Lark Cookbook

James beard award-winning chef, John Sundstrom, has written a culinary homage to the Pacific Northwest, which is his home and the source of inspiration that is showcased at his Seattle restaurant, Lark. His new self-published cookbook and corresponding iPad app, Lark: Cooking Against the Grain, celebrate the distinctly moody and majestic Northwest and its bounty of ingredients, telling the story through over 140 recipes with full color photographs and videos.


“When I began work on this book, I knew it needed to be firmly located in the Pacific Northwest, my chosen home. It feels to me that we have three distinct seasons of food: Mist, Evergreen and Bounty. Within each, there are waves of seasonal foods; there are fewer in the long grey months of Mist and we treasure them dearly. Evergreen comes on slowly, the forests and farms waking up from a long wet winter to unfurl their leaves and hope for some sun. Then for a brief window in the late summer and early fall, we struggle to keep up with the season of Bounty – the choices are overwhelming and in the kitchen we try to stay out of the way and let each ingredient sing.” – Chef John Sundstrom


The book is organized according to the three seasons that the chef identifies with the Northwest: Mist, Evergreen, and Bounty. The recipes are amply annotated with head notes in which Sundstrom shares both cooking tips and personal anecdotes. In addition, recipes are grouped according to 75 complete plates or dishes, mimicking the format of Lark’s menu. Customer favorites like Duck Leg Confit with Wild Rice Polenta; Rosti Potatoes with Clabber Cream and Paddlefish Caviar; Sunchoke Soup with Truffled Sunchoke Chips and Dungeness Crab Salad with Green Apple and Celery are all included in the recipe collection.