As someone who’s been blessed with the ability to commune with my ancestors, I have never relied on recipes to cook. How much fish sauce for my nước chấm? Just keep pouring until grandma’s ghost-whispers stop.
Unfortunately I have no spiritual connection to Gareth Whitton, the pastry chef behind Melbourne’s Tarts Anon and author of a two-page recipe for pea and feta tart, which advises to “never underestimate the value of a stick blender” and repeatedly warns to not “overwork” the dough. When it comes to cooking, I’m a veteran eye-baller; I don’t even own a measuring cup. Shortcrust pastry requires precision I would never normally attempt nor achieve. But all this pastry pain and preparation is for Cookbook Club Naarm.
The event is a monthly gathering in Melbourne that combines the best parts of supper clubs and book clubs. Everyone cooks from the same featured cookbook and everyone brings their edible homework to share. Attendee Nu Tran describes it as “the music festival [for] people in their 30s” and, just like a music festival, tickets sell out within minutes. More than 100 people snapped up tickets to their two-year anniversary – the 18th event – in late August.
Before the event, the organisers circulate a meticulous spreadsheet that coordinates attendees’ chosen recipe from the featured cookbook, The Bakers’ Book, an anthology of sweet and savoury baking recipes from Australian authors, edited by Ruby Goss. I procrastinated and was left with one of the hardest ones.
Friends and founders Joan Tran and Dominique Lonsdale held the first Cookbook Club Naarm in 2024, on the grass in Carlton Gardens. Joan had returned to Melbourne after a year living in Perth and was hoping to connect with friends old and new. While they made an Instagram page to let the world know about their little gathering, they were still shocked to see strangers arrive with plates of fresh bakes from What’s For Dessert by Claire Saffitz.
“Making friends with strangers is cool,” Joan says. Friendship is the first tenet of the club but she was also looking for an excuse to try more recipes.
Lonsdale says: “It’s grown into, like, a really supportive community.”
Luckily my first time making shortcrust pastry turns out well. Thanks to nerves I arrive fashionably early at the venue in Richmond and watch as a my tart is joined by well over 100 cakes, pies and meringues that cover three tables. Each one is proudly presented by its creator, often with floral decorations – or in my case, a heap of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano. My tart is eaten up by the crowd (probably because it was one of the few savoury options of the night).
But there are two masterpieces that truly take the cake. Brodie Nalywajko has made Rosemary Andrews’s eight-layer chocolate cake decorated with gold leaf, while Ingrid Yu has brought Alice Bennett’s classic chocolate cake, reimagined as a three-tiered sculptural showstopper with elaborate buttercream in the same colours of the book cover.
“It’s always such a happy and warm experience,” says Yu, who aspires to one day be a professional baker. She is a regular now at the club and says it’s the community that brings her back every time. “I have made a lot of friends through the cookbook club … I don’t think I would made them otherwise.”
Meanwhile, there’s Nu, who, along with her friends Marina Nguyen and Tiffany Dang, are first-timers.
“We can’t all go to run clubs. This is our version. We’re getting diabetes at our community events, whereas they’re just getting fitter,” Nu jokes.
Goss is here too, and says it’s rare to see every dish from a cookbook in one place. She is floored to see the tables heaving with with recipes she’d worked hard to collate from bakers and chefs across the country.
It is a sentiment that’s shared by Joseph Abboud, whose cookbook, Rumi, was featured in June.
He remembers being brought to tears seeing the entirety of his tome brought to life.
“If someone cooks [just] three recipes out of your book, it’s a success.”
As a newly minted Melburnian myself, I can count the number of friends I have in the city on one hand. Despite that, it isn’t difficult striking up conversations with other solo attendees over the shared experience of toiling in the kitchen to create something delicious.
Cookbook Club might not be for everyone. On top of the $15 ticket, there’s the cost of ingredients and the time and effort in the assigned homework. But, Joan says, “when people bring something to the table, they can have something to talk about and feel proud of”.
