Book review: Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes

Eater's cookbook contains recipes from America's most exciting restaurants

Since 2005, Eater has grown from a New York restaurant blog to one covering the dining scenes of 20 cities worldwide as well as a YouTube channel. Now it’s ventured into the cookbook market with a collection of recipes from some of America’s best and most exciting restaurants.

Although intended for home cooks with recipes adapted for domestic kitchens, professional chefs will find plenty to inspire them. The book’s eight chapters cover all the bases, from brunch, lunch, snacks and starters to noodles, chicken, mains, sides and desserts. Contributors range from world-famous chefs such as Dominique Crenn, who offers a simple avocado and crab salad from her casual Bar Crenn in San Francisco, to Indian village-style Doh Khleh pork salad from hip New York restaurateurs Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya’s Dhamaka restaurant.

With every cuisine from Mexican to Laotian, east African and Caribbean included, this is a truly multicultural snapshot of the contemporary coast-to-coast American dining scene. Food from the South is also well represented by dishes such as Jimmy Red grits with sorghum-cured egg yolks and bay oil from chef Sean Brock’s Audrey restaurant in Nashville and seafood gumbo from Roots Southern Table in Texas.

There are no burgers or hot dogs, but other American favourites are present and correct, often in updated form. A square pizza, originally created in Detroit and served at Down North in Philadelphia, is topped with barbecue sauce, beef bacon, caramelised pineapple and pickled jalapeño, while apple pie gets a makeover at Honeypie in Milwaukee with an oat-based crumble topping and the addition of red cherries to the Granny Smith-based filling.

The book is rounded out with a useful collection of short articles covering topics such as ‘How to make eggs like a busy line cook’, ‘What makes a pizza wine’ and ‘How to build a seafood tower’. With its striking, colourful 1970s-inspired design and upbeat tone, this is a fun book to flick through for modern American culinary inspiration.

Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes by Hillary Dixler Canavan (Abrams, £26)