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Pub & Kitchen Goes Retro with Vintage Cookbook Dinners

Pabbit, pabbit
Pabbit, pabbit

Pub & Kitchen is launching a new monthly dinner series which, if you’re an appreciator of classic cookbooks, will pique your interest. Chef Jonathan Adams is delving into his cookbook collection and putting together four course meals based on dishes from seminal cookbooks like Jeremiah Tower’s 1986 book New American Classics and Marco Pierre White’s 1990 book White Heat. The first dinner in the series will take place on Wednesday, April 7 at 7 p.m. and is really old school - Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook, originally published in 1961. Trout Meuniere, anyone?

Adams says he was inspired to do the dinners while flipping through old cookbooks and seeing how much they’ve changed over the years - from the quaint food styling and lighting of the past to the sleek, glossy food porn photos that occupy the pages of cookbooks today. On the recipe side, he says he was intrigued by some of the classics which aren’t really available regularly anymore - dishes that are solid, but have fallen out of fashion. The dinners are a way of paying tribute to those recipes and the chefs who created them.

The four course menu is $40, excluding tax and tip. It will include a complimentary champagne cocktail and reservations are recommended. Here’s the Claiborne-sourced menu:

Potage Cressonnière
potato and watercress soup garnished with black pepper and watercress leaves
Trout Meuniere
pan roasted Pocono trout with green beans, almonds and lemon brown butter
Steak Diane
cast iron New York strip steak with fresh spinach, potatoes ‘duchess’ and sherry sauce
Crepes Marcelle
crepes filled with cognac pastry cream and fresh roasted pears

Adams is also taking suggestions for cookbooks for future events - you can send him yours via Twitter @chefjonnymac. We’ve already given him our copy of the 1960s classic The Playboy Gourmet (yes, that Playboy) and sincerely hope he plans a dinner around that one of its special meals like “Pique-Nique a la Francaise for Four” or “Smorgasbord for Sixteen.”

Pub & Kitchen, 1946 Lombard Street; 215-545-0350),

Pub & Kitchen Goes Retro with Vintage Cookbook Dinners