The Sol Majestic

Kenna is sixteen and broke, and he wants to work as an adviser to the wealthiest beings in the galaxy. A prize puts him at a table in The Sol Majestic, the finest restaurant anywhere, which sits on Savor Station. He expects a single extraordinary dinner.

What he finds is a business in trouble. The restaurant faces bankruptcy unless a planned soirée brings in enough intergalactic billionaires to cover its costs. Nothing is free here, and the meal he won turns out to be the start of a larger problem.

Kenna gathers a mismatched group of new friends and sets about building a scheme on an enormous scale. The restaurant has come to feel like home to him, and he intends to keep it open. Along the way he picks up lessons about feeling, thinking and taste.

This is a space opera with a hopepunk outlook, so the tone leans warm and optimistic rather than bleak. It is also a coming-of-age story, built around food, work and service. It was published by Tor in 2019 and sits in the same territory as the work of Becky Chambers.