TableTales.me – A unique Take on Cookbooks

Cookbooks are arguably among the most favorite reading materials, found in almost every home. They are cherished and never go out of fashion, often passed from one generation to another. However, when you add personal stories from people of different nationalities living in one city to the recipes, you get a timeless piece that contributes to the cultural heritage of one region.

Table Tales, The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi by Hanan Sayed Worrell is precisely that kind of cookbook. Moreover, the TableTales.me website is the book’s online address and an ideal way to represent the cookbook to a large audience and provide them with all the important information.

Food as the basic common denominator

Table Tales is a one-of-a-kind cookbook. It introduces the reader to the recipes of people from all around the world who made Abu Dhabi their home. The cookbook shares touching stories of global nomads and people who came to live in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city between the 1960s and 2010s. Apart from sharing their stories, they share their most cherished recipes, including traditional family recipes.

There are a total of 106 recipes that speak about a more intimate side of Abu Dhabi. What’s more, they describe how communities are formed through sharing food and culture in this multicultural metropolis.

Hanan Sayed Worrel started working on Table Tales in 2015. Three years later, the cookbook was first released in October 2018. The author interviewed people and families whose stories and recipes are featured in the cookbook. Interestingly, she tried each recipe at least three times herself. 

All those people welcomed Hanan into their homes and shared their lives with her. Those encounters and all the lovely food were also recorded and represented in the cookbook through brilliant and vibrant photographs that complement each recipe perfectly.

TableTales.me

The author has also decided to create an online address for her cookbook, where one can find all the wonderful details about it.  The website’s design and the beautiful images are perfectly combined and give a glimpse into the content of the cookbook. 

Sections

There are four major sections of the website – The People, The City, The Food, and The Author. In The People, you see brief information and images of people who shared their recipes and lives with Hanan. The City contains amazing photographs of Abu Dhabi and a short description of the city’s history. The Food section is of particular interest to those who want to find out more about the recipes. It features excerpts from several mouthwatering recipes that are brilliant teasers that make you want to grab the cookbook immediately. Lastly, in The Author, we find more about Hanan Sayed Worrell, the woman behind this impressive culinary and cultural project.

In addition to these sections that grab the attention of visitors interested in purchasing the cookbook, other essential elements contribute to the website’s quality. 

The Contact section is where you can obviously get in touch with the author. Moreover, you learn how to order the book and find the links to the Table Tales social media profiles. Speaking of which, Table Tales has a great community on Instagram with over 11.6k followers. Furthermore, the Media section is an excellent way of showing where Hanan and her work were present in the press. It also allows visitors to gain more insights into how the cookbook was promoted. Additionally, there is the Events category which shows where the author has presented her work. Hanan speaks about the motivation behind creating this cookbook  that captures her experience of living in Abu Dhabi. 

Next phase

Another exciting aspect of this online presence is the author’s interaction with the community. Hanan invites anyone who lives or lived in Abu Dhabi to share their favorite food memory and recipe. This is a part of Hanan’s next phase of the Table Tales project.  She is building a community around food in Abu Dhabi and a place where people can share their recipes. One thing is certain, we can’t wait to see it go live!

Online presence: TableTales.ME

TableTales.me is not a typical author website where the author represents their work and projects. We see Hanan’s online presence as a way to emphasize the community and shared experiences in the same way her amazing cookbook does. Of course, there is a section about the author which tells us more about Hanan’s life and career. However, the focus is most certainly on the elements that formed this book. 

This is an important element of Table Tales brand image which speaks of multiculturalism, food, shared experiences, and community. The author comes across as a humble observer who simply wanted to capture a moment in time. She wanted to leave a trace of who those people were and what they ate. And that is where the power of this online presence lies. In the simple fact that our community and culture are some of our most significant treasures. 

Having a website such as this one helps the authors achieve several goals. In the first place,  today’s reader wants to know more about the author and the book itself, and they want to be able to find all the information easily. This also makes it an ideal base for promoting your writing and connecting with your readers, and another way for building credibility in a digitally-driven world. More importantly, a website allows you to have complete control over your content and branding.

Final thoughts on TableTales.ME

TableTales.me is an online gateway into Hanan Sayed Worrell’s experiences of living and sharing a life with the cosmopolitan community of Abu Dhabi. It is an online address of her unique and powerful book Table Tales, The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi, which is not a conventional cookbook, but a piece of history that shows how people come together around food. 

We congratulate the author on her exceptional work, and we’re looking forward to seeing the next chapters of the Table Tales project.