Sweetbitter

In Part 1, Tess moves to New York City as a young woman, newly graduated from college and embarking on her first big adventure. This move—and the thrill of it— introduces the novel as a coming-of-age story. It is a common trope for a young person to leave their small town and move to the big city in search of new people and new experiences. Tess has no real plan and doesn’t know anybody in the city. This makes her move even more of a jumping off point into major character growth, as well characterizing Tess as brave and adventurous. Tess wants experience so badly that she doesn’t mind her subpar apartment or her loneliness: The city symbolizes growth and new beginnings, holding limitless potential for happiness.

Because Tess doesn’t know what she wants yet, she is a malleable character, emphasizing the theme of Self-Discovery. Tess wants to be influenced by others and by real life. As such, she’s also a highly observant narrator. Danler uses imagery to tap into her reader’s senses. Danler describes tastes, sensations, and even people through romantic and gritty imagery, highlighting Tess’s sense of wonder and astute observations. At first, Tess is a narrator who observes from the outside. She is like an audience member watching the maneuverings of the restaurant, observing the different twists and turns of the other people who work there. Tess is hypnotized by the energy of the restaurant and the ease with which the other servers navigate that energy. The restaurant is a setting that parallels Tess’s desire for growth. The restaurant, like Tess, is unnamed in Part 1. This creates a mystery of identity and implies that, at this stage in Tess’s character development, there is nothing for her to identify with or as. Tess is a blank canvas, or so she thinks. Tess’s arrival in New York City is the onset of the plot, and her openness and excitement emphasize her naivety and impressionability. Rather than Tess looking within, she believes that the answers she seeks will reveal themselves in New York City, the restaurant itself, and the people who work there.

The setting of the restaurant is important because it informs Tess’s development. The restaurant is a subculture, a small world of its own in an enormous city. Thus, New York City doesn’t become Tess’s primary ground for character development: The restaurant is the setting in which she will grow. This restaurant is characterized as being one of a kind. Unlike other restaurants, long-time servers can get salaries, and there are even health benefits. This characterizes the restaurant as an outwardly safe and stable place. This seeming stability casts long-time server Simone, who wields power and influence because she is well-established, as a foil to Tess, who is brand-new, unsophisticated, and deeply unsure of herself. Moreover, in the hierarchy of the restaurant, Simone is near the top, and as a brand-new trainee, Tess lands at the bottom.

The restaurant is also a setting in which things are constantly moving, and people are under a great deal of stress, thus emphasizing the theme of The Restaurant Industry and Broader Societal Issues. The stressors placed on workers in the back of a restaurant help build the character of the restaurant, creating a multi-layered structure of many social dynamics. For example, Howard, the manager, has a calm and collected exterior that seeks to mask his obvious attraction to the young women who work for him. Howard also emphasizes the power structure within the restaurant, as he abuses his power to hit on his employees, who have significantly less power. Additionally, the chef, who is also unnamed and identifies himself only through his role, exercises a great deal of power and rigid control over the kitchen. By remaining anonymous and identified primarily through his important role, the chef controls space and people, furthering a sense of chaos and hierarchy. The other servers who work with Tess are characterized through their relative youth and sexiness; they’re all unique and even occasionally face conflict with each other, but they come together during service time to perform as a team and run the restaurant. Simone is a well-respected server whose regulars prove that she is capable of amassing loyalty. Simone is intelligent and has a wide array of cultural knowledge. The juxtaposition between Tess’s expectations of what someone who works in the service industry would be able to discuss and what Simone can comfortably speak with her customers about highlights how special this restaurant is; one might not necessarily expect a restaurant to be a strictly hierarchical place with extremely worldly, savvy employees, but this speaks to the weight of the New York restaurant scene. Furthermore, Simone is a character whose experience implies wisdom and sophistication. Though she teaches Tess about fine food and wine, others warn Tess that Simone is not to be trusted, foreshadowing conflict. But Tess is attracted to Simone’s beauty, experience, sense of self, and relationship to Jake.

Tess doesn’t have a fully developed sense of herself, so she projects her desires and burgeoning identity onto the restaurant, thus introducing the theme of Disillusionment and Experience. Though she is on her own in her apartment and at work, she feels that she is a part of something big and important. This lack of personal identity in favor of self-value derived from work is encouraged by the restaurant, whose owner uses the term “fifty-one percent” to make his employees feel proud and that they are doing so much more than serving food and clearing away plates. The “fifty-one percent” refers to the fact that the people hired at this restaurant are not only waiters but also people who are fluent in the language and culture of the wealthy. They are well-educated, whether formally or informally, and can speak with their wealthy customers about European travel, literature, and culture. Thus, the concept of the “fifty-one-percent” server equates to an ease with and around wealth, even if it is a pretense.

The restaurant is the setting in which Tess starts to grow not only because of the people there but also because of what she learns about herself through fine-dining culture, thus emphasizing the theme of Self-Discovery. Danler includes snippets of imagery, highlighting Tess’s burgeoning senses of taste and smell. As Tess’s understanding of fine food and wine develops, so does her own palate, which is a metaphor for Tess’s sense of self and understanding of the world around her. In pausing to truly savor a bite of food or a sip of wine in order to get to know that taste, Tess is taking a break from the chaos of the world around her and learning to appreciate the moment and the potential for small things to hold great meaning. For example, Simone explains to Tess how wine needs to breathe because it changes when in contact with the air, making the wine better. This is a metaphor for Tess’s character development, as it parallels how Tess’s interactions with others will change her. Tess, in essence, will need to learn to breathe and take in the world rather than be consumed by it. Another metaphor for growth occurs when Tess burns her skin at work. She learns how to work through the burns, a metaphor for toughening up, facing the challenges of the big city and navigating the social dynamics of the restaurant.