698: Best Cookbooks of the Year with Now Serving and Kitchen Arts & Letters

27:27And I feel like books that really do the dive that show has shown, there's a wide market for these types of people. Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, over a long period of time, and I think at Kitchen Arts and Letters, we saw this first with professionals, but there has been a curiosity, if not at least a turning away from, a curiosity about alternatives to things that other people do for you. Yes. So, you know, whether it was a restaurant and thinking, oh, well, we'll make our own ketchup or, you know, something as simple as that. Never a good choice, just for the record. Never a good choice. Got to go with Heinz.

28:09Sorry. My thinking about my grandparents, my grandmothers who cooked, fed families daily, you know, year after year. They didn't have the freedom to explore that because they were under a constant demand to do things. And they had to do it inexpensively. You know, my parents were both born during the Depression. So, their parents were not exactly rolling in money. And now one of the things that's happened is that more people have the freedom to explore cooking as a craft and to think about it in a way that various forms of artisanship have taken place. And, you know, whether it's in pottery or woodworking or knife making or other kinds of things.

28:59And so that awakens a desire to seek perspectives that haven't really been well represented in a lot of cases in previous books. Not because people didn't care, but there was an assumption, I think a pretty realistic assumption, that people couldn't devote that kind of energy and effort to it. To food. To food. Right. Right, because there was, you know, it's, I don't mean to be trivial about it, but in some way, it's like, how much effort do you put into your laundry? It's a great example. Not an everyday task, but it is a task that has to be addressed all the time. And yes, actually, you can go out and find people who really think seriously about laundry.

29:42I'm not one of them. I'm happy to have somebody else take care of that for me. True New Yorker right there. Yeah. Into it. There's a nice lady in the lobby of my building who runs a little dry cleaner, and I'm going to take my laundry there and my shirts there, and she'll take care of them for me, and I trust her. But when it comes to food, people are digging deeper and trying to gain greater understanding. And sourdough is a great example. I think there are probably a lot of other areas that maybe we've not come to terms with yet. I just think tortilla making, you know, I think as an adjacent to sourdough, there's been incredible books recently.

30:27Massa book, yeah. Yeah, that Massa book. Jorge's book, yeah. Jorge's book, yeah. There's a lot of room out there in the world for publishing to go that way. I know a couple of people who are working on projects of depth that have been getting pushback from publishers. I hope that publishers who might be listening to this will think again about whether there isn't room for some of those more intricate explorations of these things. I certainly don't know everything out there that could be explored. but it's amazing to find people like Sho who go out there and they do it and they spend the years and so I find a book like that incredibly encouraging in terms of a market that is also at the same time struggling against books that are clearly just designed to capture that flash of the moment when one person has a spike in social media activity and boom here's their book and it's interchangeable.

31:32I mean, my take is there's room for both. And I think just looking at Crown, where I work, I think the editors at Ten Speed and Potter are thinking about both audiences. And obviously, there's an economic concern with acquisition. And I think giving a large creator an opportunity to make the best book possible and make it really just a stunning work. And we see so many examples this year of creators coming out with debut books that just the bookmaking is superb, but also thinking about exactly what you said, craftsmanship, time, maybe not a social platform, but just a real domain expertise. And I think the best editors, many are listening, do both.

32:11Yeah, I mean, and we see it, you know, we could not have a bookstore that was only books about, you know, week-long projects to make dinner. Our customers would starve to death, and we wouldn't be open. And so we have to have those books that are like, you know, please, I have three kids and my spouse is, you know, in med school or, you know, working nine hours overtime every day and I have to feed the family. And the practical nature of that requires that you have a book that's really friendly to, yeah, here's a dinner that you can get together in 10 minutes. It's going to use fresh ingredients and people are going to feel like, yeah, we actually ate real food and this is better than takeout.

