The story of The Book Larder is the story of two dreams that crossed one day at a busy intersection.
My friend Kim Ricketts had always been a big dreamer. She dreamed of creating a different kind of book event—one where authors and readers would mingle and drink wine and talk. She had worked in a traditional bookstore and had grown tired of cookie-cutter events. She believed they could be done differently, done better.
Most of all Kim believed in the power of books connecting people. Her emails were all signed with the same quote, by Anthony de Mello, below her name: “The shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.” She believed in stories, in smart people and big ideas and bringing all that together over a glass of wine.
Kim set up a company and began producing these sorts of events. Some of them were corporate and hidden from view—she brought authors to speak at Microsoft and Boeing and Nordstrom and other large companies—but she became known, especially in the Seattle food scene, for public events that paired chefs and cookbook authors with local restaurants to host a dinner drawn from the book, or for smart talk over a glass of wine. When David Chang or Thomas Keller or Ruth Reichl came to town, Kim was the one who set up the event.
A year ago last fall, Kim and I spent the day together. She told me she was planning on shifting her business, changing things around. She wanted to do something different.
Lara Hamilton was looking for something different as well. She had a successful career at Microsoft, but wanted something more fulfilling. She loved cooking and cookbooks, and had heard of Books for Cooks, the London store devoted to cookbooks. She was delighted by the idea, though the day she went to visit the store it was closed. “I pressed my face up against the glass of the windows,” she says. “I couldn’t believe something so wonderful existed.”
Lara and Kim connected with each other (on Twitter, no less), and Kim hired Lara to help with the book events company. One day, as they were crossing a busy intersection in Fremont, not far from Kim’s office, she told Lara, “I’ve been thinking of opening up—”
“A cookbook store?” Lara finished the sentence for her.
Now the dream had two champions.
Not long after that, Kim was diagnoses with a rare blood disease. She continued to run her company, battling her illness and working as much as she could between doctor’s treatments. She didn’t get to see her friends much during this time, but I still received cheery email messages she had written from the hospital or home in bed. They were always signed with the same quote: “The shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.”
What most people didn’t know is that, behind the scenes, Kim and Lara were moving forward with their dream. They looked at a few sites, then one day Kim saw a “For Rent” sign on a storefront on Fremont Avenue as she was driving by with her sister. She called Lara and told her about it. Lara made arrangements to see the space—a former florist shop—and negotiated a lease.
Kim never got to see the bookstore that opened there this fall. She died in April, taking with her a big part of the heart of the Seattle food and book world. Even those of us who knew how sick she had been couldn’t believe this vibrant, warm, sarcastic joke-cracking, big dreamer of a friend and mother was gone.
And yet, Kim’s spirit is part of the bookstore she helped conceive. Last October, after a summer of hard work, Lara opened the doors to The Book Larder: A Community Cookbook Store.
“It was always very much about community,” Lara explained to me when I stopped by the store on a recent sunny afternoon. “About being a place where people would gather and hang out. Nothing pleases me more than when someone sits down at the counter with a stack of books and gets lost for an hour.”
Yes, I said counter—not only is The Book Larder a cookbook store, it has a kitchen as well. They can hold cooking demonstrations and classes and bake up a batch of brownies on a rainy Thursday afternoon. What could be better than opening up the door to a cookbook store and being greeted by the smell of baked goods?
The store got off to a busy start this fall, with a full list of book events and classes. This is where I got to hang out with Lynn Rosetto Kasper and Sally Swift, and there were events with Michael Ruhlman, Patricia Wells, Adam Gopnik, and Melissa Clark. They held classes for vegetarian cooking and holiday baking and cooking with kids (these classes are being taught by some of my favorite people: Dana Treat, Ashley Rodriguez, Jessie Oleson of Cakespy).
In between the classes and events, the store is a lovely place to browse amongst a wide selection of books on cooking, preserving, and gardening. There’s a section devoted to the Pacific Northwest and, because Lara’s husband is English, a particularly strong British section (this is where I fell for the Sophie Dahl cookbook), as well as vintage books for collectors. There’s an entire corner devoted to sweets and treats. It really is the loveliest place to get lost in a stack of books.
“One thing I learned from Kim is that you have to go after what you want,” says Lara, standing behind the counter of the store she dreamed of and brought to life. “She was fearless, and that was a big lesson to me.”
That’s a big and important lesson for us all: sometimes you have to be fearless to go after what you want. Speaking on behalf of the Seattle food scene, and cookbook lovers everywhere, I am so glad that she was, that she did, that she gave us a beautiful cookbook store and a place to come together.
Book Larder
4252 Fremont Avenue North
Seattle, WA
206-397-4271
Monday-Saturday: 11-6pm
Sunday: 12-4pm
NOTE: for those of you visiting Book Larder from out of town, there are good eats in the neighborhood. Across the street Paseo makes Cuban sandwiches that people line up for (cash only, closed Sundays, I recommend the Cuban Roast), Dot’s Deli just up the block is a charcuterie-lovers dream, and on the opposite side of Fremont Avenue, Via Tribunali offers excellent Neopolitan-style pizza and a lemony arugula salad I love. Come hungry!
