In its 20th year, the Book and the Cook's pairing of cookbook authors with area restaurants produced 72 dining events plus cooking demonstrations, food tours and related programs.
Restaurant tallies were not available at press time. But judging from the full and nearly full dining rooms we saw during the March 12-21 festival, the results should be comparable to last year's. In 2003, nearly 7,000 diners spent more than $620,000 at 74 meals with authors, feasting on dishes from their cookbooks.
Paid attendance at last weekend's Culinary Market and Showcase at the Fort Washington Expo Center, where culinary-related merchandise was displayed for sale and authors prepared recipes and signed books, climbed to 11,521, up from 11,116 in 2003.
The advantage of a noon opening Friday was all but canceled out by forecasts of snow for the suburbs.
This year's Book and the Cook was especially international in flavor.
Philadelphia's Israeli Consulate brought in two top restaurant chefs from Tel Aviv, TV personality Israel Aharoni and rising star Rafi Cohen. They hosted a kosher dinner Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania featuring dishes representing the many ethnic groups that make up Israel.
British seafood specialist Rick Stein, a BBC-TV cooking show star from Cornwall, appeared at the Joseph Ambler Inn in North Wales, and Paris-based food writer Patricia Wells teamed up with chef Georges Perrier at Le Bec-Fin.
The influx of new participants was a reminder that fresh eyes see Philadelphia and this remarkable restaurant-food festival as exciting and special, even if some locals believe it needs rejuvenation.
There was no lack of excitement, however, for two couples - Noel and Lindsay Carota of Merion and Lois and Michael Haber of Bryn Mawr - who have been dining around at the Book and the Cook for several years.
We caught up with them at Peter Reinhart's brunch Sunday at Lacroix at the Rittenhouse. It was the 12th of 13 events that the foursome attended this year (three brunch/lunches and 10 dinners), where they also rubbed shoulders with the likes of Giuliano Bugialli, Michael Romano and Jeremiah Tower.
"Since we don't travel, this is like taking a trip, except the authors come to us," Noel Carota said as the others tried to decide which dishes at which meals were their favorites.
The vichyssoise with white truffle oil at the David Rosengarten dinner at Novelty, they concluded, was "outstanding."
