A First Kitchen Table Book from a Longtime SF Restaurant Consultant, Bon Vivant, and Lifetime Lover of Food
by Marcia Gagliardi
from tablehopper.com
Dining with friend and author Faith Wheeler at The Big Four. Photo: © tablehopper.com.
Last week, I plunked into a corner booth for dinner at The Big Four with my longtime friend, Faith Wheeler—we were introduced in the beginning of my freelance writing career, which was before I launched tablehopper, so it has been more than 20 years! Joining us at the table was the sole copy of her brand-new and first book, Chickens Don’t Fly.
Anyone who has been involved in San Francisco’s restaurant industry for some time should know Faith Wheeler, the creative consulting force behind restaurants like The Slanted Door (she visited in the restaurant’s first days and offered to rewrite Charles Phan’s menu for free), and she’s the Faith of the Faith’s Cheese Toast that was on the menu at Town Hall. Prior to founding her own restaurant consulting firm, FW&Co., she was marketing director for Larry Mindel’s Spectrum Foods, a restaurant group some of you may remember fondly, with trendy white-tablecloth restaurants like Ciao! (one of SF’s early Cal-Ital restaurants) and Prego (the breadsticks!). What a time to be in the restaurant world.
Faith had right timing in her career: prior to her SF restaurant consulting life, she was working in advertising at Goodby Berlin and Silverstein, and before that, she was in New York in the ’80s at Ogilvy & Mather, with clients like Tiffany & Co. and Steuben Glass. She was born a New York City girl, and raised in New Jersey, but left to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a Mid-South chapter in her life—and her new book.
She’s calling Chickens Don’t Fly a “kitchen table book,” which is a combination of a coffee table book, a cookbook, and a memoir. There are 220 pages of stories, photographs, and over 100 recipes that span seven chapters and settings of her interesting life: NYC, Nashville, San Francisco, St. Helena, Asia, Paris, and Todos Santos, MX, where she currently spends as much time chasing sunsets as possible.
Stories and Martinis go hand-in-hand. Photo courtesy of Faith Wheeler.
Unless you’re family or friends with Faith, you wouldn’t necessarily know how much a great cook she is—but you don’t have a career in the restaurant industry as long as she did unless you really love food and drink (and good stories). The recipes have been collected along the way in her peripatetic life, improving with age and experience, from her winning college chili (now made with Rancho Gordo beans), to her French onion tart inspired by a chef friend, to her version of the iconic Diana’s Meat Pie from Henry’s Hunan. They’re all tried-and-true dishes you want in your wheelhouse (the Wheelerhouse?), whether you’re hosting brunch or cooking midweek dinner for your daughters or in charge of Christmas dessert.
It’s a beautiful, classy book with her favorite green on the cover (published by PRINT, a book agency and company formed by two Assouline alums), with evocative photos by Clay McLachlan of New York restaurants, vintage signs in Nashville, and hunger-inducing Korean-inspired short ribs. There are only a few chicken recipes—like the title implies, you will find it’s Faith’s personal stories that are meant to inspire you to live your life fearlessly. She’s big on trusting your gut, whether you’re reading the vibes or a menu. You may not know Faith, but you’ll share a good dinner with her while cooking your way through her book. Keep it on your kitchen table for inspiration of all kinds.