Amanda Hesser
Author
of Cooking
for Mr. Latte talks with Robert Birnbaum
New York Times writer Amanda Hesser has
published two books, The Cook and the Gardener and most
recently Cooking For Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with
Recipes. She was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and attended
Bentley College as an Economics and Finance major. While in Boston,
she began working (volunteering) in various kitchens and studying
culinary history at Radcliffe with Barbara Wheaton. She applied
for and received a scholarship from Les Dames d' Escoffier that
took her on a cook's tour of Europe, and she continued her culinary
studies at Ecole de Cuisine La Burgundy and later at Chateau du
Feo. Amanda Hesser joined the New York Times in 1997 and
in 2001 introduced the Food Diary in the New York Times Magazine.
She lives in Brooklyn Heights with her husband, New Yorker
staff writer Tad Friend.
Cooking for Mr. Latte is based on Hesser's Food Diary
column, where she tracked her budding relationship with Mr. Latte,
aka Tad Friend, and the dinner parties and dining experiences and
cooking that comprised the backdrop and context. The text includes
over a hundred recipes and is skillfully interwoven with honest
and personal commentary about affairs of the heart and the palate.
Robert Birnbaum: Are you a super-taster?
Amanda Hesser: I don't know. I have never been
tested. I don't think I am. From what I understand, it's not all
that desirable. Because you experience such extremes in tastes.
RB: You would know it if you were?
AH: I think I would know it. That's why I think
I'm not.
RB: Know any super-tasters?
AH: I don't. I don't. Maybe they won't admit it.
RB: I know one. Barbara
Haber over at the Schlesinger Library.
AH: Is it unpleasant for her?
RB: I don't think so. Cooking for Mr. Latte
is an odd kind of a book.
AH: [chuckles]
RB: In addition to your own observations and experiences
with food and cooking, which is the basis of your authority in the
modern world, you have exposed a part of your personal life to the
world.
AH: Yeah?
RB: Do you have the same feelings about writing
the columns that are the basis for this book as when you first began?
What were your reservations when you first started?
AH: I was worried my life might be too boring.
That it wouldn't be able to carry—I wouldn't be able to find
or gather fully formed stories that really said something. Because
I didn't know what was going to happen in the future. I didn't know
this relationship was going to work out. I didn't know if I was
going to have experiences that really made me—that inspired
me to write, to connect the dots in a way that you really need to
when you are writing a diary. I didn't want it to be just self-involved
blather about my life. But to really tell stories that people could
relate to. In retrospect, I don't have any regrets because the most
gratifying part of it has been making that connection with people.
I have written for the newspaper for six years, and I have probably
gotten ten times the amount of mail over the year I wrote the column
than I did the previous five years. When you are writing personally,
people, negatively and positively, make these connections and relate,
because they have experienced these things in their own lives and
feel strongly about them. And they want to talk about it, and that's
been great. In food writing there have been great food memoirs and
increasingly good food journalism, and there is also this wonderful
odd genre that maybe doesn't exist in other forms of culture, like
dance or music—which is this fantasy aspect. You know, how
I'd really like to cook or entertain. How I wish it would be, that
sort of perfection that we are all striving for but never or rarely
attain. I was trying to capture that real life slice of how we live
and how we really eat, how we really cook, with all the flaws and
sort of satisfaction bundled into one.
RB: This didn't necessarily have to become a book?
In
the past decade, a lot of lifestyle subjects from home design
to food have been put up on this pedestal, and there is a
lot of social pressure that goes along with that now. |
AH: Right.
RB: Had the relationship failed or floundered
or come to a flat line there wouldn't have been a book, I guess?
AH: No, I guess not. Before I started doing the
column, I had talked to my editors, and we discussed the goals for
the column, and it really was to have a beginning, middle and an
end. We had the beginning; it was a strong beginning. It wasn't
a bad date, it was just this date at a bad restaurant, and we had
to see where it went. We joked around that it would be a great if
we end up with a wedding. The relationship was on solid ground,
but we certainly weren't engaged. So, yeah, it didn't have to be,
but when I actually went to make the book, I thought, "This
is going to be easy. I will just slap these columns together and
add a few recipes that got cut from the magazine and there you go."
