Chef turns small-town restaurant into a new, hot-selling cookbook

Source: Associated Press DETROIT - From the time he was a 14-year-old dishwasher at a suburban eatery, Craig Common knew the restaurant business was in his blood. Ten years ago, he quit as top chef for the Chuck Muer restaurant chain to open The Common Grill in small-town Chelsea. Popular from the start, it drew a steady repeat business from people near and far, including home-town actor Jeff Daniels.

Now, Common has written a hot-selling cookbook that draws on his decades of work in the kitchen.

Out two months, “The Common Grill Cookbook” has sold-out two printings and is among the top sellers at Borders Books and Amazon.com. So with a history of success as a restaurateur, the 46-year-old master chef must have been eager to jump into the cookbook business, right?

“Well, no,” said his publisher, Brian A. Lewis.

In fact, it took Lewis, of Sleeping Bear Press, years to persuade Common to write the book.

Based in Chelsea, Sleeping Bear Press specializes in glossy golf and children’s books with titles like “Good Bounces & Bad Lies: The Autobiography of Ben Wright,” and “The Legend of the Lune.”

What it never had done was a cookbook. Lewis, a regular at The Common Grill, decided that should change.

“I’ve probably eaten 250 to 300 meals there in the last five years, and I’ve never had a bad meal there,” he said.

So in 1996, he proposed the idea to Common. And got a flat ‘no.’

“I thought he was nuts,” Common said. “I didn’t think there would be a market for it.” A few years later, with the restaurant’s 10th anniversary coming up, he reconsidered. “My wife and I talked about it. I thought about it and thought, ‘What the heck.’ I felt it was time, I guess,” he said.

Eighteen months in production, the lushly illustrated 200-page book has 161 recipes, many drawn from items on his restaurant’s menu.

Though pleased with the book’s look, Common said he did not expect many sales. Make that tens of thousands of moms and other food-lovers nationwide.

Since its release Nov. 20, 2000, “The Common Grill Cookbook” has been flying off bookstore shelves and out of the warehouses of online booksellers.

“We sold out the first 10,000 in four or five days,” Lewis said. “We sold the next 7,500 before they even go here.” It now is in a third printing.
Source: Associated Press