Peter Miller Books

Peter Miller of Peter Miller Books

Peter Miller is the owner of Peter Miller Books, an iconic Seattle bookshop nestled along Post Alley in Pioneer Square.  The shop specializes in books and supplies to do with architecture and design, but you will also find an array of unique items for just about any room in your house, especially the kitchen or study.  Peter can talk engagingly about an amazing spectrum of things, including food and wine.  In fact, one of the most special things about his shop has to do with food.  He and his staff prepare and eat lunch together in the shop nearly every working day.  To help others transform the workplace lunch into a social experience that revives them for the afternoon, Peter has written a cookbook:  Lunch at the Shop: The Art and Practice of the Mid-day Meal.  He has also written a dinner cookbook – Five Ways to Cook Asparagus:  The Art and Practice of Making Dinner – for working people who want to integrate healthy cooking into their lives as regularly and efficiently as possible. 

Peter’s cookbooks are about much more than food.  They are a call to action, asking us to slow down, to take back part of the day and make it personal and pleasurable, and to combat distance from each other and from our food.  Peter is also a strong advocate for certain types of wine and spirits.  He favors red wines of grace and humor as opposed to those that are knee-buckling, whites like rain off the roof, and aperitifs, which he thinks have never caught on as they should in the U.S.  Listen to this interview and read his books if you want to make lunch a “moment of a little care and community,” and dinner a pleasure to cook and eat, even when you need to improvise and make do, because you haven’t had much time to plan or shop.  

Listen to the Interview: