In short
Podcast Episode Notes: This Is TASTE - Episode 688: Gabrielle Hamilton on Writing Hard Truths and Prune’s New Era
Episode Overview
- Guests: Gabrielle Hamilton (chef/owner of Prune restaurant, author) and Nicola Olivieri (CEO of Italian bakery Olivieri 1882)
- Hosts: Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard
- Focus: Gabrielle discusses her new memoir "Next of Kin," the current status of Prune, and her evolution in cooking and writing. Nicola shares insights about panettone and the success of his bakery.
Key Themes and Discussions
Gabrielle Hamilton's Journey
- Background:
- Chef-owner of Prune, author of "Blood, Bones & Butter," and "Prune" cookbook.
- New memoir "Next of Kin" explores family dynamics, loss, and personal storytelling without a heavy focus on food.
- Writing Process:
- Began writing "Next of Kin" after the tragic suicide of her brother.
- Discusses the challenge of recalling her past while maintaining authenticity.
- Emphasizes the importance of truthfulness in writing, learned from her experiences with The New York Times.
- Prune Restaurant Update:
- Currently operating as a private dining space for special events, emphasizing a more personal and intimate dining experience.
- Reflects on the shift from traditional service to a more relaxed, appointment-only format, creating a more convivial atmosphere.
Food and Family
- Connection to Food:
- While her new book lacks traditional food scenes, she uses evocative imagery to depict memories and experiences tied to food.
- Prioritizes personal narrative over culinary recipes, choosing to create a literary memoir instead.
- Family Dynamics:
- Explores the complexities of her family, highlighting both the charm and brutalities of their relationships.
- Reflects on her upbringing and how humor served as a coping mechanism in her writing.
Nicola Olivieri and Panettone
- Olivieri 1882:
- Nicola and his brother Andrea focus on creating artisanal panettone, emphasizing quality ingredients and natural sourdough.
- Discusses the evolution of panettone from a Christmas specialty to a year-round delicacy.
- American Market:
- Highlights the success of Olivieri 1882 during the pandemic by being one of the first bakeries to sell panettone online.
- Describes the impact of the New York Times feature and Wirecutter’s endorsement on their business.
Key Takeaways
- Gabrielle's Writing Philosophy:
- Authenticity in storytelling is paramount; embellishments are unnecessary.
- Emphasizes the importance of not limiting herself to the expectations of food writing.
- Evolution of Dining:
- Prune's transformation signifies a shift in restaurant culture towards more personalized dining experiences post-COVID.
- Panettone as Art:
- Nicola's dedication to traditional methods and quality ingredients emphasizes the artistry behind baking.
- The growing acceptance and popularity of panettone beyond Christmas underscore changing consumer preferences.
Final Thoughts
- The episode beautifully intertwines personal narratives with broader themes of cooking, family, and the restaurant industry, offering listeners a profound glimpse into the lives of two passionate culinary figures.
Episode Links
- [This Is TASTE Podcast](https://tastecooking.com/)
Promotional Notes
- Sponsors: Mention of sponsors including Resi and American Express, Aura Frames, and Tempo Cooking with various promotional offers for listeners.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.
0:31I have a tendency to sort of saturate or hyperbolize just to add a little something. And the New York Times is like, sorry, Charlie, not happening. It turns out that you don't have to embellish in any way and that sometimes the spare facts or details on their own say so much more than your sort of schmearing. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef-owner of Prune Restaurant in New York's East Village and the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Blood, Bones, and Butter, The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, and the cookbook Prune. Her moving new memoir, Next of Kin, is an unflinching portrait of her dynamic family and its dramatic dissolution through death, betrayal, and time.
1:20It is a chef's memoir with barely any food, but plenty of propulsive writing. Today on the show, Gabrielle shares how she wrote this deeply personal book, how Prune is operating as a private restaurant today, and much more. Gabrielle Hamilton, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. You're fresh off of a long night in the restaurant, so I feel grateful for your time and hoping that you're a little caffeinated right now. I'll get there. It sounds like I've had 20 cigarettes or something. That's the perfect podcast voice. Ah. So typically I start the show by asking my guests to share an early food memory with me from their childhood.
2:02I feel that reading your books, I've had a lot of those kind of earlier food memories. So I was wondering if you had an early food memory from like the early days at Prune to share. The first thing that comes to mind, I don't know if it's a food memory, but it's a food victory perhaps, is, you know, we have Team Mexico who's doing the dishes or line cooking, etc. And when we would have family meal, it always was a question like, will they eat what we've cooked? And it's just such a great compliment when Antelmo would ask me for some of the food from Prune restaurant rather than like, can we please have tacos or can we have burritos?
2:44So it's not really a food memory. It was just the first thing that came to mind about Prune and food is like, I love it so much when the staff is happy. Yeah. And the food that you're cooking, you know, people come to Prune specifically to have that. But the people that are working like in the restaurant, like they're there to do their job. That's right. Yeah. I love that memory. I think a lot of people are wondering what's up with Prune these days. Can you give us an update? I'm running Prune kind of like a private dining room. So every restaurant, I guess, has one or has one. And you have to do regular service and then you have to take care of the 12 tops.