I realized that doesn't make a book. So I actually combined chapters
and cut chapters and really tried to make a cohesive story.
RB: How was your column edited along the way?
This is a different kind of narrative for a newspaper, were you
to follow newspaper conventions, a strong nut graf [the short summary
paragraph at the top of a newspaper story] and such?
AH: [chuckles] No, thankfully. A lot of the appeal
to me was that I had been writing with nut grafs for six years and
it was a chance to break from that style and try something new.
Because it was experimental for the Times, definitely,
to deal with a personal column, and they were very supportive. It
was great because we were figuring it out as we went along, but
it gave me a good amount of freedom. Because it was so personal
it ended up being a really fun project because they wanted me to
be involved in all aspects. On the second page there was always
a photograph of the food.
RB: So you styled the photo?
AH: We did this at my house. They were my plates,
I cooked it. We had this team of photographers…
RB: Who ate it?
AH: We all did. After the shot we all dug in.
(laughs)
RB: So you became popular with the photo staff.
AH: Exactly. It was really this nice…sometimes
when you are writing, particularly newspaper stories, you are one
piece of the puzzle and this was nice to be involved in all aspects
and feel like when it came out, "I did this."
RB: I didn't want to say this before [and risk
alienating you so quickly], but I have some familiarity with the
restaurant world over the last boom, and I have found it increasingly
unattractive and unsatisfying. Something has happened, at least
for me, that has taken the joy out of it. I wonder what happens
to someone like you who really has to live a professional life attached
to the overripe food world. Ever get tired of it?
AH: Oh sure. It's definitely an issue I face professionally
because the natural path that people try to follow at the Times
is they become a reporter and eventually a critic. I never wanted
to be a critic. I love eating and love dining, but I love cooking
at home and being at home. I find that I have done stories where
I have to go out four nights a week or to two or three restaurants
a night. It's kind of grueling and unpleasant. You get jaded. You
find yourself being super critical about what really is just a meal.
[chuckles]
RB: In Manhattan it must be a very brittle experience?
AH: There is definitely a foodie culture that's
very competitive, and there are people who really just love going
out every night. You know, good for them. [laughs] I don't want
to do it myself.
RB: How many times a year can you eat with Jeffrey
Steingartener [Vogue food writer]?
AH: I’d say a handful. [laughs]
RB: Why is he the only person in the book who
is mentioned with a surname? In the food world isn't he like a super
model?
AH: Probably, maybe in future editions I should
think about that. I felt that if people knew whom I was talking
about they would have read his work. He is well read and he is truly
a special character. I just love his whole name. Part of it is,
I love saying, "Jeffrey Steingartner." It has a kind of…
RB: Forcefulness to it?
 AH:
Yeah.
RB: The
Morning News has a department called "People We Like,"
and in that you mentioned him as your only hero.
AH: He definitely is.
RB: Do you care to expand the list?
AH: You mean in the food world?
RB: The whole wide world.
AH: The whole wide world. Ahhh...[long pause]
It's not something I think about much, but Jeffrey just leaps to
mind. He is a fabulous writer, and he is an excellent reporter,
which he doesn't always get credit for. He is a tireless reporter.
And he is just funny. He is larger than life. And I wish there were
more people like that. Like in old-style food writing, AJ Liebling,
people like that. You read them now and you can't believe it.
RB: Liebling was a master. He was great writer,
about boxing, politics.
AH: There is something about boxing and food,
too, which is really odd. There is a writer at Food & Wine,
a woman who has written about boxing and she writes about food.
And Alan Richman has written a fair amount about boxing.
RB: There's a connection to explore. They are
both sensual and direct.
AH: Visceral. [laughs] Yeah, for myself, maybe
that's a flaw for me, I am not a big boxing fan.
RB: Does it strike you that food had become very
much more significant than it ought to be in the world, in life
and lifestyles?
