Food critic overboard! To prepare a Fresh edition of his classic Cheap Eats, John Gilchrist must dive into eating every low-cost offering on Calgary’s menus. And that’s just for starters.
The night before the presses were to run on our new Cheap Eats book, Catherine and I showed the cover proof to some friends. They suggested a slight alteration to the salt and pepper shakers we’re using as the main image. After a sleepless night we called Pierre Lamielle, our cover designer, to talk about possible revisions. While he worked, I called the printer and told them to “stop the presses” and wait for changes. Ten minutes later, the talented Lamielle sent us revised images. We bounced ideas back and forth, and within the hour we had a new image off to the printer. It was a good thing, too; we were already behind schedule and 10,000 books needed to be printed.
Just another few hours in the self-published book business.
I write about food and restaurants. Every 18 months, Catherine (that’s Catherine Caldwell, my wife and editor) and I publish a new dining guide for the Calgary area. We alternate between a Cheap Eats guide and a full survey of the dining scene. This year is a Cheap Eats year. What follows is the story of how we got from a blank computer screen on a cold January day to the launch of Cheap Eats 2 at the new Calgary Farmers’ Market this weekend.
Let’s start with a few parameters. First, books are printed on big sheets of paper that are folded and trimmed to create pages—either eight, 16 or 32 at once. So to be cost-effective, it’s best to write a book whose pages are a multiple of the relevant number. Add an extra page, and it costs the same as adding eight or 16 or 32, depending on the printing press and the paper. We decide on 144 pages, 16 pages longer than our first Cheap Eats. Of those, 121 pages will be dedicated to full reviews of individual restaurants, and eight pages will be filled with “More” buffets, bakeries, markets and coffee houses. The balance will be indexes, lists and the front section, with its acknowledgements and such.
Second, each review will be 240 words long (plus or minus 10), to make sure it will fit on a single page. To accommodate the design, I am cautioned to use short words that will reduce the chance of hyphenation. (Designers and editors hate hyphens.) We work out a list of data we need from each restaurant—hours, address, food style, corkage—to fill the information sidebar.
Third, and most important, the book will focus on places where breakfast or lunch can be had for under $15 per person, dinner for under $20. It will cover Calgary, the Bow Valley out to Banff, and the foothills around the city.
We want to launch the book in March or early April. ( I am leading a University of Calgary Travel Study program to Spain in the last half of April and I want to get the book out before that.) But a slow start—it’s snowing, I’m lazy, we have other projects—means it’s looking more like late May or early June. Sheesh, better get started.
My first task is the simplest yet most challenging. I call it “Making the List,” a compilation of all restaurants that merit inclusion. It’s actually two lists—the existing one from the first Cheap Eats and a second list of all possible Cheap Eats-worthy outlets that have opened or come onto my radar in the past three years. Pulled together, there are well over 200 names.
People in the guidebook biz say that you should have about one-third new material before you write a new edition. I prefer half; that means I’ll have room for about 60 places off the old list and 60 new ones. Regardless, all the reviews need to be freshly written and the information updated.
Then the culling begins. Looking through the first Cheap Eats list, I quickly delete those places that have closed in the past three years. Surprisingly few, I note. That’s a good sign. Then I take a hard look at those I want to include and have to cross out a few more names. Arrgh! I hate to drop good places but there is only so much room.
I move on to the “new” list and go through the same process, dropping more names. I whittle it down to about 160 candidates.
The hard part about writing a restaurant guide isn’t the writing, it’s the eating. Fortunately, I’ve been to almost all the names on the list before. But if there have been changes at the restaurants, or if I haven’t been recently, I mark it for a visit. And there are a number of new tips from readers and listeners concerning places I haven’t made it to yet.
After a few visits, I start writing, warming up with some old reliable places like Aida’s and the Blackfoot Diner. I take a frigid trip to Rocky’s parking lot dining room when it’s minus 23. I plan out-of-town visits so that I can have lunch in Banff followed by an early dinner in Canmore, with a couple of quick visits to coffee shops and bakeries in between.
We meet with our designers: Jeremy Drought for the interior, Lamielle for the cover. We mull over ideas and printers and ask for quotes, deciding on a Montreal-based company that specializes in books. (Note: we have many fine printers in Calgary but none that specialize in books.)
I write more, sitting down at the computer in the early morning to type away all the content in my brain and stomach from the day before. Or until an appetite hits me and I’m off for lunch again. Catherine joins me for some meals and I wrangle friends and colleagues to meet over bowls of noodles and around plates of kebabs. I realize I’m eating a lot of coleslaw. Catherine notes that the slaw is appearing in many reviews, and that I’m eating a lot of garlic, too. I continue to write.
Names are added and subtracted from the list. New tips arrive; some pan out while others fizzle. I discover that a restaurant I’ve just finished writing about is closing. Oh well, now I can bring another place back onto the list. Some old favourites have faded. For a restaurant, maintaining the status quo isn’t good enough to retain a place among the top 121. I want to see something fresh, something interesting. I eat some more. And I write. And every time I finish a review, I take a pink Magic Marker and cross the name off my list. I pass through 30 reviews quickly but slog my way to the halfway point. I pick up steam to hit 80 and then 90 and then 100 reviews.
