An Appetizer Adventure

An interview with 'Atlas' authors Mick Vann and Art Meyer

An Appetizer Adventure

Regular readers of the Chronicle Food section know a few things about longtime contributor Mick Vann based on the articles he's written over the years. He's the former chef who always knows about the newest ethnic market, our resident expert on the local Asian cuisine scene, and the lucky guy who's eaten his way up and down Thailand twice in the past two years. Though I've known Mick and his writing partner, Art Meyer, for years, the debut of their first collaborative cookbook effort seemed like a good time to interview the authors and formally introduce them to our readers. And if you've ever thought you might just like to write a cookbook yourself one day, pay close attention.

-- Virginia B. Wood

Austin Chronicle: Tell us a little about your histories in the food business.

Mick Vann: During college, I quit a $3.53-per-hour management job in the textbook department at the Texas Co-op to wash dishes at the old Pelican's Wharf. It paid $5 an hour plus a free meal. I worked my way up from there and was running the kitchen before too long. I was the chef at the original Clarksville Cafe for several years.

Art Meyer: I started bussing tables in a joint in my New York City neighborhood at 14 and moved up to dishwashing when that guy got arrested for murder. After I got in the kitchen, it was easy to work my way up. Put myself through college working in restaurants, got a master's in chemistry at SUNY, and then went across the Hudson River to the old Culinary Institute of America. After the CIA, I finished my Ph.D. at Columbia and went to Michigan to work for Upjohn.

AC: How did you get to know each other?

MV: I was working as a chef at Clarksville Cafe on West Lynn in the mid-Eighties and Art started selling us desserts.

AM: I relocated here and was teaching chemistry at ACC, but I missed the food business. I decided that selling a product to restaurants would be better than working in or owning one, so I started Texas Tortes. I sold desserts to all the top restaurants in town for several years.

MV: I was also doing my roving supper club with Mike Quinn at that time and sometimes we'd work out of Art's commercial kitchen or get desserts from him for our events.

AC: Didn't the two of you have a restaurant together for a while?

AM: We had Clarksville Cafe [at 12th and Lamar] in 1992-93.

AC: So how did the Appetizer Atlas project come about?

MV: Years ago, back when I was working at Clarksville, I'd had this idea about a big, comprehensive book of appetizers from around the world. I'd even discussed it with Art but nothing ever came of it.

AM: After I'd finished my second baking book, I was teaching chemistry at both UT and ACC and was looking for a new project. We ran into each other in an elevator on campus and started talking about what we could do next.

MV: We had a serious brainstorming session and got to work.

AC: How long did the process take, from that meeting till you had the finished book in your hands?

MV, AM: [simultaneously] About 31é2 to four years.

AC: How was the process of getting this book done different from Art's first two books?

AM: I had sold my first two books without an agent. My dessert business had a local reputation, and I was a faculty member, so I was able to do Texas Tortes with UT Press fairly easily. For this new book, we knew we'd have to have an agent so I immediately started researching literary agents who handled nonfiction. I made a point to steer clear of agents who represented first-time authors, checked out their rankings in the guides, and sent out letters to people who fit my criteria.

MV: One of the agents he contacted decided to take us on, but between the time his office wrote us to say he'd like to represent us and the time the letter actually arrived, the guy died! So we had his letter, but then we never heard anything else from him.

AM: A couple of months later, we got a call from Rita Rosencrantz saying she'd been given the guy's files when he died and she'd like to take over the project and represent our book. We were very lucky. Rita shopped the proposal around, and we had a contract in about six months.

AC: What are some of people's misconceptions about getting a cookbook published?

AM: Most people don't understand the need for a good marketing survey and how important it is to have a rock-solid proposal before you ever even approach an agent, much less a publisher. You've got to be able to convince them there's a market for your book, how it's different from what's already on the market, and that you're the person they need to write it. Once you get a nibble, you'd have to have several sample chapters, recipes, a table of contents, and a completed introduction to show them.

MV: They'd probably be surprised about all the details in book contracts. Recipe-testing costs came out of our advance, so that's why we had the Dinner Club to pay for testing more than 400 recipes.

AM: And the photos. The contract required us to provide 32 color plates at our own expense. We balked at this, saying it would eat up most of our advance. Our first acquisitions editor assured us we could probably get them for less than $200 per photo, but one catch was that we had to use an "approved photographer" from a list they had. We chose an NYC photographer, and if we'd gone to NYC and rented a studio, it would have cost us $17,000 plus another $3,000 for a food stylist. We ended up flying the guy here, getting MM Pack to help us with the styling, and used my house for the studio. The photos ended up costing us only $10,000 plus expenses.

AC: Tell us something about what it was like working with an editor.

MV: [heavy sigh, rueful smile] It was an editorial nightmare. Wiley & Sons is the major publisher of books for the professional culinary trade. Not long after Wiley bought our book for their professional chefs series, our original acquisitions editor got promoted. Wiley brought in a new editor from a major food magazine, and she just didn't get our book at all, thought the recipes were too complex and detailed, wanted everything simplified. We went round and round.

AM: I finally just resolved to keep my head down and keep slogging though it, a new chapter every two weeks, test the recipes, turn in the work.

AC: That brings up the question, who exactly is the market for your book?

MV: Professional chefs, serious home cooks.

AM: There's detailed research on cuisines and indigenous ingredients for 28 culinary regions around the world -- good reference material for anyone who plans menus.

AC: So what's up next, do you have another book in the works?

MV: World Salads -- we're in the middle of it now.

AM: Once this book is on the market and doing well, we'd like to have a completed manuscript to show a publisher. end story

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KEYWORDS FOR THIS STORY

The Appetizer Atlas, Mick Vann, Art Meyer

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