32:55And so I'm not indifferent to that. I come home from work three nights a week and make dinner. And I don't always feel like, you know, I need another two-hour project at the end of the day. So the world requires all those things. In the same way that, you know, if we were running a literary bookstore, you know, we could not only have, you know, Pulitzer Prize or Nobel Prize winning writers in there. You have to give people a range of choices. And I just always kick back when I feel like the tide is so strongly moving in a single direction. Yes. And because I think that sometimes means that a great opportunity gets lost.

33:48But yeah, I think the best editors do both. OK, let's talk about the Matt Sartwell picks because I want to get your editorial eye and maybe books that you want to champion on our show. And again, we're linking to the Kitchen Arts and Letters website. It's very just great search. You can always email or call the store to have it shipped to your house. So definitely pick up a book there. But what are some of the books that you want to highlight? Well, I mean, like I said, the show Spacebook has been terrific. I really love Dory Greenspan's new Anytime Cakes. It's so accessible and friendly. I mean, it sort of occupies that space between her enormous expertise as a baker and the idea that you might want to just have a cake and be eating it an hour or less than that.

34:36Or you want something that you can share with somebody. she has a profound technical skill. Oh, it's so true. That marries really nicely with a sense of like, gosh, what would happen if, now that I know how to make this work, what would happen if I tried something a little out of the ordinary? So I think it sits in a really unusual position. And if you're a first-time baker, you can count on it. And if you're an experienced baker who just sort of feels like you're in a rut, it's going to help you get out of that rut. Great storytelling, too. I think she's got stories for days. Yes. And Dory shows in that book.

35:17In particular, her long history with baking around the world. And so many important bakers she's worked with. They come to her. She's gone to them. Yeah, yeah. She connects so many threads. and so I would feel really happy, you know, stranded in a cabin in the woods for a couple of months with baking supplies in that book. Maybe some alternative flowers as well. Sorry, you can get some rye flowers too, you know, shipped in. I love the point though. Yeah, it's, I think it's so accessible. So I just published my top 10 list of books from 2025. Oh man, great. It took me a long time to settle on what I felt strongest about, but including some of the things that I've already mentioned today.

36:09I really like Nicole Rucker's Fat and Flour. I think the great point about that book is you have another really experienced baker who's playing around with technique and she just does enough things out of the ordinary to make that book stand out. And I have a feeling that 10, 15 years from now, you're going to be seeing people saying, I learned this from Nicole Rucker. And Nicole's book, you know, she's written other books, but this is like really some of her life's work as a pie baker and a cake baker. And if you know her work from, you know, because you're in Los Angeles or on the West Coast, these are the things that people like go to her over and over and over.

36:49Great conversation with Nicole in the spring about that we had on the show. Cool. Caroline Eden did a book called Green Mountains. which is a walk through the Caucasus. This is the third book in a series that included Black Sea and Red Sands. She's paid a lot of attention to the farthest reaches of Eastern Europe and then into Central Asia. She is a beautiful, extraordinary writer. She's a trained art historian. She has a visual acuity and observational skill that she comes through in her prose. And she gives you such an amazing sense of place. And her stories, the people that she learns to cook from are really so impressive is the only word I can come up with because she like meets these people and suddenly they're taking her into their homes and feeding her.

37:49And it's a kind of fantasy fulfillment in a way. I think I'd also want to plug her memoir. Yes, Cold Kitchen. I love Cold Kitchen. I mean, I think Green Mountain is great, too. I like Black Sea the best out of the three. I love her memoir. It's truly, I had her on earlier in the year, and I think her ability to kind of be a true journalist and kind of weave into these cultures and really show culture through, I mean, she clearly has great language skills to kind of capture these stories. And I think the amazing thing about Cold Kitchen is that it shows you what, you know, in a lot of cases, she's not on a mountainside in Central Asia.

