We’re only halfway through 2025, and already our shelves—and stovetops—are groaning with the bounty of this year’s best cookbooks. From Peter Som’s deeply personal Family Style to Zaynab Issa’s vibrant Third Culture, the offerings thus far have been stylish, soulful, and full of flavor. A few themes are already emerging: a love of entertaining (with or without silver trays), a turn toward heritage and hybrid cuisines, and a new generation of influencers treating cookbooks like mood boards for a well-dressed life. Some books, like The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook, practically arrive with a bow on top—ready to gift or display. Others, like Umai or Lismore Castle, speak quietly but powerfully, weaving memoir into miso and marmalade.
Below, the cookbooks that captured our appetite—and attention—in 2025.
Third Culture by Zaynab Issa
Zaynab Issa’s Third Culture reads like a culinary coming-of-age story—one that speaks directly to the in-between spaces many of us occupy. Drawing on her Khoja heritage, East African diaspora, and New Jersey upbringing, Issa maps a personal geography through food, offering recipes that blend identity with imagination. French Onion Ramen, Coronation Chicken Pastries, and Almond Fudge Squares inspired by Baskin-Robbins are just a few examples of her cross-cultural, comfort-first approach. But this is no gimmicky “fusion”—Issa writes and cooks with intent, clarity, and affection. Whether you’re third culture or simply third-course curious, her debut feels both familiar and new, like a dish you didn’t realize you’d been craving all along.
Umai by Millie Tsukagoshi Lagares
With its film-like photos, lyrical essays, and humble bowlfuls of miso soup, Umai is one of the most quietly elegant cookbooks of the year. Millie Tsukagoshi Lagares invites readers into her small Tokyo kitchen and memory-soaked past, where daikon and dashi are shorthand for home. Her dishes—karaage fried chicken, foil-baked salmon, summer tomatoes with somen—offer a refreshing, unfussy take on Japanese home cooking. Yet there’s still room for romance: a Kyoto sunset, a soba shop memory, a grandmother stirring early-morning rice. Like the izakayas that inspire an entire chapter, Umai is casual but reverent, intimate but deeply transporting.
Millie Tsukagoshi Lagares
Umai: Recipes From a Japanese Home
Family Style by Peter Som
Fashion designer turned culinary storyteller Peter Som delivers a standout debut with Family Style—a collection of comforting, deeply personal recipes that span his Cantonese heritage, San Francisco upbringing, and love of unfussy elegance. Expect burnt miso cinnamon toast, cacio e pepe sticky rice, and a char siu bacon cheeseburger that nods to multiple cravings at once. The dishes are sophisticated but totally welcoming, much like Som himself, and they’re woven with reflections on family, identity, and style. “Not too sweet” is the highest compliment for a dessert in his family, and that sensibility pervades this quietly confident book—rich, balanced, and entirely its own.
Peter Som
Family Style: Elegant Everyday Recipes Inspired by Home and Heritage
The Phone Eats First by Allyson Reedy
Equal parts satire and celebration, The Phone Eats First is a TikTok-glossed romp through the most viral recipes of recent memory. Food critic Allyson Reedy curates 50 hits from top social stars—think lasagna soup, donut grilled cheese, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese board made for the algorithm. But beneath the pastel smoothie bowls and ice cube tray sushi is a real question: What makes a recipe stick? The answer, it turns out, is flavor, familiarity, and a little visual flair. Perfect for content creators and the chronically online, this cookbook is a crash course in food’s social life—and a genuinely useful one, too.
Allyson Reedy
The Phone Eats First Cookbook: 50 of Social Media’s Best Recipes to Feed Your Feed . . . and Then Yourself
Lismore Castle: Food and Flowers from a Historic Irish Garden by Laura Burlington
The subtitle says it all. Lismore Castle is as much a storybook as it is a cookbook, offering recipes inspired by Ireland’s oldest cultivated gardens alongside tales of dukes, bishops, artists—and even a Hollywood star or two. With essays from Laura and William Burlington and atmospheric photography throughout, the book serves as a seasonal diary of life at Lismore, with dishes like Beetroot Gravadlax and Irish Soda Bread grounded in the garden’s bounty. It’s a feast of aesthetics and history, a mood board for a slower, land-connected life, and a reminder that elegance can grow out of earth.
