For 20 years, Billy Costa and Jenny Johnson have been Boston food enthusiasts, champions, and ambassadors, bringing viewers and listeners along with them on their adventures to the city’s best eateries and introducing them to phenomenally talented local chefs and iconic eats with shows like NESN’s Dining Playbook.
Now the duo is taking their love for the Boston food world into people’s kitchens with “A Taste of Boston,” a brand-new cookbook featuring recipes from 60 noted chefs.
“We’ve done hundreds, probably thousands, of shows over those 20 years, both television and radio,” Johnson says. “My hope was to really take the 20 years of serving as the mouthpiece for the hospitality industry and to have something tangible, to be able to show our love, appreciation, and adoration for the industry.”
The 272-page book, which features a forward from Mark Wahlberg and is divided into breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert sections, is a love letter to the Boston food scene that’s part cookbook and part scrapbook, celebrating a phenomenal 20 years of shining a light on the city’s culinary character.
“We not only share fun photos and fun recipes from 60 of Boston’s best chefs, but we’re also able to tell our personal stories. It reads like a book,” Johnson says. “You’re getting 60 recipes and you’re also getting 60 stories.”
Thanks to those stories, readers get a behind-the-scenes look at the real people and relationships that make the Boston food scene so special, as well as hear about the personal connections that Costa and Johnson have forged with the people behind the food, many of whom have become their closest friends.
In addition to recipes and stories, readers can also get a glimpse of the philosophies behind some of the city’s best chefs.
For instance, Johnson points to Kristin Canty and Charlie Foster, whose restaurant, Woods Hill Table, celebrates their passion for local family farms and sustainability. Their contributed recipe, crispy lamb ribs, is not only delicious and creative, but also speaks to the larger philosophy that sourcing a possibly hard-to-find main ingredient—lamb ribs—is worth the effort.
“Their message was, yes, it might be an extra step, but this is who we are as an entity. What this will do is urge people to go out and connect with their butcher,” Johnson says. “I love that so much, because it does speak to exactly who they are, and it also speaks to who we are. How do we connect with local businesses and local community members?”
The book also highlights several philanthropic organizations throughout the region, from ones that are significant to individual chefs, to nonprofits that Johnson and Costa have supported over the years, such as the Greater Boston Food Bank, Spoonfuls (formerly Lovin’ Spoonfuls), The Food Project, and Camp Harbor View.
At the heart of it all, though, is the food itself. The cookbook’s name, “A Taste of Boston,” recalls classic dishes associated with The Hub, and those certainly are represented within the pages. There’s a recipe for Boston cream pie from Joanne Chang, the celebrated chef behind the beloved Flour Bakery, and a New England lobster roll and French fries from the historic Union Oyster House.
But the book also spotlights the exciting ways the Boston food experience has grown and evolved, becoming more international and fusing flavors, cultures, and traditions from around the world. There are recipes for sushi, wild boar, and ginger rice with braised goat alongside traditional Boston staples.
It all comes together to form the delicious, complex, and exiting layers of flavors that make up the Boston food scene.
“The taste of Boston has shifted drastically in these 20 years,” Johnson says. “That really shows the talent pool that we have here in Boston and the creative capability that has morphed over these past two decades.”