Chicago's Newest Bookstore Wants You To Read It And Eat

By Melissa Wiley in Food on Jan 14, 2015 10:00PM

Some of the best reading comes with measurements, a fact the city’s newest bookstore will soon try to parlay into profit. Read It and Eat, scheduled to open along north Halsted in Lincoln Park this April, will exclusively stock cookbooks and other food-themed volumes.

Publisher's Weekly reports owner Esther Dairiam will also allocate part of the space for a kitchen designed to host demos, tastings, readings, and other events that will help usher culinary theory into practice. Books for sale will cover everything from travel lore to food science.

A management consultant, Dairiam is new to the bookstore industry. But a 2012 culinary trip to France and Montmartre’s La Librairie Gourmande persuaded her Chicago needed a bookstore devoted to food literature of its own.