Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food

Get the most out of your grocery shopping with this innovative shopper’s guide and cookbook rolled into one. In Eat Good Food, former chef Sam Mogannam, owner of San Francisco’s popular Bi-Rite Market, guides you through the grocery store one department at a time, and explains how to identify incredible ingredients, decipher labels and terms, build a great pantry, and reconnect with the people and places that feed us.

Eat Good Food gives you a new way to look at food, not only the ingredients you buy but also how to prepare them. Featuring ninety recipes for the dishes that have made Bi-Rite Market’s in-house kitchen a destination for food lovers, combined with Sam’s favorite recipes, you’ll discover exactly how to get the best flavor from each ingredient. Dishes such as Summer Corn and Tomato Salad, Spicy String Beans with Sesame Seeds, Roasted Beet Salad with Pickled Onions and Feta, Ginger-Lemongrass Chicken Skewers with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce, Apricot-Ginger Scones, and Chocolate Pots de Crème will delight throughout the year.

No matter where you live or shop, Sam provides new insight on ingredients familiar as well unique, including:

Why spinach from open bins is better than prepackaged greens
What the material used to wrap cheese can tell you about the quality of the cheese itself
How to tell where an olive oil is really from—and why it matters
What “never ever” programs are, and why you should look for them when buying meat

With primers on cooking techniques and anecdotes that entertain, enlighten, and inspire, Eat Good Food will revolutionize the way you shop and eat.

Sam Mogannam is the second-generation owner of Bi-Rite Market and founder of the Bi-Rite family of businesses, which includes Bi-Rite Creamery, 18 Reasons, and Bi-Rite Farms. He also serves on the board of the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. Sam has been featured in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Sunset, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and programs such as Foodcrafters. Sam stepped into the family grocery business in 1997, after working as a chef at his own restaurant, and transformed the market into a culinary landmark. Dabney Gough is a writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in Fine Cooking, HAWAII Magazine, the Honolulu Weekly, and Edible Hawaiian Islands, among other publications. She is the coauthor of Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food.

“Eat Good Food makes a convincing case that sustainable grocery shopping is good for both customers and the community as a whole — a concept that could work anywhere.”
—The Atlantic, 11/21/11

“I am of the mind that the process of learning how to cook should always begin with learning how to shop.”

—Chocolate & Zucchini, 10/25/11

“If it came from Bi-Rite, it was going to be good. This book captures that spirit and takes it out into the larger world and, hopefully, it will find its way into your kitchen where it will inform, encourage and inspire you to Eat Good Food.”

—TheKitchn.com, 10/21/11

“A yummy, practical book that invites readers to dig in.”

—San Jose Mercury News, 10/19/11

“What makes the book particularly valuable is its comprehensive guide to ingredients found in the aisles of Bi-Rite – and in other stores like it – that helps readers become better-informed shoppers. The approach is a natural extension of a store that has built a business, and a community, around doing the same thing.”

—San Francisco Chronicle, 10/16/11

“San Franciscans, with their city’s well-earned reputation as a culinary paradise, have no shortage of world-class restaurants and shops. At the apex stands Bi-Rite Market. . . . The shop’s owner, Sam Mogannam has put together Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food, an intelligent and useful guide and cookbook framed by Mogannam’s accomplished approach to cooking and shopping. Filled with practical tips and tasty recipes (and crammed with color photos and a vibrant layout), the book is the embodiment of the Bi-Rite experience. Even if you live far from San Francisco, Eat Good Food will make you feel like a shop regular. And that’s a very good feeling indeed.”
—Modern Tonic, 10/13/11

“Not only provides recipes for the kind of comfort food you’ll find behind their glass case, but more importantly, the book functions as a guide to intelligent grocery shopping from the man who’s spent years learning the art of buying.”
—7×7 San Francisco, Fall’s Best Local Cookbooks, 10/6/11

“A beloved West Coast institution is celebrated between the covers of this inspiring cookbook.”
—Publishers Weekly, 7/11/11

“Like a trip to Bi-Rite Market, this book is super helpful, incredibly informative, fun, and full of great ways to use all the food that’s in it. Spend twenty minutes shopping at Bi-Rite Market and you’re pretty much guaranteed to leave with a basketful of well-made, great tasting, sustainably produced food, a lot of informative insights about what you bought, recipe ideas for how to serve it, and a big smile. With this book, you’ll experience all of that—aside from the actual food—and will likely want to start putting what you’ve learned about smart, sustainable shopping to work right away at your local market and then later in your kitchen. If you live in the Mission, you probably already shop at Bi-Rite. If you live further afield, buy the book and visit the shop (as I do) every time you’re in town.”

—Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses and author of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating

“Eat Good Food is a lot more useful than your typical coffee-table cookbook. It’s a teaching tool that’s sure to change the way you shop, source, and cook good food.”
—Charles Phan, James Beard Award–winning chef-owner of The Slanted Door