Some great Melbourne coffee adventures to check out!
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 | | Great Coffee - at the Vic Market - Recommended |
AVisTony's Git Our Sponsor |
 | | Great Coffee |
We had a great coffee & breakfast at their Kensington Cafe the other day
Visit Our Sponsor |
 | | Padre Coffee - East Brunswick, Melbourne & Sth Melbourne |
Smooth, great coffee!
Visit Our Sponsor |
 | | Toby's Estate Brunswick |
Good Coffee - wish they opened weekends!
Visit Our Sponsor |
 | | Seven Seeds - Carlton, Fitzroy & Melbourne |
DeClieu - the Fitzroy cafe is a minute from Books for Cooks |
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| Greetings!
For what seemed on paper to be a gentle month, letting us get ready for the annual crush of new cookbooks leading up to Christmas, August has all of a sudden become rather busy.
At the end of July we went to the Australian Bookseller's Conference and met a number of new suppliers and colleagues. We all left envigorated and excited about what is a testing but exciting time for booksellers. At the annual awards dinner, Books for Cooks was acknowledged for the 3rd year in a row as Victoria's Specialist Bookstore.
In other news, if you haven't noticed, we have finally made our entire catalogue available online. You can browse, shop and buy or order. You can leave reviews if you wish and it's all secure. We are adding more content every night including images, author biographies, detailed content and occasionally video clips.
Whilst it took us a long time to get this far, we are forging ahead and in the next four weeks or so we will be enhancing our online offering with food and wine related eBooks via Booki.sh which you will be able to read in any browser enabled device. We'll keep you posted!
At the same time, we have been lucky enough to buy several large collections of second-hand and vintage cookbooks. Over the next few months we'll be cataloguing these and adding them to the shelves.
This month we have an event or two, a new books, our Grand Cookbook Raffle and National Bookshop Day Celebrations ...
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Author Event: 6 September - Guy Mirabella's Hungry: food from the heart - an evening with Guy Mirabella
 | | Hungry by Guy Mirabella $50 |
Last month, we excitedly announced the release of Plum's first book Marion by Marion Grasby. Their second, The Good Life by Adrian Richardson is also great (see below) and now their third food book - by perennial Melbourne favourite son Guy Mirabella is Hungry: food from the heart.
Guy will join us in store on 6 September for an intimate evening chatting about food and family and running a food business on the Mornington Peninsula.
We are looking forward to a lovely time. The food draws on Guy's Sicilian heritage and the food he cooks at his family's cafe EatAte in Mt Eliza. As Guy says: "This is the food I cook for my friends, my customers and my family. It's the food I love to cook for the people I love to be with."
Guy is also an award winning graphic designer and has been involved in the production and design of a number of the great books published in Melbourne over the past decade or more. Guy's experience and eye shows in what is a beautiful evocative book that will leave you literally 'Hungry'. As usual, our event is free, but bookings are essential. Tastes will be available from the book as well. Hungry: food from the heart 7pm Tuesday 6 September 2011 @ Books for Cooks, 233-235 Gertrude St Fitzroy To book, call or email us: T: (03) 8415 1415 shop@booksforcooks.com.au |
Books: The Good Life
by Adrian Richardson
 | | The Good Life by Adrian Richardson $60 |
First, an apology...this is the third book from Plum that we have mentioned. There are lots of other great publishers and new books and we will get on to them, asap...
That said, we drive past Adrian's restaurant most days and even our vegetarian staff member loves his restaurant (which is known for its suckling pig roast).
Adrian is probably known to you for his first book Meat, or his appearances on Lifestyle on Secret Meat Business. In The Good Life, Adrian explores the family food from his extended and culturally diverse family. The recipes encompass all parts of Adrian's family and sum up the sensibility of modern Melbourne eating - good food, seasonal ingredients drawn from a myriad of culturual heritages. There are lots of home-made dishes including curing meats, making sauces, chutneys & relishes; flavouring oils and vinegars; as well as great comfort cakes, biscuits and baking.
This is one of those quirky books that will reward those who dip into it with unexpected, elegantly simple but delightful recipes
...to buy... |
Dining: The Montague Hotel
a review
 | | The Montague Hotel |
Every few months a gaggle of booksellers (what is the collective noun for booksellers - a binding? a quire? ) meet over dinner. Last week, dinner was at the Montague Hotel in South Melbourne.
For what seems a quiet local, this was a great find. Owner Scott Thomas (of Court House repute) and head chef Andrew Hyam have put together a nice tight modern Australian menu that provided a great meal for us. There were a great range of dishes to share and the mains ranged from contemporary to classic with an emphasis on great flavour and interest. Every plate was practically scrapped clean. The wine list is interesting and very reasonable - a couple of Yarra Yering wines were extremely well priced. We used the upstairs dining room, but I imagine you could eat just as well in the bar and enjoy a cold one at the same time. We'll be back!
www.montaguehotel.com.au 355 Park St South Melbourne (03) 9690 9044 |
Special Dinner: Offal Dinner @ Josie Bones
by Josie Bones, Chris Badenoch & Others
 | | Offal Dinner @ Josie Bones 31 August |
Barely a day goes by without one of our customers asking us where they can find a restaurant serving good offal.
