When Drew Curren first signed up to operate a restaurant at downtown Austin’s new, state-of-the-art central library, which opened in October, near Lady Bird Lake, to much acclaim, one of his then-partners in the ELM Restaurant Group came to him with an inspired thought. “He said, ‘Man, I got a goofy idea. What if we named the cafe Cookbook?’ ” Curren remembers. “And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s kinda cute. We can just source all the recipes from my cookbook collection.’ ”
Two years later, Cookbook Bar & Café, which opens today at the library’s entrance on West Second Street, does just that: everything on the breakfast and lunch/dinner menus is based on recipes from some of Curren’s favorite chef and restaurant cookbooks, from the whole-wheat raisin scones (Zoe Nathan’s Huckleberry) to chicken pot pie (Ad Hoc at Home, by Thomas Keller) to a watermelon agua fresca (Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Fruit).