Kitchen WitchLocation: New Orleans, LAIt’s difficult to imagine how 11,000 cookbooks could fit
Kitchen WitchLocation: New Orleans, LAIt’s difficult to imagine how 11,000 cookbooks could fit in one modest shop, until you visit Kitchen Witch, the New Orleans used cookbook store and personal collections of Debbie Lindsey and Philipe LaMancusa. But Phillip was raised in professional kitchens, long before he was in book biz. The Kitchen Witch is not just a shop; it’s an homage to Phillip’s adventurous life in food, one that he was born to share. Phillip started out his storied career in professional kitchens working in a Jewish country club in Denver. He later joined the Navy, where he worked as a cook preparing meals for his fellow soldiers. But New Orleans was always a draw, and when he moved there he fell right in with the best: he was a cook at Commander’s Palace, preparing fine Cajun food alongside Creole cuisine’s most iconic chef, Paul Proudhomme. Always the eager student, he explored living in New Mexico, Monterey, and Polynesia. He worked under the saucière from the famed Paris restaurant, Maxim’s, worked as the pastry chef at the Las Vegas MGM Grand, and made fish tacos in Ensenada with a wild gypsy woman (her secret was to add mayo and coca cola to the batter). Now “vegan, besides butter,” Phillip briefly dreamt of opening a vegetarian Dairy Queen, but then what would he have done with the incredible collection of cookbooks he had acquired in all the kitchens and far-off locations along the way? He returned to New Orleans, where he met his Debbie, now his wife and business partner, and they opened a cookbook store that really functions as a community living room. There is always someone cooking, reading, or waiting to give some cooking advice. This store is their world, a life of culinary wonder under one roof. -- source link