The Cookbook Makes a Comeback in Vegas

A shelf of rare cookbooks at Amber Unicorn at The Cosmopolitan

	Myrna and Lou Donato, a romance for the books
	The Cosmopolitan
	A rare English-language edition of Cuisine des Quatre Saisons, signed by Joël Robuchon

A former Marine with training in mining and explosives was making such a racket constructing a small bookstore at the corner of Rancho and Charleston that he knew he had to be disturbing his neighbors. It was January 1981, and Lou Donato walked into the dentist’s office next door to apologize to Myrna Zinck. From that small gesture, one of America’s great book collections started cooking.

On that day, Donato was constructing what would become Donato’s Fine Books. Shortly after his apology, he accepted his perky neighbor’s invitation to “come over and see my cookbooks,” and he saw a collection that numbered around 300—an impressive number for a home cook. Of course, Lou was smitten with her well before he saw her books. “Cookbooks were common; Myrna was not,” he says with a twinkle in his eye that is still flickering. One thing led to another, and before you could say, “Venus in the Kitchen: Or Love’s Cookery Book,” by Pilaff Bey (1953), they tied the knot and started building a business.

At first, cookbooks were just another part of their store, but then Myrna discovered how much some of the older books were worth and started doing research. “Quite frankly, we were astounded when we found out the value of some of the books we were carrying,” Lou says. “And then I told her, ‘We have to get your books out there.’” By the time they sold Donato’s Fine Books in 1997, it had a very impressive collection of more than 7,000 cooking titles. Then, the pot boiled over.

Both Lou and Myrna thought Internet sales were the wave of the future, so they concentrated on doing sales from home. “But I never stopped buying cookbooks, so we eventually ran out of room,” Myrna says. Almost out of self-preservation, in March 2008 they opened Amber Unicorn Books on Decatur Boulevard, naming it after Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber science fiction series and Myrna’s lifelong love of unicorns. Immediately, word started to spread among chefs, food writers, and cooking aficionados about Myrna’s collection, which by then had grown to more than 15,000 titles.

A Gourmet Following
America’s most famous foodie, former Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, is one notable fan: “[Cosmopolitan public relations director] Amy Rossetti told me about Amber Unicorn,” she tells us. “Amy said I’d love it, and she was so right. I spent two long afternoons wandering through the store, and bought so many books I had to have them shipped back. Among other things, I bought M.F.K. Fisher’s novel, Not Now But Now, a first edition of the Alice B. Toklas cookbook, a book of radio recipes from the ’20s, a Greenwich Village Cookbook from the ’60s, a history of English food, a signed edition of Louis Szathmary’s American Gastronomy.... and that’s just for starters. It’s quite a long and eclectic list. I think the store is one of Las Vegas’s great treasures. Myrna and Lou are so passionate about their books, it is pure pleasure to talk to them.” Recommendations in the food world don’t come much higher than that.

Rossetti, herself an amateur collector, says one of her favorite purchases was a first-edition English translation of the 1994 Cuisine des Quatre Saisons by Joël Robuchon. “I asked chef Robuchon to sign it on one of his visits to Las Vegas, and he asked me where I found this particular book,” she says. “He was shocked to learn that I found it in Las Vegas, as the English version was an extremely limited run.”

Paul Bartolotta of Bartolotta at Wynn is equally smitten by the couple and the collection. “My first time in the store, I was like a woman buying shoes,” he says. “I spent three hours reading and patrolling the shelves and couldn’t make up my mind! I’ve found a book of Italian Renaissance cookery, one specializing on the Emilia-Romagna region, and Luigi Carnacina’s La Grand Cucina Internazionale (“Great Italian Cooking”), a classic from the early ’60s that I never got around to buying when I apprenticed in Italy. So fast-forward 25 years, and there it is in Myrna’s collection. I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

It wasn’t long before the Strip wanted a bite of the cookbook action: the Eat Drink store, on the second floor of The Cosmopolitan, now carries a special display of Myrna and Lou’s collection for sale to the public. Rossetti was the main force in bringing a small part of their treasure trove to the Strip. “I’d sent so many chefs and friends and customers there, I thought it was time to show off to tourists something that’s very special about our Vegas food culture,” she says. According to Myrna, mixology and bartending books have been the biggest sellers (perhaps not coincidentally, given the store’s location across from the Marquee nightclub), along with anything with “Vegas” in the title (By Hook or by Cook–The Official Nevada Brothel Cookbook notwithstanding). “It’s been nothing but word of mouth for the past two years,” Myrna says, “and now it seems like everyone is calling us.” Which, once you see Lou and Myrna Donato’s staggeringly delicious collection, will come as no surprise.