Nobody spots culinary ideas and trends like Alison Fryer. Her shop is where ambitious chefs go for the books that give how-tos on the groundbreaking techniques that eventually make their way onto Toronto menus. Fryer agreed to give us a peek into our gastronomical future.

Are there any recent big sellers that can give us an idea of what’s coming in 2007?
Absolutely. There’s going to be a lot more molecular gastronomy. It plays with our senses; what you expect is not what you actually experience—something that’s green and looks like zucchini is actually apple. Just wait—people like Pat Riley at Perigee and the guys at Reds, Chris Zielinski at Ultra Supper Club, David Gaunt at Crush and Claudio Aprile at Colborne Lane are buying the big molecular gastronomy books. And the young chefs are going to start learning it, too. We just sold a copy of one of the main books to the Stratford Chefs School.

What about desserts?
They’re about to get more interesting. A lot of chefs have been buying a fantastic book called Fusion Chocolate, by a master pastry chef in Europe. It’s all about pairing chocolate with savouries—you’ll start to see chocolate with cabbage and root vegetables, for example. Another hot book, called Wild Sweets, by two chefs in Vancouver, is all about pairing savouries with sweets, too, so you’re going to see things like pear-and-icewine compote with sweet pea shoot salad, or red curry–squash flan with gnocchi and coconut curry foam.

Who’s buying that stuff?
David Lee at Splendido, Jenn Stone of JS Bonbons, one of the cooks at Truffles at the Four Seasons.

What about sous vide?
This is the technique where chefs slow-cook food in vacuum packs so it retains its flavour and comes out incredibly tender. Everybody’s interested in this stuff now. For example, Dinah Koo bought a couple of sous vide books this past Christmas for her catering company, Koo & Co.. David Lee, again, is buying this stuff, as is Ted Corrado, the chef at Crystal Five Bistro Bar, the new restaurant opening soon at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Any other changes?
The other thing that’s interesting is we’re starting to see more chefs as butchers—a lot of chefs, like Anthony Rose at the Drake and Martin Kouprie at Pangaea, want to be able to use the whole animal. They can use all the little extra bits that might have been tossed out before by the butcher shop. And that’s going to mean more hearty meals again, as opposed to small plates. The dishes in these books, are big, substantial, complex dishes.