11 top SF chefs on the cookbooks they can’t live without

Asking chefs to pick a go-to cookbook is like asking parents to pick a favorite kid. There definitely is one, but they’ll tell you they love them all equally.

The sauce-splattered, dog-eared pages hold the techniques, ingredients, and stories that helped transform Bay Area chefs and restaurant owners into the Michelin-worthy, James Beard Award-winning pros they are today. Many of these books were gifted to aspiring chefs who devoured the tips, tricks, and inspiring dishes within. Today, they still turn to their trusted pages for menu inspiration, insight into how to use an ingredient, or to find new ways to apply age-old techniques.

Here are the 11 cookbooks that Bay Area chefs find indispensable.

Essential cookbook: “Grand Livre De Cuisine: Alain Ducasse’s Culinary Encyclopedia”

Early in Lee’s career, a fellow cook encouraged him to buy this book to bulk up on classic French cuisine. The 10-pound tome of recipes, techniques, and gastronomic history helped shape Lee’s career, landing him at the head of two-Michelin-starred Saison. “I hold what chef Alain Ducasse has done for food in such high regard,” Lee says. “I love taking inspiration from the past and applying more modern techniques or ingredients.” He admits that the pricey encyclopedia may be a little “dry” for the casual home cook, but he “really enjoys nerding out on it.”

Essential cookbook: “Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art” by Shizuo Tsuji

If you task Younkin with narrowing down the list of cookbooks she can’t live without, she’ll give you a roster of selections, including details of how she discovered each one. The lineup includes “Baking with Julia” by Dorie Greenspan, which she encountered while cooking at her mom’s cafe in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and “The Joy of Truffles” by Patrik Jaros, which she found in Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola’s office at Boulevard. When it comes to “Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art,” she has fond memories of cooking from the book in her mom’s kitchen. To this day, she references it for historical explanations of recipes and meticulously described techniques. “For a book without modern food photography, it offers an amazingly detailed explanation of Japanese cuisine,” Younkin says. “It will forever be in my library.”  

Essential cookbook: “On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee

“As chefs, we are endlessly curious,” Ozyilmaz says. “But with our attention constantly in demand, even the smallest curiosity becomes a luxury to explore.” That’s why, in his free time, he turns to McGee’s book to dive deep on topics like starch conversion and the life cycles of fruits and vegetables, which inform new menu items at Dalida. He tells chefs training at the restaurant to use the cookbook as a kind of textbook — a solid resource for how to make halloumi, kaymak, crème fraiche, and other dairy products unique to Eastern Mediterranean cuisine. 

Essential cookbook: “Bar Tartine: Techniques and Recipes” by Nicolaus Balla and Cortney Burns

“Build your larder, and creating your own dishes will become effortless,” Justice says. That’s one of his key takeaways from the 2018 cookbook inspired by acclaimed Mission restaurant Bar Tartine. The ideas in this book had a tremendous impact on the well-traveled, well-read Justice, who’s known for his singular, cross-cultural dishes. On every page, he learned something new — koji as a means for fermentation, how to blend Hungarian and Japanese influences, how to use burnt bread powder. “I love, love this book,” he says. “It’s a cookbook ahead of its time.”

Essential cookbook: “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China” by Fuchsia Dunlop

Before working at a three-Michelin-starred Benu and opening one of the most highly anticipated restaurants of the year, Parry was just a college kid in the U.K. — and, he admits, not a big reader. But when a friend gave Parry this memoir, he couldn’t put it down.  Reading about a British woman’s travels to China to learn Sichuan cuisine transformed the way that Parry, who grew up in London and Hong Kong, thought about his future. “I often credit both my friend who bought me the book and Fuchsia Dunlop for inspiring me to pursue cooking professionally,” he says.

Essential cookbook: “Tartine Bread” by Chad Robertson

In 2011, Costa sought out a bread apprenticeship with a baker in Asheville, North Carolina, after a failed attempt at making desserts and sourdough for a Thanksgiving potluck. At the bakery, she saw a tattered copy of “Tartine Bread.” “As I flipped through it, my jaw hit the floor,” Costa says. “It made working in a bakery look like a dream. With my fine arts background, baking felt like the perfect fusion of working with my hands to create tangible art, hard work, and adventure.” She doesn’t use the book as much as she did when she was starting out, but she credits it for shaping her career. “It opened the doors to what is now a pillar of my identity: a baker.” 

Essential cookbook: “Illustrated Quick Cook” by Heather Winney

While Skye loves Anna Voloshyna’s “Budmo! Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen” for inspiration for Dacha’s Eastern European menu, Winney’s book wins out at home. “This is probably the most-used cookbook on my shelf,” Skye says. Skye often turns to this book, which is chock-full of practical recipes and time-saving techniques, to make healthy, simple, and satisfying meals.

Essential cookbook: “La Technique” by Jacques Pépin

Though first published in 1978, “La Technique” remains a go-to reference for revisiting fundamentals. “It’s the ultimate manual for cooking,” Halverson says. Early in his career, he worked for Roland Passot, an acclaimed French chef and restaurateur in San Francisco, who handed him a copy of this classic. To this day, Halverson holds his copy in high regard. Pépin’s book describes classic techniques that serve as the starting point for more modern ones. Halverson turns to it every four to five months, when he wants to go back to basics. “It may not be glamorous, but it’s grounding,” he says. 

Essential cookbook: “El Cocinero Español” by Encarnación Pinedo

The first Mexican American cookbook published in the U.S. came out in 1898 in San Francisco. “El Cocinero Español” was a landmark text, offering a glimpse into the kitchens of California-born Mexicans who were creating innovative, complex cuisine. Pinedo, who was writing for immigrant communities that moved to California during the Gold Rush, crafted recipes that featured local produce and ingredients. “Because she had created this cuisine in the 1800s, I felt free to do what I loved when I was first working on Californios,” Cantu says. “The recipes and lessons that she shares are still relevant today.”

Essential cookbook: “The Last Course” by Claudia Fleming

Krasinski devoured the pages of Fleming’s dessert-focused cookbook as she got ready to start her first job in 2001. As a young pastry chef with no previous restaurant experience, Krasinski relied on this book as she developed her own style. “Claudia was the first pastry chef to put out a cookbook that spoke not only to home cooks but really to professional pastry chefs looking to say more with less,” Krasinski says. Under Fleming’s unofficial tutelage, Krasinski learned about exercising restraint when it comes to garnishes and how to alter recipes to incorporate different ingredients. “Hands down, this is the book I recommend to all of my pastry assistants,” she says. “I call it pastry plating 101.” 

Essential cookbook: “The Lebanese Cookbook” by Salma Hage

Picking a single cookbook felt like an impossible task for Naba, the chef behind California-Lebanese pop-up Ilna. “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown” by Brandon Jew and Tienlon Ho, “The Noma Guide to Fermentation” by René Redzepi and David Zilber, “The Whole Fish Cookbook” by Josh Niland, and “State Bird Provisions” by Krasinski and Stuart Brioza top his list. But this tome of more than 500 Levantine recipes — which he found while browsing the shelves of Green Apple Books on Clement Street in 2013 — has proved to be one of the most influential in his library. “I come back to this book to ignite my creativity with a cuisine I grew up eating,” Naba says. “This is a cornerstone cookbook to Levantine cuisine and is, without question, one of the best written.”