Here are 59 books that Chicago Cooks fans have personally recommended if you like
Chicago Cooks.
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I’m a longtime food writer, magazine editor, cookbook author, and certified chef (through Kendall College, also in Chicago of course!). I was born in Chicago, raised in the Northern suburbs, and came back right after graduating from the University of Michigan in the early 2000s. For two decades, I lived in various parts of the city and wrote about the food scene for local and national outlets. The first edition of The Chicago Chef’s Table came out in 2012. Even though I moved to the suburbs a few years ago with my growing family, we still get down to the city often to enjoy the hottest new spots. My love for Chicago will never subside!
David is a fellow food writer and friend of mine and we’ve enjoyed many dinners and events out at local restaurants.
Many years ago he started an online forum for the food-obsessed in Chicago, and that was before “blogs” and Substacks and even social media. Monica is a longtime local food writer and NPR contributor. They both are true authorities on the dining scene here so their stories about the history and lore of various beloved Chicago/Midwestern dishes (beyond deep dish and Italian beef sandwiches) are really exciting to read.
Italian beef and hot dogs get the headlines. Cutting-edge cuisine and big-name chefs get the Michelin stars. But Chicago food shows its true depth in classic dishes conceived in the kitchens of immigrant innovators, neighborhood entrepreneurs, and mom-and-pop visionaries.
Monica Eng and David Hammond draw on decades of exploring the city's food landscape to serve up thirty can't-miss eats found in all corners of Chicago. From Mild Sauce to the Jibarito and from Taffy Grapes to Steak and Lemonade, Eng and Hammond present stories of the people and places behind each dish…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m a longtime food writer, magazine editor, cookbook author, and certified chef (through Kendall College, also in Chicago of course!). I was born in Chicago, raised in the Northern suburbs, and came back right after graduating from the University of Michigan in the early 2000s. For two decades, I lived in various parts of the city and wrote about the food scene for local and national outlets. The first edition of The Chicago Chef’s Table came out in 2012. Even though I moved to the suburbs a few years ago with my growing family, we still get down to the city often to enjoy the hottest new spots. My love for Chicago will never subside!
Carol Haddix served as the former editor of the Chicago Tribune’s food section and is a personal friend and colleague of mine; we are both part of Les Dames d’Escoffier Chicago, an international society for women in food service with chapters around the world. This literal tome is a homage to all things Chicago and food. It’s a bookshelf must-have if you live in the area, have lived here or want to live here!
The Chicago Food Encyclopedia is a far-ranging portrait of an American culinary paradise. Hundreds of entries deliver all of the visionary restauranteurs, Michelin superstars, beloved haunts, and food companies of today and yesterday. More than 100 sumptuous images include thirty full-color photographs that transport readers to dining rooms and food stands across the city. Throughout, a roster of writers, scholars, and industry experts pays tribute to an expansive--and still expanding--food history that not only helped build Chicago but fed a growing nation. Pizza. Alinea. Wrigley Spearmint. Soul food. Rick Bayless. Hot Dogs. Koreatown. Everest. All served up A-Z, and all…
I’m a longtime food writer, magazine editor, cookbook author, and certified chef (through Kendall College, also in Chicago of course!). I was born in Chicago, raised in the Northern suburbs, and came back right after graduating from the University of Michigan in the early 2000s. For two decades, I lived in various parts of the city and wrote about the food scene for local and national outlets. The first edition of The Chicago Chef’s Table came out in 2012. Even though I moved to the suburbs a few years ago with my growing family, we still get down to the city often to enjoy the hottest new spots. My love for Chicago will never subside!
Steve’s headshot is still hanging in both off-the-beaten path and famous restaurants in Chicago having been known as the “Hungry Hound” when he was the premier food reporter for ABC/Channel 7.
He’s now with Channel 5, and he continues to report on lesser-known restaurants and chefs in the city. In fact, he’s made people famous just by his endorsements! That’s why I love his focus on tavern-style pizza. That’s much less talked about than deep dish so there’s lots to learn by this book!
There are few things that Chicagoans feel more passionately about than pizza. It is the most identifiable food of the city, and neighbors can argue endlessly about who makes the best pie, whether thin crust or deep dish takes the cake, and which essential ingredients are the most important to make up the ideal pizza. With such a broad range of Chicagoland pizzerias, how could anyone ever decide the best of the best, once and for all? Enter Steve Dolinsky, Chicago's very own eminent food journalist and impartial pizza judge extraordinaire. Dolinsky has embarked on a self-described "Pizza Quest," methodically…
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
I’m a longtime food writer, magazine editor, cookbook author, and certified chef (through Kendall College, also in Chicago of course!). I was born in Chicago, raised in the Northern suburbs, and came back right after graduating from the University of Michigan in the early 2000s. For two decades, I lived in various parts of the city and wrote about the food scene for local and national outlets. The first edition of The Chicago Chef’s Table came out in 2012. Even though I moved to the suburbs a few years ago with my growing family, we still get down to the city often to enjoy the hottest new spots. My love for Chicago will never subside!
