By Zoe Perzo
The Food Temptress Cookbook Store in Virginia Beach, Virginia, specializes in cookbooks written by Black authors. As the owner and sole employee, Rekaya Gibson is on a mission to “connect customers to cookbooks by Black authors that inspire creativity and preserve food traditions.”
I met with Gibson to learn more about the store’s origin, mission, and operation. 
Although The Food Temptress Cookbook Store first opened its physical location in 2023, Gibson’s Food Temptress brand has been around for years.
Gibson first discovered her love of food in New Orleans, after moving there to work on her master’s degree. Even though she evacuated and ended up in Las Vegas after Hurricane Katrina, the Indiana native couldn’t shake her love for the city, and published her book, The Food Temptress, in 2009.
With food playing a major part in her novel, Gibson started a food blog by the same name to help keep her readers’ interest. When her readers responded positively to the recipes and photos she was sharing, food eventually became the focal point of the Food Temptress blog.
When Gibson took the next step, moving to Virginia to do food and restaurant reviews as a freelancer, there was never any question what name she would operate under. While freelancing, Gibson acquired an expansive collection of cookbooks that ultimately inspired her to open a cookbook store.
The Food Temptress Cookbook Store opened as an online store in 2021. But Gibson felt that an online storefront alone wasn’t enough.
“I really wanted to figure out a way to contribute to history, to preserve history and to keep food traditions alive — particularly for Black people in the African diaspora,” Gibson explained. “So, I decided to open a physical space, and I did that in 2023.”
Today, The Food Temptress is located inside Virginia Beach’s Painted Tree Boutiques. The unique arrangement has been central to Gibson’s ability to both run the bookstore and maintain a full-time job (these days, she’s a food and drink reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press).
“With Painted Tree Boutiques,” Gibson explained, “you get a unique identifier for your inventory, and there’s one central checkout location that [Painted Tree] hires staff for.”
While Gibson can track her inventory through the company’s vendor portal, decorate the space, and hold events, she doesn’t have to worry about staffing the space or utilities. While it may not be the perfect solution for every bookstore, for Gibson’s staff of one, it’s allowed her the freedom to maintain her job while pursuing her mission to help people connect to their pasts through food.
“I like history,” she said, “and one way to preserve that is to keep books in circulation and teach people how to cook recipes and tell stories.”
Besides stocking a wide variety of modern cookbooks, another way that Gibson is supporting the store’s mission is by making historical cookbooks more visible and accessible. Currently, a scan of Malinda Russell’s 1866 cookbook, A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen, is available for free on The Food Temptress website and Gibson plans to add more historical cookbooks soon.
“I wanted to make sure that I pay homage to one of the first cookbooks published by a Black author in the United States,” Gibson explained. “And I want people to try some of the recipes! It’s from 1866, but you can take a recipe and say, ‘I want to try this ingredient because it sounds better.’ ”
“It’s just another way to keep history alive,” she said.
Gibson also wants to start a campaign encouraging people to start writing down their family recipes.
“I remember my grandmother making biscuits and fried mackerel patties. If I wanted to, I could go in the kitchen and make it right now, because I remember what she did. But it’s not written anywhere,” Gibson said. “It’s so easy not to write down your grandma’s or your auntie’s or your uncle’s recipes, but then they’ll die with them. If you write down just a little, or if you just take a picture, it will help you remember. It will bring back memories for people, and then we can carry them on into history.”
For Gibson, food is a vital way of connecting with the past and bringing memories into the future. And through The Food Temptress, she hopes to connect as many people as possible with recipes created and shared by Black authors.
Gibson laughed as she recalled one memorable encounter with a bestselling author who told her, “I didn’t know there were this many cookbooks by Black authors!”
“It made me take a step back,” Gibson said, “I thought, ‘I wonder if other people think that.’ There are tons of cookbooks by Black authors around the world — and in every genre. Take a peek and support them.”
If you’re in Virginia Beach, don’t forget to stop by The Food Temptress in person! You can also find The Food Temptress online at foodtemptresscookbookstore.com or follow the store on Instagram and Facebook.
