34 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 9, 2020
Cookbooks
Lost Restaurants
of Santa Cruz County
Liz Pollock. History Press, Mar.
This installment in the publisher’s
American Palate series traces five
decades of the area’s cuisine,
from the wartime belt tightening of
the 1940s to a new focus on local,
seasonal foods in the ’90s. Pollock,
who owns the Cook’s Bookcase, a
Santa Cruz bookshop, interviewed
restaurateurs, purveyors,
servers, and bartenders to
get the histories of stalwarts
like the Miramar Fish Grotto
and the Saˉba Club, to name
two. She includes cocktail
recipes as well as images of
her collection of restaurant
ephemera—menus, match-
books, and more.Lummi
Blaine Wetzel. Prestel, Apr.
Two-time James Beard
Award–winner Wetzel honed
his affinity for seasonal, local
ingredients at René Redzepi’s
Noma, and in 2010 brought
that passion to the Willows
Inn, situated on a tiny island
off the coast of Washington
State. His second cookbook
(after 2015’s Sea and
Smoke), is named for the
island, a fitting choice for a
collection of recipes he described to PW as “a tour of the
island in the form of a tasting menu, and of the natural
flavors that are in season”—wild plum, young rhubarb,
blue clams, and sockeye salmon, to name a few.Summer Kitchens
Olia Hercules. Weldon Owen, July
In the first two cookbooks by Ottolenghi alum Hercules,
2015’s Mamushka and 2017’s Kaukasis, she roved
across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Here, she
centers her Ukrainian upbringing in an homage to the
“summer kitchen,” a small separate building in the
garden where produce is preserved for the coming winter.
Recipes like fermented watermelon, spiced pork belly,
and apple and quince babka pair with on-location photos
to bring the dishes of her childhood to life.Sweet, Savory, Spicy
Sarah Tiong. Page Street, June
Tiong, a MasterChef Australia finalist, takes readers on a
tour of the hawker stalls and food markets of Southeast
Asia. The 60 recipes map out the flavors she sampled
while living and traveling in the region, such as Laotian
meatballs, Malaysian sweet potato doughnuts, and
Singaporean chili mud crab.Taste of Tucson
Jackie Alpers. West Margin, Apr.
The tastes of the U.S. Southwest inspired this collection
of recipes from the Sonora region. Food columnist and
photographer Alpers helps those new to the area’s cui-
sines stock their pantries—staples include beef tripe,
chia seeds, and chipotle chiles in adobo—and provides
cheerful, encouraging direction for cooks of all levels.
Recipes are identified by their provenance, such as
Charro Steak Restaurant’s
Oven-Roasted Salsa, where
“the Flores family has been
serving salsa,” she writes,
“for almost 100 years.”The World Eats Here
John Wang and Storm Garner.
The Experiment, Apr.
The borough of Queens is
said to be the most ethni-
cally varied urban area on
Earth, and on Saturday nights
from April through October,
some 12,000 attendees at the
Queens Night Market sample
foods from more than 80 coun-
tries, at no more than $6 a pop.
In what PW’s review called a
“wildly diverse collection,”
readers meet Wanda Chiu of
Hong Kong Street Food and
learn to cook her pan-fried
noodles, which they can
chase with Laura Joseph’s
Antiguan ginger beer and
Joey Batista’s Portuguese
custard tarts. In addition to
the recipes, family photos
and cartoon renderings of
the chefs bring the market
experience to people who
lack easy access to the
7 train. —L.S.