The United States is sleeping on more than just universal healthcare and widespread bidet use. In cities from Helsinki, Finland to Canberra, Australia, libraries offer more than just a place to take a break between using the fast and free internet and exploring ancient Martian glaciers. They’re crammed with cafes and wine bars (yes, really!) that invite you to linger with a culinary experience all their own. Imagine: chickpea bánh mì, forest mushroom soup made from sheathed tufts of wood collected from a nearby forest, and Côtes du Rhône on tap on tap. Not a shrink-wrapped slice of cake, a lukewarm Styrofoam cup of filter coffee, or a soggy egg salad sandwich in sight.
Public libraries in the United States outnumber McDonald’s, Susan Orlean points out in her 2018 book The library book. “They outnumber bookstores two to one.” Libraries is one of the last truly equitable third places we have in the United States, a freely accessible meeting place that was visited more than movie theaters in 2019, according to a Gallup poll. And yet Our nation’s libraries are a largely untapped eatery.
As a seasoned library tourist (honourable regards to the Kansas City Public LibraryThe New York Public Libraryand the Los Angeles Public Library unfortunately left now Panda Express), I searched for libraries that serve everything from pit stop ice cream lattes to Indonesian Tahu Goreng. What strikes me most, however, is how international libraries foster an inimitable sense of commensality. A fancy term to describe the act of eating together, commensality was shown to play an overwhelming role in strengthening social order and public health. Also of particular note is sharing an upscale dining experience increases the feeling of personal satisfactionproves that Eating is not just a means to an end.
I found that you can have a very good curry and egg salad sandwich at a white-cloth communal table just off the reading room Richelieu site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. And that’s just the edge of the library rabbit hole. Helsinki Oodi library Café serves everything from rainbow trout coconut curry and beet and goat cheese lasagne to light, fluffy passion fruit cakes – all labeled with their own carbon footprint rating.
If you find yourself in Canberra, feast on confit snapper and pan seared pork belly National Library of Australia‘S Exlibris Cafe, whose table service adds an atmosphere that’s more restaurant-living than fast-casual. Embedded in Manila’s brutalism Magsaysay Laureate Library is the speakeasy-inspired Library Café, where you can enjoy spicy sisig over rice, towering slices of unrivaled mango, and even an espresso margarita (no martini) while tucked into emerald velvet-tufted booths beneath low, moody pendant lights. It should also come as no surprise that you can sip a Campari Spritz on the rooftop at the Caffetteria in Florence Biblioteca delle Oblate.
Libraries have long remained viable, changing shape to meet the needs of their communities far beyond book lending.
But what about the United States? Libraries have long remained viable, changing shape to meet the needs of their communities far beyond book lending. Around the mid-2010s, Central Library branches from London to Bologna began offering dining options that mimicked the trendy spots surrounding them. While most major US libraries now offer services and space for activities like 3D printing, sewing machine rentals, or recording equipment to record a podcast, they don’t necessarily offer their own restaurant (either by not offering a dining option or by being allowed to browse through the stacks no food from outside is consumed). But change is coming.
“Customers come to the library just for this food — it’s incredible,” says Emily Duchon, manager of library, recreation and cultural services at the public library in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The branch, which has existed since 2014, opened the Book Nook Cafe Early 2020, where diners can expect Moroccan lentil soup, caramel apple scones, and pressed sandwiches made from homemade ciabatta loaves — dishes that cost diners between $4 and $10 without relying on government subsidies. “The library café is run by a mother and two daughters team,” says Duchon. “They are former restaurateurs and bring that perspective and expertise to their restaurant.”
These library cafes are often built from existing space and leased to local vendors, with the library earning income from rent and utilities, and occasionally a percentage of the profits. The opportunity to increase foot traffic, as noted by Milwaukee Public Library’s Marian Royal, has led to many other side effects, such as: B. increased participation in programs and income from the sale of used books in these cafes. This increased revenue then allows libraries more funds to acquire more diverse titles for their collection.
“Community feeding takes different forms,” says Royal. “Whether a community is being provided with food, information, books, or safe spaces, everything belongs together.” After all, libraries are sanctuaries that provide important escape routes—and constantly evolving ones at that. The library is perhaps where many of us first felt autonomy. The mere proximity of libraries in a neighborhood has been found to lead to emergence increased trust and connection within communities, as well as less traditional contributions to community health. As in the case of the cafes in Washington, DC’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and the Rochester Public Library central branch, library committees have turned to local providers who provide training to communities facing employment challenges and enable a different level of engagement and upward mobility that simply cannot be replicated in a Starbucks.
Some American libraries are even getting help with fine dining. Jose Andres Think Food Group recently consulted on the menu for the MLK Jr. Memorial Library cafe in DCby giving his own definition of “library food‘ with inexpensive dishes that push library cuisine like grilled goat’s cheese sandwiches and açaí chia parfaits.
The National Library of Australia website Exlibris Cafe (very charmingly) posits that the famous Greek mathematician Eratosthenes would probably not have been able to calculate the circumference of the earth if he had not “enjoyed from time to time a bracing cup of wine fresh from the amphora and a dish of figs the Nile Delta, still warm from the sun.” Libraries have always been proverbial watering holes for the spirit. Why not recharge our bodies and stay a little longer in the oasis?