38:28She's back home in Edinburgh. And so she's bringing those insights home and applying them. We are importing a book called The Irish Kitchen. It is a successor to a book called The Irish Bakery by Sheree Dunham with photography by Andrew Montgomery. And it is gorgeous and amazing. and it is both respectful of tradition and gives you a real sense about how home cooking in Ireland has changed. It gives you a sense of what modern Irish cooking is. It's so important to note that it's modern and it's not how Americans view Irish cooking. There are some real limitations on many American-produced Irish books.

39:14There have been some good ones. I'm not like slamming Coleman Andrews who did an amazing book about 15 years ago. But this is a really great contemporary snapshot. It's beautifully photographed for people who like beautiful photography. There are some lovely essays as well by Kitty Corrigan in there talking about different cooks that they've learned from. It's transportive. And I say that having never been to Ireland. Oh, really? Wow. I'd love to go. Got to get there. Do you have stock right now? We do. Oh, great. I'm smashing that buy right when we get off. I have somebody in mind for that. And it comes in, actually, we even have a box set with the original bakery book.

39:52So that's the kind of thing where some of our customers heard about it from the UK. And they were like, get us this book, get us this book. And we got it. And it's been a lot of fun working with them. They're really such careful, thoughtful people. I've also really gotten to love Six Seasons of Pasta, the Joshua McFadden book. I think that book represents a lot of ingenuity that is also very, very accessible. It is not, in most cases, that come home from work and have dinner on the table kind of book. But it is that it's the weekend. And I would like to eat something that I really look forward to eating kind of book.

40:37It's a book you relax into. too it has you know his perspective on on the seasons and what's good when and how to make it work is a continuation of his if his two earlier books but you don't have to have those to make a lot of great food with this book he worked with martha holmberg who i have a lot of respect for uh martha has uh and joshua gives her a lot of credit too in our conversations And I just feel like, boom, even if you feel like you have, like pasta is that thing that you go to because you don't know what else to make. This changes that up and it refreshes the whole pasta game. I love that book.

41:16We had a great conversation with Joshua earlier in the year. And the ingenuity is correct. It's very, very smart from a chef with 25 years of experience. And I think it rethinks a category that is very flooded with books. Lots of pasta books. Yes. And a lot of good ones. Yeah. But this one doesn't require fresh pasta. Exactly. You could use fresh pasta if you wanted for a lot of those things. But, I mean, it's just, it is very friendly in that space. We've also had a lot of success with a book that I really like by a Scottish author named Jess Elliott Denham, who has published her second book called Weekend Recipes.

41:56She did a book last year called Midweek Recipes. This is something else we're importing. We buy them directly from her. Midweek is, you know, another word for weeknight. And her first book was a big hit for us. Weekend, again, is that, you know, I've got a little more time. And it is a book for people who like to cook. And sometimes you can be that harried person who has to get a dinner on the table on a weeknight. But you still like to cook. And then the time comes and you don't want to be like, okay, I've got to get this done in 15 minutes or half an hour or whatever the time may be. and this is a book that lets you do that.

42:35And is it wildly, distinctively Scottish? There are definitely Scottish elements for it, but it shows you what contemporary UK cooking is like in a lot of ways. It's a simply designed book. She self-published it. It's not a fancy design. I love that you're including a self-published book here. Yeah, I love it. So much, well, like Katie's, Yeah. Parless book. Self-publishing is the way to go for a lot of people who might be willing to try something that they want to be in total control of. Whether it's design, whether it's content. We pay a lot of attention to self-published books. And I get all kinds of inquiries.

43:21Like, maybe you don't carry self-published books. So, I think that means that there are bookstores who don't bother, judging by the number of people who ask me that question. If you're a self-published author, you should probably reach out to Kitchen Arts. Please, I know, email me. You can literally email Matt at kitchenartsandletters.com if you've self-published. We can't take everything. Of course not. We have to be selective. We look for things that we think do something really unusual and that have been carefully formulated and put together. But I have no prejudices against self-published books.

