Emi Vergels
Brussels is one of the most diverse cities in the world. And yet, this nugget of a city is often overshadowed by giants like London or Paris. Through the powerful medium of food, this cookbook-cum-coffee book will bring to light Brussels’ communities, neighbourhoods and history, and celebrate the people and stories behind the recipes.
Sharanya Deepak is a widely published and award-winning young food writer based between New Delhi and Brussels. Thomas Ost is an equally skilled Belgian photographer with a background in documentary film-making. Together, they will document and champion Brussels’ rich cultural landscape.
Meaningful food writing and journalism that exceeds exoticism and relates back to people, history and sociology have been gaining popularity over the years, especially in metropoles. A recent example is “London Feeds Itself”, by Jonathon Nunn (also a coworker of Deepak). Although some inspiration could be drawn, the end-product here would be vastly different in content, feel, aesthetics and tone. Perhaps the publishing house, Open City, could be the same.
Drawbacks: Costs of fieldwork, photography and book production will likely be high. Important to find compromises (e.g. not a long book?)
A great combination cook/culture/travel/journalism book – it will be crossing over many areas with the journalism angle so that will be something you will need to explore further. Tell us more about Open City (in the proposal) and about where this sits in a typical bookshop. The author combo sounds compelling – you may need to give us a bit more info about them (in factual way – not too blurb/copywriting like)