The East Village Cookbook is a pandemic-born project made for the East Village by the East Village. 

The cookbook showcases 300 pages of recipes, illustrations, and everything else from more than 100 local chefs, artists, and residents. 

It was made to support Trinity’s Services and Food for the Homeless, a historic community hub calling for justice for asylum seekers, people of all genders, the unhoused, and – most especially – the food insecure.

Champions read about the cookbook in neighborhood blog, EV Grieve, and volunteered to design it.

Like every community cookbook, the East Village Cookbook was designed in a use-what’s-available, function-first style. It lives at the intersection of cookbook and zine.

The book is a collection of recipes submitted on the back of kitchen printer paper, in chef chicken-scratch, in drawings and poems, or via photos of mom’s old recipe cards, and at least one recipe submitted by text message.

Champions recruited East Village resident and frequent New Yorker contributor Marcellus Hall to sketch the food pantry in the style of traditional neighborhood cookbooks for the cover art.

The seals used throughout the book are pulled from local landmarks like the sticker wall at A1 Records. 

Nothing here is invented. Everything here is reinvented.

The organizing principle of the book is the layout of the streets (starting at E 14th and walking south), so why not make a custom map to complete the package? 

Our very own Garden of Earthly Delights, the map takes on the neighborhood’s unique brand of disorder, barely contained by the city’s grid. 

It includes location tags for contributors, like Cafe Mogador, Thayer, C&B, and our own Ave A studio. The map highlights subway entrances and bus stops. The church gets particular shine, as does the park. 

The map acts as a thousand foot view of all the creatures, characters, and cretins that make up this weird and vibrant chunk of Manhattan.

Food is one of the most powerful ways we tell our stories, whether it’s sharing a beloved family recipe passed down through the generations or expressing ourselves through our culinary creativity. 

The pages of this cookbook contain nothing less than a weaving together of the stories of this community, told through successive waves of immigrants who made their homes here in the hope of a brighter future, artists and creatives who have inspired and challenged us, and so many of us who have left our pasts behind to discover our truest selves in these storied streets.

A very partial list of contributors includes: Veselka, Momofuku, Cafe Mogador, Superiority Burger, B & H Dairy, and Veniero’s, Susan Sarandon, Alan Cumming, legendary punk musician Richard Hell, and magician and mentalist Prakesh Puru.

Community Cookbooks of the past would fund their production by selling paid ad placements for local business. These ad pages would get sprinkled throughout the cookbook and offered a little added personality to the otherwise standard recipe listings.

Inspired by this, we went about compiling more than one hundred completely unsolicited ads for local restaurants, bars, venues, and book stores. 

Each ad is accompanied by a very real testimony as quoted from a Google review, like “Unexpectedly found suede double monk straps for just $30,” “Coffee and sandwiches. Has a couch. Cash only.” “During Prohibition your grandmother drank here… unless she was a Baptist… in which case… she drank at home… in the pantry.”

Included also, are a suite of “In Memoriam” ads for businesses we either personally loved and lost, like Ciao for Now and Sunshine Cinema; or iconic East Village establishments like CBGB’s, Kim’s Video, and Filmore East.

The seals littered throughout the book come from the visual landscape of the East Village too. 

They all reference classic EV restaurants, clubs, jazz venues, gig poster extracts, weirdo stores from old St Marks, record labels, EV bands, The East Village Other magazine, The East Village Eye magazine, 80s East Village art extracts and murals, as well as a Loisaida Ave wall drawing from the 80s, and a “religious icon” mural by legendary urban agriculturalist, Mr Purple, now scrubbed from memory.

There’s also an evocative tip of the hat to various vanished institutions like CBGB’s, Electric Circus, the Filmore East, Scrubs in the Far East, and the Saint; groups like The Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Run DMC, and The Ramones; records stores of the neighborhood’s past and present, A1 , Academy, St Marks Sounds, Limited to One and Ergot Records; as well as record labels either native to the area, or who’s output filled the air of night clubs like Strictly Rhythm, Nu Groove, and Sleeping Bag Records.

Highlighted restaurants, bars, and stores include Stromboli, Trash & Vaudeville, Odessa, Tish, and Snooky’s.

In the words of the owner of St. Mark’s Sounds, “It was totally commonplace to have Johnny and/or Joey and/or Marky Ramone, a Beastie Boy or two, John Belushi, Afrika Baambaata, Tim Sommer, Bob Quine, Rick Rubin, Arthur Russell, Richard Hell, Craig Kallman, John Zorn, Joe Jackson, B-52s’ Fred Schneider, Steve Buscemi, Thurston Moore, Paul Schaefer, various Blondies, out-of-towners like John Doe and Exene, Natalie Merchant, Henry Rollins, Buzzcocks, among others, shopping there.”

Sounds opened at 20 St. Mark’s Place — above the Grassroots Tavern — in 1979, closing for good on October 11, 2015, making it the last record store on St. Mark’s Place.

The energy of the book was made to match our neighborhood’s wild combination of eclectic styles. 

The book covers are an edition of six vellum dust jackets featuring icons and art of the East Village. Look closely and you might spot an ex’s tattoo (true story). 

Readers receive a cover at random because this is the East Village we’re talking about!

Standing in the heart of the East Village for 180 years, Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish is committed to working for positive change in our community and offers radical welcome and affirmation to all who come through the doors.

The food pantry provides fresh, nutritious groceries to households throughout the community and a first-of-its-kind College Student Pantry serves hundreds of students from throughout the city. 

The East Village Cookbook celebrates one thing above all… Community.  This job was a rare opportunity to express our pride and admiration for the neighborhood that we’ve called home for more than a decade. 

The book was conceived as a quick-print, staple-bound collection of recipes from locals to drum up funds for SAFH. It culminated in a expertly-edited, pain-stakingly crafted love letter to the East Village that amassed goodwill collaborators organically through the course of its creation. 

The book’s launch event was a joyous affair. Locals, contributors, chefs and interested parties crammed themselves into the soup kitchen’s atrium on a cold December evening. 

They shared stories, discovered recipes, danced to live music, and most importantly, enjoyed A1 catering and drinks organized by the cookbook’s chief executive, chef extraordinaire, and pillar of the community, Chef Will Horowitz.