Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks opened in Vancouver’s Yaletown district in the fall of 1997 and is currently located in the Armoury District. Barbara-jo McIntosh, the store’s owner, envisioned an epicurean’s delight, where food lovers and cooks of all abilities would find inspiration.
Barbara-jo McIntosh signing books at the launch of her latest book Cooking for Me and Sometimes You: A Parisienne Romance with Recipes
Barbara-jo McIntosh is an award-winning food professional with over 25 years experience in the food and hospitality industry. Formerly the owner of the popular Vancouver restaurant Barbara-Jo's Elegant Home Cooking, she is now a passionate bookseller and supporter of the culinary arts.
Barbara-jo opened Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks in Vancouver’s Yaletown district in 1997 and in 2004 relocated to the Armoury District on 2nd Avenue. Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks is an epicureans’ delight, where food lovers and cooks of all abilities find inspiration.
Author of the bestselling Tin Fish Gourmet, Barbara-jo served on the prestigious James Beard Awards cookbook selection committee for six years. In 2003, Vancouver Magazine honoured her with a lifetime achievement award for her many contributions to the local culinary scene.
In 2004 Barbara-jo published Great Chefs Cook at Barbara-Jo's. This charming book captures the ambience of forty culinary events featuring celebrated chefs and authors with over 50 recipes contributed from their own cookbooks.
In 2010 Barbara-jo launched french apple press, an independent press whose aim is to publish unique and treasured books for likeminded culinary and book enthusiasts. French apple press released their first book in June 2010, Cooking for Me and Sometimes You; A Parisienne Romance with Recipes by Barbara-jo McIntosh. In her culinary memoir with recipes, Barbara-jo takes readers along with her as she realizes a life-long dream of spending a month living, loving, and cooking in Paris as a true Parissienne.
Carol Watterson’s Carol Watterson’s keen appetite for the pleasures of food and writing have taken her on a variety of professional and personal journeys. Born in Toronto, Carol fled for West Coast in the early 90’s and enjoyed many satisfying years with Raincoast Publishing (one of her fondest achievements is publishing a little gem of a book called Tin Fish Gourmet!). In 2004, eager to keep her hand in writing and publishing while raising two daughters (and to justify her cookbook obsession) Carol started Cookbooks We Love, a completely biased and opinionated blog offering picks and reviews of her favourite cookbooks. Carol remembers her first meetings with Barbara-jo, to bounce off cookbook ideas and the opportunities and perils of opening a bookstore in Yaletown devoted to cookbooks and culinary events.
Carol’s favourite books include The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater, all of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage books (especially Meat and The River Cottage Family Cookbook), 7 Fires by Francis Mallman, and a must-haves for any truly, serious mushroom forager, David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified and All that the Rain Promises and More.
Barb Wong is driven by such an insatiable curiosity about food that it has inspired her other great passions in life, such as her career, travels, and family. In her ten years as community dietician, Barb has found that conversations with most clients "always boil down to food and how to cook and nurture themselves."
In 2000, Barb co-founded VanEats, one of Canada's first food blogs, which continues to allow her a voice and space for sharing experiences with other Vancouver foodies. This self-confessed "cookbook junkie" loves helping others to "create great food experiences by finding a good cookbook, as well as talking about cooking technique and where to find ingredients."
Barb's favourite books include Every Day Artisan Breads by Peter Reinhart, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, Baking Illustrated by Cook's Illustrated Magazine, Authentic Vietnamese Cooking by Corrine Trang, and Trattoria Cooking by Biba Caggiano.
Glenys Morgan found her first culinary hero close to home. "I realized what a good cook my Mom was when I looked at other kids' sandwiches at school and had no desire to trade whatsoever," she chuckles. Growing up on the family farm and eating at her mother's table also taught her that "what comes out of the garden, goes into the kitchen," a maxim that she now holds more dearly than ever. It's a message that was reinforced by travelling as a young woman in Europe and Morocco, where the use of fresh local ingredients infused her cooking with a sense of spontanaeity and flexibility that classical training at Le Cordon Bleu hadn't provided.
The culinary scene that she came home to was experiencing "a rapid-fire era of change," as Glenys puts it, and she soon seized an opportunity to develop a program of classes at Calgary's Culinary Arts. A career in teaching and consulting has since led her to Granville Island's Market Kitchen, West Vancouver's Tools and Techniques, and some of the city's best restaurants and retailers, including Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks. Glenys confesses that her personal collection of cookbooks is "all over the map," consisting mainly of much-loved "odd books" she has acquired over the years. She enjoys reading other cooks' recipes, appending them to her own knowledge and experience like one might a "fine print" footnote.
