The River Cafe Cook Book
Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers
Published by Ebury Press, 1995 (Hardback)
Designed by the Senate
Photography by Jean Pigozzi
Food photography Martin Thompson
The River Cafe was established in 1987 by Ruth Rogers and the late Rose Gray. Though Rogers and Gray could not be described as ‘celebrity chefs’, the restaurant achieved cult status amongst a certain class of people for its authentic Italian food and for the sourcing of its seasonal ingredients. This book was published in 1995; like the restaurant itself, the influence of this book has been great, spawning a host of imitators - and five more books in the River Cafe series.
The book uses an understated design that, although occasionally erratic and unresolved, carries with it the ethos of the restaurant and of its founders. The design is extremely simple, based on the sans-serif typeface FF Meta which had been designed by Erik Spiekermann and released by FontFont four years before the publication of the book. FF Meta was particularly popular amongst designers and architects in the 1990s so seems a fitting choice for a book about a restaurant that was originally the canteen for Richard Rogers’ architectural practice. The recipes are simply written and are, on the whole, very brief, relying not on complicated techniques but on the quality of ingredients, in season and well sourced - the functional simplicity of FF Meta carries this message but without resorting to the blandness of more ‘neutral’ typefaces such as Helvetica.
There are other elements in the book that appear self-consciously ‘designed’, which, in their self-reflexivity, seem to be signifying that this is a book that is aimed for design literate readers as well as cooks. The use of space throughout the book is, at times, verging on the indulgent: recipes are generally presented one to a page which, from a functional point of view, works well, but that sometimes feels insubstantial given that the recipes are very brief which, when combined with the choice of typeface, gives the feeling that the pages don’t have much substance. The use of coloured pages throughout the book could likewise be seen as an indulgence. This ‘less is more’ aesthetic is particularly interesting in the context of commercial publishing where customers might judge the value of this book in terms of the number of recipes - it is clear, however, given the success of this book and the subsequent River Cafe cook books and the many imitators, that this formula is a winner.
Photography is very important in the book: the saturated colour of the food photography is given particular prominence in the book with most colour images being shown at full bleed. The food photography has a kind of honest realism attached to it through the use of extreme close-ups and very few props or accessories - the suggestion is that this is food that you can prepare at home, the opposite of styled or ‘presented’ dishes. However, it could be argued that the food is given kudos by its context, either in the architecturally-designed restaurant with its view of the Thames or in the designed pages of this book. Back and white photography is used in the book to document the working life of the kitchen and restaurant, these gritty images which show the industry involved in creating food, reinforcing the idea that although this book is aimed at the domestic cook, it is about serious recipes and hard work.
Front cover
The cover is predominantly typographic: the title of the book is the dominant element in the cover hierarchy, it is set in FF Meta bold and is reversed out, in white, from a blue background. The title is set over five lines, one word per line and is justified, filling almost all of the cover, with a narrow margin at top, bottom, left and right. The authors’ names are set in orange, centred, in title case FF Meta bold, between the words ‘cafe’ and ‘cook’; the names are set much smaller than the title of the book, roughly half the width of the cover but are given dominance by the contrast of orange against blue.
At close range this cover becomes difficult - though not impossible - to read with the uneven spacing in the justified words creating awkward gaps between letters. Paradoxically, at this distance, the title of the book recedes, becoming more like a decorative pattern and the names of the authors come to the fore. However, at a distance, or when seen as a thumbnail on a website, the authors’ names recede, the title dominates and the front of the book becomes a logo. This ‘logo’ has been adapted for subsequent ‘River Cafe’ books, creating a visually-unified series and becoming a bold and highly-recognisable brand. Interestingly, the logo of the River Cafe itself, is far less strong: the name is drawn as a continuous line that suggests both the fluidity of water and hand-written menus but, in its feyness, lacks the meaty punch of the uppercase bold FF Meta.
What initially appears as a solid blue coloured background reveals itself, on closer scrutiny, to be a photograph of ripples on water that has had a vivid blue filter applied to it; this is, obviously, a reference to the river after which the restaurant is named and which it is sited next to but it also has the effect, when viewed close-up, of animating the cover and creating a layered element to the cover.
The dustjacket is gloss laminated - both for practical reasons, this is a cook book and kitchens are messy, and also for aesthetic reasons: the glossy surface is eye-catching and gives the colours a richness and resonance, it is also reflective, suggesting water, with the reflections on the surface adding another layer to the cover imagery. Beneath the dustjacket, the cover boards are bound in a metallic silver bookcloth with endpapers in a vivid yellow: though somewhat understated, these design elements help convey that this is a special book, appealing to a very specific, design conscious, audience.
Inside Pages
The book is 19 cm by 24.5 cm, printed full colour on white matt coated paper. The layout has a clean, crisp simplicity: it is based on two single-column grids: the first has a wide central column with a narrow outside margin, a wider inside margin, a deep top margin containing running heads, and a narrower bottom margin containing pagination; the second grid is based on the first but has a narrower central column. Recipes are generally set justified in the wider column while the authors’ commentary is set justified in the narrower column. However, the design is somewhat inconsistent and the designers break these rules on occasions which, when combined with the brevity of some of the recipes, the loose tracking, wide linespacing and the delicate character of FF Meta Roman, gives the impression of the pages appearing not quite grounded.
The book has been designed with a typographic hierarchy that uses two weights of FF Meta, set in different sizes and in colours to order the various kinds of information in the book. Recipes are set in three sizes of FF Meta: titles are set in Roman with the Italian title printed in blue and the English translation in black, these are the largest element on the page; subheadings, set in Roman, are set slightly smaller; ingredients, also set in Roman, are indented and are set in the smallest size on the page; the method and the authors’ commentary are set in justified Roman. Running heads are set in small caps FF Meta - they are colour-coded by section and are aligned to the outside and top margin; pagination is aligned to the outside and bottom margin.
The book is divided into colour-coded sections: green for soups; red for pasta and risotto; yellow for polenta and so on. Each section opens with a double-page spread: the title of the section is reversed out, in white, from a bold colour and is set at a size that fills the entire width of the spread - a numeral in the bottom right-hand corner is a consistent and anchoring element.
Aside from the previously mentioned brightly coloured endpapers and section openings, colour is also used throughout the book in a variety of ways: pages of solid bold colour (yellow, blue, black, green etc) are used to contrast full bleed photographs on the facing page; recipes are reversed out of pages of solid colours that reflect the content of the recipes - green for Gnocchi Verdi and yellow for Spaghetti al Limone etc. These interventions of colour add rhythm and variety to the book though occasionally it feels that the coloured pages are being used to pad out the content.
There are two types of photography throughout the book: colour photography is used to illustrate the finished dishes and sometimes to demonstrate techniques such as making polenta; black and white photography is used to document the daily workings of the restaurant, not only the planning, preparing, cooking and serving of food but the ‘after service’ - the cleaning of the kitchen and restaurant. Colour photographs generally appear on the recto and are shown full bleed - though there are exceptions. As in the design, the food photography aims for simplicity: the food is photographed extremely close-up, usually from above with very little background included; serving dishes, cooking pots and crockery are generally utilitarian - white or stainless steel; where a background is shown it tends to be black, white or a strong colour - though there are exceptions: a bowl of pasta photographed on a bed of red chillis, for example. The black and white documentary photographs offer a gritty contrast to the bright saturated colours of the food photography, showing the heated industry of a busy kitchen. These tend to be printed at a smaller size than the food photographs and generally fill the bottom half of the page.