291: Hillary Dixler Canavan

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. You know, if you're a chef, do you do a restaurant cookbook or do you do your at-home cookbook? Where the restaurant cookbook is like this memento and a marketing product, but people can't do it. And I feel like we really try to thread the needle of these are restaurant recipes, but we've done everything we can to let you do it. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

0:59Hilary Dixler-Kennavin is Eater's restaurant editor and the author of a great new book, Eater, 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes. Now, I've known Hilary for years, and I just respect her so much. I love her journalism and the work she's done to Eater for over a decade. And this book is absolutely remarkable. I love it so much. It's editorial. It features recipes from 100 restaurants. And really, it's cookable. You can make these recipes. I just love talking to Hilary, and I really hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:35Hilary Dixler-Kanavan, welcome to This is Taste. How are you? I'm great, and I'm very excited to be here. My God, I've known you forever. I know, and it's taken forever to make this happen. I know, it's been a little while, but it's a good reason your book is extremely cool. Thank you. I'm just holding it right now, 100 Central Recipes, Eater is the place you work. And you did a cookbook for the Eater. Mm-hmm. Our first cookbook, our first book, really our first, yeah, physical editorial product. Yeah, right. You don't have to have like an iPhone or a computer to use it. It's cool because I'm such a fan of this book.

2:10I mean, I'm a fan of yours and I love your journalism and have followed your career from day one, essentially, it feels like. But also, I just think this book is terrific. Thank you so much. That really means a lot. You did a wonderful job. It's not an easy project, an anthology. with all the different chefs' voices. It's 100 recipes from 100 restaurants around the country. We'll get into that, but I want to know, you used to live in New York. That's when we became friends when you were living here. Where do you go first, restaurant-wise? In New York? Yeah. So I have a few different New York musts.

2:45I feel like the first thing that changed when I moved to California was that when I would come back, I would make this, like, mad dash to try to mainline New York feelings. so that could look like making sure I was getting to Russ and Daughter's original location, making sure I was going to Balthazar, Union Square Cafe, like the places that feel so New York. On this trip, my first meal, I arrived on Sunday and Sunday night I went to Superiority Burger and that totally did the thing because it's in that, now it's like in the old Odessa space. So I was like in this historic space. Like I've been on, you know, I like used to drink with my husband at Odessa.

3:24And, you know, and I had been going to Superiority Burger since it was like an OG pop-up. Yeah, when he was like sitting at food events and sitting at the veggie burger there. Yeah, or like trekking out to, I think he did one, like trekking out to Gowanus and eating a veggie burger. So that felt very essential New Yorkie to me. And then I would say the other, the New Yorkness of it all, New York is like ground zero for the idea of hot, buzzy, gotta go. restaurant. So that's always a part of the trip. It's part of my job. Yeah, because you're the restaurant editor. I mean, you're running the national coverage of this publication.

4:03It's so important. So you've got that. Yeah. So it's literally my job, but it's also my pleasure. And so every New York trip, I try to get somewhere new. So on this trip, I went to Lourdes. Yeah. You know, and that's sort of... Game set match. Lourdes. Good place. Everyone likes that place. Yeah. And Ed and Patricia had just gotten their copy of the cookbook. So it was like up near their POS system. Oh, that's nice to have all the participating restaurants, you know, put the copy in the restaurant. Yeah. I don't know that everybody will do that, but it's very cool. I like it. So how has New York changed?

4:39I'm really curious about this question. I feel like you have this perspective of living in Los Angeles now. You also lived in San Francisco, but it's been a few years since you've lived in New York. How has it changed by your estimates? I mean, it's a cliche to say that the nature of the city is change, but it truly does change. I mean, even going back to like going to Superiority Burger, I was struck by how polite, you know, the letter avenues are now. I was also struck by I went to Plastafette last night and walking around that part of Clinton Hill. It was so busy. That feels very new to me.

5:21So like where people are hanging out, who's hanging out where, what these neighborhoods feel like feels different to me. I think there's also something very different about restaurant culture in New York now versus when I lived in New York. And then even before that, when I worked in New York restaurants that I feel like that is something I'm I feel like I'm continually relearning every time I come to the city. Yeah, the sharp edges maybe aren't quite there. I feel maybe there is a little bit more community in some ways. I'm hearing that from you. Yeah. And I think there's also it feels and it's not surprising that it feels this way, but it feels to me a little bit less risky and a little less taking big swings.

