In this episode, I chat with Celia Sack, founder and owner of Omnivore Books about cookbooks, cooking disasters and achievements, her favorite cookbooks, and the growing geographical scope of cookbooks.
Located in an old butcher shop in Noe Valley, Omnivore Books is a cherished epicurean hub blending a passion for food and the pleasures of reading. As the Bay Area's only culinary bookshop, Omnivore Books specializes in new and vintage books on food and drink. They are open daily and staffed by passionate cookbook lovers who will happily guide you to the perfect book.
When Celia Sack's fascination for the culinary universe first bloomed, it was hardly imaginable that her path would weave through the nuanced worlds of rare golf books straight into the heart of Omnivore Books.
Cookbooks, she reveals, are conduits of solidarity and understanding, opening palates and minds alike to the diverse tapestry of global heritage. The physicality of leafing through a cookbook receives its due reverence too; it's likened to the full-bodied experience of listening to an entire music album, where each recipe is a track in the soundtrack of our culinary landscape.
Enjoy!
Mandy
The Zuni Café Cookbook, Judy Rogers
Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens: Andrew Beahrs
In this episode, I chat with Celia Sack, founder and owner of Omnivore Books about cookbooks, cooking disasters and achievements, her favorite cookbooks, and the growing geographical scope of cookbooks.
Located in an old butcher shop in Noe Valley, Omnivore Books is a cherished epicurean hub blending a passion for food and the pleasures of reading. As the Bay Area's only culinary bookshop, Omnivore Books specializes in new and vintage books on food and drink. They are open daily and staffed by passionate cookbook lovers who will happily guide you to the perfect book.
When Celia Sack's fascination for the culinary universe first bloomed, it was hardly imaginable that her path would weave through the nuanced worlds of rare golf books straight into the heart of Omnivore Books.
Cookbooks, she reveals, are conduits of solidarity and understanding, opening palates and minds alike to the diverse tapestry of global heritage. The physicality of leafing through a cookbook receives its due reverence too; it's likened to the full-bodied experience of listening to an entire music album, where each recipe is a track in the soundtrack of our culinary landscape.
Enjoy!
Mandy
The Zuni Café Cookbook, Judy Rogers
Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens: Andrew Beahrs
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with independent bookshop owners from around the globe, authors, publishing professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice. To help the show reach more people, please share it with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review. Wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 246. Located in an old butcher shop in no Valley, san Francisco, omnivore Books is a cherished Epicurean hub blending a passion for food and the pleasures of reading. As the Bay Area's only culinary bookshop, omnivore Books specializes in new and vintage books on food and drink. They are open daily and staffed by passionate cookbook lovers who will happily guide you to the perfect book. The founder and owner is Celia Sack. Hi, celia, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, mandy, it's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1:I love to cook. I love cookbooks. So now I have an excuse to come up and visit you in San Francisco at Omnivore Books. But I warn you you may never get me out of there.
Speaker 2:You're not alone. We've only had so far one customer stay the entire open to closing day. But a lot more people threaten to.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can totally relate. Okay, let's begin with learning about you and your history, with rare books, dog walking and becoming the Bay Area's only culinary bookshop.
Speaker 2:Okay, I went to I'm not going to do it for too long, but when I went to college I went to Sarah Lawrence in New York, which is about half an hour from New York City, and I got. But I was born and raised in San Francisco, so I, when I got there, I got an internship because my high school had been very into volunteering and internships. I got an internship at Christie's the auction house my freshman year and every single year that I was at college I made sure two days a week I had off so I could take the train in and work there. And so I was always telling my friends while your parents are supporting you, go into the field that you want to go in, work for free so it'll be on your resume.
