Toronto food icon Bonnie Stern started a book club 22 years ago. She's still serving up great stories

Not long after, he gamely tackled a question about what ordinary people can do if they realize they might be complicit in fascism. And all the while, tantalizing whiffs of chicken katsu and leek and potato kugel wafted in from the open kitchen behind him.

This collision of the culinary and the literary came courtesy of Bonnie Stern and her book club.

You likely know her as a beloved Canadian food icon. What you might not know is that this career, which includes a dozen bestselling cookbooks and an eponymous cooking school, was actually her plan B.

“I was going to be a librarian,” Stern, who graduated with an English degree from the University of Toronto, told the Star. “I honestly thought my whole life was going to be living in a library. The only thing I like to do besides read is eat and cook.”

While life had another story for her — a year off after university turned into a life-changing chef-training course at George Brown College — Stern still found a way to honour the librarian she might have been, by starting a literary event that’s been running for more than two decades.

Because this is Bonnie Stern, it’s a book club with a culinary twist: authors mingle with readers, chatting about their latest work, while sampling a menu that’s been inspired by the text. (Tag line: “Oprah’s Book Club never tasted this good!”)

On the menu

For $195, you get a gourmet three-course meal, drinks, a talk with a buzzy author — who then rotates among the tables for smaller group conversations — and a copy of the new book, sometimes before it’s even released. Signing up is charmingly old school: you leave Bonnie a voice mail to snag your seat.

The very first Bonnie’s Book Club was held in 2004, feting the late Wayson Choy and his Giller-nominated novel “All That Matters.” “People just loved it,” said Stern, who partners with Penguin Random House Canada’s Scott Sellers to wrangle the authors. “At that time, we were doing it out of the cooking school, so we cooked everything.”

A decade later, once the cooking school had closed, the event moved to restaurants across the city. During the pandemic, it continued via Zoom. Stern has even taken it on the road: a recent book club featured Michael Crummey and Holly Hogan at Fogo Island Inn while she was leading a food tour in Newfoundland.

Over the years, the guests of honour have been a who’s who of CanLit — Linden MacIntyre has done it five times, Margaret Atwood twice, Conrad Black, Vincent Lam — and a roll call of big international names, like Madhur Jaffrey and Maye Musk. “This was before (her son Elon) was so … in the news,” Stern clarified.

“I love watching people listen to the author, and the quiet that comes,” she said of the gatherings, which are capped at around 30 people. “Everyone is engaged and really dedicated to being with the author, which is very special these days.”

Another hallmark of the event is the loyalty it inspires.

“I’ve been coming since day one, 22 years ago, when a friend told me about this,” Toronto’s Donna Craig said. “I was very hesitant, because I didn’t think I would participate and I was a little bit shy. But it was amazing, and it’s been a highlight for many years that I look forward to.”

Craig was in attendance at the most recent book club, which took place on May 28 at the Edible Story in Moss Park, celebrating singer-songwriter Baerwald’s novel “The Fire Agent.”

A novel idea

Until now, Baerwald has best been known for his music, albums like “Boomtown” (with David Ricketts) and tracks he’s helped write for others, including Sheryl Crow’s big hit “All I Wanna Do,” for which he was Grammy nominated, and “Come What May” for Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” which earned him a Golden Globe nod. This book, already generating major pre-publication buzz, may change that.

Sitting across from Craig at the table were childhood friends Denise Rotenberg and Cheryl Herman, joining for their first and second times, respectively.

“It’s a very nice evening out,” Herman said. “We’ve probably all gone to book talks where there’s no food, and it’s just not as much fun.”

Rotenberg said that it was the synopsis for this particular book — which draws on Baerwald’s own family history for a gripping fictional story about a German-Jewish scientist and industrialist who is drawn into espionage in Japan in the years leading up to and after the Second World War, creating a tangled web of moral compromise and lost idealism — that prompted them to sign up. “And the fact that the author is here is a big draw,” she added.

As for the author himself? “I had a ball,” Baerwald said. “Bonnie is a delight, and the food was great.” (The menu featured traditional Jewish fare inflected with Japanese flavours, like braised brisket gyoza and potato latkes with tuna tataki.)

Before dinner, Baerwald was interviewed by Literary Review of Canada editor Kyle Wyatt, but he particularly enjoyed the conversations with guests around the table. “It was a fantastically engaged group,” he said, “not only of readers, but of independent thinkers.”

Stern credits this convivial atmosphere to the powerful act of breaking bread together, multiplied by the special bond that unites book lovers.

“An amazing amount of people will come on their own,” she said. “Especially after the first time, when they realize that everyone is friendly and will talk. That’s a very nice part of it.”