'Who ends up in the kitchen, Gabe?' 'Misfits', he said, 'psychos, exiles, culinary artists, and people who just need a job'. In The Kitchen is Monica Ali's follow up to Brick Lane. It opens with a mysterious death in the cellars of a smart, cosmopolitan hotel and over the course of the ensuing pages, peels back the layers of polyglot London to reveal the melting pot which exists below.