For people who love food and cooking, certain spaces are sanctuaries. Now Serving, the only cookbook shop in Los Angeles, is one of them.
Now Serving cookbook store owners Ken Concepcion and Michelle Mungcal, and their daughter, Frankie.
“The whole concept was always: Where would Ken want to hang out on his day off?” said Michelle Mungcal of her husband, Ken Concepcion; before Concepcion became a bookshop owner, he spent two decades as a cook and was chef de cuisine at Wolfgang Puck’s Beverly Hills steakhouse Cut when he hung up his monogrammed jacket in 2016. Mungcal asked, “Where would cooks and chefs want to hang out on their day off?”At Now Serving, shelves of cookbooks and a center island of ceramics and more cookbooks.
Now Serving is and is not a gift shop. Although you can buy a bowl or a bandanna with a copy of the latest cookbook from Mark Bittman or Anissa Helou, the extra stuff is engineered for cooks to pick up on their days off. The tasting spoons are a tell, one of the first things you’re made to get at culinary school, along with a knife kit and a Sharpie. “It’s fun watching people pick them up, put them down, look at them.
Concepcion cooked for his roommates, and stockpiled cookbooks, and thought about going to cooking school, but instead took a restaurant job rather than rack up more student loans. “So I learned on the job, and cookbooks were a big part of that.” “I love it when there’s 30 or 40 people in here and it feels like a house party,” said Concepcion, whose work uniform the day of my visit was an old Billy Joel concert T-shirt.
No diet books then — “there are no avocado slicers or garlic peelers here,” said Concepcion, as if declaring a political party — but a smartly curated catalog that draws chefs on their days off as if it has curative powers. Recently Concepcion opened the place for Ari Rosenson, the longtime head chef at Cut, with whom Concepcion worked for a decade. As they chatted about mutual friends and Frankie sang in her stroller, Rosenson’s pile of books grew.
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