Speaker 2:They all came to me later saying how much they regretted not listening to me. They all came to me later saying how much they regretted not listening to me, but I was the only one who did so. After four years there, though, I was in 19th century European paintings, not books. When I moved back to San Francisco, it was very easy to find a job at the one and only book auction rare book auction galleries in San Francisco, which is still here. It's called PBA Galleries, and I was the head of modern literature, but also you became the head of whatever collections sort of came your way. There were only two of us who, as a cataloger, you know you're writing the catalog but you're sort of selling the books by describing them and researching them, which is so fun because we would get Civil War diaries and Gold Rush letters and all sorts of things that were outside of my purview. I became the rear golf book specialist on the West Coast, I know, just because we got one good collection and I didn't even know that it was good. But people flew out from Scotland and luckily, a couple of the guys who came took me aside and told me what I had done wrong and which books were valuable in the lots and then we just started getting better and better collections until we were getting the best in the world and I was the go-to expert which is so weird because I don't even know how to play golf but I know everything about the history. So.
Speaker 2:But my collecting interest soon became the books on food, not just antiquarian cookbooks, but books that sort of were an anthropology of food. In particular, what I like to collect and still do is books about retail food businesses and how to do it, sort of from Victorian England. One of my favorites is a butcher guide to opening your own butcher shop and it shows samples not only of the signage and the window cases but of the cases, you know that, where you set up your meat. And it's so English. It says like sheep's head, sheep's heart, sheep's brain, fern and pot, fern and pot on each side. Oh my God, to make it pretty. But somehow I'm just fascinated with these guides. I saw a guide the other day at the Anne of Green Book Fair it was way too expensive and not exactly in my collecting wheelhouse, but it was from around that time on how window displays for shoe stores. Just an entire book, thick book, about how to do window displays for shoe stores from like 1900. So I really for some reason that those instructions on on all of that were fascinating to me. And then I'm also really fascinated with books on colonial cooking, colonial places like India and Africa and how those were approached. We can talk about that a bit later, though I will just tell you that after seven years at the auction house my wife had sort of inadvertently stumbled into taking over a dog walking service.
Speaker 2:Our dog walker moved back to Australia and she was between jobs and decided to take it over. And it was the very beginning of the dot-com era and so we were starting. She was getting more and more people who needed their dog walked twice a day and we she would take them here. We're very lucky. You can take like seven or eight dogs out to the beach and run them off leash. You don't have to keep them on leash, you just need a truck. So that business built up very quickly.
Speaker 2:I loved animals and volunteered at animal shelters a lot as a kid, so I joined her and we started walking dogs out at the beach every day and it got busier and busier. We ended up hiring a couple of people and then we decided to open our store about a year later, just so that we had a central space and it was right around the area that the dogs were After 10 years, which we really loved. But a lot of the dogs were dying because they were older or, you know, aging out, and we thought, well, we haven't been sued or audited, so let's get out while we can and do something a little calmer because also when something goes wrong in dog walking, in walking dogs off leash, it's always an emergency and it's always something that you never even conceived of or imagined.
Speaker 2:So the phone ringing was always really stressful you know the dogs were playing too hard in the back of the truck and they opened it and are running down the highway, whatever things that keep you up at night you know, yeah, it was things like that where you just have to like close the store and go running off and helping that, so.
Speaker 2:So anyway, we happily decided to stop and at the same time the space next door to our store became available and it's an old butcher shop. The front half, which was the pet store, which is the pet store is probably it was the grocery, and then the back half, was the, was the butcher shop. So there's this still, the scale hanging and the old redwood lined cooler and everything.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's what that is. I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really amazing. And you'd hang and people, people, always in the store. You see their eyes drifting up and you're like, do I feel like answering this question today or not? But, um, they love to see back because the redwood is, you know, at least 120 years old, so it's very red and it's milled so long and wide and beautiful, and then it connects all the way through the back to the pet store. So it's a, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:And I thought, you know, I think it's time for me to get back into this more intellectual versus visceral world, and I'll never make it if I just open a store that's all antiquarian books. So why don't I have new and vintage or antiquarian? And I also thought I'll be the gateway drug for new collectors. I was hated as a young collector, the way that people would. You know, when I'd go into a bookstore that had some rare books, they were either behind the counter or way up high, and when you went to get it down, you know you start to get the stink eye from from people who work there, because I was like 18 or 19, and until you start piling up and you're gonna buy and then suddenly they're really nice to you, especially in France. Um, so they're really mean until they're suddenly nice and their whole personality changes, but anyway. Um, so I thought I don't want to be that, I want to be accessible.
