Amanda Elliot

Amanda Elliot turns professional rivalry and restaurant culture into contemporary romantic comedy. Best Served Hot follows Julie Zimmerman, an aspiring newspaper critic who has built an audience through social-media reviews, and Bennett Wright, the traditional critic who receives the job she wanted. Berkley published the novel in 2023, presenting their competing ideas about food writing through shared assignments, New York dining, and an uneasy partnership. Elliot also wrote Sadie on a Plate. Her wider publishing career spans several names: she writes books for younger readers as Amanda Panitch and mysteries as Bellamy Rose. Food, ambition, and the pressures of public judgment give this novel its particular comic setting.