This is just an awesome cookbook that I recommend regardless of its Chicago roots.
Stephanie Izard was the winner of Bravo TV’s Top Chef Season 4, is a two-time James Beard Best Chef: Midwest winner and longtime restaurateur in Chicago with Boka Restaurant Group, which owns a ton of popular restaurants around town.
I really like her sweet and sour eggplant and pork ragu recipes. All the recipes are great and easy to make, though.
Stephanie Izard knows how to inspire, captivate, and cook up a storm. Fan favorite and the first and only woman to win on TV s Top Chef, she s also the chef and owner of the acclaimed Girl & the Goat restaurant in Chicago. The Girl in the Kitchen collects more than 100 of Izard s best recipes, from innovative appetizers like Asian-Spiced English Peas to luscious desserts like Quince and Fig Cobbler with Vanilla Mascarpone. Beautifully photographed and bursting with flavor, personality, and insights into the top chef s process including where she finds her cooking muses, how she…
If one of the main reasons we marry is to raise a family, what happens to the couple once the children grow up and no longer need daily care?
A few years ago, I completed an MSc in Psychology, and my dissertation explored exactly this question. After interviewing many couples, it became clear that unless parents are emotionally prepared for life after children, the sense of loss can be overwhelming. That research raised deeper questions about why we commit—and what keeps us committed.
Out buying vegetables, Julia encounters a woman she hasn't seen for twenty years. This shakes up her world and keeps the pages turning. Running over her years getting the perfect life, the chance encounter forces her to reconsider everything and foreshadows a crashing downfall.
The writing is clear, no frills, yet gets right into the mind of a very complex protagonist.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK BY PEOPLE AND PARADE • The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.
“Infidelity, dysfunction, secrets – this family novel delivers."—The New York Times • "Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family’s fabric." —The Washington Post • “Witty and insightful...a powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self.”–Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons…
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved history, devoured mystery fiction, and scribbled my own stories. Today I combine all those passions by writing books in classic mystery-suspense style, but set in the place and the period of history that fascinates me the most: the American West. I firmly believe that the Old West should be treated not merely as a myth or a set of tropes, but a historical period in its own right, and so I love to use it as the setting for character-driven stories drawing on my favorite elements of the mystery genre.
Laura March is serving as temporary guardian of a little refugee girl who may be the next heir to a fortune when a man claiming to be the child’s father turns up at her door—and when shortly afterward he turns up dead, Laura is both a suspect and a target for the real killer in this atmospheric whodunit. The fun of this one lies in its wintry 1950s Chicago setting: the foggy streets, high-rise apartment buildings, corner phone booths and drugstores, and department stores decorated for Christmas.
From one of the most prolific authors of the Golden Age of mystery: “A nice example of [Eberhart’s] powers . . . Intelligently complicated” (The New Yorker). When Conrad Stanley dies, Laura is the only heir not concerned with her slice of his estate. Orphaned at a young age, she was Stanley’s ward, and cannot celebrate the death of the only father she ever knew. The executors of Stanley’s will find that he had a Polish relative, Conrad Stanislowski, who is due part of the inheritance. A search for Stanislowski produces only his daughter: eight-year-old Jonny, who comes to Chicago…
Odette Lefebvre is a serial killer stalking the shadows of Nazi-occupied Paris and must confront both the evils of those she murders and the darkness of her own past.
This young woman's childhood trauma shapes her complex journey through World War II France, where she walks a razor's edge…
When I was fourteen years old, my family moved from Texas to London for a year, and I started going to a little second-hand book shop around the corner. It was run by a long-haired Canadian, who always smoked a pipe. There were only three or four aisles, plus a cluttered backroom. You could pick up a 19th-century edition of the complete works of Shelley, with uncut pages, for two pounds. One volume led to another, in the same way that one friendship can lead to another, or introduce you to a new circle of people. Twenty-odd years later, I decided to write a novel about some of these writers.
Simone de Beauvoir met Nelson Algren in Chicago in 1947.
A couple of years later, his novel The Man with the Golden Arm won the National Book Award, and a few years after that De Beauvoir won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for her novel The Mandarins, which featured a character based on Algren. They became famous literary lovers, involved in a complicated triangle with De Beauvoir’s long-time partner Sartre.
