The Somerville Public Library Supper Club is a group devoted to books and food, two things I love dearly. Each month, the group selects a cookbook; everyone makes a different dish, then gathers at Remnant Brewing to enjoy a (large) meal together.
I had the opportunity to join Supper Club on Tuesday for its October gathering, which included dishes from “50 Pies, 50 States: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the United States Through Pie” by Stacey Mei Yan Fong. She developed a pie recipe for each state based on its fruit, food, pastry or something else she felt spoke to its culture. With about 30 people in attendance, there were 19 pies to go around, representing states from Arkansas (Heirloom Tomato and Cheese Pie) to Indiana (Sugar Cream Pie). The number of participants was standard – usually the dishes fall in the 10-to-15 range.
The group, which is organized by Somerville West Branch librarians Kelly Gates and Gregory Xavier, started in 2019 before going on hiatus during the Covid pandemic. Gates and Xavier revived it in May 2023 with recipes from “The Weekday Vegetarians: 100 Recipes and a Real-Life Plan for Eating Less Meat” by Jenny Rosenstrach, and have hosted it monthly since.
“People kept coming in and asking us, ‘Are you going to restart Supper Club? Can you restart Supper Club?’” Gates said.
Under Gates and Xavier, the group’s popularity has grown. “We open registration for the following month’s Supper Club the morning after that month’s meeting, and we’re usually full within a week,” Xavier said. (There are 25 spots for people who want to sign up to make a dish and an additional 10 for people who just want to come and eat.)
At each month’s meeting, the cookbook for the following month’s gathering is chosen. Gates and Xavier select a few options, which they bring to the meeting for attendees to peruse before taking a vote. Some recent favorites have included “Let’s Eat: 101 Recipes to Fill Your Heart & Home” by Dan Pelosi, “Smitten Kitchen Keepers” by Deb Perelman and “Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home” by Eric Kim.
Sometimes the cookbook choices are themed to a month: In June, Supper Club cooked from “Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking” by Toni Tipton-Martin, in honor of Juneteenth. November’s cookbook, voted on at the end of the gathering I attended, will be “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen” by Beth Dooley and Sean Sherman in celebration of National Native American Heritage Month.
Great food in a great space
We at Cambridge Day know that one of the best parts of living in Camberville is being part of a strong, proud community. With that community comes a host of community events, including some that I’ve been lucky enough to cover, such as Somerville’s ArtBeat and Cambridge’s Taste of Cambridge. I came away from Supper Club feeling largely the same as I did after those events, with a full heart and a full stomach.
Walking into Remnant Brewing, where Supper Club meets the third Tuesday of each month, I was struck immediately by the cozy ambiance. Several tables in a compact area near the bar had been reserved, already full of people talking and laughing. The pies were spread across the bar, each dish labeled with its name and its baker. Those pies, which were wildly creative and deliciously executed, included North Dakota’s Tater Tot – Hotdish Pie, California’s Artichoke Pie with Savory Almond Crumble and Red Wine Reduction and North Carolina’s Pulled Pork Pie with Cheerwine Barbecue Sauce, Carolina Red Slaw and Hush Puppies. The sweet pies included a Florida Key Lime Pie, Maine Wild Blueberry and Moxie Pie and a sweet-salty combination, Vermont’s Apple Pie with Cabot Cheddar Cheese Crust.
Gates and Xavier contribute dishes, too: Gates made New York’s Scallion Bagel Pie with Lox, Onion and Thinly Sliced Lemon, chosen for her New York roots and her love of bagels (for a previous Supper Club, she made an everything-bagel galette); Xavier tackled Alaska’s Wild Alaskan Salmon & Halibut Pie with Mashed Potato Topping, inspired by the two years he spent living in Alaska.
Opportunities to experiment
Hannah Duhaime, who started coming to Supper Club around January, brought two pies: A New Hampshire Maple Pumpkin variety and Alabama Blackberry and Peach Pie with Pecan Crumble.
“It’s fall, I couldn’t not do pumpkin,” she said.
Supper Club has become her way of experimenting in the kitchen.
“So much of the cooking I do is practical, like meal prep,” Duhaime said. “I like getting to be creative and try something new out.”
Diane Coles, who started attending Supper Club after seeing an advertisement at the West Branch, said she also uses it as a way to push herself to be ambitious in the kitchen. She made an Idaho pie – Mashed Potato Pie with Hash Brown Crust and Scalloped Potato Topping – that she called a three-parter and “a great project.”
Likewise, Nancy Kalajian, a Supper Club attendee since before the pandemic, keeps coming back because it exposes her to different kinds of cookbooks and recipes.
“There’s always something new, and there’s so many different cultures being represented in the cookbooks we choose,” Kalajian said. “It gives us an opportunity to try new foods, both the ones we make and the ones others bring.”
Intergenerational community
The food is undeniably very good. Getting to try each dish alone would make the trip to Supper Club worth it. (Dave Rubinow, who made the Mississippi Mud Pie, called October’s Supper Club “the best meal I’ve had in Boston.”) But the group is really about community: sharing a meal with friends new and old and learning something along the way.
Almost everyone I spoke with at Supper Club referred to the community aspect in one way or another. One of the group’s hallmarks is that it draws a wide range of ages: there were children attending with their parents, young adults and older folks alike.
Kalajian was sitting with newcomers Aidan Doherty, who made Wyoming’s Elk Chili Pie with Huckleberry Sauce, and Lexie Wheeler, who made Delaware’s Peach Custard Pie. They’re recent graduates of the University of Vermont who were attending for the first time.
“I love libraries and I love cooking, so I thought it would be cool to be in this space with so many people who share those interests,” Doherty said.
Kalajian and Brian Lawson, also a veteran attendee, couldn’t imagine a space like this existing 20 or 30 years ago.
“People are so much more into cooking now, and they look for things like this,” Lawson said, noting the intergenerational aspect of the group.
That’s rare, Doherty said: “There are so few spaces like this, where people who are different ages and from different groups are represented.”
Much of that community is attributable to Gates and Xavier, who brought the group back and have kept it running. Marissa Fried, a repeat attendee who made Ohio’s Buckeye Pie as an ode to her time at the University of Cincinnati, had to miss a cookie swap last December because she had Covid. But Gates brought the cookie swap to her.
“Kelly put together a plate of cookies for me from the swap, and she brought it to my house,” Fried said. “That meant so much to me.”
A stronger
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