‘Fixer Upper’ Stars Chip and Joanna Gaines Are Writing a Cookbook

• Attention, obsessive HGTV watchers: The next season of smash hit Fixer Upper will be its last, but stars Chip and Joanna Gaines have plenty more in the works. In addition to growing their lifestyle empire with a forthcoming Waco, Texas restaurant, they’re also working on a cookbook. As Joanna revealed in an Instagram post this week, it will be called The Magnolia Table Cookbook and will include recipes for mac and cheese and brownie pie, among other dishes from the soon-to-open restaurant by the same name.
• When a Brooklynite moves upstate to the Catskills and opens a restaurant, you get what Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema has declared “the ultimate hickster restaurant”: the Phoenicia Diner. Owner Mike Cioffi, executive chef Chris Bradley, and writer Sara Franklin are working on The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook, which will showcase recipes for its classic and modern diner fare alongside “essays celebrating the region's vibrant culture, history, and ongoing revival.”
• The so-called “barbecue whisperer” known as Meathead has a second book in the works: Meathead on Fire: The Art of Great Barbecue and Grilling will feature “approximately 150 recipes for meat, fish, and vegetables, along with more myth-busting concepts and ‘hot tips’” in his signature science-based style. Hurry up and wait, because it won’t hit shelves until spring 2020.
• Former New York Observer restaurant critic (and Eater contributor) Joshua David Stein is writing an illustrated culinary guide to knives, title TBA. Stein told Eater: “What I find really interesting is that knives are such a specific object and that behind each blade there is often an incredible story. No one just accidentally ends up making the best knives in the world. It’s a choice. So those are the stories I want to tell — the craftsmen, weirdos, and geniuses.” (Stein’s second food-focused children’s book, What’s Cooking?, will be released in October.)

• More Cookbook Coverage on Eater [E]