Speaker 2:Book collecting is sort of like the opera, like everybody's aging out who are fans and we need to get new fans. So one of the best ways to do that is to intermix the new books with the old ones, and so people can sort of also make a connection between wow, here's a book on pickling and preserving that just came out, and then next to it is one from 1910 or from wartime, world War II, telling you how to save, you know, economize your victory garden. And they start making the connection and they start getting less shy about exploring those books and checking through them. And their excitement is so palpable. And that was exactly what I wanted when I opened was to share. I had this beautiful library here at home and no one was ever interested in it, none of my friends, my partner and so to suddenly be able to share this passion and have other people respond to it in kind is so satisfying every single day.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful. Oh, it sounds fantastic. What you were saying made me think of the word artisan and artisan shops. And while there seems to be a little bit of a resurgence in smaller, independent specialty stores, the artisan shops, I don't think there's enough of them, and we kind of watched that happen with the birth years ago of the large chain supermarkets. We lost so many bakeries, delicatessens, butchers, a hand-painted wallpaper store.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and it's good to see a lot of younger people coming in and whether it be, you know, a brewery or a wine shop, but they are coming back. I think these little artisan shops, the specialty stores, as is Omnivore Books, and this makes me so happy, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, what I've found throughout the eras of the cookbooks and also in real life, is that whenever there's a technological advance, like the Industrial Revolution or World War II with munitions, freezing you know, frozen foods in the 1960s there's always a pushback and oftentimes it's back to the land. It's the arts and crafts movement to the revolution, it's victory gardens. In world war ii, it's, uh, the back to the land movement in the 60s and in 2008, when the dot-com era, which was, of course, so important here in san francisco, uh became what did my friend call it? Dot squat, and all these people were laid off. That was exactly the year that I opened. I love opening. In a recession, there's nowhere to go but up.
Speaker 2:And so all these people were laid off. Suddenly they were coming in and buying books on raising chickens and making your own jam and they were starting to think about going back to the old ways and away from the technology of the internet and computers and back to sort of analog arts and doing their own thing. And it didn't completely last. Like that area was so popular for my first like two years how to butcher your own hand there were like butcher demos in the city. I mean it was crazy that you couldn't get into because they were so packed and that's you know, it's pulled back a bit, but it's happened so many times in so many cycles that I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. And just looking at bread making during the pandemic, it's true For about six weeks.
Speaker 2:It was six weeks and you felt it. Everyone was like fuck this, I can just buy bread down the street, I don't need the ajita. And it was like musical chairs just stopped and we were stuck with all these bread books that we had really over ordered oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm still making my own bread.
Speaker 2:I still have the same sourdough starter good, okay, well, uh, if you need a sourdough book, I've got hundreds for you to choose from.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Well, let's talk about something that you kind of touched on earlier. Since opening Omnibold Books, have you noticed a change in the geographical scope of cookbooks and the defining of specific regions?
Speaker 2:Hugely. I love, love, love that question because I feel really proud of the cookbook community and publishers for expanding the reach. When I first opened, I think you know, all the books that we had about Indian cuisine, chinese cuisine, eastern European were all, were all just sort of a mishmash of all of that. It was a wide brush and nothing got really specific and it was very hard to find regional cooking from certain places, south American cooking. You wouldn't find like a Colombian cookbook or an Argentinian cookbook, something like that. Now and I think we still have a ways to go, but there are so many more options there's a really great small publisher I love called Interlink, and they publish a lot of books about Eastern European countries and also Middle Eastern and African countries. And I remember when Trump got in the first time and immediately banned I know, immediately banned Muslims from coming into the country and there were certain countries that he banned. I put a window up in my front window of all the cookbooks from all the countries where people were banned from and said you know, these people are no longer allowed in learn about them, and most of the publishers were. I mean, most of the books were published by Interlink. I noticed that and they're distributed now by Simon Schuster. But you know, now you get a Romanian cookbook and a Georgian cookbook and Now you get a Romanian cookbook and a Georgian cookbook and you know, I think it'll even get more specific.
