In retrospect, it’s possible to reconstruct a recipe that enabled Catie Gainor to create her South Philly cookbook store, Binding Agents. Start with a family connection to the food business and a mother who loved cooking for friends and family. Add a high school summer spent working at a bookstore, early exposure to classic TV cooking shows hosted by Julia Child and Lidia Bastianich and nostalgia for the camaraderie of restaurant work. Fold in a desire to honor her mother’s legacy, a growing realization that Gainor wanted more from her career in public relations and a 2018 move to the Italian Market neighborhood. An idea that formed in 2022 became, by the fall of 2024, Binding Agents: a welcoming shop Gainor describes as “the size of a sardine can.”
With millions of recipes and cooking videos available online, opening a brick-and-mortar store selling cookbooks and fiction and nonfiction books about food and eating might seem foolhardy. But Gainor found reassurance in the fact that similar stores were thriving in cities across the U.S. She sees Philly as a great food city where interest in cooking and eating runs strong. Since the Cook Book Stall in the Reading Terminal Market closed in 2017, she says the city has lacked a hub for food authors, cooks and eaters to gather.
Gainor believes cookbook sales remain a robust part of the publishing industry because cookbooks offer richer, more reliable information and a more satisfying experience than sifting through a barrage of unvetted online recipes or trying to replicate a TikTok demo. “When you come to Binding Agents, you’re finding a curated selection of books that can offer you something you’ll find useful in your kitchen, [books that] have something to say and a recipe you can follow … They feel substantial. They feel heirloom,” she says.
I hope that people feel they are gathered around the island in the kitchen with me … That there are people here they know and people they’d like to know.”
— Catie Gainor
Gainor sees a strong trend toward rediscovering the pleasures of cooking, eating and entertaining communally, as well as a growing interest in authentic, culturally and regionally specific cuisines that are less represented in mainstream publishing. She especially enjoys offering “voicey” books with strong points of view — “that’s my catnip,” she confides. As a mother of a young child, Gainor takes special delight in stocking children’s books about food. To spotlight her wares, she hosts frequent events including author book signings, wine pairing workshops, cooking demos and reservation-only potluck dinners. “It’s very important to me that this is a place in the physical world … I hope that people feel they are gathered around the island in the kitchen with me … That there are people here they know and people they’d like to know,” she says.
After growing up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and attending college in St. Louis, Missouri, Gainor considers herself a transplant to Philadelphia, honored to be accepted into its rich culinary culture. Locating her store in the Italian Market felt like the right fit. She views the 9th Street area as a “passionate community that want[s] to preserve the independent family food businesses … and that’s an amazing thing. I hope they thrive for all of us who have to eat.”
In cooking, a binding agent is an ingredient such as eggs, flour or gelatin that holds other food elements together. Gainor hopes her store will be a social binding agent, realizing her ambition to create “a place that people can come and find community.”
Catie Gainor’s Recipe For A Great Potluck
The magic of a potluck is that everyone is invested in the party, but the organizer is responsible for setting some rules of engagement!
- Decide on the venue first. Is there a surface (or combination of surfaces) large enough to hold all the dishes, room to navigate the buffet and space for eating? Ding, ding, ding! In my home, we often set up the food on our dining table and have everyone eat in the living room — including some folks on the floor.
- Offer a theme. At Binding Agents Cookbook Club, we use a single cookbook as the source for all the recipes, but you could pick a star ingredient, a cuisine or culture, a holiday, or simply name the entrée and ask everyone to bring accompanying dishes. You’d be surprised by how much a gentle boundary empowers people. (This is why Friendsgivings work so well.)
- Collect a few details in advance. I like a crowdsourced spreadsheet to corral all planned contributions, as well as any allergies or dietary restrictions. This helps avoid a table laden with desserts and no entrées, or a meat circus when there’s a vegetarian in the house.
- Be clear about what the house provides. Will you take care of drinks, or should guests BYO? Do you have enough serving utensils, or should those come with each dish? Can you offer oven, stove, microwave or fridge space, or should everything be ready to serve? Let ‘em know so they can plan accordingly!
- Worry less about setting the scene and more about opening the door. Break out your mismatched plates, borrow a few forks, pile your shoes in a corner farther from the door, ask the room for a playlist idea and welcome people. Your enthusiasm curates the vibe better than any tablescape could.
