Field Hall to host food, literature event

Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 20, 2026

PORT ANGELES — A best-selling novelist and a chef walk into a bar. When they decide to sit down together for supper, the two discover a connection — and the night turns into pure delight.

That’s the notion behind Tuesday’s event in the Sunset Bar and Lounge at Field Arts & Events Hall: a gathering for people who love local food and literature.

Author Erica Bauermeister of Port Townsend and chef Jeff Andrew of Port Angeles will collaborate on the 6 p.m. dinner, which will bring together a four-course meal, Marrowstone Vineyards wine pairings and true stories from their lives. Tickets to the dinner at Field Hall, 201 W. Front St., are available at fieldhallevents.org.

The spark comes from “The School of Essential Ingredients,” the novel Bauermeister published, against odds and expectations, shortly before her 50th birthday. She had a career as a University of Washington professor, and then she and her family went to live in Bergamo, Italy, for two years. There, Bauermeister — who had grown up in a recipe-following household — discovered the delectability of cooking not with a book but with her senses.

So, “The School of Essential Ingredients” sprang from Bauermeister’s belief in the magic of cooking and eating together. The 2009 novel is about eight people, strangers, who meet in a Monday night cooking class at Lillian’s Restaurant. Claire, Antonia, Tom, Isabelle, Carl, Helen, Chloe and Ian come from different backgrounds. Yet they learn together how to cook from the heart and how to move forward in their lives.

When the book was about to come out, Bauermeister invited a varied crew of friends to her home. These were people who had helped her along the way to publishing her debut novel.

Bauermeister dreamed up a place-card arrangement at her dinner table. After each course, guests would change places, to be seated with a new dining companion.

“It went much better than expected. People had amazing conversations,” Bauermeister recalled.

It was as if they knew they wouldn’t be with this person for long, so they skipped the small talk and went straight to real talk.

Tuesday’s dinner at Field Hall will be set up in a similar way. For the first course, pea-shoot salad with pine nuts and manchego, guests will sit with the people they came with. For the second, garden risotto with crab, they’ll change seats to meet a new conversation partner. For the third course of pappardelle with Tom’s pasta sauce, they’ll change again.

Then for dessert, Carl’s white cake filled with strawberry mousse — that’s Andrew’s twist on the cake from the novel — people will return to their original companions.

Sprinkled into the evening will be stories from Bauermeister and Andrew about how food and cooking have changed their lives. Andrew will share a memory of how creating meals for his ailing father transformed an awkward situation into a much closer relationship. Bauermeister, for her part, will read a few passages from “The School of Essential Ingredients.”

This novel was only the beginning of her new chapter. In the 17 years since it arrived, Bauermeister has become a New York Times bestselling author known for “Joy for Beginners” (2011), “The Lost Art of Mixing,” (2013), “The Scent Keeper” (2019) and “No Two Persons” (2023). Her memoir, “House Lessons: Renovating a Life,” was the Port Townsend Community Read in 2021.

For Andrew, Tuesday will take the typical multi-course meal to the next level.

“I’ve done, in my lifetime, a ton of wine-pairing dinners and cider-pairing dinners,” he said.

Yet none was quite like this one.

Andrew, who is the food and beverages manager at Field Hall, came to work in Port Angeles last October. Not long after that, artistic director Steve Raider-Ginsburg told him about Bauermeister’s book. You really should read this, he told Andrew.

“Great, I’m back in high school,” with assigned reading, he thought.

But “Essential Ingredients” resonated. A particular chapter brought him back to a time in his life when he learned, on a soul level, how powerful food is, and how it ties people together.

Andrew wanted to create a menu based on the dishes made in the book — with local flavors. That’s where the crab and the strawberries come in. He hopes for more events like this one; Field Hall isn’t a restaurant or a resort like those he’s worked in. The venue is a place for events that mix elements.

The local touches for Tuesday are ingredients for good conversations, Bauermeister believes.

“It’s a night to not talk about what you do for work, but instead about what you care about, and what food has meant to you,” she said.

This gathering “is a celebration of food and books, and in the end, it’s mostly a celebration of community.”

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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Port Townsend.