Speaker 2:Like, filipino still needs we need more countries. African, there are several, but we still need more countries. And same with South American, but it's getting better and better and we're seeing a lot more regional and Indian especially. We see regional now and I love making room for those because I just love and people love to see their heritage represented when they come in Our Filipino events. Whenever we have an author come off the hook. Off the hook all arrive and there's like a local Filipino TV crew outside. There's pot plates that they've set up in my store of like. It's like a local Filipino TV crew outside there's pot plates that they've set up in my store. It's like a party that I didn't even know was going to happen and packed, and people are just so, so excited to see respect and excitement about their own food. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1:What a wonderful idea for a window display. You know it goes to show people that one person, specifically Trump, can't take away our love, our curiosity and our respect for people worldwide and we welcome them here. We welcome their cultures, we welcome their food, we welcome and celebrate our differences.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and the books are sort of a portal. I mean, the food is a portal to learning about that culture, more than I think, more than any other genre, and so it's, you know, it's just so important. Like last night we had a talk by this woman, crystal Wilkinson, who was the the poet laureate of Kentucky from like for the last couple of years, and she has a book called Praise Song for Kitchen Ghosts.
Speaker 1:I have my signed copy of Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts which I bought from you from Omnivore Books. It's a wonderful, wonderful book.
Speaker 2:Oh thanks. Yeah, it was such a good talk and the book is all about her Black relatives from Appalachia, which most people don't realize that Black people even lived in Appalachia but she up in the mountains. But she's talking about her ancestors and relatives and what they did there. So you're getting recipes, but you're getting so much more than that.
Speaker 1:Well, particularly with that book, you're getting these great stories, and cooking and stories go together for me. People say to me well, how did you learn to cook? Where did you learn to cook? It was my mom just standing in the kitchen as a little girl, watching her, never measuring anything, throwing everything in and the perfect gravy would turn up or the perfect stuffing or whatever. And then I guess from home ec. You know we had that in Australia, but it's the stories that I love to remember whenever I cook something that mum taught me how to make. It's just so endearing. It's a wonderful, warm, hearted memory and when you think about it, cooking is one of the few things we do that brings to life all of our senses.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And how lucky are we that we can go to somewhere like Omnivore Books and get this infusion of cookery books from so many regions.
Speaker 2:And one thing also is that I'll just say that, because it's such a specific, my store is such a specific subject, even though also, just you know, have those micro specific books about particular regions when I find them, and you know, when I find one that oh, I've never seen a cookbook from you know, trinidad and Tobago or whatever. I get all excited and, and you know, happy to have it represent.
Speaker 1:Is it easy to find many of the ingredients or the spices that are used in a lot of these cookery books from other regions in San Francisco.
Speaker 2:We're pretty lucky. Yeah, lots of, lots of yeah. We have a bounty of just about everything.
Speaker 1:It's probably like that in most major cities. I know it is in Los Angeles. Let's get back onto books. What do you see as the philosophical difference between downloading a recipe online and using a cookbook?
Speaker 2:Excellent question and I have to credit my wife, paula, for coming up with the best answer to that. She said it's like downloading one song instead of buying a whole album, and I think that's it's kind of like the perfect thing to say. You know, it's great if you want to make a key lime pie and you need to go online, you know, just figure out how to make it quickly. You can go online and do that. It's fine, you'll probably find a decent recipe. Go online and do that, it's fine, you'll probably find a decent recipe.
Speaker 2:But if you love someone's sense of taste and the way that they write a recipe, buying their cookbook like okay, alison Roman great, great, great cookbook writer and very popular. But what I love about her books is that she always uses combinations of ingredients or flavors that I wouldn't have thought of on my own and I took a lot. So I don't actually use that many cookbooks, but having her book always inspires me to make something else and I wouldn't really know how to look up that recipe or whatever it is because I'm just searching through and looking for inspiration.