43:55And they're a big part of what makes a store like ours exciting. because you walk in and find something you didn't know existed. I think you have a few more picks. Those are actually the top of my list because so many of the other things were you'd already spotted and had on your show. Your taste is to be commended for that. Oh, thanks, man. I had a sort of short list of things that almost made it. Okay. So I would call out attention on Jeremy Fox on meat. This is definitely project cooking if you're not a professional cook, but it is technically quite accomplished. You know, this is a restaurant chef doing ambitious restaurant things.

44:34But it is original and fresh. I really liked what Michael Twitty did with his recipes for the American South. Recipes are really great. His research is so strong. And his head notes are really informative. And he'll tell you, you know, he settled on one version and he knows there are others. and he'll give you a description of what those others might include. He's not trying to be definitive. He's trying to give you a sense of the landscape, knowing that you can't see around every tree and there are going to be variations. I mean, there's no more ambitious project this season than a book about the American South.

45:13I mean, we had Michael on and he had a great conversation with Liza and just major props to Michael for just taking that title. It is. I mean, just incredible work. It is a huge subject. One that people feel very passionately about. Of course. And even, you know, putting the—trying to put the whole South into a single book inevitably means that you're going to not do full service to a lot of regional variations. But he is always acknowledging it. And I think that's very smart. Hi there. It's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you.

45:57Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story.

46:38The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last-minute shoppers, you might know the feeling.

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48:40I really loved Diane Kuchilis' book on Athens, which I think is another book that says there is this tradition in this place. It's ancient, but it's also changing. And she's doing a great job of giving you a sense about how Greek food and its most cosmopolitan city is adapting influences from throughout the Mediterranean and elsewhere. And I think that's a really unusual take because almost all of the Greek books that we've been offered over the last 25 years have been just hyper-traditional. And Diane knows enough to sort of say, hey, actually Athens has those things, but it has more. Amazing Food City.

49:27I think you've hit a thread with a couple examples of how just like modernity and covering how cultures cook today in places that maybe have been covered more in the traditional sense. There never has to be just one book about something. And, you know, I think sometimes when people are looking for like lists of the best or whatever sort of flag you want to run up the poll, the temptation is to find that there's, you know, one book that sort of covers everything. And you need multiple perspectives on things like that, particularly someplace that has as much tradition and dynamism as a place like Athens or even a place like Rome.

50:11There's a funny little book, another self-published book. We bring in called Free Food by Andrew Barton, who is a self-publisher. He's also got a small press. He runs out of Portland, Oregon. And this is, I mean, I may be betraying a lot about my hippie youth or not quite hippie youth, but I went to college at the University of Oregon in Eugene and Andrew grew up there about maybe 10 years after I left. And this is that sort of like laid back, cheap as hell, try to be healthy, feed lots of people, have people coming in your house. You want a big pot of something ready to go on the stove or something to pull out of the oven and feed a lot of people.

50:57And it's a meditation on a kind of generosity that I think is maybe enjoying an undercurrent and some other books that are coming up out of mainstream publishing about potlucks and having friends over. But this is harkening back to a time that was less slick. And it's an interesting little meditative book. I loved it. I picked it up at that great shop, Vivian, in Portland. Oh, that would make all kinds of sense. And I was hand-sold that book by the wonderful owner of that store. And I just, I love that book. Glad you call it out. I think it's a really great pick. Yeah, and Andrew did a great little book on bread of his own.

51:35He self-published, well, not self-published, but he published Tom Eagle's book called Psychogastronomy, which is a meditation on sort of being in a particular place and what you're inspired to eat when you're there. Yeah. And it's short vignettes, really, rather than even essays. another book that we import it comes from France but it's in English is a book by Jean-Francois Piège who is a very popular chef in Paris this is the recipe recipes from a restaurant he has called La Poule au Par it's French bistro food and it's totally approachable and friendly and amazingly the French publisher did the English edition themselves and did it before they did it in French Wow, cool and interesting choice i don't know what happened there but i market i didn't question it he his team reached out to us and told us that the book had happened yeah and um so we were like sure let's do it so it's a great look at again what you would get if you were like eating out in a really nice bistro in paris these days yeah um not hidebound in tradition but again modernity from a culture that's been over covered in in many ways i think is a thread we're hearing here i want to close and talk a bit about your hopes and dreams for the future.