I pass the finished reviews over to Catherine for editing. She does an expert job of making the words more comprehensible but she sends some back for rewrites. (Editors!) She also collects detailed information from the restaurants and co-ordinates the project with our designers. We both deal with the printer on details like boxes and packing material. We set dates for delivery—our files to them, then the finished books to us.
Midway through the process, Catherine decides we should include more social media information. We turn to our teenage nephew for sage advice, and add Facebook and Twitter info. Catherine, back aching and eyes red from too many hours at the computer, starts re-calling restaurants for the additional information. She also flags any other important notes and imminent changes—hours about to shift, new openings, names that will change, websites being built—that we need to follow up on. Our offices fill with yellow sticky notes.
I eat some more. And I write.
Takeout containers fill the fridge, and we have the occasional home meal that includes Lebanese, Italian, Vietnamese or Mexican leftovers (sometimes all at once).
There are other commitments, too: weekly and monthly columns, U of C classes, culinary events, family happenings, even the odd social activity (anyone want to go out for dinner?). The trip to Spain necessitates daily Skype sessions between Catherine and me and late-night writing. It’s awkward, but it works.
And then there are the “More” pages of bakeries, buffets, coffee shops, and markets. I eat some more. And I write.
Then the indexes, pages of references and cross-references about food styles and neighbourhood locations and such. Catherine and I debate which names go on which lists. Can’t forget the introduction. Or the back cover copy. Or the acknowledgements. Catherine e-mails Ottawa for info to include on the copyright page and keeps on gathering information and editing.
By early May, we have what almost looks like a book. Drought, our designer, is leaving town for a few days, but we manage to send some files to the printer in Montreal. A few hours later we receive a message that the big file was corrupted in transit. We scramble, calling Drought as he’s readying to leave for the airport. He sends a fresh, clean file. This one works.
Our design team has come through with a look we like, but we vacillate on the cover colour, changing it three times. Catherine wants the fennel-green tones she’s seen on some kitchen pots. Then there’s the salt and pepper shaker change. Finally, we send the document to the printer in Montreal. They send us back a digital proof to approve. We’ll look at it in the morning.
We go out to celebrate. And we see a new restaurant. We can’t resist. We go in, have some food and are impressed. We discuss the possibilities of including this fresh find. But the book is full.
Later that evening I’m back at the computer, banging out some words on the new place. Catherine finds a space for it in the book. We e-mail the printer to “stop the presses” again and contact Drought to redesign a page. A day later, we have a new proof with the latest, and last, addition.
We give approval to print.
We can relax for a couple of weeks until the book arrives.
Then I get a call from Shelley Youngblut, Swerve’s editor. Can I pull together a cover story on what it’s like to write a book about cheap eats?
Sure, I say, banging my head against my desk. At least I won’t have to eat anything.
The Value of Cheap
There’s a myth about food writers—that we’re all obsessed with foie gras and caviar and truffles. Sure, we like those things—well, I’ve never been big on truffles—but when we get together, what we really talk about is cheap eats. A $5 bowl of Vietnamese noodles in a scruffy joint on the wrong side of town or a cheap and drippy spit-roasted shawarma sandwich drenched with a garlicky sauce and wrapped in foil—that’s the stuff we really like.
Good food and high prices don’t have to go hand in hand. Give any chef worth her whites a big enough budget and she can create marvellous meals. But challenge her to do something equally tasty on a shoestring and you’ll see real creativity. That’s what most chefs really like, too.
The ability of local restaurateurs and chefs to work with reduced budgets explains why the recession hasn’t been as fatal to local restaurants as originally forecast. I can’t think of any place that has closed, strictly because of the change in the economy, since the recession rolled into town. Certainly revenues decreased as expense accounts were slashed—in some restaurants, the daily ring-out dropped 50 to 60 percent—but chefs and restaurateurs have rethought, refocused and retooled their businesses. Fifty-dollar entrees are largely gone, replaced by value-centred menus and all-round better service.
For the most part, new post-recession restaurants are smaller and less opulent than their predecessors. Many look like they were put together over the weekend after a quick visit to IKEA. And some of them were. But they’re no less professional. Young restaurateurs are opening with high-quality food, much of it sourced locally and seasonally. Think Petite, Taste, Una, Home, Farm, Notable and Boxwood among the new guard. (They also have a penchant for simple, frequently monosyllabic names.)
Another post-recession trend is the broadening of our restaurant scene: more Latin American places, more Asian cafés, more diners and more pizzerias, plus pubs that produce better pub grub, and coffee houses that serve dinner. It seems that creativity is the key. And that the price tag is more attractive than it was just a few years ago.
Originally published in Swerve magazine on June.10.11.
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Jaimie
10:06 PM
may not have seen it