Nostalgia Cooked
August 10, 2026
No. 10

“Hands, please”

The cookbooks that quietly rewired how I cook, including a pastry book that treats Pop-Tarts and Oreos with the same seriousness as haute cuisine; the forgotten job title that ran America's real neighborhood hangout once Prohibition shut down the corner saloon; and three things worth your time this week, including one of the last soda fountains left in the country.

Coffee, then read on.

- Chef Tim

Every summer, someone gives you a list of books you should read on vacation. Most of them have absolutely nothing to do with becoming a better cook. Until now.

I don't think cooks read enough. We spend thousands of hours learning through repetition. We learn from the chef standing next to us, from the restaurant we're working in and from screwing something up enough times that eventually we stop screwing it up. But some of the biggest changes in the way I cook have come from books.

Here is my list of great books:

The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. It follows cooks chasing completely different versions of excellence, from the Certified Master Chef exam to Michael Symon's kitchen to Thomas Keller at The French Laundry. It made the pursuit of becoming a chef feel bigger than knowing how to make a sauce or butcher a fish. There was an entire philosophy behind how seriously you could take the craft.

BraveTart by Stella Parks did something completely different for me. It gave me a way into pastry. Parks takes things we think we already understand: Oreos, brownies, Pop-Tarts, yellow cake, etc and treats them with the same curiosity and precision we normally reserve for much fancier food. It opened a gateway to nostalgia that created a huge spark inside me.

Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking teaches you why food behaves the way it does.

Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg's The Flavor Bible helps you understand what might belong together before you ever start cooking.

Matt Jennings’ Homegrown can teach a cook how to make the best staff meals ever.

Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook demonstrates what happens when a chef puts an entire culinary philosophy on paper.

Josh Niland’s The Whole Fish Cookbook teaches a new methodology on how we should treat the entire fish, not just the cuts you see in Whole Foods.

What are your favorite cookbooks? Did any transform how you go about thinking in the kitchen?

Before service, the whole crew huddles up and someone tells the story behind the food. Pull up a crate, you’re on the line tonight.

There was a time in America when one of the most important people in town was called a jerk. The jerk store called and they’re running out of you!

The soda jerk worked behind the counter of the neighborhood soda fountain, pulling carbonated water, mixing syrups, scooping ice cream and making drinks to order. The name appears by the early 20th century and likely comes from the jerking motion used to operate the fountain handle. By the 1920s, soda jerks were fixtures of American drugstores and luncheonettes.

The draw the soda fountains was your health, not ice cream, believe it or not. In the 1800s, carbonated water was sold with all kinds of supposed health benefits, which made the pharmacy a natural home for it. Pharmacists began flavoring the water with syrups and eventually adding ice cream. Somewhere along the way, the place you went for medicine also became the place you went for a chocolate malt.

This all changed when Prohibition began in 1920. The neighborhood saloon suddenly disappeared from legal public life. Something had to fill at least part of that social void. Soda fountains sold soft drinks, luncheonettes and quick-service restaurants flourished. The Smithsonian notes that the number of restaurants in America tripled during the first decade of Prohibition. Instead of meeting over a beer, you could meet over a phosphate, an egg cream (I’ve never heard of this) or an ice cream soda. The soda jerk was standing in the middle of all of it.

By the middle of the century, the fountain had become something more important than a place to buy a drink. It was a neighborhood gathering place. Teenagers could go there without their parents. Kids could sit beside adults at the counter. You didn't need a reservation or much money. You could stop in alone and reasonably expect to talk to somebody.

Eventually, bottled and canned soda became easier to buy, fast food exploded and drugstores stopped being neighborhood gathering places. By the late 1950s, the classic soda jerk had become a relic.

Coffee shops are probably the closest modern equivalent. Bars still serve the social function, but they require hard drinks aka alcohol to be the centerpiece. Restaurants expect you to eat a meal. Fast food is designed around getting you in and out. Somewhere along the way, we lost a category of place where the entire point could simply be to show up. Maybe that is what deserves a comeback.

I could only find a handful of these establishments left in America (see section below). But, I think we need the modern soda fountain back en masse. A counter with stools. Something inexpensive to eat. Something interesting to drink. A person behind the counter who knows the regulars. A place where a 16-year-old, a 40-year-old and a 75-year-old might all sit next to each other.

Top Tip

August 13 is National Filet Mignon Day, which feels like a perfectly reasonable excuse to buy the steak you normally talk yourself out of at the butcher counter.

I am pairing it with Buena Vista Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, a bottle you can find for around $30. It brings dark fruit, spice, and enough structure to stand up to the beef without overwhelming one of the more delicate cuts of steak.

I recommend cooking two filets. One for you, and one for the household quality-control department…

The Nostalgia Table

The second Monday of every month · 7 o’clock · Eight seats. Location shared by post the week of. Subscribers receive first word. Write for a seat