But Cowie’s novel brings to life the ordinary intimacies and misunderstandings of their love affair – the title comes from de Beauvoir’s confusion about the time difference between Paris and Chicago. Caught up in the details of day-to-day life, people, even brilliant writers, don’t always have the time or vision to make real decisions about how they want to live, or who they want to love. It’s a brilliant book.
Sharp and intimate, Douglas Cowie’s reimagining of the turbulent love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren asks what it means to love and be loved by the right person at the wrong time. Chicago, 1947: on a freezing February night, France’s feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades. Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating…
Growing up in an intellectual household with a New Yorker subscription, I became a fan of the short story early on, with J.D. Salinger, Ann Beattie, and Raymond Carver forming a baseline of personal taste and inspiration. I especially love stories that resonate with my own sense of yearning for life and love—and the deep losses that inevitably come our way. Decades of reading would pass before I began writing stories myself, and I’m thrilled to have a chance to recommend these moving and beautifully written collections.
I absolutely loved King’s novel Writers & Lovers, and her story collection did not disappoint! Here, too, are the struggles of writers—to find the right words and something meaningful from loss.
There’s nothing typical in King’s diverse array of characters, and her intimate portrayal of their desires—their strengths and failings, their glimmers of hope as they brave new starts—drew me in and kept me turning the pages.
"Five Tuesdays in Winter moved me, inspired me, thrilled me. It filled up every chamber of my heart. I loved this book." —Ann Patchett
By the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers and Euphoria comes a masterful new collection of short stories
Lily King, one of the most "brilliant" (New York Times Book Review), "wildly talented" (Chicago Tribune), and treasured authors of contemporary fiction, returns after her recent bestselling novels with Five Tuesdays in Winter, her first book of short fiction.
Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter intriguingly subverts…
I was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburbs. After a career at the University of Illinois, 150 miles downstate, I moved back to my hometown to recapture the urban vibe that I love. A historian, I love the stories that architecture tells me and wandering the streets of the city never stales. Having romance in my life is important and writing about how relationships can develop in the city is part of that. Everywhere I go in Chicago, I think of how my characters might interact with each other and the setting. Romance can be found in grand restaurants and in odd corners and Chicago has it all.
This is a hockey romance set in Chicago. This is the final book in Helena Hunting’s Pucked series and my favorite. Her fans waited for years for Helena to get Charlene and Darren’s story right. Chicago is a hockey town, so it fits in very well. Underpinned by comedy and angst, a great group of characters, the relationship between the mysterious Darren and his firefly girl, Charlene, are the compelling center.
In my own book, one scene takes place at a game at the United Center. I have been following my home team, the Blackhawks since the age of eight and when I discovered hockey romance, I was over the moon. I asked Helena why she chose Chicago for her books, and she said it was most like her native Toronto.
As an NHL player, relationships haven’t been my thing. Shrouded in secrecy and speculation, they never last very long. But then that’s what happens when you require an NDA before the first date.
Until Charlene. She’s like a firefly. She’s elusive, and if you catch her she’ll burn bright, but keeping her trapped dulls her fire and dims her beauty.
I caught her. And as much as I might want to keep her, I’ll never put the lid on her jar. Not at the risk of losing her. So I've let her set the rules in our relationship.
Can a free-spirited country girl navigate the world of intrigue, illicit affairs, and power-mongering that is the court of Louis XIV—the Sun King--and still keep her head?
France, 1670. Sixteen-year-old Sylvienne d’Aubert receives an invitation to attend the court of King Louis XIV. She eagerly accepts, unaware of her mother’s…
I came to Indigenous history through the experience as a settler growing up at the edge of a reservation. I also love cities as “texts,” and the ways in which urban places never fully erase what came before. These two interests led me to urban Indigenous studies. Urban and Indigenous histories are often treated as though they are mutually exclusive, when in fact they are deeply entangled with each other: for example, the majority of Indigenous people in the United States live in urban areas. These works capture the rich history of migration, political organizing, and cultural production that has taken place in Indigenous cities.
This collection of short stories draws from Van Alst’s experience as a Native American growing up in Chicago, where racism and gang violence were everyday realities. Gripping and uncompromising, the stories walk a line between the traumas of Indigenous life in America and the possibilities of resilience and resistance.
Growing up in a gang in the city can be dark. Growing up Native American in a gang in Chicago is a whole different story. This book takes a trip through that unexplored part of Indian Country, an intense journey that is full of surprises, shining a light on the interior lives of people whose intellectual and emotional concerns are often overlooked. This dark, compelling, occasionally inappropriate, and often hilarious linked story collection introduces a character who defies all stereotypes about urban life and Indians. He will be in readers' heads for a long time to come.