52:56Later in this episode, I talked to Ken from now serving about the same topic, but I always love to ask booksellers, what do you want, Matt? What do you want? You mean what do I want other people to do? Yeah, we're in the, you know, I could go upstairs and have a little chit-chat with the editorial team. But I'm being serious. Like there are a lot of books published every year, So it sometimes feels like everything is published, but you know best what the market is demanding. I'm going to say something that maybe isn't exactly what the people upstairs want to hear. There's been a few things you've said that make people upstairs.

53:33But I think sometimes the market needs to be shown the path. So what the market demands is, in a way, sort of an immediate solution to their problems. And there are always going to be things that are like addressing that boom, boom, boom. Here's the drumbeat of everyday life. And I don't think anybody has to be told that that's a need that people have. But I think that there are explorations that can be made, like Sho's book on ramen or the book that we bring in from Laos, that make people say, holy cow, I didn't know that there was so much to say about that. And what I'm always looking for is that holy cow book, something that swings for the fences to borrow a metaphor from another form of human endeavor that sort of says, you didn't know that there was so much to say about this.

54:35but there really is um i happen to know for instance uh that um there's a really amazing book coming on chinese noodles um which is um i believe is coming from crown um it's not till like 2028 okay i'm amazing to know that that's happening i'm so excited because me too i know what you're talking about can't really say much more i was encouraging the author for several years because he was like, do you think I should try? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. You're really well positioned to do that. So those kinds of things, hot damn, hot damn is somebody lying awake at night saying, you know what? I really need to solve my problems.

55:21It's a book on Chinese noodles. No. When that book passes in front of them, are there going to be people who are like, oh Jesus. Amazing. There was a book that happened about two years ago on Chinese breakfast. Holy cow. It's not the most obvious topic, but that kind of exploration really lights people up. And I think being open to those kinds of things is important because it keeps opening up the horizon for everything else. and if we are always addressing the immediate needs, and the immediate needs can be very pressing. There's no doubt about it. Everybody needs, I mean, look, I need books that sell because I have rent to pay and I have employees who like to be able to feed their families.

56:14So I understand the need to get that kind of thing done. But we also have to look at the things that we've never considered dealing with before and that don't have a model out there for comparison purposes, whether when we go to talk to the sales department or when we go to talk to the buyer at some giant company who's like, well, nobody's ever bought a book on that. Well, maybe that means that lots of people will want to buy that book. So that kind of thinking means that, you know, we can look at books on foods from different parts of the world. We can look at like funny specializations. We had a really delightful book this year that wasn't a cookbook.

56:59It was a book of 19th century Japanese illustrations of fish. And it has tiny little notes on the eating qualities of many of them. Some of them aren't even food fish. But people loved it. It's a beautiful book. It's gorgeous, man. I love that book. And it just says, does what it does. And, you know, fishes of Edo. and holy cow people really responded to that so i think people like surprise matt i i love that final sentiment i think it gives a lot of inspiration for our listeners folks working in editorial folks who maybe are thinking about writing a cookbook um that wow element we we really we really need to bottle that when we're at our desk writing our proposals and thinking about the world of cooking.

57:48Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Delighted to be here. Thank you again.

57:56Ken Concepcion, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you, my friend? I'm great. Great to be back. Thanks for having me, Matt. Oh, I love Now Serving, and it's your wonderful bookstore in Los Angeles. And we will talk all about some of the books that you've been excited about this year, some books that will be on your table, on your shelves. and again our uh our listenership knows the name i'm sure but um tell us where you're at and and really a little bit about um that you know now servings history so we are in chinatown uh just outside of downtown here in los angeles uh we're specifically in the far east plaza and we've been here for eight years yeah crazy it's amazing i i think i i found you guys early on and i loved You were doing a lot of interviews on Zoom, and now you do so many terrific author events in store.

