8 Portland Cookbooks for Every Kind of Food Lover

Image: Michael Novak
For almanac devotees: Six Seasons
Ava Gene’s co-owner Joshua McFadden and recipe star Martha Holmberg divine three seasons out of summer and teach us to reimagine the humble vegetable, raw and uncensored.
For next-level Francophiles: Taste & Technique
Naomi Pomeroy, the James Beard Award–winning queen of Beast, channels Julia Child with a gutsy edge. French onion soup with fish sauce, anyone?
For Travel & Leisure subscribers: Pok Pok: The Drinking Food of Thailand
Stumble through Thailand with Pok Pok owner Andy Ricker and celeb cookbook author JJ Goode as they endeavor to soak up copious amounts of rice whiskey. Bonus: stellar, from-the-hip photography.
For stockings: Pears
This edition of Short Stack’s zine-like, single-subject mini cookbooks tackles the coveted Northwest fruit, veering away from the expected tarts and compotes into the world of cider-braised short ribs and wheat berry salad.
For coffee tables: Modern French Pastry
Pix Pâtisserie macaron wiz Cheryl Wakerhauser unveils the secrets to her baroque French pastry with dazzling displays of aspirational sugar craft.
For pickle fiends: Preservation Pantry
Sarah Marshall, best known for her complex Marshall’s Haute Sauce, is a PhD pickler. Forget bread and butter pickles; she’ll teach you to cure kumquats with pistachios, then pair it with a killer chicken and coconut–black sesame rice recipe.
For epicurean prosumers: My Rice Bowl
Revelry, a Korean-comfort-inspired restaurant in the Central Eastside Industrial District, still flies relatively under the radar. But in their home base of Seattle, chef-owners Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi are culinary rock stars. Yang’s cookbook, which includes her famous Korean fried chicken with peanut brittle, gives “Asian fusion” a new lease on life.