Taste of the Seasons

California Pizza Kitchen

 

Editorial Concepting & Writing

Popular restaurant chain California Pizza Kitchen celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2015 and wanted to publish a cookbook to mark that milestone and introduce its Next Chapter restaurants, which feature fresh, updated menus and decor. CPK came to Waterbury with a basic concept and outline. They knew they wanted to do a book that was organized around seasonal ingredients and that celebrated locally sourced foods and sustainable farming and fishing. While CPK provided recipes, Waterbury organized and mapped the book and did all of the writing, which included recipe head notes, chapter intros, and captions for location-based photography.

Design & Photography

California Pizza Kitchen is currently implementing its Next Chapter strategy and updating the look of its restaurants nationwide. We studied the new decor and the materials being used in the remodel, and based our photography on those themes. Natural wood and stone surfaces were used to support the new artisan look and feel. Since CPK—as well as this book—is all about fresh seasonal ingredients, to emphasize this point we included site-visit photography shot at some of the CPK suppliers around the country.

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Recipe Adaptation, Editing & Testing

The chefs on the culinary development team at CPK created recipes for the book, but they were scaled and written in a style for a restaurant kitchen, which has a team of chefs as well as a sauce station, a grilling station, a vegetable prep station, and so on. There were base recipes—such as pizza dough, sauces, salad dressings—that appeared in multiple main recipes and had to be properly scaled and integrated into those. The Waterbury editors adapted and edited all of the recipes and tested them to make sure they were achievable for the home cook.

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