The Smart Traveler’s Guide to Falling for Flavor: A Dikasih Book Romance

Price: $9.69 - $3.00
(as of Sep 12, 2026 08:50:53 UTC – Details)


A French food writer who can no longer taste comfort. A stubborn Blitar warung owner who refuses to let his family’s recipe become content. One no-chili sambel pecel that was never meant to be a product.
Aveline Marchand has built her career writing about food, memory, and the quiet ways people find home through what they eat. But after losing her mother, the French writer has also lost something more private: her appetite.
When her next book sends her to Blitar, East Java, Aveline arrives at Dikasih Kopi, a warm local café and homestay surrounded by rain, coffee, travelers, difficult roads, and food that refuses to be simplified. There she meets Jalu Sembagi, the guarded owner of Warung Sembagi, a small pecel warung built on family memory, stubborn principles, and a sambel pecel recipe he does not want turned into anyone’s beautiful paragraph. Aveline wants to understand. Jalu wants her to stop translating too fast. Between no-chili sambel pecel, gula kelapa, lodeh, cendol, bubur sumsum, night-market chaos, and one very opinionated aunt who believes a handful depends on whose hand is measuring, Aveline begins to discover that food writing has limits. Not every recipe is meant to be published. Not every grief is meant to become a hook. And not every flavor can be carried away.
But when an elegant Swiss guest sees business potential in the warung, a local content creator turns family memory into viral material, and Aveline’s editor asks for the emotional story behind Jalu’s most private dish, Aveline must choose between the chapter that could make her career and the trust she may never earn back.
Warm, funny, cinematic, and deeply human, The Smart Traveler’s Guide to Falling for Flavor is a clean cross-cultural food romance about grief, appetite, ethical travel, family recipes, and the kind of love that begins when someone finally learns what not to write. Perfect for readers who love clean contemporary romance, food fiction, international settings, slow-burn chemistry, cultural discovery, and stories where love arrives one careful bite at a time.
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0HBNM8MC9
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Endik Koeswoyo
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 26, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1.7 MB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 270 pages
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Part of series ‏ : ‎ Dikasih Book