Two cookbook awards nominee lists announced

Cookbook awards season seems to creep up earlier and earlier each year. No sooner than we finish compiling our “best of” lists here at EYB, than announcements for various awards start popping up in our news feeds. Today we learned about two organizations that have released their nominees for the 2018 cookbook awards. 

The first of these is from The Art of Eating, which today published what it calls its 2018 long list. The award from this magazine differs from many others in that there is only one overall winner. There are no categories or specialties dividing the books; all books about food (or food and drink together) that were published last year compete together. The founders of the award hope to encourage the excellence of food writing in general through this prize, worth $10,000. 

This year’s “long list” of a dozen books includes Bangkok by Leela Punyaratabandhu, The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty, Istanbul and Beyond by Robyn Eckhardt, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samrin Nosrat, and State Bird Provisions by Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski.

Contestants for The Art of Eating awards are nominated by their publishers. Each imprint is limited to three nominations, and there is no cost to nominate a book. Self-publishers are not allowed nominate their own books, however, up to two self-published books are nominated by each of five independent bookstores.

The stores are among those featured in the EYB directory: Rabelais in Maine, Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City, the recently closed The Cook Book Stall in Philadelphia, The Book Larder in Seattle, and Omnivore Books in San Francisco. The seven judges for the contest are also well-known to EYB Members: Eric Asimov, Lisa Abend, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Peter Meehan, Pim Techamuanvivit, Adam Sachs, and Frank Stitt. 

The second announcement of finalists comes from Gourmand International, which has published its shortlist for 2018. Unlike The Art of Eating’s “longlist” of twelve cookbooks, Gourmand International’s “shortlist” features hundreds of cookbooks from 215 countries and regions, competing in 100 categories for food and 30 categories for drink. Nineteen of those categories are reserved exclusively for digital publications.

Having so many categories allows more countries to compete, a goal for Gourmand International, which looks to the Olympics for inspiration for these awards. This is the only cookbook award competition that allows cookbooks of languages other than English to compete. In late May, The Best in the World (top three in each category) will be announced in Yantai, China at the Gourmand Awards annual event. 

A few highlights from the Gourmand shortlist are Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles by Joseph Centeno (don’t forget to enter our contest for this book),Home Cook: Over 300 Delicious Fuss-Free Recipes by Thomasina Miers, Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food by Simon Thibault,  The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook: Indian Spice, Oakland Soul by Preeti Mistry, and Ostro: The Pleasure That Comes from Slowing Down and Cooking with Simple Ingredients by Julia Busuttil Nishimura.