Speaker 1:That's a fabulous answer. And in the world of streaming and getting back to the artisan world that we were talking about earlier, it is important to support your favorite musicians or your favorite authors, and the best way to do this is to buy the book, buy the album.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, a lot of my customers will actually take a cookbook out of the library first, and then, and if they like it and they've used it a few times, then they'll come in and buy the book and I think that's a great idea. I mean, that way, you're not, you know, committing to the whole thing without knowing if you're going to really like it.
Speaker 1:And I don't know about you, but I have a lot of my mother's and grandmother's cookbooks that were handed down, and what I love about them is the side notes. Something will be written, such as don't use this much sugar, use half a cup instead of a cup, or add more cocoa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I know Paula does that all the time. My favorite thing she does is she'll write the date of when she made something and then like the next couple of times she's made it and she'll write still great.
Speaker 1:It's so great, though, that Paula does that, because it makes the cookbook personal. You know, it's almost like a cooking diary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was one recipe of Ottolenghi's that she really hated and she, you know, wrote all over it what she hated and I photographed it and sent it to him and I was like I'm so sorry, Not everyone loves every recipe. He was cracking up.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, how did he take?
Speaker 2:it. Oh, just fine, he was laughing, he's Israeli, he can handle. You know their talk.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Now.
Speaker 1:I got to talk about the mural on the front of the store. I love it. What can you tell me about it?
Speaker 2:the mural on the front of the store. I love it. What can you tell me about it? That was a local artist. He lives in the Mission. He's Salvadoran American. I think he was born here, but his mother is from El Salvador and she came too. His name is Jose Rojas, j-o-s-u-e Rojas, and I found him online.
Speaker 2:I just searched for Mission District, which is famous or Mission District is famous for its Mexican and Latin American murals, and he came up and I liked some of the work that he had done and so I asked him to come do it and I had a whole vision of what I wanted it to be. I already had the chicken in it. That's a sort of a Wahawken design. That was already there and my lovely landlord said I'm a little disappointed that it's not bigger. I was like what landlord does that? So I was like I guess he'd be fine if we did the whole thing.
Speaker 2:So I thought we'll incorporate pets, since the pet store at the corner and food, and there's a Jewish school down the street with groups of little kids go by every day. So I really wanted them. We're Jewish too, but I did want them to see themselves represented in it. So there's a challah roll. There's that matzo ball soup that the little ones are making. But he came up with the whole concept and he wanted every age group to be able to enter it at some point. So there's, you know, the Maurice Sendak characters from In the Night Kitchen is the two chefs and that's probably for your and my age. There's the Campbell Soup Kids, which is really like maybe 1930s, and then there's a bunch from afterwards. There's Ratatouille Rat. There's afterwards, after us, that we wouldn't know the life of pets. So I know he did an amazing job.
Speaker 1:He sure did. I love it. It's so beautiful and makes me feel good, makes me feel happy.
Speaker 2:Thanks, it's a showstopper?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's for sure. Okay, now you have bought and read hundreds of cookbooks by numerous authors, restaurateurs and chefs. Is there a standout cookbook you think emanates a particular author's personality in the prose and the recipes?
Speaker 2:Yes, there's the one that people I do get asked a lot what my favorite cookbook is. If I have a favorite and I do, and it has stayed my favorite all this time it's called the Zuni Cafe cookbook by Judy Rogers, who unfortunately passed away several years ago now, but Zuni Cafe is a really popular restaurant in San Francisco and has been since the 80s. The thing about the book, though you don't have to have any reference to the restaurant to love it. She tells you why you're doing what you're doing, in a poetic yet concise way, so it's not too saccharine in the headnotes, but it's not too scientific, because that bores me a lot.
Speaker 2:I really, you know, I don't need to know the exact perfect temperature to make my egg. A certain way that science-y thing that men, frankly, are into. So I love it, it's true, but I love the way that she'll describe. You know why you want to crowd the tomatoes in a pan when you're steaming them, how that, how that makes it better, so that when you see that instruction in another cookbook you know why you're doing it. You don't need that explanation. And also she just picks the perfect, perfect words.
