Camilla Kitchen has opened inside M. Judson Booksellers, Greenville, S.C., replacing the Chocolate Moose, which had closed in August because of the coronavirus pandemic. Greenville News reported that the new venture "is the brainchild of M. Judson owners and is designed to complement not just the bookshop but the roots and the why of the shop's origins. Deep within both is a love of and for food. Not just the way food tastes, but the way food brings people together," according to book buyer Ashley Warlick, who is overseeing the menu and food production for Camilla Kitchen.
"It was always part of the original dream of the bookstore that we would carry our love of cookbooks and of home cooking forward into something that was actually demonstrable," Warlick said. "So you could come in and taste test what you were reading."
Plans also call for using the space as a setting for M. Judson's literary dinners, "which weave writing and literature and food, and for using the kitchen to host cookbook authors," Greenville News wrote.
For now, Warlick said, the creators are taking it slowly, focusing on flavor, food and stories, and the feelings all bring, and getting back to what she called "a fuller food picture that we think goes so very well with books and stories."