6:05And I was in Philly a few months ago and that's what's happening in Philly right now. There are so much happening, so many cool new restaurants opening in surprising ways. And I think it's that thing of if you can afford to live there, you can afford to be creative somewhere. Yeah. And it is really hard to live in New York. Yeah. Great point, Hillary. I think that's such a well-set point. It's you have to really, before you launch your restaurant, you have to be so ready for the masses and be able to, you know, give the masses what they want. And sometimes it has to be safer. Yeah. And I want to be clear.

6:42It's not to say that there aren't New York restaurants taking risks. And I think even something like an opening like Attaboy is a risk. You know, that's something like that didn't exist before. That's a risk. But it's not the same as a it's not the same kind of risk as like a 24 year old who's just going to give it a go. Yeah, right. It would just like a staff of three or four, which I found a lot. I was in Houston recently and I found that a lot in Houston. There's a lot of young talent opening in cool spaces there. I love dining in Houston. It's definitely one of my favorite cities in America.

7:15It was amazing. I also feel like there's a very fun like Houston X LA thing where there's that like the oddball nature of the way Houston is built because of like literally I think it's like they do not have zoning laws. They literally don't. They like literally don't. And with LA's sprawl and Houston's sprawl, but again, the like historic, it's a little easier to live there. But yeah, I feel like there's an L.A., Houston vibe. You're on point, and it has a lot of L.A. vibe. Do you go to Tatamo up in North Houston? No, I haven't made it. That place, I mean, it shares a wall with a church. Perfect.

7:56So it's like it's definitively Houston. We'll actually get into Houston in another episode. It may have run already. But let's talk about Eater, realizing that home cooking actually matters. And I joke because years ago, I remember Leventhal and Locke, the founders of Eater, were so anti-home cooking. We weren't allowed to use any photos of food on the site. Right. Yeah. That's, wow. I did not know that. That was a long time ago. That was pre-Vox Media days. But it seems like at that time they were extremely allergic to any kind of home cooking. It was like the delineation was restaurant culture is eater.

8:31Fair enough. You guys are at the top of the heap, doing it the best in the country. But what then changed? I know at home is a part of the eater universe now. Rebecca Flint Marks runs that. She's great. and what changed and what made you write a cookbook, which is like the antithesis of what Locke and Ben were saying back in the day. I know. I sent an email to Ben. I wanted to get his address to send him a coffee, and I was like, brace for food photos. Hilarious note. So in a very concrete way, we launched Eater at Home during the pandemic, and we knew Amanda Kloot, who was then the editor-in-chief of Eater.

9:11She's now the group publisher of Eater, Thrillist and PopSugar and Punch. You know, Amanda, our dot com lead, Aaron DeJesus, it was pretty clear that we needed to continue to meet readers where they were and they were literally at home. So I remember Aaron came to me and she was like, can you please like write up a memo of what an at home sub vertical would look like? What could we do cadence wise? what would feel eatery, what is the eatery way in here, knowing that our readers are food savvy. Some of our readers are extremely passionate cooks and some people never cook. So I like wrote that memo.

9:54I had like this whole plan laid out. It got green light. And within four weeks of writing that memo, Eater at Home launched. And my strategy with that was thinking, continuing to center restaurant expertise. So expert advice, restaurant experience. And again, like walking that, like I would not assume knowledge, but I would also not assume ignorance. I love that. That's so smart. It's exactly the way this book is framed and a lot of that home content. But this book in particular, you can't assume anything with your reader, but you have You have to make it not boring. You can't make it didactic.

10:35You have to make it extremely eater, right? And my question is, is how do you get 100 chefs to give you their recipes that aren't literally a trash fire? Yeah. So there are a lot of emailing and phone calling. I think there's sort of two parts to it, which is at that moment in time, did the chef or restaurant in question have the capacity to participate? I did everything I could to make participation as low lift as possible. The recipe tester and developer we worked with, Louis Victor, her background, she was a professional line cook. She then moved into recipe development. She also does food photography.

