Five hundred cookbooks, four weeks, and a social enterprise
The beginning of our life with a book in it, raising
life-changing funds for the Fat Macy’s programme.
Five hundred books to sell. Five hundred copies of this wild and beautiful project, where Fat Macy’s and Sohaila have reached their hummus-laden crescendo as we try to simultaneously teach everyone we know how to make tabbouleh, while raising funds for young, brilliant people who need homes.
Except it’s not the crescendo: it’s the beginning. These next four weeks mark the end of what was, and the start of what is new. I’ll be honest with you, because you've eaten our food and that means we are family: this is a newsletter imploring you to buy our beautiful Sohaila cookbook. And here’s the reasons why you should:
All royalties go straight to Fat Macy’s
If you're new here: Fat Macy's is the reason any of this exists. It's the social enterprise behind the restaurant, and it works with people living in temporary accommodation: hostels, hotels, rooms that were meant to be for two months and turned into two years, and moves them into real hospitality careers. Training. Wages. A kitchen that's a job rather than a favour. And, at the end of it, a set of keys. That's the actual mechanism. Not awareness. Not exposure. Keys.
Nathalie’s Teta, opening our forthcoming cookbook
Four years of brilliant, hard work from so many of us
Four years ago we opened a restaurant and named it after my grandmother. In hindsight, that was a great deal of pressure to put on a person who had never once written down a recipe.
A bit of this. A touch of that. Until it looks right. You'll know. Very helpful, teta. Thank you.
So we spent four years working it out. Weighing the things she never weighed. Arguing about how much lemon is too much lemon, which is a trick question, because there is no such thing. Pouring the wines we love next to the food they were made for. Writing down the stories that fall out of a kitchen whether anyone asks for them or not.
All of it is now a book.
It's four years of the restaurant, 10 years of our catering company and foundation and a lifetime of hers. The recipes you've asked us for. The ones we quietly tried to keep to ourselves. The ones that changed six times before they were right, and one that changed eight, which I won't be naming here.
There's a chapter on hummus, because everything starts there. There's wine, because Lebanese wine is the beginning of wine. There’s some fantastic trainees with their recipes that are purely beautiful. And there's a sense of teta on almost every page, mildly disapproving of the seasoning.
So here’s the thing. Our goal is pre-sell five hundred copies.
And by 28th August, so that works out at roughly 28 of you a day. So if you're reading this today: statistically, it's your turn.
I could dress this up. Publishers, print runs, order thresholds, the machinery of getting a book from a kitchen table into a shop. But the honest version is shorter. We need five hundred people to pre-order the cookbook. And actually do it, rather than think warmly about doing it so that we can increase the impact of the work we do on The Fat Macy's programme.
So if you’ve loved watching us grow and you love our food, and you want to spend a little on something worthwhile today, give us a pre-order.
Saha w hana.
PRE-ORDER COOKBOOK
Saha w hana.
