[REVIEW] 'What's Eating Jackie Oh?' explores food, family and identity

Welcome to one of the most compelling coming-of-age books I have ever sampled. A Korean American girl in New York is one of a dozen high schoolers selected from around the U.S. to demonstrate their culinary skills on the first season of reality TV cooking show “Burn Off! High School Edition!” Garnish this competition with Gen Z dialogue and you have Patricia Park’s compulsively readable "What’s Eating Jackie Oh?" The eponymous Jackie lets us know right off the bat that she’s no longer “one of those AP-everything kids with the turtle backpacks” who attend a hagwon, “the school you go to after school because regular school is not enough.” But she hasn’t told her Ivy League-educated workaholic parents yet. Force-fed their great expectations as well as reminders of the disgrace of having an older brother in jail, Jackie retreats to her “mental happy place” — recipe-making. Her physical happy place is Melty’s, a deli in midtown Manhattan operated by her grandparents, first-generation immigrants from Korea. She can be found there as early as 5 a.m. on weekends and