Speaker 2:I joke that it's the kind of book you can take to bed with you to read in bed, because it's just, it's so well done. You know, like for roast. And it came out a while ago. It came out in like 2010, I think, or 2008. So some things have evolved. Like she says, ask your butcher to get you a two to three pound chicken Now it's fairly easy to find that and open it up. If you can go buy it a day or two in advance, open it up and put it on a plate in your fridge so that the skin dries out and it's crispy when you cook it. And that was before the days of you could just buy an air chilled chicken. But you know, now I do that with every roast chicken that I'm making, even if it's not a recipe, and so that is the one that I like to set people up with, because it's got technique, it's got, you know, great recipes and, yeah, it was fabulous.
Speaker 1:Highly recommend. Well, that's another book I'm going to have to add to my list. It sounds fantastic For anyone wanting to contact you regarding a collection of cookbooks they've inherited. Can you define what you are not interested in and what rare cookbooks get you excited?
Speaker 2:This question has been the thorn in my side for my entire business. It's so hard to explain and people, honestly, they don't really listen. Anyway, you can actually you can say I'm buying things that aren't still in print, that I can't just buy elsewhere. I try to say, just to generalize it. I'll say, you know, probably pre 1920s, and I'll say, oh, so not a signed Julia child. No, okay, yes, I want that. And then, and then you know, I just don't want your like beat up used. Copy of Moosewood cookbook.
Speaker 1:Inevitably they bring me.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I just don't want your like beat up used copy of Moosewood cookbook. Inevitably they bring me oh no, I don't have that. Inevitably that's what they bring me.
Speaker 2:Their beat up used copy of Moosewood which is so frustrating. So it's a lot of people on the West Coast. They're not as familiar with auctions, antiques, things like that, because we're just a newer place than you know, just like Australia. We started so much later so we don't have things that go back that far. So they think really, really old is a 1970s copy of Moosewood. So I have to explain, and it's not just old, it's also unusual. So you know, if you've got a Cuban cocktail book from the 1960s, yes, or 70s, I want it even though it's from that era. So I guess you know the easiest thing to say is I don't want anything that's still in print that I can get new, because I don't sell used cookbooks. Get new because they don't sell used cookbooks. It has to be either long out of print and something unusual, like a Sephardic cookbook or something from even that's 1990s. If it's out of print, that's a subject that's desirable. So I can't give you a very good one line answer on that.
Speaker 1:That makes absolute sense, and I think what we have to remember is what means a lot to us isn't going to mean a lot to most people out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and people's idea of condition.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly those stained side notes on pages aren't going to mean as much to everyone else, unless I guess they're signed by someone famous or the author of the book, right?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, exactly, I did install recently, a couple of years ago, a free cookbook library in front of my shop and it's bolted to the wall so people can just stop by anytime and drop off if they have their entire collection of gourmet magazines, which is, or Bon Appetit, which is a constant phone call, or you know, used cookbooks that I can't really use, that are because they're either still in print or too new, constantly dropping them off now and people pick them up. So it's a really nice service to provide and also it provides me a way to push off people who want to sell me their used books. Yeah, and even when you say we don't really buy used cookbooks, they get offended Like well, these are not, I never touched them, that's not what I mean.
Speaker 1:I love the idea of the library at the front of the store. What about cooking? As a child did you enjoy cooking and have you become a better cook since opening the bookshop?
Speaker 2:I've definitely become a better cook. I feel a little bad that when I was a kid, especially a teenager, my mother always was inviting me into the kitchen to cook with her, and I wanted to be as far away from her as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, teen years are tough age to want to be near your mom, right?