Laura Burlington
Lismore Castle: Food and Flowers from a Historic Irish Garden
La Sicilia in Cucina by Dolce & Gabbana
In true Dolce & Gabbana fashion, La Sicilia in Cucina is not just a cookbook—it’s a visual opera of color, pattern, and excess. This 400-page ode to Sicilian cuisine is served extra large and extra lavish, with regional recipes like Parmigiana and Timballo del Gattopardo presented alongside glossy still lifes and baroque tableware. It’s as much about lifestyle as it is food, with chapters that unfold like moodboards for the Mediterranean set. Yes, it’s in Italian (with English in the appendix), but translation hardly matters: the drama, devotion, and dolce vita spirit are perfectly clear on every page.
The Fishwife Cookbook by Becca Millstein and Vilda Gonzalez
Tinned fish has never looked—or tasted—so chic. Becca Millstein, co-founder of cult-favorite Fishwife, turns the humble can into a culinary statement in this charming debut filled with punchy illustrations, easy entertaining ideas, and 80 flavor-forward recipes. Think Smoked Mackerel Udon, Trout Tacos, or Lamb Bolognese with anchovies. With chapters dedicated to everything from solo lunches to cocktail parties, the book is part manifesto, part guide to maximalist snacking. For anyone who’s ever packed a picnic with a tin of sardines and a chilled bottle of something—this one’s for you.
The Fishwife Cookbook: Delightful Tinned Fish Recipes for Every Occasion
Tahini Baby by Eden Grinshpan
Middle Eastern pantry staples meet millennial lifestyle branding in Tahini Baby, a 300-page ode to olive oil, pomegranate molasses, and laid-back elegance. Eden Grinshpan, who rose to fame on Top Chef Canada and Instagram, brings a cool-girl sensibility to her second book, packed with deeply flavorful vegetarian dishes. Yes, tahini features heavily, but so do harissa, zhoug, sumac, and za’atar—woven into dishes like asparagus with crispy za’atar oil or bright, brothy Moroccan harira. It’s aspirational, of course, but also deeply cookable. A worthy addition to the Levantine canon—and your next dinner party.
Eden Grinshpan
Tahini Baby: Bright, Everyday Recipes That Happen to Be Vegetarian
Good Things by Samin Nosrat
The follow-up to Salt Fat Acid Heat was always going to be met with sky-high expectations—and Good Things delivers. Samin Nosrat returns with an everyday collection of recipes meant to be shared with people you love, from sesame-ginger slaw to mozzarella-toast giardiniera. Her signature voice—thoughtful, generous, and joyful—permeates every page, and her recipes unfold into endlessly repeatable, remixable meals. There’s a lived-in quality to the book that makes you want to linger. Like a perfect condiment, it adds depth, brightness, and just the right amount of heat to whatever you’re already doing.
Samin Nosrat
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love
The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook by Meredith Hayden
A Nancy Meyers dream in cookbook form, The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook is part recipe manual, part lifestyle fantasy. Meredith Hayden, known for her “POV: I’m your chef” videos and Hamptons tablescapes, offers a seasonal, stylish approach to cooking and hosting. There’s a hot crab dip, tomato galette, and creamy truffle pasta, sure—but also advice on dressing for dinner, plating with panache, and lighting a candle on a Tuesday. For followers of the Wishbone Kitchen world, this is a long-awaited artifact; for newcomers, it’s a sun-dappled invitation to cook, entertain, and live a little more fabulously.
