From KCRW, I'm Evan Kliman and you're listening to good food.

I imagine you didn't get all of your holiday shopping done on Black Friday and that if you're listening in, you might have some food focused folks on your gift list.

Might I recommend a cookbook? Remember those things we used to get recipes from before Tik-Tok. I still love cookbooks. I have

so many of them that the stacks have turned into furniture in my house, no kidding, and every year I look forward to my annual call with Celia Sack of

omnivore books in San Francisco. Celia joins us every holiday season for

recommendations of the

recommendations of the cookbooks she loved over the last 12 months.

Hi Celia. Hi Evan, how are you?

I'm good.

I can't believe how fast this has come around.

I can't either. I can't either whenever your

producers get in touch with me to schedule this. I'm like no it can't be

already. It's impossible. Yeah you know I've kind of lost track of how many years we've done this, but instead of getting

straight to it, can you share how omnivorous started and what prompted you to open a store dedicated to cookery and drink books?

Oh, sure. So it's actually this month is our 15th anniversary of the store being opened.

So yeah, so it's a good time to ask.

I was a rare book specialist for many years at an auction house and my specialty was all sorts of things. I was the rare

golf book expert I was in charge of Modern Litt but my collecting interest became

books on food because I felt like those books tell me the most about a time, a place, a culture. I mean it's anthropology, it's archaeology, it's, you know, it just sort of tells the whole story of a people through their food and it also is what brings people together so much around the world.

So that's why I opened it.

I wanted to share my passion with everyone.

So interesting.

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