WHERE WE ATE Publication Day!!!!!
Today's the day my love letter to Canada's restaurants comes into the world!
When I signed the contract to write Where We Ate in August 2020, June 2023 felt VERY far away. We were still in the scary part of the pandemic, all of my freelance work had dried up and of course, my imposter syndrome was raging. But still, Adam and I popped a bottle of champagne, and drank it in our backyard, toasting to my first book deal.
Now almost three years, a house purchase, a parent's death and a whole lot of writing later, I walked into Indigo bookstore in St. John’s this morning and saw my book, MY BOOK, sitting on the shelf next to Michael Pollan and Natalie MacLean in the “Writers on Food” section and realized….
TODAY IS PUBLICATION DAY!
Where We Ate: A Field Guide to Canada’s Restaurants, Past and Present is now available wherever you buy books!!
Where We Ate is my love letter to restaurants across Canada’s history; a love letter to the corner bistro, the perfectly-lit dining room, the innovative tasting menu, the not-so-secretly excellent strip mall eatery you always return to.
I love to eat and love to eat with other people, and this book represents an effort to showcase how where we ate has changed over the past 270 years.
This book is many things.
And it will be many different things for many different people — for the people who read this and recognize a beloved favourite, it will bring back warm memories of dinners gone by. For the people who are still running these restaurants, it will bring out a sense of pride. And for all those people that arrived in Canada and opened a restaurant, adapted dishes to make ends meet and who slowly cultivated our dining culture, they will be able to hold a place in the history of where we ate.
I want to thank all of my friends and family who supported me throughout this journey, and to my editor at Appetite, Zoe Maslow, who believed in me in the times when I didn’t.
And thank you to all of those who pre-ordered Where We Ate — you helped make the launch of my debut book a success!
Cheers,
Gabby
So much wonderfulness.