Meredith Hayden
The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes for Everyday Luxury and Elevated Entertaining
What Can I Bring? by Casey Elsass
Casey Elsass makes a strong case for retiring that tired bottle of wine and instead showing up to your next gathering with something unforgettable—and preferably jellied, layered, or gift-wrapped. His book is a love letter to the art of arriving prepared, with 75 recipes engineered for potlucks, picnics, dinner parties, and everything in between. Think Cream-Soaked Cinnamon Rolls for a brunch invite, Seven Onion Dip that outshines every chip, and the kind of nostalgic desserts (hello, Bruce Bogtrotter Cake) that guarantee an encore. With instructions tailored for transporting, adapting, and charming any host, What Can I Bring? is less about showing off and more about showing up—deliciously.
Casey Elsass
What Can I Bring?: Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life
Kapusta: Vegetable-Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe by Alissa Timoshkina
Eastern European food is often reduced down to something a bit, well, meat-forward, but Alissa Timoshkina’s Kapusta takes all the flavor and history of her Siberian, Ukrainian-Jewish, Polish, Russian and Belorussian heritage and upbringing and focuses it on just five key vegetables—cabbage, beetroot, potato, carrot and mushrooms—for a finished product that’s light yet deeply, intensely flavorful. If you need a star recipe to make you the hit of the break-fast at this year’s high holidays, Timoshkina’s Tzimmes Carrot Cake or Potato Babka should do the trick.
Alissa Timoshkina
Kapusta: Vegetable-Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe
Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine by Sami Tamimi
Another cookbook focused squarely on the immense bounty of vegan and vegetarian cooking, Boustany is the first solo effort from Ottolenghi co-founder Sami Tamimi that reflects his Palestinian roots and lifelong habit of eating simply and seasonally. The book features jaw-dropping, visually stunning recipes like crushed butter beans with orange and a pan-baked tahini, halva, and coffee brownie that more or less deserves its own Instagram account.
Sami Tamimi
Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine
Sally’s Baking 101: Foolproof Recipes from Easy to Advanced
If you only know Sally’s Baking Addiction as the website you stumble upon when you desperately need to triage a cake recipe gone wrong, you’ll flip for the real, hardcover thing; self-taught baker Sally McKenney has a real knack for explaining even the most intricate of pastry procedures with a calm, relaxed tone that makes you feel like you can conquer the task at hand, and as someone who won a lot of praise for bringing her Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake to a BBQ last summer, I can attest that you need this book in your life.
Sally McKenney
Sally’s Baking 101: Foolproof Recipes from Easy to Advanced
Setting A Place For Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War by Hawa Hassan
As a Somali author and chef whose family fled Mogadishu in 1991, Hawa Hassan knows all too well how it feels to be overlooked as a refugee; this, in part, is why she’s focused her latest cookbook squarely on the food of countries dealing with major conflict, from bolani (stuffed flatbread) from Afghanistan to ghorayeba (shortbread cookies) from Egypt to mouhamara (spicy walnut and red pepper dip) from Lebanon. Deeply revealing about global politics and the people who are forced to withstand their constant evolution, Setting a Place For Us richly deserves a place on your cookbook shelf.
Hawa Hassan
Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War Hardcover – May 13, 2025
Make It Plant-Based! Filipino: 60+ Recipes for Vegan Soups, Stews, Noodles, Snacks, and Desserts by Ria Elciario-McKeown (series ed. Mehreen Karim)
Filipino food is known for being hearty, filling and infinitely riff-friendly, and that last descriptor is proved true by Ria Elciario-McKeown’s commitment to making Filipino recipes vegan-friendly in the latest installment of Mehreen Karim’s Make It Plant-Based! cookbook series. Traditional Filipino recipes like sisig and lumpia don’t give up any of their flavor in Elciario-McKeown’s adaptations, instead marrying their original cultural context with new possibility in an era of increasing vegan (and vegan-ish) curiosity.
Ria Elciario-McKeown
Make It Plant-Based! Filipino: 60+ Recipes for Vegan Soups, Stews, Noodles, Snacks, and Desserts