Allagash Cookbook at Pub & Kitchen

Last night I was invited to the release party at the Pub & Kitchen for Allagash: The Cookbook. I hadn't heard anything about the cookbook up until last week when the invite arrived in my inbox but apparently it's about two years in the making. That a ton of time was put into the book really shows in every piece of it: the pictures, the recipes, and the overall build quality.

The event had Allagash's Rob Tod and Suzy Woods along with the photographer for the book, Brian Smestad. In the below picture, Brian is in the middle, Rob to his left, and Suzy is to his left.

Even though Allagash Rob has been coming to Philly for years now, this was actually the first time I've been able to meet him. As expected, he was really nice and if you are in NYC tonight, you should head to the Blind Tiger for their annual Allagash tap takeover since he's going to be there too. If you want to meet Brian or Suzy, you can head to The Churchkey in DC. Talked to a few other people as well including Lew Bryson who I hadn't seen in a while. He's the one sitting.

While I haven't had a real chance to look through the recipes in the cookbook yet, I feel like I can recommend it just on the build quality. Very nice cover, high quality glossy pages, and some really impressive pictures make for a very cool book. If the recipes hold up (and I don't see why they shouldn't), you should look into picking one up even though it's $35. You can find them here if you're interested. I don't know if it'll be available elsewhere but I believe the initial run was small so probably not for a bit either way. And, just so you know, I did buy one last night so I'm not just encouraging you without buying one myself.

All in all, it was quite a fun night. It's always nice talking with Suzy and getting to finally meet Rob was great. Hopefully he'll be back in Philly again and I can chat with him a bit more as he had some great stories about Allagash. I even got to meet one of the chefs at Pub & Kitchen, Johnny. He's the guy on the left in this picture.

Nice guy. And again, if the food samples were any indication of the quality of food at Pub & Kitchen, it's a place to check out. Tasty stuff. Also got to drink a bunch of Smoke and Beards and Curieux, both of which were quite enjoyable. And I also got a small hint about the Sours of Allagash class at Tria (it's this class which is unfortunately sold out already) in two weeks and now I'm super excited. Cannot wait for it.