58:49But before we get to the season, Ken, where have you been dining out as of late? Well, as you said, it is the peak of fall cookbook season right now before we go into the holidays. So I'm not getting out as much as I should. But when I do, I'm trying to grab a slice at the new Bub and Grandma's Pizza, which is fantastic. There's a bar that has been open for a couple months, and it's called Bar 108. Yeah. And Brian, who is the owner, he comes from a fine dining background, and he's about to open Corridor 108, which is like a tasting menu restaurant in Melrose Hill. But Bar 108 on Tuesdays after 10 p.m., they do this like this burger looks insane.

59:45and um i'm a little bit uh i'm i feel like i'm a little i'm suffering a little bit of burger fatigue but uh brian's burger looks looks so good yeah bar 108 is has been on my mind and have gotten some messages about it and i i'm i'm excited to visit uh and i mean this discourse about the smash burger has been exhausting i don't know if you've been following it at all yeah yeah no it is exhausting and um it is but i think you know i think we're at the i think hopefully we're at the tipping point i i'm in the camp of uh um while i do love a good smash burger i'm definitely in the camp of a bistro burger and a pub burger uh a backyard burger that's uh you know about eight to ten ounces so um yeah yeah i like it juicy yeah i like it juicy too i mean but But a great smash burger is what it is.

1:00:39It's fucking great. So if you prepare it well and you have all the ingredients dialed and you're using Kraft Singles, because that's, you know, the only cheese of choice, in my opinion. I feel like we're good. We're good with the smash burger in my camp. I'm fine with everything that's out there. And LA has some great burger spots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, let's talk about the season. I just want to ask you first, just like reflecting on this big, big year. um what have been some best sellers um at now serving yeah it's been a huge year um you know just going off the dome i think uh you know samin's good things it's great to have her back in in just in the conversation back in the store and conversation of cookbooks um that's been a top seller um hayley catalano's by heart was a huge hit for us and continues to sell um and then you know local local hero uh nicole rucker's fat and flour it's such a it's such a great book and it it really it's kind of that perfect title where it speaks to professionals it speaks to home bakers it speaks to people who are just starting out uh and just want to make some cookies um and um yeah nicole's done a great thing allison roman's uh latest which uh i saw just hit the bsl yep um not a surprise of course uh something from nothing that is that we can't even we can't keep enough in stock so i love to hear that all those books are terrific all have been on the show and we i love nicole's book and and great holiday pick and i'm linking to now serving on uh in our show notes and and listeners for real um you know kitchen arts and letters are now serving two of my my favorite shops in in the country and honestly just if you're buying a gift or you're you're you you've heard an author on our show and you're thinking about buying it for the holiday season maybe for yourself you know buy it at these stores you know buy it go to go to ken's website super easy to buy a book from ken we can't compete with the the people who are building rockets to go to Mars.

1:02:54But, you know, we throw in a little bit of humanity in there. I think you throw in humanity. Price is not that different. And honestly, you just, you got to support local retailers at this time of year. And it's just an amazing shop. I want to hear about your own, some of your favorites that were released this year and that you're selling for the holiday season. Yeah, of course. Well, right now we're obsessed with Sean Sherman's Turtle Island, which... It's kind of breathtaking how beautiful it is as well as like the guts of it. You know, there's, there's a breakdown of indigenous ingredients.

