Keen-eyed Nostrana diners in Portland, OR may have noticed the Buckman Italian restaurant’s growing collection of unusual-looking cookbooks. The restaurant staff has spent years collecting all 20 first editions of the “In Bocca” (in the mouth) series of cookbooks produced in the late 1970s by Palermo, Italy, publisher Il Vespro.
First, they built a display for them in the Nostrana dining room, adjacent to the kitchen. Now, they’ve created a whole dinner series based on them, beginning this Friday, March 8. “It’s hard to overstate how taken we are with these books,” chef Cathy Whims said in a statement. “But these aren’t merely showpieces: We’ve also used them as a source of inspiration.”
