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Adventures in Canadian bookselling

Globe and Mail columnist Sasha Chapman profiled Toronto landmark The Cookbook Store on Saturday. Chapman notes that the store’s history has coincided with an explosion in Canadian cookbook publishing and interest in homegrown meals.

Toronto’s culinary landscape looked very different when the Cookbook Store first opened its doors at the corner of Yonge and Yorkville in 1983. “That was back in the days of nouvelle cuisine. You know, you’d get three peas on your plate and then people would go home and eat a pizza,” Ms. Fryer recalled a few days later. Back then, devoting an entire shop to cookbooks seemed like a crackpot idea, and the words “Canadian” and “cuisine” almost never ended up in the same sentence together.

Now, look at us. The number of cookbooks published each year has increased more than tenfold. Food stories regularly make the front pages of newspapers. Television chefs command the kind of attention usually reserved for rock stars. And words such as “local” and “Canadian” are more likely to evoke pride than derision.

This year, the store has branched out into arranging events. One sold-out lecture featured author Michael Pollan, and store manager Alison Fryer has also brought a French chemist to Toronto to discuss molecular gastronomy.

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