Rabelais Books (website, facebook, instagram) opened their new shop in the Black Box on Washington Ave intending to run the bookstore as a pop-up from July through September. Engagement with the culinary bookstore has been strong enough that owner Don Lindgren has extended his lease through the end of 2025.
Not only have sales been better than we had hoped, but it’s been a pleasure to be back in Portland, reconnecting with old friends and customers and conversing with many new ones. Since the shop is in a shipping container it is tiny, and customers engage with the material we have in ways very different than they did in the big Biddeford store. I love watching people browse and discover something new, and it seems to happen more frequently here. So we’re going to keep this location for a while longer and see how it stokes our imagination further.
Rabelais will be closed this coming Saturday and Sunday (September 28th and 29th) for a quick break. They’ll reopen Wednesday October 2nd with new hours, 11 am to 5 pm most days with an extended close on Fridays and Saturdays at 6:30 pm. The store is open 6 days a week and is closed Tuesdays.
Rabelais is stocked with printed books, ephemera and manuscripts from the past six centuries, covering a wide range of culinary subjects from mushrooms and mixology to farming and food photography, And, of course, there are cookbooks from nearly every corner of the globe. For more information on Rabelais and Lindgren see this article from June.