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Some of my favorite cookbooks from the last few years—including some new ones I got to flip through while working on this spring's cookbook preview—are restaurant cookbooks. Lately, with all the restaurant industry struggles, I've been thinking about, and reaching for, those cookbooks more than ever.
Restaurant cookbooks can help you feel connected to a restaurant that's far away (or currently closed). But in our current moment, they have a deeper purpose: giving the restaurants a sale in lieu of the meals they aren't able to serve.
To that end, I've selected a few of my favorite restaurant cookbooks from the past few years, and, where possible, I've provided links to the restaurant's own homepages for purchasing. Yes, it might take a few days longer to get your book. But if you, too, want to see these restaurants survive, the wait will be worth it.
Mosquito Supper Club by Melissa M. Martin
Sometimes you find a restaurant cookbook that pulls you out of your cooking rut without frustrating you with miles long ingredient lists and tricky techniques. Mosquito Supper Club is one such book. Out on April 21, the book chronicles the Cajun cooking Melissa Martin grew up with in Louisiana—the same cooking she shares at her family-style restaurant by the same name in New Orleans, which is now closed due to the novel coronavirus. Sure, if you can get fresh shellfish and fresh blackberries, the Blackberry Dumplings are a big crowd pleaser. But in a quarantine pinch, boxed broth, frozen shrimp, rice, beans, and spices will go far when cooking from this book.
“Right now, I'm drawn to the Shrimp Okra Gumbo," says Martin. “We’ve been making a lot of it for hospital workers and service industry workers,” she continues. Gumbo, which relies mostly on pantry staples (you can sub the fresh shrimp and okra for frozen, too) makes for a satisfying one-pot meal—and it's great as leftovers.
Of the restaurant Martin usually runs? "Our last service was Saturday, March 14," she tells me. "We had nine employees—everyone but my assistant and sous chef have been laid off." Martin has continued to support her laid off employees. "I am sending all of my employees supplemental checks for as long as I can. None of them have received unemployment yet."
Pastry Love by Joanne Chang
I knew Pastry Love had become an isolation-cooking favorite when I saw it pop up all over my Instagram feed. Make the Mulitgrain English Muffins for satisfyingly spongey butter-and-jam vehicles, the Palmiers for a project. While this is not a book of "easy" baking per se, it sure is a book to pull out when you've got a little extra time on your hands (maybe now?) and want something comfortingly sweet (definitely now).
Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden
If you're finding pantry cooking to mean too many uninspired pots of beans, might I suggest Six Seasons? Joshua McFadden of Tusk, Ava Gene's, and Cicoria, all in Portland, is here to help. His 2018 cookbook Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables both highlights a perfectly ripe plant in all it's raw glory, and shows you how to transform slightly less peak-season produce (yes, the cabbage lurking in the back of your fridge right now counts) with heat, spice, acid, and fat. Oh, and Portland residents: you can support McFadden's three restaurants—which have had to cut back their 180 staff members to 15—by ordering takeout, or just raw cookie dough to bake alongside your homemade Six Seasons meal.
Trejo's Tacos by Danny Trejo
I've made more tacos than ever in the past month—maybe you have too? The methodical act of rolling masa balls and pressing them carefully has been particularly soothing, yes, but more than that, they are a vessel for just about anything in my fridge. When I need some proper guidance, I turn to Trejo's Tacos, the upcoming cookbook by actor and restauranteur Danny Trejo.
Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt
We love Tartine books—all the Tartine books. But this one, in particular, is especially great for quarantine cooking. Make a batch of the melty, jam-filled granola bars or the buttery shortbread, which requires both almond and rice flours—two flours you might not normally have unless you're gluten intolerant, but are definitely easier to get your hands on then a bag of all-purpose right now. And, if you're in San Francisco, you can order delivery from Tartine, or pop by for bread and treats: just be prepared to wait in a (socially distanced) line.
South by Sean Brock
When I first reviewed this book for our Fall 2019 Cookbook Preview, it wasn't just the lusciously creamy grits or okra coated in a cornmeal crisp that caught my eye. It was the 'waste nothing' ethos that echoed through the book. Sean Brock is a whole-hog kind of chef—or, in pantry cooking terms, a use-your-scraps-for-stock kind of chef. If southern food is your comfort food and pantry cooking is the name of your game right now, this is an excellent book to order.
Emotional Eating by Alissa Wagner and Toniann Fernandez
I'll admit, I have a soft spot for the Dimes trio: a restaurant, a deli, and a little market, tucked into a popular corner of New York's Chinatown. I lived in the neighborhood and unknowingly circled my partner there for years, each of us regularly sipping a green pozole during our solo dinners at the bar, never crossing paths. When we finally met (and later, moved in together) our friends at Dimes brought us cartons of the vegetarian chili we had more or less lived on.
That recipe is in here, as well as a handful of pleasingly simple work-from-home lunches: a Freekah Pilaf, a taco filled with custardy scrambled eggs, a white bean casserole. It's simple, nostalgic food, presented in a playfully designed book. While Dimes the restaurant is frequented by a young-ish, arty crowd, the cookbook is particularly suited to families thanks to the simplicity and speed of many of the recipes.
My Korea by Hooni Kim
Hooni Kim has a Michelin star—in fact, his New York City restaurant Danji was the first Korean restaurant ever to have one—but that isn't stopping him from personally delivering take-out from his two restaurants during the novel coronavirus outbreak. If you're not in Manhattan and unable to order one of his family style to-go packs, try My Korea instead. Kim will walk you through preparing your own family meal of Korean cuisine—even if you've never cooked a bibimbap or fermented kimchi.
Chef Josef Centeno usually spends his days running his four Los Angeles restaurants— Bäco Mercat, Bar Amá, Orsa and Winston, and Amácita. These days, he's organizing produce box deliveries to his restaurants for customers to purchase, using his side project in clothing to make face masks, fundraising for his out-of-work employees, and arranging a new take-out service (the proceeds of which go directly to his employees and the cost of ingredients). In short: he's busy, trying to make do with what this virus has done to his beloved restaurants.
So, now seems like a great time to bring the attention back to Amá, a modern Tex-Mex cookbook brimming with the kind of comforting food we want right now: Mama Grande's Chicken Soup, Huevos Rancheros, and maybe most importantly, a mezcal Negroni.
Missy Robbins of Lilia and Misi fame did not consider herself a home cook until far into her culinary life, when she was between restaurants. At that point, she had to relearn how to cook—healthfully, economically, and simply—for herself, in a teeny New York kitchen. The result, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner....Life: Recipes and Adventures from My Home Kitchen, feels especially approachable to any cook dealing with about seventeen more hours in the kitchen a day than they are used to.
Robbins, along with her restaurant partner Sean Feeney, has organized a fundraiser for the out of work staff at their two restaurants. She has also been an outspoken advocate for the restaurant industry in general throughout the COVID-19 outbreak.
