In the Test Kitchen above our O.G. Flour + Water in the Mission, we have a high wood shelf that runs around the perimeter of the space. It’s not there for aesthetics (though it is pretty cute), but to store the hundreds of cookbooks in our team’s collection.
While, you’ll, of course, find cookbooks that speak to our obsession with Italian culinary tradition, the collection spans all genres. Gastón Acurio’s Peru, the definitive Peruvian cookbook, rests a few titles away from Yohanis Gebreyesus’ Ethiopia, an anthology of recipes and traditions from the horn of Africa. Seattle legend Renee Erickson’s A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus: Menus and Stories transports us into the depths of the region’s Puget Sound, while the eponymous Noma cookbook immerses us in the spectacular zeitgeist of René Redzepi's Nordic cuisine.
Each title is an invitation. Yes, an opportunity for us as individuals and as a team to expand our perspective as chefs, but also to explore regions far beyond the Bay Area via their culinary culture. Not every book is connected to a restaurant, decorated chef, or destination, but the beauty of cookbooks is their ability to immediately connect us with the author’s personal culinary culture. Recipes allow us to see inside someone’s world through the dishes, flavors and ingredients that are home to them – regardless of whether they live next door to us in San Francisco or across the globe in Mexico City.
Is this a form of gastronomic voyeurism? You bet. (We’d much rather snoop in someone’s pantry than someone’s medicine cabinet.)
So, this May, we’re putting our cookbook obsession on full display for our Shift Notes + Foods' fam. Over the next month, expect author Q&A’s, a roundup of our team’s favorite cookbooks, and more nerdery. Sharpen up those knives, folks, we're just getting cooking.