Glenys's favourite books include Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni and It Must Have Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten.
Mark Holmes likes to joke about his many years in the local hospitality industry. “I was the oldest living busboy at Hy’s Mansion,” he laughs. Arriving from London 25 years ago, the native of Wales came here with no restaurant experience. His first interview was at the posh William Tell. He remembers telling them: “Well, I’ve been to a lot of restaurants.” They decided to train him anyway and, much to his surprise, Mark discovered the waiter’s life suited him. “I liked the horrid customers as well as the nice ones,” he says. Unfailingly elegant, Mark recalls telling one especially horrid customer: “Madam, the wine will taste a bit different after four martinis.”
In a career that spans work at some of Vancouver’s best loved restaurants – including a stint as the catering manager for the Georgian Court Hotel – Mark has especially fond memories of his two years as the waiter everybody wanted to be served by at Barbara-Jo’s Elegant Home Cooking. Reunited with Barbara-Jo at the shop, he adds just the right touch of playful sophistication to the surroundings.
Mark's favorite cookbooks include Biro by Marcel Biro , The New English Kitchen by Rose Prince, Being Dead is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe, Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros, and Sugar by Anna Olson.
Adrienne O'Callaghan has been with Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks since the shop's early days in Yaletown and has enjoyed working with countless cookbook authors and chefs over the years: "I have been blessed to have been able to cook and cook and cook...what I love to do most." While traveling extensively through the UK she completed her culinary training at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. Her passions for all things culinary, art and architecture have also taken her on many travel adventures including Spain, Australia and South Africa. Adrienne's interests in food and travels have recently turned towards Asia to explore and celebrate the birthplaces of her three young children.
One of Adrienne's favourite things about working at the shop is "being surrounded by books which have always been my dear friends" which is evident in her choice of favourite books, all of which she treasures.
Adrienne's favourite cookbooks include "all the books I have by Julia Child", especially Julia Child and Company, Beyond the Great Wall by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, Jean Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Whole Grain Breads by Peter Reinhart and Desserts by Pierre Herme by Pierre Herme and Dorie Greenspan.
Lawren Moneta's culinary career began in highschool when she was given charge of the garde manger at her first restaurant job. After honing her cooking and baking skills in several of Toronto's top restaurants, she pursued her formal training at the Stratford Chef's School in Stratford Ontario.
Lawren has worked in food styling on various projects in France, Australia and Canada, including the television program, French Food at Home with Laura Calder. Lawren has be fortunate enough to combine her two passions of food and travel. She has cooked and eaten her way through Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the United States, Canadan and France including one year in France working with Anne Willan.
Lawren's favourite cookbooks include Maggie's Harvest by Maggie Beer, Molecular Gastronomy by Herve This, French Regional Cooking by Anne Willan, Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi and Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.
Bethany Leng is originally from Alberta, where she grew up happily eating plenty of beef and baking often during the cold winters. She developed a love for baking that has stayed with her to this day, resulting in 18 cakes for her wedding-one for each table. "Baking those cakes was one of the best things I've ever done," she said. "You can't help but feel loved when you eat something homemade, and we wanted our guests to feel loved."
Bethany first traveled to Europe on a backpacking trip almost six years ago and ate mostly bread-which was delicious-but her most recent trip to Paris presented a much wider scope for food appreciation. While there, she and her husband had three goals: to recreate restaurant meals in their flat's kitchen, picnic everyday and eat their weight in butter.
During university, Bethany worked at Wendel's Cafe and Bookstore in Fort Langley where she particularly enjoyed making cappuccinos with very stiff foam and tasting the chef's new creations. She has since worked as a journalist and freelance writer for newspapers in both Alberta and BC and has always thought it is impossible to write well if you don't read well.
Bethany's favourite books include How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson, A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenburg, Apples to Jam by Tessa Kiros, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Breakfast, Lunch, Tea by Rose Carrarini. She also likes to read restaurant menus online.
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The store is nestled in the heart of the Armoury District - fast becoming THE design district in Vancouver.
We are open seven days a week with a fabulous selection of cookbooks and wine books guaranteed to satisfy any appetite.
We welcome you to browse the shelves and enjoy our warm, inviting atmosphere. The shop has a full kitchen which is used to demonstrate recipes from new and notable cookbooks. Cooking classes are conducted right in the shop, and guest chefs and cookbook authors are often here sharing their culinary expertise.