Speaker 2:I know, I know and so I just I just didn't take her up on it. I have one great memory of the first thing that I ever cooked that my mom helped me with, which was called like Greek orange chicken or something. It was very easy to do, but she helped me and I was probably about seven, but I really spent so much time trying to avoid her as a teenager and and so I didn't really pick it up until I got out of school, um, and just started. I think my very first cookbook was by Evan Kleinman, who is on, you know, she has that show, uh, good eats on KCRW, or good food, um, and she hosts me every year, actually in December, to talk about the best cookbooks of the year. Her book Pasta Rustica was really, or Cucina Rustica was probably the first one I used, and I've gotten better and better, especially because not just the books we get in, but the talks that we have at the store we have usually events and talks two or three times a week from authors, and so I learn from them. I feel like I've been in a 15 year extended ed course, you know, because I learned so much about how things are made and ideas of flavor combinations that I hadn't thought of.
Speaker 2:So we had an Italian cook in recently. She wrote a book called Italy by Ingredient and she's also a local Italian cookbook, food instructor, cooking instructor, and she talked about one dish during the talk of. You put in a bowl, you shave, botarga, you know, which is dried fish roe with a lot of butter and garlic and a little bit of pasta water, and then when the pasta is done, you just throw that in there and toss it, and it sounds so easy and wonderful. I went home and did it and it was incredible and it was like this is the first time I'd ever made that. So and I happened to have some botarga that I didn't know what I was going to do with, but I resist buying, so it was perfect.
Speaker 1:I love it when you try out a recipe that you've tasted somewhere else and it turns out well. It's so exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and usually then you totally forget how to do it and never do it again.
Speaker 1:Or you try it and it's a dismal failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly what did I do right the first time that happened. Recently, I decided to learn how to fry oysters and with a little cornmeal crust, and because we have a second home near a very famous oyster place here at Foldhog Island, and so I got them, it did them, they were absolutely perfect. Everyone was freaking out, my friends, paula, and then every time I've done tried it. Since they've come out. We see the batter's falling off.
Speaker 2:I don't know what made the magic of that first time, but I'm always trying to get back to it, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's frustrating because it can be, you know altitude, it can be the oil you use, the temperature, the oven, the stove. It's frustrating.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Did I not? Did I do? Did I miss a step in dredging them? I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh well, live and learn. You've kind of answered this question. I was wondering what your favorite cookbook is to hand sell and if it was the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which was, as you mentioned, your favorite cookbook.
Speaker 2:Yes, there are a couple others, too, that I can add on if it helps. There's a really good one called Small Victories by Julia Tertian. That is a little less intimidating and more photographs than Zuni Cafe, but it also gives you lots of small victories, which are techniques, and each recipe is laid out very simply, probably with the simplest version of it, but then there's spinoffs in it. She's written a lot of the books for Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, so she's really trustworthy and I love handing people that book. Small Victories, julia Turshen, t-u-r-s-h-e-n. And then there are a couple of food writing books that I love to hand people, and, in fact, last night, one of the authors was in attendance for the event and he reintroduced himself to me because he had given a talk in like 2010. And I was like you owe me, buddy, because I hand sell your book constantly and my employees do.
Speaker 2:When I introduce them they were. They were like oh, celia talks about you constantly. He's a little shocked, but his book is called um Twain's Feast. His name is Andrew B-E-A-H-R-S theirs, and it's all about the foods that mark twain was writing about at the time that he was writing and what's become of those foods so prairie chicken, um canvasback duck and in maryland, tahoe trout and how they've sort of. It sounds like it could be depressing because a lot of them have disappeared or shrunk it down, but the the way he writes it is just wonderful. And then he's got recipes from that era for those things. And then there's another called 97 Orchard by Jean.
Speaker 2:I think it's Ziegelman building in New York City with like five or six different immigrants living there around. You know the late 1800s. It's got Germans, it's got Russians, it's got, I think, russian Jews, it's got Italians and it's got Irish and each family. It sort of follows them and fictionalizes them, but then goes into how the foods that they brought over from Europe spread throughout New York City and became popular in the whole country. It's just fascinating and she takes you on such a wonderful journey.