AH: I guess so. In the past decade a lot of lifestyle
subjects from home design to food have been put up on this pedestal,
and there is a lot of social pressure that goes along with that
now. It's not just about being able to make the perfect tarlatan
but having the Viking stove to bake it in.
RB: [laughs] Right.
AH: I'm sure that it has to do with the economy
in the '90s. People had more disposable income and…
RB: Thus Sub Zero and Viking became must haves.
AH: In the magazine business, there was a lot
more advertising budgeted, so there was a lot of writing about these
things. There were magazines starting, lots of television shows
starting and just as this kind of…
RB: Has all this been good for the world?
AH: In the long term it's been very good. I just
did this
story for the Dining section of the paper about college students.
It was fascinating to me. That is definitely a product of this [food
boom]. In the past two decades America's awareness of good food
has really altered, and now this generation that was raised with
parents that were hyper alert about good food are now becoming adults,
and it's a regular part of their lives to go out to restaurants
or to cook or to watch cooking shows.
RB: I like the quote in that story from The University
of Alabama where someone said about sushi that in the past they
would have thought it was fishing bait. [both laugh] And in the
short term one goes to restaurants and sees the entree prices rising
to the where you could feed a Central American village for a week
for the cost of one. What are you paying for? Debt service for all
the extras that go into the comic opera of fine dining: an expensive
build out, a public relations firm, designer waitstaff uniforms
and on and on. Doesn't all that change the dynamic and the attitude
involved?
AH: It's so rare that a restaurant can really
pull that off. Have this high design and high concept and really
do it well because when comes down to it they are hiring waiters
who have other professions and things like that. It's a thing as
a diner that bugs me to go into a restaurant where you feel like
when the word 'concept' comes to mind you, walk in and you think,
"That's what they have been working with, the concept."
At the same time, in terms of design, if you are into architecture
and interior design, they have made great strides--in the past decade,
there has been a lot of money channeled into restaurants. That's
one of the things I both like and like to make fun of in New York.
It’s great, but it is taken a little bit too seriously at
times. Yes, it is frustrating when you know what good food is all
you need is a simple room and a good cook in the kitchen that you
see all this fluff surrounding and you know that you are paying
for it.
RB: The last time I went out to dine was with
some friends visiting, and they were on their expense account. So
we went to an expensive place and though I could have ordered any
entrÈe and not been concerned about my scribbler's finances,
I ordered the cous cous which was the least expensive entrÈe
on the menu. The waiter exclaimed, "Really?"
AH: [laughs] My favorite line from waiters is,
"I really like the…" [laughs]
RB: What are you doing these days at the Times?
AH: I'm a generalist reporter. I have been writing
more about wine. I will continue in that direction. It's something
I've been wanting to write about for a couple of years now and I
really love and am interested in. It is a beat that takes a while
to get up to speed.
…this
generation that was raised with parents that were hyper alert
about good food are now becoming adults, and it's a regular
part of their lives to go out to restaurants or to cook or
to watch cooking shows. |
RB: You have to drink a lot?
AH: You have to drink a lot. Also, it’s
international. It's enormous. California alone has 2000 wineries.
To keep up, on top of everything is a lot of work.
RB: Is that a macho world?
AH: Ah, yeah. It has definitely been dominated
by men. Jancis Robinson is a well-respected female wine writer and
critic. But there are fewer women. It's changing but it's slow.
Interestingly, in Spain some of the best wine makers are women.
Also, in California. So they are making strides. But I am coming
from restaurants to wine; it's still a man's world in restaurants.
There are very few top female chefs. There are a growing number,
but it’s still dominated by men.
RB: Odd.
AH: It is odd. It's very strange. I don't really
know why it is.
RB: Alice Waters… Is Lydia Shire in that
weight division?
AH: Sure, she is extremely well known and successful.
There is a handful in New York. When you think of the four-star
restaurants in New York, they are all run by men. There are plenty
of women in the kitchens, but in terms of being the chef, it's at
a slower pace than other professions, the shift to equality.