11:18but I knew that I could rely on Louis to like take chef chicken scratch and like work with it and ask good follow ups and all of that. So assuring chefs that like I'm not asking you to do the adaptation work. And so I think the other element of it is I I've been at Eater for over 10 years. I used to work in the restaurant industry and I had my my work there connected me with a lot of the chefs that are in the book as well. so I have sort of a deep personal relationships with a lot of chefs around the country and they know and trust me and they know that I'm going to work really hard and do it really well so I think that leap of faith was a bit easier for them because it was two people they trusted it was eater and it was me yeah yeah um and then in terms of um yeah so there's a hundred recipes that are in the book the book is also like stuffed with like how to's and tips from chefs bartenders sommeliers so beyond the restaurants that are featured in the recipes so I was emailing with literally hundreds of people and with any cookbook there were also recipes that we couldn't end up printing in the final edition and that was actually one of the things that makes books very different from working on the internet yeah where I it's not that we've never cut things from a package or from a story but if I really want it it can run on site and we've done That was some of the recipes that we didn't have room for.

12:46But that was an adjustment. Yeah, it must have been tough to have like a real copy fit moment, which is like part of the magazine and book business. And let's go back to the conversion because I think that's a really big part of this book is actually getting recipes that work. And I've written books with two chefs and really the challenge can be making a restaurant dish work at home. so your recipe converter, what was the process like? Because I feel like these recipes work. I mean, they're great recipes. Yeah, so for some of the recipes, I went in with a clear idea of how I wanted to ask or get a chef to agree to let me do the hack or the corner cut that I envisioned.

13:31So for some examples of that, like Peter Cho, chef owner of Toki and Hanok, has these essence of ramen wings. And at the restaurant, he and his team, they're like doing food science, you know? Yeah. We're just using a packet of ramen seasoning. And it's so delicious, you know? And it's not, and like Pete was like totally on board with like, yeah, just rip it open, shake it over. So like your project is frying chicken. Yeah. You know? Or like with the Gian Famous Foods recipe, when I reached out to Jason, I asked if he would be down for us to start the recipe with a jar of chili crisp. And he was so into it.

14:14And then he was like, you know, the hand-torn noodles are a project and this tastes really good over rice. So we have the recipe for the hand-torn noodles in the book. But once you're starting with a jar of chili crisp and serving it over rice, that's now like a weeknight. Yeah, you're just articulating like the combination of flavors and ingredients at some point more than just like making everything from scratch. Yeah. Or like, you know, the Thai diner, the Thai disco fries. I was like, seems to me we should like, let's just use frozen crinkle cuts. And like, don't you think we should put them in the air fryer so they're really sturdy?

14:44Yeah. I can like handle being with curry. And, you know, yeah. I noticed this when paging through the book. I noticed a lot of really tactical and sharp recipe choices, which I love because a lot of these anthology books don't do that, which is fine. Some books are not for everyone. I love the shout out to Peter at Hanok. he's in our book Korea World and we did that jungle with the hot pot with him yeah and to echo like a previous theme like I worked with Peter a very long time ago at the Breslin this is somebody I've known yeah a real long time so I think he was down you know to see yeah what that adaptation to adapt some of the restaurant dishes we'll get into the sidebar content because I think it's really key to make this actually a cool reading experience but I do want to ask you about how do you tackle several of these, I would call them like master cuisines.

15:37And that's just like my broad terms of like pizza, sushi, and noodles plus sauce, which could be like ramen or any types of other noodles, even pasta. How are you able to translate these like this, these, these crafts, like pizza is like not easy at home. Sushi is, you know, there's books about sushi at home. That's a huge task for you as the author. It's a big task and you've risen to the occasion. How did you do that? One of the ways I approached those, as you called it, like master cuisines or like categories is I put them into breakout sections. So I gave them their own special section. And then that let me think about them separate from the rhythms of the other chapters.

16:18And then for like talking through sushi, for example, I knew there's no world in which this is a book to teach people how to make sushi at home. And in fact, I as a diner don't think you should make sushi at home. So when I was on the phone with Nick from Indo in St. Louis, I reached out to see we have a recipe of his for sashimi. And I also said, I was like, I have this instinct that you should go out for maki, but stay home for tirashi or, you know, like donburi. And he was like, you should stay home for hand rolls. I was like, tell me about that. So he walked me through his whole at home hand roll setup.