Speaker 1:I love the sound of that book and what a great way to bring food back into stories. I love that idea. Yeah, to bring food back into stories. I love that idea. Yeah, okay, celia, now when you're not reading cookbooks, what do you like to read and what are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:I read fiction. I really love good fiction. I just finished Absolution by Alice McDermott, which was fantastic. I think my favorite book is Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. It's so funny and the first two pages are the best I think the best opening ever in literature.
Speaker 1:And then right now, I'm reading this fantastic book For our listeners, who can't see what you're holding the book is Northwoods by Daniel Mason.
Speaker 2:I've heard of it but I've not read it yet. In Western Massachusetts, all the way through the 20th century and into current day, and who the residents were and what happened to it throughout time and what happened to the nature around it and the forest. And he manages to write each chapter sort of in the voice of the day of the time that he was writing, but it does not sound contrived when he does it, it just fits in perfectly. It's masterful. I have a good time with nonfiction. Sometimes I'll listen to it by podcast, but I don't know. It's hard for me to stay interested. I don't know why. I would like to be the kind of person that can read nonfiction, but I never seem to be.
Speaker 1:You know, I find I learn about nonfiction in well written fictional books and my prescription for reading fiction is that you're in another person's point of view or multiple characters point of view, and I think that helps us understand empathy and learn empathy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally yes, yeah, and I love you know. Plot is okay, but I'm more interested in character development.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm the same. Yeah, I like a story that pulls me into a relationship or relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, annie Proulx's books like Brokeback Mountain and Shipping News, anything, and Steinbeck and Twain and Dickens they all are so much about building a character that they stay relevant and current and pull me in.
Speaker 1:There's a book I'd like to share with you. It is one that we had to read in Australia in high school and it's called A Fortunate Life by the author AB Facey. He taught himself to read and write and was in World War I, but the story and the way he talks about early life in Australia and the relationships and the funny twists and turns that happen throughout his life, his relationship with the land, it's just wonderful. It can be a little difficult to get out here, but if you can, it's definitely worth the read.
Speaker 2:I'll find it, you know me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Sherlock Holmes of the book world, that's my specialty. Do you happen to know Don Lindgren from Rabelais Books? Yeah, in.
Speaker 2:Biddeford, maine. Yeah, I just had lunch with him actually, or breakfast. He was seriously my inspiration for opening. I met him at an antiquarian book fair here in San Francisco. He was displaying and he had some more modern books that were like a first edition of, say, omnivores dilemma. For some reason I hadn't it hadn't occurred to me that you could sort of make a market for newer, rare books. Just, uh, I was just thinking of it's either new or it's antiquarian, like you know 19th, and there's no in between. But he sort of got me to see that oh, there are a lot of books actually that are sort of scarce, from mid century or even current ones that we can. There's not much of a market for yet, but between us and any other booksellers we can make a market for those. And I thought if he can do it in Portland Maine, I can do it in San Francisco.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was on the show a couple of years ago and whenever I see his posts on social media, there are these chickens, or the chickens surrounded by snow or some other animals. It's really cute. Yes, his dog.
Speaker 2:We visited him a couple times there in Maine.
Speaker 1:Well, celia, it's been great chatting with you. I could chat with you for a long time because I love cooking and food and cookbooks. So the next time I'm up in San Francisco I will pop in and say hi to you and Paula. Please do, please do. And for anyone listening who might want to order the books we've spoken about today, how do they go about that? What is your website?
Speaker 2:Omnibore we've spoken about today. How did they go about that? What is your website? Omniborbookscom. And then we, since the pandemic, we've gotten all of our cookbooks up there. I used to just have the antiquarian ones and ones that were hard to find, because I thought I thought well, if people want a regular copy and they're not getting my curated special store, they'll just buy it from Amazon or something. And I was totally wrong. During the pandemic, I realized so many people from all over the country really want to support independent shops, which is wonderful. So now we have everything on there, new and vintage, and a lot of signed books, because we have so many authors come and speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have an amazing events program there. Celia, thank you for being here. I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it was such a pleasure chatting with you. I can't wait to meet you in person.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with Celia Sack, founder and owner of Omnivore Books San Francisco. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrian Ohtohan and graphic design by Frances Farala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.