Novels Nibbles
Where good food meets great stories 📚 🍽️
This year, we invite you to slow down and savor more than just a meal. Nibbles & Novels is our celebration of comfort food and classic literature, experiencing meals in unforgettable stories.
Whether you’re turning pages over a bite to eat or discussing a beloved novel between courses, this experience is about connection, creativity, and indulgence. From cozy flavors inspired by timeless tales to an atmosphere made for readers and food lovers alike, every visit is a chapter worth remembering.
Pull up a chair. Take a bite. Turn the page. Share your favorite meal in a novel and you might see it on the menu. Because the best stories are even better when shared over good food.
Current Special
The Kitchen Daughter - By Jael McHenry
Here’s a blurb about our novel of the week, so you people know what you’re getting yourself into with this page turner… After her parents’ sudden passing, shy 26 year old Ginny Selvaggio does what any sensible Italian granddaughter would do: she cooks her feelings. But when the spicy steam from Nonna’s soup conjures up Nonna’s ghost with a dramatic half warning and a vanishing act, things get deliciously complicated. Meanwhile, her take charge sister “Demanda” is bulldozing plans to sell the family home, and Ginny starts uncovering hidden letters, mystery women in old photos, and secrets tucked into the chimney. She may be a wizard with mozzarella, but to get the truth she’ll need to sauté, simmer, and straight up summon the dearly departed for answers.
Novels & Nibbles chosen recipe from this apparitional story crafts a comida delicioso with Aji de Gallina. Slow cooked shredded chicken gets tossed in a bold, creamy ají pepper sauce with garlic, onion, stock, evaporated milk, and a scandalous sprinkle of parmesan lounging over boiled potatoes, topped with Peruvian black olives, hard boiled eggs, and a confetti of cilantro.
Comfort food with a little attitude! Come on by and taste for yourself.
$17.95
2/25/2026 – 3/01//2026
Previous Special
Everything I know About Love - By Dolly Alderton
This week’s Novels & Nibbles takes you on a roller coaster ride known as your twenties. In this sharp and self aware memoir, Dolly Alderton chronicles her twenties through spectacularly bad dates, cinematic breakups, questionable financial choices, and friendships that survive it all. While she chases grand romance with the enthusiasm of a woman who believes every text means destiny, she slowly learns that the real love story may be the one she shares with her closest friends.
We are channeling the chaotic culinary spirit of Everything I Know About Love this week with…Got Kicked Out Of The Club Sandwich which involves toasted sourdough stacked with Dijon mayo, peppery arugula, and a scandalously runny egg. Served alongside Hangover Mac & Cheese, because some mornings require intervention. We are talking cheddar, Red Leicester cheese, fresh mozzarella, Parmesan, and green onions all baked into a bubbling, golden therapy session.
Come. Brunch like you have stories to tell and nowhere else to be. We have wine.
$16.95
2/18/2026 – 2/22//2026
Novels & Nibbles: The School Of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Welcome to Lillian’s kitchen, where magic smells like rosemary and cinnamon, and the oven doubles as a heart-mender. Her tiny Seattle cooking school isn’t just about recipes… it’s about noticing the little things: a whisper of garlic, the sparkle in someone’s eye, or the perfect flick of a spatula. Every student who wanders in brings a little baggage, and maybe a few emotional crumbs. Through laughter, fragrant sauces, and the occasional perfectly roasted carrot, Lillian teaches them that food can fix a lonely heart, spark a smile, and occasionally work miracles. Stir, taste, connect, and repeat because in this kitchen, even the simplest ingredients can cook up the biggest transformations.
Although there were many tasty choices throughout the chapters, we decided to share with you the meal Lillian made for Isabelle. The book describes it perfectly. “Isabelle looked down-the empty salad plate was gone without her noticing, replaced by a dinner plate of white cannellini beans, atop of which sat a perfect piece of salmon, garnished with strips of fried green leaves. Isabelle picked up one of them experimentally and brought it to her nose. Dusty green, the smell of life made out of sun and a little water, the driest of perfumes. Sage.”
Once upon a fork: salmon met beans, sage crashed the party, and your taste buds cheered.
Do Not miss this one!
Novels & Nibbles: Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
This week we’re diving fork-first into Chiles en Nogada, a dish as dramatic as the novel itself. Draped in the colors of the Mexican flag, this iconic plate celebrates Mexican independence while carrying a whole lot more than flavor. Chiles en Nogada shows up loaded with meaning. This dish mirrors Tita’s own struggle between inherited rules and personal freedom. Like every meal she creates throughout the story, it becomes a powerful release of emotion. Love, longing, grief, rebellion… Tita pours it all into her cooking, and everyone who eats feels it whether they’re ready or not.
Chiles en Nogada (Chiles in Walnut Sauce, for those of us politely negotiating with Spanish) This iconic dish reads like magical realism on a plate. Roasted poblano peppers take on the role of the vessel, filled with a rich mestizaje of ground beef and pork, sweet plantain, tomatoes, candied pineapple, black raisins, almonds, onion, and garlic. Each ingredient acts as its own narrative voice, savory and sweet in deliberate tension. The story resolves beneath a creamy walnut sauce before being punctuated with pomegranate seeds and fresh parsley. Red, white, and green. A clear motif of Mexican identity, independence, and tradition.
Come for the Chiles en Nogada. Leave a little more in love with food that tells a story.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
This week’s Novels & Nibbles follows Rose, a young girl who discovers she has a very odd superpower: she can taste people’s emotions in the food they make. She figures this out on her ninth birthday, when one bite of her mom’s lemon cake hits her with a wave of sadness instead of sweetness. From then on, every meal becomes an emotional clue, and navigating family, love, and growing up gets a lot stranger, and a lot more interesting. 🍰
We’re serving up a little edible love letter rich in imagery, metaphor, and mood, where every bite tells a story. Made completely from scratch, this sweet narrative travels straight from our hearts to your plate. Delicate crepes cradle crumbled lemon cake like a well-kept secret, set atop silky lemon curd, and brought to a dramatic conclusion with a decadent drizzle of dark chocolate ganache.
Can you taste it? Made with love. AND a hint of mischief.
$16.95
01/28/2026 - 02/01/2026
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing serves up food with meaning and a little marsh magic.
For Kya, food isn’t just a meal, it’s how she survives. Digging mussels, gathering grits, and cooking what the marsh provides are bold acts of self-reliance and living proof that she belongs to this wild place. As she matures and begins sharing simple cabin meals with Tate, food shifts into something sweeter. It becomes trust, intimacy, and care passed across the table. By the final pages, food tells Kya’s whole story. What she eats, how she gathers it, and who she shares it with reflect her loneliness, her strength, and the quiet nourishment of finally belonging.
This week’s Literary Meal drifts straight out of the marshlands of Where the Crawdads Sing. We've gathered the flavors that shaped Kya’s world and turned them into a dish that’s as beautiful as it is comforting. Creamy bacon, jalapeño, and cheddar grits form the heart of the plate, rich and grounding. On top, tender mussels steamed in white wine, tomatoes, and vegetable broth bring a briny whisper of the marsh, slow and soulful.
Rooted in survival and finished with grace, this dish is as soulful as the story behind it. Come taste it, linger over it, and don’t forget your camera… it’s one of those plates you admire before the first bite.
$15.95