17:03Like he's sitting on the couch. He's got like Tupperware of rice. And, you know, so that's the opening of that section is go out for Maki, stay home for hand rolls as told to by Nick Wagner. And so that is the approach that I took with those cuisines. So like with pizza, the pizza section opens with like if you're getting into pizza, part of what you're getting into is gear. I talked to all these pizzaiolos about what gear you actually need at home. Yeah. And with the pizza recipes, for example, several of them, we were just like, we'll just use a store bought pie crust. But, you know, we have an at home dough recipe from Anthony Mangieri from Una Pizza Napolitana.

17:44That restaurant is very important to me. I was like thrilled that Anthony was down to share his strategies with a home cook. and we also have the dough recipe for the Al Forno grilled pizza because that one is actually doable at home because that restaurant isn't really a pizzeria. Yeah. Great call to have a grilled pie in there, but also using at-home dough or a store-bought dough or, you know, Bambi's even from the pizzeria down the street. Yeah, totally. And so that was one, I would say that was sort of the guiding approach was like trying to acknowledge when the move is to go out for it and what can you do at home.

18:22When you are thinking about this book project, Hillary, is there a recipe in the early days that you're like, I need this recipe? This is like the one that I need. And also, second part is, was there a time when you were just like bugging and bugging and bugging the chef to give you the recipe that eventually came in? Because I've certainly been there myself. Yeah. A recipe I knew we needed was the Veracruz migas. So Veracruz is a beloved Austin taqueria. And they work out of like food trucks. They now have brick and mortars. But like OG eater recommendation. I don't want to be wrong about this.

19:02I'm pretty sure Eater Austin was among the first media to cover them. And it's possibly like the single most recommended dish across the eater universe is like getting breakfast tacos at Veracruz. so I was like that to me is like the perfect recipe for this book it's one of our favorite restaurants it's the it's the dish and what was fun was not only were they down to share the recipe they were like we'll do a one pan migas it's like great it's a it's not it's like totally doable at home and um Veracruz like start when they when they started they were really about like smoothies and juices and they still do that it's just not what people are Instagramming so So like we also have a smoothie recipe from them.

19:44Oh, fun. You get to get them in twice. So you get like the full experience. So I think that's a good example. I think of the like OG eater faves like Kachka, Nongs. Yeah. And then I knew I also knew I really wanted to have a solid representation of old institution restaurants in the book. So I worked pretty hard to make sure we were getting recipes from places like Keene's or Tam O'Shanter in L.A. Yeah. Those historic spots. In terms of chefs I bugged, I will not be naming names. You know, everybody has different capacity. Everybody is working at different speeds. I am thrilled with the mix. Yeah.

20:27Yeah, it's you did such a great job with the classic versus the new and it doesn't feel like has a timestamp of 2023 in it. And yet it like inherently is. Of course it does. I mean, everything that is published has a point of view from that period. But you definitely didn't want to feel like super like only new places. Totally. And, you know, the thing with restaurants is they're living, breathing organisms. And I did my best to create to include restaurants that I think will continue to stand the test of time. But as we know, restaurants close for a lot of reasons. And it's one of those things is like I know with 100 percent certainty that restaurants that are in this book will eventually close.

21:06Yeah. And then we'll have this book. Yeah. To like forever have that memory and that connection to these restaurants. Yeah. I love the yellow, by the way. I'm just going to say that. Thanks. You picked a good yellow. It's yellow is tough and you picked a good one. I mean, the whole process of designing the cover was fascinating. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We do that a lot here at Pangerendamook. I'm sure. It is a big process. OK, so the Taylor Egg and Cheese from Summit Diner is the first recipe in the book. And there's definitely a lot of Hillary in this book, which I love because I love what you do. That was a choice.

21:36That was such a choice. I am from New Jersey. I am a proud Jersey kid. I really wanted to have a diner represented in the book. It's a staple of American dining. I think one of the things that New York based media organizations get wrong is like New Jersey. And so I reached out to the Summit Diner for a couple of reasons. One, it was one of my diners. So every New Jersey family has their diner. Like my family had three. Summit Diner was one of them. It's I think the stat is like it's considered or it's like, you know, all this stuff is a little apocryphal. But it's possibly the longest continuously operating diner in New Jersey.

22:20It's in a train car. And what I also loved about including Summit Diner is for New Yorkers, you can take NJ Transit to Summit and walk to the diner. So the book is also sort of a guidebook. You can absolutely use this as your travel guide. It's a wonderful guidebook. That's what I love about it. We want you to go to all these restaurants. And so part of picking Summit Diner as the New Jersey diner is New Yorkers or anyone visiting New York can easily get there. And I wanted a Taylor Ham egg and cheese because that's New Jersey. Yeah. Talk about Taylor Ham, what that is, because that's a very, very Jersey and unique to Jersey.