1:03:32And then just seeing how, you know, he talks about like ingredients, like, you know, making a California bear stew. And it's just really, I mean, we're not surprised with it being the follow-up to sous chef, but it's really really impressive um i think that um jeremy fox's on me it's another kind of like uh like a sophomore album and it's really really strong and i think it's jeremy really speaks through his cooking and is really like you know to paraphrase a certain midwestern uh diva he's really like your favorite chef's favorite chef and uh on mead is awesome yeah yeah and a local hero as well gotta shout that local local hero yeah yeah do you have any signed copies in in the store are you keeping some stock yeah we just actually we just got a bunch of cases in and and um texted jeremy to come through to sign some i also want to shout out um and it's really great i don't know about you matt but it's really great to see when there's a revised edition that you you know the original is such a beloved totem but like david libovitz is um ready for dessert um the revised edition is is awesome i mean new photography updated recipes flipping through it everyone is just like man i really want to make this or i want to eat this right now so and it it really it really speaks to what david does best and he really he really is such a genius that way agree fully and i think there's many readers of his sub stack who maybe haven't picked up this book maybe picked up more of his recent books but fully agree the brand new photo program is is uh brings it to life in a new way he's revised some recipes he's added some recipes um and i i think there's no better writer who thinks about baking technically but can then break it down for the every day baker than david lebowitz yeah 100 and there's i mean the rice pudding in there looks oh great call that's that's something that he he does as well as like he will take on traditional categories but his his books are written they're they're like it's his personality and it's like his his favorites you know he he and some of them are deep cuts.

1:06:03And I like that about a baking book where he will prove to you why, you know, possibly like Madelene's, you know, maybe a little bit of a deep cut for people who are like obsessed with, you know, cookies and cakes, but like make your own Madeline perhaps. Yeah, man, you can't go wrong with that. And it's actually, this kind of leads me to thinking I might be getting ahead of it, but I think David's book is also a nod to what I see as a big trend this year, especially this fall, is French food is back, baby. French books, French recipes. So many French books are doing really well right now. I love to hear that.

1:06:45Any last stuff? Any favorites? Anything that you're looking around your store right now, you're like, oh yeah, that book. Love, love, love Helen Goh and her book, Baking and the Meaning of Life, is like a treatise on like the meditative nature of baking and just the process of it. And she's been such a champion of Odolenghi and really kind of like one of his secret weapons. And to see her like take the main stage with such a beautiful book is, we love it. I love that. Now, a great part about visiting now serving is you've got all the table with the latest releases. You've got the, you know, your shelves, with all the amazing historical books.

1:07:29But then you have a lot of indie. You have some magazines there. And you have a great eye for independent publishing and smaller presses. Are there a few that are available online or in your store that you want to point us towards? Synonym Magazine is a favorite. That is also a local, really a dear friend of the shop, Caroline Huang and her team there have really put together this beautiful spiral-bound orderly magazine that changes theme every issue. We really love what the guys at Guilla Domingo out of Mexico City, they put out three volumes on tacos. Mexico City, Tijuana, and Guadalajara. And I just heard they signed with a publisher named ACC.

1:08:21and it's kind of cool to hear like the the band go from like an indie label to get signed to a bigger a bigger deal just because distribution people can actually get to it a little bit easier so yeah um but that all that indie stuff and all the small press stuff is very very cool and um the way we learn about that stuff is primarily either through you know our peers that you know like Matt at Kitchen Arts and Letters, or it's from, you know, from our own guests, you know, sending us a link or DM and saying, hey, I think you guys would really like this. You should check this out. It's an incredible point.

1:09:05The connective nature of all these tremendous culinary bookstores, you know, you guys all talk and, you know, we're the ones who benefit when, you know, You can get like a deep cut from Matt or from somebody else. And I have to say like when you're thinking about buying a book for a gift, you know, we obviously work in a major publisher here and our books are sold. But like the cool thing about buying an independent publication from an independent retailer is that you're helping both sides and like you're supporting both sides. so like you can buy direct from the from the publisher but like maybe think about picking up your favorite zine or an indie publication from now serving um available on your website yeah and also it especially for us you know we're in in the plaza here and it's such a no-brainer to like come down grab a book you know go get a coffee at endorphine you know hit up lestida or even Howlin' Rays or Amboy, and it's such a great environment.

