By Cynthia Marone
Semiquincentennial doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it’s the party everyone is talking about. Though the country is inching closer to its exact 250th anniversary—or Semiquincentennial— of its Declaration of Independence from England, the festivities have been in full swing since the calendar flipped to 2026 and Philadelphia is its celebratory centerpiece.
Becky Libourel Diamond has always known Philadelphia is special. It’s been at the heart of two of her previous books, and in honor of the yearlong birthday bash, the Yardley resident's fifth outing will take readers inside the City Tavern, the Philadelphia hotspot where the men crafting the country’s future met for dining, drinking and discourse. It’s considered one of the most significant places in the nation’s past in a city that is chock-full of them. “I think people don't realize sometimes how many different pieces go into a puzzle of what's going to happen. The guys would let their guard down in there, have a pint of beer or Madeira, and would hash out things they weren't necessarily saying in the State House,” Becky said of the rooms where it just so happens George Washington first met the Marquis de Lafayetteand Alexandar Hamilton had his retirement dinner after leaving his post as secretary of the treasury. “Deals were made, ideas were sparked and the City Tavern was important for that.”
“City Tavern: The Founding Table-Colonial Dining, Revolutionary History, and the Restaurant at the Center of It All” brings to life the gathering spot that became key to the Colonies’ rebellion and the new nation as well as its ensuing years. Slated for an Oct.15 release, “City Tavern” is not the first trip back in time for the author, historian, researcher, librarian and book reviewer who has been writing about food and its place in our pasts since 2008. “It's probably my least food-focused book out of the five. Having said that, I do mention food and drink. Luckily, you can get bills people paid to the tavern owner at the time and that actually breaks things down into what they were eating,”
Becky, whose background includes corporate writing and editing, numerous articles, book reviews, essays and blogs, as well as speaking engagements, podcasts, research projects, food demonstrations and book club discussions, said. “To me, it's almost like writing a biography. The tavern's the person and what are the different moments in time that resonate and what makes it significant. I could have written about a number of little things, but I really wanted people to look at it through the lens of liberty, I guess you could say, of what they were trying to do to make America a nation.”
“City Tavern” is a bit of a departure from Becky’s last two books, 2025’s “The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook: Cookies and Treats from America’s Golden Era” and 2023’s “The Gilded Age Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from America’s Golden Era.” Filled to the brim with recipes tweaked for today’s modern kitchens, both also have details and stories—many holiday themed for the Christmas version—of the colorful era between 1868 and 1900. Each book is infused with a dash of personal history, too.
“Both actually have some family recipes. We had these great recipes my mom had saved on recipe cards, and they were from my grandmothers and even before that, so I knew they were authentic from the time frame,” Becky, who has been a business librarian at the Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University in New Jersey since 2020, said. “I always say there's so much history you can learn through food—why people ate a certain way, what foods and why — but the thing with food is it's been in my background my whole life because my mother, three of my aunts and my grandmother all went to college for home economics. My aunt and grandmother also got their master's in nutrition, so I grew up with these strong women who really knew how to cook and put things together.”
Becky’s interest in the science of food deepened more so in her 20s, but her love of the written word started much earlier than that. As a child, she would read stories to her classmates and write little books of her own, but it never crossed her mind to go any further than that. When she headed to Rider University in New Jersey, though, she didn’t stray far from words or language. “I actually started college as a German major, believe it or not, and then I switched to journalism in my sophomore year,” Becky, who graduated from Rider in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and then went on to earn a master of library science from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 1997, said. “I love writing. It wasn't always my goal to write a book, but I always loved that style of writing where you're putting research together—like a research paper was always actually fun to me. That's kind of how it evolved into book writing.”
Her first book, the historical nonfiction “Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School,” was published in 2012. Becky reached back to the early 1800s for the story of Elizabeth Goodfellow, a pastry chef who ran a sweet shop, catering service and a cooking school—all in Philadelphia. “It's almost like you go down a rabbit hole — one thing leads to another. When I started on ‘Mrs. Goodfellow,’ that's what really kicked it off. I found so much information about Philadelphia history I didn't know—that Philadelphia was the culinary capital at the time and the markets on Market Street were just amazing and all of these things,” Becky, who is president of the Historic Foodways Society of the Delaware Valley that is dedicated to the promotion and understanding of food and its place and contributions to history, said. “You find one little thing that leads you to ‘this could be a really cool book.’”
That thinking lead to “The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge,” which focused on Philadelphia restauranteur James W. Parkinson and the sumptuous 17-course feast he created in the 1850s to rival — and show up — the Delmonicos of New York and their fine dining establishment. Published in 2015, Becky’s secondhistorical nonfiction book captured a delicious moment in time that simultaneously launched the concept of the celebrity chef, today’s gourmet scene and the culinary competitiveness between Philadelphia and New York that many believe lingers to this day. “I would say I'm kind of stuck in the 19th century. It just fascinates me,” said Becky, who has a daughter Cate, 25, and a son Patrick, 22, with husband Joe and shares the family home with three cats, Cinnamon and Nutmeg (“I call them the Spice Girls”) and Mr. Willy.
Becky’s time travel continues with plans to return to the Gilded Age for her next works, which are slated to be about author Edith Wharton’s collection of recipes and a possible third cookbook on the era’s teas. Peering into a past full of culinary innovation and invention, upheavals and firsts, inspires the researcher in Becky to forever dive deeper down that rabbit hole so the writer in her can share the untold stories she finds. “I always think if I didn't know something or I think it's interesting, hopefully other people will and that's what I like to write about,” Becky Libourel Diamond said. “There's so much about history that we can learn through food. I really want to continue celebrating that connection and learning more about it and highlighting the past and how we can learn from that going forward.”
For more information on Becky Libourel Diamond, visit beckyldiamond.com. Her books are available at Commonplace Reader in Yardley, Newtown Bookshop, The Doylestown Bookshop, Farley’s Bookshop in New Hope, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and various other outlets. “City Tavern: The Founding Table-Colonial Dining, Revolutionary History, and the Restaurant at the Center of It All” may be ordered in advance of its Oct. 15 release at the above outlets.
Cynthia Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Bucks County.