What Do Chefs Read?

King Phojanakong, Kuma Inn

What are your five favorite books?
Art of War by  Sun Tzu; Don Quijote by Miguel Cervantes; Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn; Tetsuya: Recipes From Australia’s Most Acclaimed Chef by Tetsuya Wakuda; and White Heat by Marco Pierre White

What would you love to eat while reading each of them?
Art of War: my mom’s chicken adobo, a glass or more (probably more) of Eagle Rare and a Cohiba. Going into battle I want to enjoy my favorite meal. Who knows? It might be my last.

Don Quijote: a bottle of albariño with some pulpo, chorizo, gambas and some jamón Serrano. REPEAT.

Dogeaters: You want me to say dog, don’t you? Give me some TruCola and a bucket of KFC!

Tetsuya: Recipes From Australia’s Most Acclaimed Chef: I could eat those pages if I had to but I’d much rather have fatty tuna and some wakatake junmai daiginjo.

White Heat: A cup of tea and a ham sandwich with English mustard.

What’s your favorite time and place to read?
It’s usually in the evening at home or whenever I’m on vacation. I love a good book on the beach or by the pool.

What books, if any, have inspired your work in the kitchen?
All of the above. Some days are a battle and you have to be prepared. Everyday is a journey and you meet some characters along the way, mostly good and some bad. We create with our heart and mind. Everything we read, see, hear, eat and feel influences what we create. It all sounds cliche but it makes total sense. And then sometimes you just have to take a step back.

“At the end of the day, it’s just food, isn’t it? Just food.” –Marco Pierre White

Why do you even read, when there’s work to do in the kitchen anyway?
My Tito Sammy, a true OG, used to tell me that playing mahjong and reading were calisthenics for the mind. He was definitely on to something.

Gabe McMackin, The Finch

What are your five favorite books?
So many and for so many different reasons: East of the Sun and West of the Moon, by Mercer Mayer: beautiful, very, very beautiful. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera. A tie between Martin Dressler and Edwin Mullhouse, by Steven Millhauser, both magical stories about youth, energy, creativity, love… Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman: just on the concept, it’s a book about the antichrist being born in modern times, given to the wrong parents, and growing up normal. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: brilliant on every level. Cooking by Hand, by Paul Bertolli. Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons. Empire of the Summer Moon, by S. C. Gwynne. A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin. Dune, by Frank Herbert. Mythologies, by W.B. Yeats: his telling of Red Hanrahan is brilliant.

What would you ideally love to eat while reading each of them?
It’s so hard to eat while reading. Turning pages, swiping on a screen—I never get to focus on the story. I love doing it, but I always feel disjointed.

What’s your favorite time and place to read?
Right now it’s waiting for the subway. Seriously. I can’t get to email, I don’t have any obligations I can tend to. I can focus. I have a hard time reading outside—beach, park, etc—I get excited about being outside.

What books, if any, have inspired your work in the kitchen?
Again, so many! The way we make objects is one thing. Michele Bras made an extraordinary book, he changed the way so many people look at food who (like myself) have never had an opportunity to dine at his restaurants or eat his food. Hervé This, Harold McGee—looking carefully at the food, thinking about what’s actually going on. All of Euell Gibbons books helped shape the way I look at the environment around me, made some of the things I knew already to be edible in the woods to be delicious. Things that I could identify as not poisonous, things that I knew I could eat if I was lost and hungry became exciting new flavors to work with. But books like Martin Dressler—and I can’t mention that without thinking about Colin Devlin—it’s very, very hard to build a beautiful system. It’s an incredible thing to create something in the real world that you love so much, and to share it with people. It’s not a moral tale, it’s tragic, but much more. That’s a few.

Oh—Martha Stewart. We all love huge coffee table cook books. They’re beautiful! But they’re also tools. Martha makes books to teach people how to cook. A reader has to look at the book, see what’s there, and want to participate enough with what they see to cook that dish. They need to be energized, they need to feel confident, comfortable and excited about the food they see on the page, and then go and cook things and share them with their families. I think this is also why I love Harold McGee, but in a different way. Nathan Mhyrvold’s book(s) are very much spanning the gap here, but I think David Kinch’s book is unabashedly a book of inspiration rather than instruction.