1:10:09Great point. Great point about visiting the plaza. I mean, it is such a great place to spend an afternoon, and I know some listeners are planning their winter trip to L.A., because why wouldn't you? And stop by the plaza. Endorphine is amazing. Great, great spot to grab coffee, and it's right next door to you. You got to, and parking is easy, too. Don't let people fool you. you parking is actually really good down there so don't let them fool you um let me ask you just generally why do cookbooks make like the perfect holiday gift well it's funny i was just talking about this with a guest um actually about eric warheim's steakhouse book yeah it because with cookbooks they really hit they can really hit on different levels like as an object in itself is conveying the perspective of the author or the chef or the restaurant behind it with photographs, illustrations.

1:11:06And then you can really have, you know, like studied research journalism in the head notes, especially if it's focusing on a particular regional cuisine or like an underrepresented demographic. And we get all these guests who come in all the time who talk about, I don't really cook, but I just love cookbooks. I read them at night like a novel. So I think it's really special. And especially if you're picking out a book for a friend or someone you love, I think that it's kind of like, Like it's a little bit of taste making too, where you're like, I know you, I'm going to pick out this book for you that I think you'll really love.

1:11:57I love that point. I think when we're thinking about gifts, like if you, it's not just about the money, it's about the thought, right? And about you thinking and taking that care for, it could be somebody you work with, it could be a loved one, it could be just a friend. And like buying a cookbook or a couple books, like a bundle that are curated, I think that's an amazing gift. you can also buy maybe if it's a higher, if you have more budget, like buy a couple of cookbooks and maybe like a gift certificate to a restaurant or a market that's tied to the theme of that book. I think that would be a really classy gift to buy like, you know, Wareheim's Steakhouse book, which is such a deep dive into these regional steakhouses around the world.

1:12:40And like, you know, buy a gift to like a local steakhouse. I think that'd be a really fun gift. Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's really that's really diabolical, as the kids say. Yeah, it's totally diabolical. I always ask booksellers because you guys are really, really on the pulse. You know, what are you looking for for the next couple of years? Just hopes, wishes, books that you would love to see published? Like I said, I think while it's great, I really love seeing this reemergence of interest in like classic French cooking. But, you know, we really need, especially we really need here in LA, some more Salvadorian books, Guatemalan, Ecuadorian, hitting that like Central and South America representation.

1:13:33but also um more of you know we had eric ajepong's great uh gone into the world but let's keep digging deep into into into africa it's such that there's so much going on over there 100 and i think those books have performed well and like the there's been successes there so i'm you know signing up more of those books um would be would be incredible to see um i can't leave you what's you know people who visit the shop just know that you know now serving is as much of a record store as it is a bookstore even though you don't sell records because you play great music and ken you're you're just on the pulse about music and you're a huge music fan what's your take on geese what's your take on geese i am team geese man i am i am i am in awe of these kids uh and it's like their a third record and they really sound like they're fully realized and uh cameron winter has like this singular voice yeah that i'm just hypnotized and um yeah it's that's definitely been uh in in rotation at the shop i have to uh agree it's a singular band and i love the success for them i have to say i've been listening to a lot of the besnard lakes i don't know if you've ever listened to those guys montreal band they started in the early 2000s and put out like maybe seven albums I've been just loving it's like definitely Pet Sounds with this gentleman who sings with the most incredible falsetto and you also get moments of shoegaze and noise and I know there are a lot of like music criticism word salad at the audience who's stuck with us this whole episode they're so good I'm gonna put it on right now put it on uh you know like uh beta band uh high fidelity style oh yeah i i returned to that versus uh the the the the beta band uh eps all the lps three lp the eps i have returned to that actually often um um but we could talk about we could we could do a music podcast you and i i know we could yeah we could well ken it's been really a pleasure speaking with you and again now serving is in los angeles i'm linking to uh the the retail shop in the show notes you can easily buy these books online.

1:15:52You very much should. Matt, thank you, man. Always so fun to talk to you about anything. Thanks, buddy.

1:16:04This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.