SF's Tastemaker: Celia Sack, Owner of Omnivore Books

It was just a little over a year ago that Celia Sack opened Omnivore Books, California’s only cookbook shop (around the corner from the Noe Valley Pet Company, which she has long co-owned with her partner Paula). Week one, the publicist for Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert called and asked if Ripert could book a signing in the tiny space crammed with books both new and antiquarian. This was just the first indication that the public’s appetite for Omnivore would be ravenous—rendering Sack instantly in demand. Since then, she’s dined at La Ciccia with The New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni after his reading at the shop, and hosted Thomas Keller for his Ad Hoc at Home tour. Ruth Reichl has picked up a first edition of A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals, and the NYU Library, at the encouragement of Marion Nestle, purchased a copy of The New London Cookery, written in the 19th century—for $950. The stress of being SF’s
go-to cookbook store finally got to Sack after the week she booked both Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. “I was driving through the neighborhood, desperately looking for parking and finally, I just started sobbing!” she says, laughing a bit wearily. Cookbooks have long been a passion of Sack’s—she owns about 3,000 Victorian cookbooks herself. But still, we had to ask: Is print dead? “It’s not!” she promises. “People are really into books. People like pictures. Kindle doesn’t have that.”