Cookbook Store cookin' after 25 yearsJun 18, 2008 04:30 AM
JULIA AITKEN
special to the Toronto star
Naked Chef Jamie Oliver, who isn’t as cheery and dishevelled as he might appear, poses with the staff at The Cookbook Store.
A success where many have failed, the downtown Toronto bookstore has played host to stars of celebrity chefdom
You heard it here first: Bad boy Gordon Ramsay, the potty-mouthed scourge of neophyte chefs in his reality show
Hell's Kitchen, has impeccable manners. And curvaceous Nigella Lawson, the spoon-licking siren of the TV cook top, has no sense of personal space (although some men wouldn't look on that as a negative).
For 25 years, dozens of food celebs have come to Toronto's The Cookbook Store to shill their wares, and manager Alison Fryer and her sidekick Jennifer Grange have seen it all.
Some authors make like rock stars, needing a specific pen for signings. Emeril Lagasse couldn't face his public without a bottle of Evian water at his elbow. And British wine writer Clive Coates announced, just as Fryer was escorting him into a wine dinner she had organized for him, that he was a vegetarian.
Both Fryer and Grange have worked at the city's iconic bookstore at Yonge and Bloor since optometrist and foodie Josh Josephson opened it in April 1983. In this era of big-box stores, independent booksellers are as thin on the ground in Toronto as successful NHL teams. For one to last a quarter of a century is near miraculous. Josephson credits the store's success to a passion for food and reading shared by him and his staff, and to the relationships they build with both customers and authors.
"It's so important to engage the customer," he says, adding, "when you start to diversify you dilute all the elements that are important to the store."
Fryer says they were the first store in North America to have Spanish surrealist chef Ferrán Adriŕ's cookbook in English, "all because we'd once done his brother a favour."
Because Fryer and Grange personally source – and read – many of the 6,000-odd titles they have in stock at any one time, The Cookbook Store is a unique resource, offering British books that haven't been Americanized and U.S. books that haven't been changed for overseas markets.
Martha Stewart was the first celebrity they hosted back in 1985. And guess what? The Ice Queen has a sense of humour. Once Stewart was at the store on a chilly November day. "I asked if she wanted her fur jacket draped over her for the book signing," remembers Fryer. "She refused, saying, `Can't you just see the headlines? Martha Stewart needs fur knee-warmer in Canada.'"
Just like movie stars, many TV celebs are not what they seem when they step down from the small screen. According to Fryer, Food Network star Jamie Oliver, who personifies geniality while cooking up his "pukkah" food, has a tendency to grumpiness. And that endearing scruffiness? "It's a very well put together, expensive scruffiness," she says. "He had on a yellow T-shirt that looked like it came from Goodwill but when I asked Jamie where he got it, he said it was a Fred Segal."
But Mark Bittman,
The New York Times food columnist, gets the store's crabbiest celeb award after he stomped back to New York City the day before a scheduled book signing. Fryer believes some authors don't realize that writing a book is just the beginning. "They think they're above engaging with their public," she explains.
Take Tyler Florence, host of
Tyler's Ultimate on Food Network. At a book-signing, he text-messaged his buddies between signatures.
And what of the hunks? Much to their surprise women loved the late Canadian cookbook author James Barber, whom Grange describes as "the Tom Jones of the post-menopausal set."
Their favourite was Australian chef Curtis Stone, who was voted one of the sexiest men alive by
People magazine in 2006. There was a time when fans would line up to have their favourite cookbooks signed. When Curtis came to town, "we had 250 screaming women stripped down to halter tops who'd have had him sign anything," says Fryer.
But, hey, sex sells. Nigella Lawson is fully aware she's voluptuous: "Why do you think she wears those plunging necklines?" says Fryer. "She must have the best undergarments known to mankind."
Meanwhile, Gordon Ramsay couldn't believe women were shoving their phone numbers into his back pocket when he visited the store.
Who would clamour for a date with foul-mouthed Gordon?"I was with him for two days and didn't hear him swear once," says Fryer.
Julia Aitken is a Toronto food writer.
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