Earls Is Turning 40, and Releasing a New Cookbook to Celebrate

In honour of its 40th birthday, Earls has released a brand-new cookbook filled with more than 120 recipes served over the past four decades. I might be biased because, yes, I own the original cookbook and yes, I did make the Earls spinach artichoke dip last week for a barbecue that subsequently wowed all my friends and made me feel like a superstar. But, according to chef David Wong—Earls’ culinary development chef—this new iteration has 16 new recipes, and they’re pretty darn great.

Chef Wong has been working at Earls for 8 years. He and his team travel around the world taste-testing new and interesting dishes and then come back to Vancouver, where they try them out themselves. After rigorous recipe testing and tinkering, the public gets a bite at the Earls Test Kitchen. The team then adjusts the recipe before it debuts at Earls country-wide (or in some cases, scraps it entirely—they can’t all be winner). This is all to say: chef Wong has the inside scoop on everything Earls-innovation.

“Earls has always been progressive and innovative,” says chef Wong, “and the new cookbook is a time capsule that captures the way food has evolved over the past forty years.” With recipes from the 1980s to now, you can expect to see all the classics (like that spinach dip) but also retired dishes that were beloved during their time on the menu. Chef Wong says this includes the winter favourite warm kale salad, and the vegan crispy tofu zen bowl, recipes from recent years. The cookbook also contains cocktail recipes, like his favourite charred jalapeno margarita.

“This cookbook shows the magic behind it all,” chef Wong explains, “trying to find something that’s interesting but relatable at the same time can be tricky, but we did it. I think that’s part of what’s in Earls DNA.”

Reliability is key when it comes to creating a restaurant cookbook, and chef Wong says that while most restaurants don’t provide their exact recipes, the ones in the Earls cookbook are the same ones they use in their kitchens–just scaled down for the home cook. So your homemade creation should taste like the restaurant version.

The cookbook is available now at 40th.earls.ca and all major retailers.