Cook's Library on Third to Shut Off the Burners

When we get visitors, we love to brag, brag, brag about how Los Angeles is the type of town that can easily support stores that focus on just one thing. Love accordions? Bet there's a shop for you. Kites? Ditto. And the same with cookbooks. Our Exhibit A would always be the Cook's Library on Third Street, that pocket-sized nook devoted to numminess, a piquant place that helped kitchen novices pick up a spatula for the first time, or the expert gourmand assemble an army of capons for 20 food-knowledgable guests.

But no longer will the very nice staff chat with you as they bag up your Mario or your Julia. The Cook's Library shutters at the end of April, due to dwindling business (the owner points her spoon at online as a competing culprit). So, we're sad. We're sad for the serious chefs out there who were regular, loyal patrons of the store, sad for people like us who skipped the cookbooks but sniffed around the store for cute postcards and non-cookbook-y works (the shelves packed with food commentary and travel-y tomes were always our favorites), and sad for LA at large. We're losing a one-of-a-kind store, staffed by smarties who know their savory/sweet stuff, and that's just a bitter shame.

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