From screens to stovetops: Exploring the tactile delight of culinary bookshops

I had some time to kill on a recent Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, so I popped into Vivienne Culinary Books, a pint-sized culinary book and kitchenware consignment shop on a wedge-shaped corner in the Hollywood District. 

Ten minutes melted into 45, as I got absorbed in a lovely cookbook by Judith Jones, “The Pleasures of Cooking for One.” I mentally filed away a crispy, layered potato side dish with garlic (I’d add more, I decided) and ample butter that Jones made once for Julia Child; Jones was Child’s longtime publisher at Knopf. Then I examined the mandu technique illustrated in Hugh Amano and Sara Becan’s comic book cookbook, “Let’s Make Dumplings!”: Make half moons and pinch the ends together to form “plump little belly buttons.”

Meanwhile, shop owner Robin Wheelright cooked lunch for a few patrons seated at the tiny bar at the front of the store, near where I stood moments later, cackling aloud at chef Lou Rand Hogan’s gift for turning a campy phrase in the humorous, brilliantly economical 1965 cookbook, “The Gay Cookbook,” the first cookbook aimed exclusively at a gay audience. 

“The easiest canapes are the sort where you smear some kind of a cheese mix on some kind of packaged cracker, and possibly add a dab of garnish,” wrote Hogan in a chatty introduction to the hors d’oeuvres. “We know a mad character in San Francisco (where there is a large percentage of mad characters) who puts pineapple cheese (out of those little glass jars) on round crackers and tops this with a candied violet, no less. Gawd, Mabel, how gay can you get?”

In this one-dimensional era of online shopping and mindless scrolling — punctuated by unnervingly targeted advertising — we’ve lost touch with the visceral delights of meandering around in a single-subject bookshop. I realized it had been years since I bought a cookbook in a physical store. My standard practice upon hearing about a new cookbook or culinary memoir has become to check online at Bookshop or Amazon. Sure, while there, I might stumble upon a tempting, related title from the site-generated “hot cookbooks” roundup (or, if I was shopping on the latter, throw on an order of LED light bulbs). 

At Vivienne, I had the time to organically engage with the books for inspiration — whether to revisit pasta from scratch with help from Vicky Bennison’s “Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook,” or try my hand at growing porch vegetables under the warm guidance of gardener Maggie Stuckey in “The Container Victory Garden.” I found emotional sustenance, too — immersing myself in gay life in Hogan’s mid-century San Francisco and in Naz Deravian’s roving Iranian diaspora in “Bottom of the Pot: Persian Recipes and Stories.” (The latter prompted an ache to return to my home kitchen and attempt Deravian’s golden, crunchy tahdig.) 

“You don't know what you’ll discover, browsing in a shop,” Wheelright told me later. “And when you're looking for things online, ideas don't generate in the same way.”

Wheelright debuted Vivienne in its current form in 2021. The chef/owner of the former seasonal cafe of the same name pivoted to offering takeout due to the pandemic before deciding to re-concept the space into a culinary book shop and wine bar that also offers cooking demos and classes. She sees Vivienne as a vehicle for kitchen sovereignty in her community.

The Secret Bar (Photo courtesy of Vivienne Culinary Books)

“Our mission is to have people be able to feed themselves,” Wheelright said. “And if you really get into me, I oppose the industrialization of food, which is problematic on so many levels: for us, the planet, the animals, the soil. If you look at our food system from that perspective and think about how to feed ourselves in a sustainable way in cities, it goes to growing food locally, shopping farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture. We support that at the cookbook store by teaching people how to utilize products at their hands — like flours, grains, and pantry goods.”

Understanding that the notion of food sovereignty might not resonate with everyone who darkens Vivenne’s door, Wheelright seeks out books that have value beyond mere collections of recipes — those that foster engagement through photography or illustration, prose or personal stories. Intimate classes and cooking demos from visiting authors including Ivy Manning (“Tacos A to Z: A Delicious Guide to Nontraditional Tacos”) and Viola Buitoni (“Italy by Ingredient: Artisanal Foods, Modern Ingredients”) further aid the tactile end of this sunny shop’s mission.

“It’s a great way to learn to cook and have a great experience,” Wheelright said. “That’s another way we can create a social platform for people to interact in person.” 

She paused here to reiterate that “social” didn’t refer to some digital content-sharing platform. Indeed, other than to check the time, I left my phone in my pocket for the duration of my visit to Wheelright’s shop, caught up in surveying the shelves for treasures beneath the glow of twinkle lights. It was a sorely needed reminder that the rational, oft-tedious act of feeding ourselves also contains therein gratification and sensual delight. It can restore us, reconnect us to the earth and our loved ones, transport us somewhere new or uncover some buried nostalgia. 

“We have a lot of times we have to eat in our life, everyday,” Wheelright said simply. 

I did make one online purchase as a result of my outing at Vivienne; however, this was mainly due to my already overloaded carryon. “The Gay Cookbook,” from Vivienne’s online store, will arrive next week. I hope it’s the same copy I held in the store.