RB: I read a piece on you, and you were sitting
on a panel, and the piece ended with you asking a question, and
it was an interesting question, and I wished the answers were included.
You asked, "What was the maximum work load that chefs would
take on?" What I thought you were getting at was how many new
restaurants were they comfortable opening and running?
AH: Yes, exactly. At what point do you determine
that you have to compromise on integrity for financial success?
Is it one restaurant? Is it one restaurant and a cafe, is it three
restaurants?
RB: And a chicken farm?
AH: I didn't get a clear answer. I think it's
something a lot of chefs struggle with. As a diner it's frustrating
when you go into a restaurant and you feel like it's been franchised,
and you are not really getting that chef's clear vision and that
he or she is in the back overseeing things. But then again, even
at a restaurant run by a chef who only has one, they are not there
all the time. But you just feel like they can have more control.
RB: There was piece ["Brigade de Cuisine"]
that John McPhee wrote in Giving Good Weight about a place,
a wonderful restaurant that he refused to name and the chef didn't
want to be famous.
AH: Hmmm. That's unheard of. [laughs]
RB: A very improbable integrity suggested in his
piece.
AH: You do see a little bit more of that now.
You are getting cooks who have worked for chefs like that and they
see what it's like or they can't identify with it [fame and the
limelight] in their own personality. Of course, after I say this
she is going to go and franchise herself, but there is Gabrielle
Hamilton at Prune. She is an excellent cook, but the food at her
restaurant is extremely simple, and it's a tiny sliver of a restaurant,
and she's gotten tons of press, and I don't think she is planning
on going anywhere with it.
RB: The pressures must be incredible. I wouldn't
blame anyone for the taking the big-money path…
AH: Kitchen life is tough. It's really difficult
to have a social life outside of it. The hours are grueling. It's
hot. It’s physically tiring. If you have done it for a decade
and someone is telling you…it must be really seductive. Also,
even top chefs don't make that much money. And if you can expand
—if you are living in New York City and living on a typical
chef's salary and you can open three more restaurants, and then
actually have bedrooms for your children or send them to a decent
school. It definitely makes a lot of sense.
RB: Easy for me to say, but it may be a mistake
to live in NYC to begin with…
AH: [laughs]
RB: Living there does raise the ante.
AH: For everyone.
RB: Yeah. I have had the opportunity to see a
number of different models in the so-called hospitality business,
and I most admire someone like Chris Schlesinger [East Coast Grill,
Back Eddy]. He seems to know his own limits or something like that.
AH: I always felt like he does what he knows.
And instead of writing about a billion different things, he has
written in this narrow circle, but he is literally an expert who
has great things to tell people, and maybe that's the secret—understanding
yourself before you go and…
RB: Well, now that's a deeper subject and big
issue. But it would seem to take a long time for some people and
some people never get to that. In your writing you are pretty Eurocentric.
You are not concerned with regional cooking, or with Latin American
or Asian.
AH: Yeah, I write what I know. [laughs] I worked
in Europe. Yeah, people think of New York as truly being the melting
pot, but the restaurant culture is definitely European oriented,
the high end. You would think by now that there would be fancy Chinese
restaurants.
RB: There are some in Boston, and even some forays
into so-called fusion menus… Is the word 'cuisine' reserved
for European menus?
 AH:
No, definitely not. Interesting diner food that you find in the
Midwest. I think that's cuisine too.
RB: Like macaroni and cheese?
AH: That kind of thing. Fried bologna sandwiches.
Little regional
specialties.
RB: Where does bologna come from?
AH: I don't know. You would think it was Italian,
but for some reason I think it comes from the German culture and
settlers in Pennsylvania. But I'm not sure.
RB: Back in this conversation you said something
about a heightened food awareness as a benefit of this food boom.