22:55And many don't know what that is. And it's fucking great. It's pork roll. It's like a salty cured pork product. It's difficult to find outside of New Jersey. So in the book, I recommended subbing in Canadian bacon, which at least you can slice to a similar thickness. Like crazy to say it, but Canadian bacon is not as salty as pork roll or Taylor ham. So, you know, in the recipe, I like recommend like not salty. Taylor pork roll and or Taylor ham. Holy shit. It is like the it is like taking salt to its absolute extreme. But I love it so much. Salt is so good with eggs. Yes, it is. And it's just a perfect breakfast sandwich.

23:37So that was really important to me to include my diner. Another specific question, between Oma's Hideaway and Nong's, and then, of course, Judy Rogers' chicken from San Francisco, your three chicken recipes or three of them are coming from the West Coast. It seems you're making a statement that roasted chicken and chicken dishes live in a very nice place in the West Coast. From the jump, I knew I wanted to do a whole chapter on chicken. And when you look at how chicken moved from being considered like, I don't know, like the yokels will order it. You know, like that's like the dum-dums. Right.

24:14You know, like the fool's order. Yeah. To actually having this really prominent place on the menu. So much of that goes back to Zuni. so I admittedly I don't even think I thought about the west coastness of it all in terms of who I was putting in that chapter it just organically yeah that's what happened um and the Zuni adaptation I love because obviously like the Zuni cookbook is iconic it doesn't need adaptation. So instead we worked on like, what if you do it on your grill? Like just taking the inspiration and moving it in a new direction. And also that recipe includes very good usable instructions for how to spatchcock.

25:01Yeah. But also like you can just get your butcher to do it. You can definitely get your butcher to do Whole Foods and those places, but definitely the technique in those three recipes. I definitely learned some things from it. Another sidebar I really liked was leveling up your burrito at home because I think burritos at home is something we always want to do it's like such a delicious fun food to serve for your fam or just yourself but how like oftentimes it's it's misses the mark right so what's your advice to leveling up the burrito at home well the advice we gathered um there's some really fun tips in there i mean i think it was um luis from maya boilers food in um in atlanta it was like phyllo dough and i was like that's crazy but like all right bust my gut you know um jonathan whitener from here's looking at you in la had like this great tip about like anytime you go out for like a barbecue that you like you just like take a little sausage put it in a little ziploc freeze it that is now like your burrito yeah enhancement at home um so you know all the chefs had such great tips about it But, I mean, for me, burritos are something I eat out.

26:10But I love the tips that we got because it makes it more exciting to think about doing it out. Yeah, the frozen bag of langanista having that ready to put in the burrito. Yeah, I agree. I'm more of an eating burrito out kind of person. But, you know, I moved to a spot in the Hudson Valley that doesn't have a lot of great burritos out. So I'm forced to make them myself. Yeah, and maybe Chintan from Dhamaco, his big like leftover burritos move is to air fry them. Oh, yeah, definitely. Like, yeah, for real. Chintan's going to do Mexican at some point. It's going to happen. Those guys are taking over the world.

26:45I love what they're doing. I'm glad you brought up his name. What did you learn putting the dessert chapter together? That's a tough one to me because desserts are obviously such a category on its own for a cookbook. You don't want to be an afterthought. And they're not an afterthought at great restaurants. So with the dessert chapter, I used the sidebars to really push into, like the chapter intro and the sidebars, to really push into why desserts matter at restaurants. And so some of the things I learned on a personal level, it was really validating to hear from professional chefs, even professional pastry chefs, that they too, when they're entertaining at home, often think of dessert as a place to do their best shopping.

27:35But that you're not necessarily, that you're not obligated to do a project to serve dessert with hospitality at home. the recipes that we included in the dessert chapter um i really wanted i'm really excited that we have the chocolate souffle from pajoli because i mean obviously souffle is so restauranty so i loved that there was that you know it's yeah it's so restauranty so we have that vibe but then we really also have some dessert projects that are very very manageable so reams like halwa truffles, a beginner can absolutely do that. And like, yeah, when you dip in chocolate, it's going to be a little messy looking, but you're going to you can cover up all your mistakes with pistachio.