Jurassic World: The Official Cookbook

Return to the thrilling paradise of Jurassic World with this deluxe cookbook featuring recipes served throughout the park!

Take a taste of Isla Nublar home with you with this exclusive cookbook featuring the most popular dishes, drinks, and desserts of Jurassic World. Organized according to the park’s various regions and territories — Gyrosphere Valley, T. Rex Kingdom, Jurassic Lagoon, and more — this mouthwatering cookbook features over fifty delicious recipes, each one inspired by the flavors, environment, and culture of the island and the awe-inspiring dinosaurs that live there.

Filled with fascinating dinosaur facts, park guides, and gorgeous food photography, Jurassic World: The Official Cookbook is the ultimate souvenir for fans hoping to recreate some of the flavors of Isla Nublar in their own home.

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It seems like forever ago (when considering pandemic-induced time dilation) that one of my editors at Insight Editions reached out to gauge my interest in collaborating on this project. As I was told at the time, they were looking for “an author who can write in a strong in-world voice,” and my previous work on the Vulcan and Klingon travel guides for Insight had apparently gone a long way toward demonstrating I could pull off that sort of thing.

Go me, amirite?

For this book, I was asked to create what my editor described as “flavor text.” Basically, everything that wasn’t going to be a recipe or other information related to the preparation of each of the more than 50 dishes the book would offer. In simpler terms, I was got to write about dinosaurs, Jurassic World itself along with Isla Nublar and the surrounding region, and so on.

Just as I did with the Star Trek travel guides, I presented all of that information from an “in-universe” perspective, in keeping with my editor’s original intention that the book read as if it existed in that world and as a souvenir you could purchase at one of the park’s gift shops.

To that end, my editor turned me loose, providing me a tremendous amount of latitude to mine the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World mythos. This evolved into writing about the theme park’s various areas and activities, excerpts from “field guides” about the different dinosaurs, and even bits of history about the Isla Nublar and the surrounding region as well as the backstory of John Hammond and his dream of creating the original Jurassic Park which eventually leads to the development of Jurassic World.

Holy moley, was this a lot of fun. I was already a fan of the films, but this gave me an excuse to jump back in and rewatch them as I searched for bits and nuggets of cool info to include in my notes. I even managed to sneak in a few references to Michael Crichton’s original Jurassic Park novel, which I hadn’t read since before the first movie came out in 1993. Let me know if you find any of those.

I actually completed my writing duties on this back in the late summer/early fall of 2020, with an eye toward the book being published in the summer of 2021 alongside the release of Jurassic World: Dominion to theaters. When the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with (among many other things) film release schedules, the movie was pushed out a year, and so too was this book. So, I’ve been waiting a long, looooooooong time for folks to see this thing.

And yes, it was very much a collaboration. In addition to my editor who provided her usual expertise and guidance, a book like this just doesn’t work unless you have someone who actually knows what they’re doing when it comes to the actual food and recipes aspects of a cookbook.

Enter Elena P. Craig, veteran recipe developer and food stylist who’s been doing her thing for about as long as I’ve been doing my thing. She’d already performed similar feats for Insight’s cookbooks devoted to Deadpool and Gilmore Girls. For this one she went all-out, creating over 50 recipes for dishes, snacks, cocktails, and other goodies designed to evoke the sort of cuisine to be found by visitors to the park.

Her awesome recipes and prep notes are enhanced by eye-popping photography that really help bring Elena’s creations to life, and luscious art and photos from the films enhances my “flavor text” about the island, the park, and the dinosaurs. The book itself is a gorgeous hardcover tome, and I’m just a little giddy to see it already popping up on a few “Best of” lists for Spring 2022 releases.

Jurassic World: The Official Cookbook is now officially on sale from Insight Editions and Simon & Schuster as well as the usual book haunts:

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop
IndieBound

My wife and sister area already planning on trying out some of the book’s recipes. If you end up doing the same, be sure to let me know in the comments below how things turned out!

Because lunch finds a way, yo.