I don't know which comes first…but the recent flap in which
the sugar grower's association was lobbying against the World Health
Organization because their guidelines suggested that there should
be a reduction in sugar intake as part of a healthy diet and that
sugar intake contributed to obesity. I thought of that when I read
one of the more charming chapters in your book where you were shepherding
an Indian tourist around New York and he took note that there were
many fat people. On the one hand, you have the heightened consciousness
of better foods and diets, and on the other hand lots of obese people
who are not eating right.
AH: Yeah, I don't know how to explain it. Sadly,
I think it's largely socio-economic. There was a study done that
was published in the New York Times, about a study on weight
in NYC. It was fascinating that basically the lower-income boroughs
people's weights increased, the average weight increased by a fair
amount. Whereas on the Upper East Side was where the lowest average
weight was...I don't know how to explain it. It's not something
I study myself. Is it something you have observed?
RB: Years ago I taught in urban public schools,
and the kids would eat the funkiest snack foods, bacon rinds being
a popular item.
AH: I don't know if it's the choice or it's also
comfort, you know when everything else in your life is not so stable.
RB: Like that sad kid in Monster's Ball.
AH: Exactly, really devastating, and if you couple
that with bad choices of food, it's a really a bad situation. I
think Americans have made great strides, but really, I'd like to
see it hit the mainstream. Which I don't think it has.
RB: It is promising that McDonald's and some of
the other fast-food chains have suffered their first losses ever
in the last few years.
AH: Excellent.
RB: The foodie world is a world inhabited by a
relatively small and exclusive group of people.
AH: Definitely.
RB: What's the criterion for a fine restaurant
in New York, Zagat's?
AH: The New York Times has a four-star
system.
RB: How many restaurants in New York have three
or more stars?
AH: Ah, hmm, just a couple of dozen, maybe. Not
even, maybe a dozen or so. There are four four-star restaurants
now. And one recently closed because of the economy.
RB: Really? A four-star restaurant closes because
of the bad economy?
AH: Everyone is struggling. Even good restaurants
are opening for breakfast, Sunday brunch. They are using all ways
to make a few extra dollars. The period before this downturn saw
unprecedented growth in the restaurant industry in New York. You
just could not keep up with the number of restaurants opening, every
time you turned around.
RB: I had acquaintances in the business who told
me stories of impromptu parties thrown by young financial services
hotshots and the bill would come to thirty-thousand dollars plus.
AH: Yeah, it was pretty incredible. There was
sort of this heat in the restaurant business, and it was fun while
it lasted [laughs] but it got a little tiresome towards the end.
RB: Do you have a long-term plan of what you intend
for your career?
As
a diner it's frustrating when you go into a restaurant and
you feel like it's been franchised and you are not really
getting that chef's clear vision and that he or she isn't
in the back overseeing things. |
AH: I don't. I realized shortly after I arrived
at the Times that I would like to eventually write about
wine. Although, I still love writing about food. I knew that I didn't
want to become a restaurant reviewer and so I don't know. This book
just happened and it made sense at the time. My last book was a
much different book. Sure, sometimes I wish I had a plan.
RB: What's it like living with another writer?
AH: It's great.
RB: [laughs]
AH: He's a much better writer, and so when he
reads my stuff he is very helpful. [both laugh]
RB: It's great for you. [laughs]
AH: Yeah, it's great for me, but not great for
him. [laughs] Whenever he writes something I say, "Oh, its
great." [laughs] Actually, it's fabulous. We are on the same
schedule. We work a half a block apart. We go to work together.
It's very sweet. We have lunch together sometimes.
RB: One of the ultimate New York writing couples…
AH: There are lots, Frank Rich and Alex Witchel,
and my friend Jennifer who is a reporter at the paper who set us
up, her husband is a writer.
RB: May be there is a book there?
AH: There are lots of writing couples. [giggles]
RB: What informs your life beyond the foodie culture?
You like old movies, right?
AH: Well, I like both, I all movies. My husband,
he is kind of a movie buff, so we do go to the movies a lot. We
are not theater people, but also I love to read fiction, and we
both love to travel. He is much more well-traveled than I am. One
thing we have discussed is that one day, we would like to take some
time off and travel around the world. Get one of those around-the-world
tickets.
