Shortlist Amsterdam. Restaurants & Recepten - Famke & Floor van Praag

A book with an ‘anti-cover’ that all but one of the panel wanted to have! But though the cover is more suggestive of a bus or train timetable, this is a cookery book about restaurants that the authors say are here to stay in Amsterdam with its enormous range of eateries. Books on cookery aren’t always designed to be used in the kitchen and this book makes no pretensions to being a chic cookbook. The design is very accessible, in an almost old-fashioned clear style reminiscent of the seventies. The mise en page could have been a little more sophisticated and the salt-free endpapers in offset might have been more tasteful. The atmosphere of each restaurant and the neighbourhood in which it finds itself is well captured. The photographs are so good you can almost hear the dish sizzling in the pan!