A Recipe for Survival: Wellfleet Preservation Hall Cookbook
Taste of Wellfleet
In the Before Times, folks from across the globe gathered together in Wellfleet to nosh on delicious bites, sip mimosas, listen to music, stand too close to one another, and laugh loudly with strangers, all while helping to raise money for the beloved and iconic Wellfleet Preservation Hall. But that was then, and this is now. Rather than enjoying Taste of the Town in person, expectant participants engaged in cooking classes via Zoom last year. This year, they’ll be able to purchase their very own copy of a brand-new cookbook that celebrates the food of the community: Taste of Wellfleet.
Due to COVID-19 and its ever-changing variants, Taste of the Town, the Hall’s signature fundraiser, hasn’t happened for the past two years, at least in the same capacity that residents and visitors have grown to love. According to the Wellfleet Preservation Hall’s Executive Director, Janet Lesniak, “Every single day it feels like we have to do things a different way. Everything that we had planned yesterday is no longer viable.” This is where creativity and ingenuity come into play.
The Hall, which is in the midst of celebrating its tenth anniversary of being open, was to have had a grand celebration this year. In good humor, Lesniak says, “I have been a dancer my whole life and when people wonder how I got this job, I realized it’s because I’m very quick on my feet.” So. Much. Pivoting.
There was a tremendous amount of degradation of the 100-year-old building before new life was eventually breathed into it. The process was arduous, but fruitful. “As I often say, in Wellfleet you can’t get five people to agree that the sky is blue on a clear day, although you do get a lot of really creative answers,” says Lesniak. Almost three million dollars was raised to restore this building, and in May 2011, it was reopened as a community cultural center. “In the last ten years we’ve averaged between 600 and 700 events per year at the Hall. Everything from yoga classes, to live theater, to film, to weddings and funerals. You name it. There are very few things that you could probably name that we haven’t done,” says Lesniak. The collaborative creativity Cape-wide astounded Lesniak “in ways that [she] never could have imagined.”
For almost eight years, Taste of the Town has been the Hall’s most lucrative fundraiser. Chefs and restaurateurs were asked to participate, a big tent was set up in the backyard, and friends and donors were invited to join in the festivities. “It’s like walking around to every restaurant that you know and love, and sampling their best dishes,” says Lesniak. Despite well-intentioned people begging Lesniak to have this event in-person again this year, in good conscience, she just couldn’t. “We can’t put 200 people under a tent, and certainly can’t do a fundraiser on the backs of restaurants that have been out of business for over a year. They can barely open their own doors, never mind do more than that,” says Lesniak.
The first major fundraising twist occurred in March 2020 when the Hall closed, and life as we knew it came to a screeching halt. Planning for Taste of the Town was already well underway, so when their other programs went from in-person to virtual, lots of brainstorming occurred. “One of the first, very successful things that we did was a partnership with Michael Ceraldi,” says Lesniak. Ceraldi, chef and owner of the restaurant of the same name, “is a good friend and a good part of our community.” When he was approached to do a Zoom cooking class as a fundraiser, while there was a momentary hesitation, 150 people signed up for it. “It was great because we were able to, as is part of our mission, keep the economic vitality of our community alive. We shared proceeds with Ceraldi and it was just a wild success,” says Lesniak. “One of the things that I am most proud of what we’ve done, as a whole, is incubating other businesses.”
The momentum continued when Liam Luttrell Rowland, local chef and artist, hosted a series of Wednesday night cooking classes through the summer in conjunction with the local farmers market. “We made Rowland part of our regular, ongoing virtual programming for the year, and shared proceeds with him as well,” says Lesniak. While Rowland was teaching participants how to make delicious ceviche using local produce and fish or how to purchase uncommon ingredients, others were circling back to yet another fundraising idea. The cookbook.
“We have an email list of about 7000 people. We reached out to our constituency that way, and then very much focused on the restaurants that we’ve partnered with in the past for Taste of the Town. A small group of women worked their booties off all year. They met weekly, hounded people, and even chased down a few recipes. And then recipe testing began,” says Lesniak. For the most part, restaurants submitted recipes of their signature dishes. Others shared recipes they just really love. There may even be a few grandmothers’ secret recipes in the mix, too.
Taste of Wellfleet is more than just a cookbook. Everyone who submitted a recipe - chefs, restaurateurs, volunteers, food enthusiasts - each included a backstory that helps bring their dishes to life. “Every single recipe has at least a line or two about the genesis of the submission. We also have a few features including photographs, primarily about chefs and contributors, that fill out the story a bit more,” says Lesniak.
Not only are Taste of Wellfleet’s recipes and stories top notch, so are its graphics and illustrations. Susie Nielsen, a former Hall board member and one of Lesniak’s dear friends, is an amazing graphic artist who not only teaches graphic design, but her contemporary, clean lines and aesthetics helped create a book that really jumps out as a very serious cookbook. “It’s one that you’ll pick up and look at because it looks like a book you want to own, as opposed to one that your kids have begged you to purchase so they can get a free trip to the amusement park,” says Lesniak. Chef Rowland, who has had a strong working relationship with the Hall for years, did the illustrations. His talent as a creative visual artist allows him to wield a pen as mightily as a knife. And if you were lucky enough to have eaten from any of Rowland’s Farm Stand Ramen Pop-Ups, your stomach has probably already thanked you. “For the most part, the illustrations are line drawings, and are really simple, beautiful, and sweet,” says Lesniak. “They just sort of really capture the sense of what we were trying to portray and who we are.”
From the whimsical illustration of a fish on the cover, to over 100 recipes from fabulous cocktails to amazing desserts and everything in between, Taste of Wellfleet will be a cookbook you will turn to time after time. Whether you are looking to warm your soul with Connie Saems’ Roasted Tomato & Caramelized Onion Soup, or kick it up a notch with Charles J. Rutz’s Cuban Mojo Pork, or satiate your sweet tooth with the illustrator’s grandmother’s Charlie Chaplin Chocolate Cake, you will not be disappointed. “We really spent the time and energy to make sure that everything was right, and that it would have legs into the future. It wasn’t just something that we would sell this autumn and then it would live on a shelf as that pandemic year we wrote a cookbook,” says Lesniak.
“Our hope in putting this together is that it will be something that will last and will continue to bear fruit financially as well as bring new people in. We see almost everything that we do as a way to cultivate our Outer Cape community, but what we really want is that when people who live in Chicago or in LA receive this, they’ll be more inclined when they take their East Coast venture to want to come see where all the action happens.”
Cookbooks will be available for purchase at restaurants involved in its making, at the Wellfleet Preservation Hall and on their website. A number of local bookstores, between Orleans and Provincetown, will also carry Taste of Wellfleet.
Proceeds from the sale of Taste of Wellfleet will go back to the Wellfleet Preservation Hall.
For more information or to purchase Taste of Wellfleet, visit:
wellfleetpreservationhall.org
ceraldicapecod.com
instagram.com/farm_stand.capecod
farmprojectspace.org/susienielsen