Why do you even read, when there’s work to do in the kitchen anyway?
One reason is so I don’t fall asleep on the train. I worked in Bushwick and lived in Gowanus for a while when the L train was running shuttles—so getting in on the G to L could take 30 minutes, but getting home the two miles could take two hours. So late at night I could either take a cab, take a super dangerous bike ride, or just deal with it. I started reading Sci Fi. Particularly young Adult SciFi. Enders Game makes for great train reading.

Why else? I think reading gives my brain a bit of a break from the problems of running a restaurant—the new dishes, the problems with breaking plates, the staffing problems… the endless staffing problems—without shutting it off. Being able to imagine what it’s like to be a Comanche Chief (Empire of the Summer Moon) or to have the BFG as a friend or David Lee Roth. Just what’s up with David Lee Roth? Crazy From the Heat. Amazing. White Heat? Also amazing. But I’ll go DLR over MPW.

Jen King, Confectioner, Liddabit Sweets

What are your five favorite books?
My five favorite books are The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, Katish Our Russian Cook by Wanda L. Frolov, The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater, and Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling.

What would you love to eat while reading each of them?
I don’t really eat while reading but if I do, it’s probably potato chips. I usually want to cook after reading.

What’s your favorite time and place to read?
I really enjoy reading at night or in the early morning. My favorite place would be on a comfortable chair or sofa near a fireplace.

What books, if any, have inspired your work in the kitchen?
Like Water for Chocolate was a really inspiring book, to this day I still want to make Quail with Roses. But it was my first exposure to Mexican culture and food, the book was beautifully written. Probably Little House on the Prairie started my fascination with candy, I still remember reading about them making maple sugar candy and syrup on snow. I was so excited about it that I tried to make it when my parents weren’t looking, however, I didn’t realize and was too young to know that imitation syrup is not the same as actual maple syrup. I now know!

Why do you even read, when there’s work to do in the kitchen anyway?
Reading is a joy, a great book can take you to a different world, it’s a great way to meet so many people. Words are so powerful and those who can use them well are artists. It takes talent but so much work to keep writing, that’s same with cooking. Creative people are inspired by other creative people, it’s what binds us to one another, it’s what inspires us.

Sara Jenkins, Porchetta and Porsena

What are your five favorite books?

Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky), The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), The Woman of Rome (Alberto Moravia), and Bastard Out of Carolina (Dorothy Allison). 

What would you love to eat while reading each of them?
I don’t know why, but it would seem appropriate to eat oatmeal while reading Wuthering Heights, but I don’t like oatmeal. Something plain and very, very English.

Caviar for Dostoevsky.

Indian food, specifically Kerala food for The God of Small Things.

Penne arrabiatta for The Woman of Rome.

And something trashy and Southern for Allison, like pimiento cheese dip.

What’s your favorite time and place to read?
I love to read lying in a hammock on a lazy afternoon,  but I also love to read in bed before going to sleep.

What books, if any, have inspired your work in the kitchen?
That’s hard, not sure, I don’t generally read food-porny types of books although if I am really involved in a book about another country, I start wanting to eat that country’s food.

Why do you even read, when there’s work to do in the kitchen anyway?
It’s the greatest escape and relaxation ever!

Laena McCarthy, artisanal food company Anarchy in A Jar

What are your five favorite books?
The White Album by Joan Didion, Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje, Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino, Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf, My Mother’s House by Colette.

What would you love to eat while reading each of them?
The White Album: oysters and a martini.
Running in the Family: spicy Sri Lankan curry.
Marcovaldo: a simple pasta with red sauce.
Between the Acts: toast with butter and  jam.
My Mother’s House: roast chicken.

What’s your favorite time and place to read?
On a porch at the beach.

What books, if any, have inspired your work in the kitchen?
My Mother’s House by Colette, Jam and Bread for Frances by Russel Hoban, A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Why do you even read, when there’s work to do in the kitchen anyway?
Reading is food for the spirit and the soul; nourish in and nourish out!