Since the closure of the Homebush Hotel in North Fitzroy we haven't had a good answer other than to offer them a copy of Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail so they can cook offal at home - until now!
Chewing the fat one day with Chris Badenoch from Josie Bones we decided to organise an offal dinner celebrating the whole of the beast.
Chris, Julia & their Head Chef have put together a fascinating menu - just for Books for Cooks customers - so pluck up your courage and book a seat or two - we'd love to see you there!
Where: Josie Bones, 98 Smith St Collingwood
When: 31 August for 7pm
Cost: $110 inclusive of drinks
To book - call or email Josie Bones 9417 1878 or info@josiebones.com
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National Bookshop Day....
this Saturday 20th August....  | | National Bookshop Day Saturday 20th August |
We will be celebrating on Saturday 20th with Bubbles and lots of tastes throughout the day. Amanda will be baking up a storm from books new and old and a few of our friends will be helping out too. We expect the odd chef and author to drop in and say hullo (they do most days!).
Please join us throughout the day: after breakfast or before lunch; on the way to the football or before an afternoon coffee - or just because you have a moment - and raise a glass with us to the health of independent and community bookstores and the communities we live in. Please also buy a ticket (or ten) in our 'Grand Cookbook Library Raffle which will be drawn at the end of the day on Saturday. Donations are flooding in of classic and new release cookbooks and the window will fill during the week with a display of all the donated cookbooks up for grabs. Already there are a number of classic references in the prize, and rumour has it there might even be a copy of Modernist Cuisine in the mix...! This will be the one raffle you just have to win! All the proceeds will be donated to two charities dear to the hearts of booksellers around the country - the Indigenous Literary Foundation and the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation so dig deep! Tickets are $5 and can be bought instore. Donations are also welcome. Thanks in advance to our sponsors: Murdoch Books; Pan Macmillan; Random House Australia; Penguin Australia; Hardie Grant Books; Harper Collins Australia; & many more to come. And if you can't drop in to our bookshop - please visit another one - there are events going on in almost every bookshop in the country this Saturday - check out the National Bookshop Day Facebook Page |
Modernist Cuisine
by Nathan Myrhvold, Chris Young & Maxine Bilet  | | Modernist Cuisine $650 |
Last month we said:
"For chefs, this is the one book this year to buy.
Modernist Cuisine is a 6 volume encyclopedic reference that is for the 21st century what Larousse Gastronomique, Le Reperotire, Herings & McGee on Food & Cooking were for the previous century.
Weighing in at 22 kgs, this amazing book with extraordinary photography, incredible research and fascinating detail explores every aspect of 'modernist cuisine' from sous-vide to spherication or as Buzz Lightyear might say 'to infinity and beyond!"
The first print-run was sold out before it was even printed. The second is being bound as we speak and is sure to sell out. We are expecting limited stock in July/August. We have one copy in store for people to look at. You will be amazed at the ideas, photography, sheer inventiveness and generosity.
Well the wait is over! Our stock landed at Swanston Dock on Saturday and will be instore any day. For those who pre-ordered a copy we'll be in touch very soon! ...see more... |
Movida's Guide to Barcelona
by Frank Camorra & Richard Cornish
 | Movida's Guide to Barcelona $33
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How do you review a guide if you've never been there...? Well if the rumblings of our stomachs are any guide, this is a cracker. Frank and Richard have combined again for the third Movida book - a guide to Barcelona. As you would expect, these two trenchermen have left no plate unturned looking for the best food and wine experiences in Barcelona. Frank is a regular visitor to Barcelona as he still has family there. As such this is a true insider's guide - many of Frank's family secrets have been included. Judging by the response from customers, many who have been, most who are going again and some eagerly waiting for their tickets... Barcelona is the place to go for great food and wine, and art and architecture, and...well... in short one of the great cities of the world. ...to buy... |
Books: New Beijing Cuisine
Jereme Leung
 | | New Beijing Cuisine by Jereme Leung $49.95 |
Fine Dining contemporary Chinese cookbooks are not common, so when we find a good one, we usually stock up. Jereme Leung is one of the most prominent Chinese chefs in the world. He was the founder behind the Whampoa Club restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing and before that the Executive chef of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel In Surabaya, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, the Excelsior Hotel in Hong Kong, and the Four Seasons in Singapore. For those interested in a new look at Northern Chinese fine dining - this is a great book. Not for the faint-hearted - this will reward those who embrace the detail ...buy... |
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Which brings us to a close for this Newsletter. In addition to our Newsletter, we also occasionally post on facebook, twitter and our blog - you can subscribe to these via our website if you would like to keep in touch. If you haven't already noticed, our website is now finally live and catalogues everything we have in stock. You can safely purchase, order, pre-order upcoming titles and request out of print searches online. We are still having the odd teething issue - but bear with us - we are working on it every day. We are adding more detailed content every day and night. A growing number of titles have multimedia content available such as videos and look inside tools. We'll keep adding those as we find them. Our forthcoming page lists new titles up to Christmas - and there are a lot of them this year! Please have a browse online and tell us what you think! Of course, we are still open every day and welcome your visits and calls. Oh and please come & see us this Saturday for National Bookshop Day!
Regards,
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Tim & Amanda
Books for Cooks
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