When Jane Rodmell arrived in Toronto from London in the late sixties she brought with her collection of Elizabeth David books. The great British food writers recipes and recollections of life in France inspired Rodmell and the young mother began driving all over Toronto looking for decent ingredients. "It was hard to find good things," she remembers, "I depended on the Italian grocers for things like olive oil or balsamic vinegar - you certainly couldn't find them in supermarkets."

Rodmell and I had a coffee recently near her iconic Summerhill store, All The Best Fine Foods (full disclosure: ATB is an advertiser on GFR) to talk about her just published All The Best Recipes cookbook, which features 275 recipes she's and her chefs have used over 25 years. Although she has published five recipe collection previously, this is the first one taken directly from her kitchens and features recipes from their lines of prepared foods and products, including the bran muffins that started it all. Rodmell explained that All The Best began preparing foods by baking the muffins in a small oven in the store so people would be drawn off the street by the smell.

I wondered if Rodmell was a cook prior to opening All The Best and discovered that her first job was as a buyer for Marks & Spensers in Britain. There, she was terrorised by her boss, a six foot tall woman named Miss Mole, who wore a cape. She credits Miss Mole with toughening her up quickly and showing her metier. "You have to love retail," Rodmell says smiling, "because it draws every ounce of blood from you."

Rodmell's burgeoning career ended with her move to Hogtown, but by the ealry 70s she'd started writing about food for Toronto Life, where her husband worked as a designer. Toronto Life's founder, Michael de Pencier, his associate the late Phillip Greey and a small group of investors had set-up a clutch of gourmet stores next to the liquor store at Yonge and Summerhill. The bakery wasn't doing well and the landlords wanted a gourmet shop to compliment the butcher and green grocer. Rodmell agreed to consult and help with the opening, especially since she had a passion for good bread, which was so hard to find. Needless to say, she has been at All The Best ever since and has retained the original shareholder in her venture.

The little shop, which began as a bakery grew and grew, as did the amount of cooking until Rodmell moved her chefs to a separate facility in Leaside. I asked her if she was nervous about disclosing all her recipes: would her customers just start cooking the food themselves. She wasn't too worried: "Our customers are sophisticated and educated people who know a lot about food, but they're incredibly busy - we help them get through the day and put food on the table." Like the array in the store, the book offers a whole range of recipes ranging from super health conscious to indulgently rich, as well as tips on staples, spices and ingredients. "You have to learn to enjoy a piece of chocolate cake every once and a while," Rodmell advises with a tone of seriousness in her voice. She continued: "Our number one criteria is that it has to be good - it has to taste good. Otherwise what's the point of wasting those calories on something that isn't the best?"

All The Best Recipes is available at The Cookbook store, All The Best Fine Foods and other retailers.

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.