A Community Dinner

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Books & Books’ New Dinner Series Unites the Neighborhood

Left to Right: Featured chef Cindy Hutson’s cookbook; the Books & Books Community Dinner is held in the outdoor courtyard.

In his 1989 book, “The Great Good Place,” Ray Oldenberg coined the term “third place” to define a public, social space outside of the home (the “first place”) and work (your “second place”). In the “third place,” people can relax, interact socially with friends or strangers, and feel a stronger sense of community and belonging. In an increasingly lonely society, these places where you can be free from expectations of productivity and open to the potential of new connections are increasingly necessary.

Our favorite “third place” in Coral Gables is Books & Books, which has been committed to community since its inception in 1982. Lately, Jonah Kaplan, who manages the bookstore’s café under his father and owner Mitch Kaplan, has cooked up something we love even more than just sitting and people-watching in the outdoor courtyard: the community dinner. Every month, Kaplan invites a new local chef to invent a five-course menu for diners.

“What my dad has always strived for is to have Books & Books be a community space for anyone to go to, to start conversations about what’s going on in the world,” the junior Kaplan says. “The Community Dinner is a good way to bring different people from different backgrounds together and get them to speak to each other. I think that’s really important for people to do more often, not just dinners where you go with the same people. Here, you sit down at a long table and you might be talking to someone you’ve never met.”

On the evening we attended our first Community Dinner, the courtyard was so packed that our waiters had to squeeze between people to stack the tables with each course. The featured chef was Cindy Hutson from the still-missed Ortanique on Miracle Mile. Together, she and Books & Books’ Chef Papo Santiago collaborated on a menu that included creamy Florida conch chowder, a gorgeous salad featuring orange and grapefruit segments paired with feta and passionfruit mint vinaigrette, local snapper in a coconut and key lime broth, and our favorite dish of the night: a Caribbean jerk chicken pasta.

Between courses, emcee Carlos Frías, a two-time James Beard Award winner and former Miami Herald food editor, explained each dish. We spent an extra $45 dollars for the natural wine pairings (the regular ticket is $70 plus gratuity), which elevated the experience and gave us the boldness we needed to speak with Chef Hutson (basically a celebrity in our eyes) about her incredible menu – and to toast to it with our new friends.

For the final course, we indulged in a coconut tres leche topped with indulgent Chantilly and coconut cream and toasted coconut flakes. As the light faded from the sky, the lamps and string lights lit up, creating a warm atmosphere that felt a lot like a dinner party at our “first place” – home, that is. We received copies of Hutson’s cookbook, “From the Tip of My Tongue,” to peruse while we finished off our wine and exchanged phone numbers with new friends.

The next Books & Books community dinner will be in late June, with details and tickets posted on its website.

265 Aragon Ave
booksandbooks.com
305.442.4408