RB: That's a beautiful thing.
AH: He's done it, so he knows how wonderful it
is.
RB: And what about life in New York? It's the
current hot word, kind of snarky, isn't it?
AH: The Observer reviewed
my book—they took three books, and they assigned a plant
to each one. I am so bad at math that at first I thought I lost,
but my husband told me that actually mine did grow the most. But
anyway, it was so Observer style. Thank god. It was funny.
RB: You would never see that in Boston periodicals.
AH: Why is that? Are they afraid of losing advertising?
RB: So it would seem.
AH: Oh really. That's too bad.
RB: Craig Unger, an ex-Observer editor,
was at Boston magazine for a few years, and occasionally
he would roil the waters with cover stories like "Henry Louis
Gates: Head-Negro-in-charge" or "Where are the Good Restaurants?
They're in New York." It was very calculated to get attention,
not to inform anyone… Have you thought of another book after
this one?
AH: No. I have lots of little ideas, but they
are not well formed. Any ideas? Anything you want to read about?
RB: Are you looking to be affiliated with a newspaper
for your whole career? Or are you considering branching off it to
do longer works and other media?
AH: Well, I'm happy at the newspaper. I really
love the Times.
RB: I won't tell them if you …
 AH:
No, I am. It’s a really great company to work for. And the
one thing that is nice is that I could change beats entirely if
I became miserable. And that's nice to know. There is a temptation
when you are writing for the soft sections of the paper to get some
experience in some of the other sections of the paper, so that you
are taken seriously. I thought about that in the past. I am leaning
against that. Ultimately I don't think I'll do it. Maybe it will
pop up again in a couple of years or something that I really should
do it for my own satisfaction. To see if could write about crimes
in the Bronx or whatever.
RB: How many deadlines a week are you dealing
with?
AH: It's not like that. You are always working,
and it's more like, can you get it in yesterday? One of the things
I like about the Times is that productivity is definitely
rewarded. It's interesting that I ended up there. I come from a
family that definitely did not encourage going to a liberal arts
college or any kind of career that didn't involve a weekly paycheck
with benefits.
RB: You went to Bentley and studied financial
analysis…
AH: Yeah. So I rebelled and went the other way
and ended up becoming a writer, and then I ended up at a place where
I do work for a large corporation and have benefits and am rewarded
for hard work and discipline and things like that. It's like I'm
a writer, but I am doing what I was trained to do as a child by
my family. [laughs] So I feel very comfortable at the Times.
In terms of longer pieces, there aren't really many places for longer
food pieces. Calvin Trillin has done great things at The New
Yorker, but he is one of a kind.
RB: Do you like to read books on food?
AH: That's one of the things I should be doing
in my spare time. When I have time off I want to read fiction.
RB: Like?
AH: Right now I am reading White Noise
by Don DeLillo. Tad thought I would like it.
RB: Are you liking it?
AH: Yeah. I am liking it. I am fascinated with
the way his brain works. The story is not totally captivating. I
recently read Anna Karenina. I just couldn't put it down.
I felt like I was living in that world. I was fully absorbed. I
don't feel that way [with White Noise]. He is extremely
skillful at capturing home life, that sense of all the little things
that are happening and adding up to the actual emotions you are
feeling. I just finished the part where the toxic event has taken
place and I found that less interesting.
RB: DeLillo and some others seem to take their
lumps from some portion of the reading public. I often wonder if
it's just the shock of the new?
AH: It’s interesting that the food page
had been happily going along for twenty years in kind of a monotonous
way, and we did this little thing, and people freaked out. Because
it was like change, and they don't want that new thing.
RB: Didn't Francis Kline do the Metropolitan Diary?
That's the future of newspapers. That's the only thing that will
make newspapers viable for readers, that you have personal voices.
The rest of the news can be gotten elsewhere and quickly…
Anyway, it's been a pleasure.
AH: It's been so nice. Great.
____
|
Posted:
May 14, 2003
