never knew creating and plating a terrine could be so utterly tense and terrifying.

• The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine by Rudolf Chelminski
More true-life restaurant horror; in this case it’s the true-story of a three-star Michelin chef who killed himself because of the pressures involved with keeping three stars. Another aspiring-restaurateur soul crusher.

• Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
This novel has a lot to say about the local food movement, and it’s all disguised as a breezy David vs. Goliath parable. And the restaurant at the center of it is called The Monkey’s Paw! Mmmmm, delicious!