In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the street names flow like the alphabet, starting with Ash, Box, then Clay and carrying on until Oak. On Huron Street, I came across Archestratus Books & Food, one of New York City’s coziest spots for daydreaming about food.
Reading at Archestratus Books & Food
I find large bookstores with general cookbook sections overwhelming. Vintage cookbook stores can feel dusty and outdated (cornstarch - Yikes!). And while I love to shop for new shiny covers and navigate a labyrinth of towering bookshelves, I prefer Archestratus where the cookbook genres are digestible in size and the recipes that resonate are easy to find.
Children's Food Books at Archestratus
At Archestratus, they recognize New Yorkers’ capricious appetite for variety, rarity, and fondness for Italian food. The store’s namesake was an ancient Greek poet, who left behind verses on what he loved to eat, especially the fish and seafood of Sicily.
Special Italian food importation at Archestratus
Behind the cashier, a blackboard lists the café menu of the day. The cookbook displays seem to switch as often as the ingredients in the kitchen, creating a healthy balance of seasonality and originality.
Italian cookbooks at Archestratus
Chef-owner Paige Lipari, whose family comes from Sicily, handpicks the collection of titles and rescues vintage cookbooks from estate sales. She sells specialty Italian dry goods, like dried pasta, Roman coffee, and pistachio cream. Time your visit right and order warm arancini fried by Paige in the kitchen.
Since the pandemic, Archestratus also sells grocery items. Boxes of organic vegetables from nearby farms and fresh provisions, like mozzarella cheese, prepared salads, and fizzy drinks fill the entryway. The café remains open, but for pick-up only.
So many Italian cookbooks at Archestratus Books & Food!
While you’re enjoying your arancini, these are the Italian cookbooks I recommend checking out at Archestratus online or in person, before your brain (and belly) open up to all the possibilities...
I remember a trip to Italy, before running to catch a midnight bus from Rome to La Spezia, I convinced a friend to cram hot porchetta panini into his backpack. Eating the juicy strips of pork and salted focaccia from a stand-in Trastevere with our hands on the dark bus was the best impulsive move of the trip. Paola Bracchia’s beautifully photographed Italian Street Food: Recipes from Italy’s Bars and Hidden Laneways (2016), dives into the dishes that make street life hum and shares recipe adaptations for cooking at home. I love the fried chapter, where Paola, who was a MasterChef contestant and current owner of a professional tour-guiding company in Italy and Australia, reveals the tricks of supplì with ragù, zeppole with anchovy and olive, chickpea fritters, and stuffed fiori di zucchini fried in butter. In Paola’s words: “Authentic Italian street food puts you in touch with the local people who make it, their land, their traditions, their ancestors and even their mothers."\
Classic recipes never get old, but why not explore their regional variations? Take a look at Italy Dish by Dish by Monica Sartoni Cesari (2011). This pocket-sized book covers over 3,000 recipes, translated from Italian by Susan Simon, including standard ingredients and regional names. The index at the back proves super useful when exploring lasagna recipes without bechamel or mozzarella. (Try out a Carnival recipe, it calls for cinnamon!) Another bonus, the author was once the educational director at the culinary school of this publication.\
Joyful by design yet rigorously-researched, the “The Gastronomy of Italy” by Anna Del Conte bounces around from affogato to apricots to a traditional recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana. She explains how “anatra,” a breed of duck known as “Muscovy” in English, became the protagonist of the beloved duck à l’orange, a dish whose recipe might have journeyed by carriage from Florence to the French court of Catherine de Medici. Full of wisdom, Anna is a celebrated guardian of Italian cuisine and known as the “Marcella Hazan” of Italian food in England, where she has lived for decades. Anna started this encyclopedia in 1987 with consultation from esteemed food writer Massimo Alberini and it has since been republished. Like a treasure map, the book covers enormous ground from A to Z with incredible historical anecdotes, illustrations, and recipe photos.