3:22that's in the dining room, and now I'm just running prune like the private dining room instead of having to do regular service. So I guess it's called prune by appointment only.
3:36So larger groups, anywhere from 10 to 26 for events, I guess. I don't like the word event. Yeah, I had the privilege of going to prune for a, I guess not event, a private dining experience, and I was getting the sense that, you know, I was there for a work event, but that you maybe prefer more of like friends, birthday party, wedding kind of vibe instead. It's just so personal in there and it's so conducive to dinner party. And I love the festivity that happens when people are so excited to see each other and not too much corporate stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And do people come in with requests of dishes that they want you to make or is it just kind of Gabrielle's choice?
4:23For sure. What I ask people what they absolutely can't have, what they despise, what they're allergic to, what all the dietaries are, and also what their hopes and dreams are. And then I cook accordingly. So I decide. I don't want to go too much down the, what's that called, like the nostalgia tour. So sometimes people are like, I want to have everything from the opening menu, that kind of thing. And it's not fun for me because obviously I love some of those things, but also I'm cooking differently. Not differently, but it's like being in a band and being asked to play Freebird. Right, yeah. Over and over and over again.
5:01So I have some new songs that I like to sing. You're not like a cover band to the old days of Prune. You're making new things. And it's a new place. And I think that's a really interesting aspect that has been really fun. And I've been doing this now for about three years. I think I'm just starting the fourth year of doing it this way. Maybe third year. Anyway, it's so fun to be allowed to emerge and to evolve. And so we have tons of old regulars, old customers coming in, but they are game for what's happening now. And you can see when people can't get it and they're just still following sort of all the old restaurant rules, like waiting to be told what to do.
5:43and what to enjoy. And it's so much fun when people pile in and they understand exactly what's happening. I'm going to cook and clean. We're going to shake the cocktails. You just come in. It's almost like Club Med. Yeah. Like you've already paid. It's all free. Just come on in and consume. And when people start piling into the kitchen and, you know, reaching into the pot and picking something out, it's so fun. It's like the all-inclusive resort restaurant of First Avenue. I guess speaking about the evolution of prune, are there any dishes you've put out lately that feel like something that maybe wouldn't have been on the menu when the restaurant was in its kind of earlier era?
6:23I don't think there are items per se. Now I'm cooking more family style. So that's always something I'd missed with prune, that everything has to be individually plated. And you can't have that sort of convivial like, hey, this platter here is meant for. You can cook a whole roast or something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. And it's just so much fun. Well, we're not here to talk about prune all day. We're here to talk about your new book, Next of Kin, which I just read and really enjoyed. And it's a really beautiful and personal and I think sometimes like challenging book. And I'm curious when you first started about writing it and what you kind of wanted to create.
7:03I started writing it probably the minute that I got the news that my oldest brother had killed himself. And I'll say this, and I hope it's not too shocking, but I immediately, not maybe immediately, but I must have been in some sort of denial or shock, but I found it almost funny early on. It must have been some sort of defensive response, but I was like, oh, my God, this guy who had been borderline OCD, a perfectionist, someone who had argued with me over the most minor, minor, minor details of how a tree branch grows. And he was a professional woodsman. And I heard or thought that he had gone out into the woods and hanged himself from a tree.
7:57And I don't know. I just thought that was funny in a way or in my immediate response. And I was like, there is a story here. There is a story that has to be told. As you point out, it's not an easy book and it turned out to not be a funny story at all. Once my adrenaline, I guess, sort of leaked out of my veins and, you know, sort of like the hydraulics coming out of your system. and then it took, what, eight, nine years to actually write because it's not a funny story at all. Yeah, I mean, I hear you say that and I feel like I relate to the humor as a coping mechanism response and also the writer's response to try to make sense of things through writing about them.
8:39When I was reading the book, I was really struck by just the intense level of detail of events that happened a long time ago, family dynamics, when you were a different version of yourself. How did you do that? Did you keep journals? Did you just meditate? That is such a good question. I think one of the hardest jobs as the writer, who is presumably omniscient. Obviously omniscient. And you know, you're supposed to know everything. You do know everything. You're in control of the material. But you have to go back and recall who you actually were at the time of the event, while still being completely savvy and knowing about what's happened since then, who you subsequently became or how you have subsequently understood and organized the information of those events, let's say.
9:31So to re-inhabit the mindset and personhood that you were is the challenge, the challenge of all challenges, it felt to me. But it's the most vital one. Otherwise, you're kind of fibbing or you also can lose the vitality of the moment if you don't reconnect with it. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And how does that get done? I'm like, I don't know, babe. I just got it. I just do it. Do you have like a writing practice? No, I think my writing hygiene is terrible. My writing practice is when's the deadline and do I have to give the check back? And if we're down to that wire, I'm writing my brains out.
10:16Yeah. I feel like I have such a selective memory for the past that even remembering like the way that I felt about a sibling as a seven-year-old compared to who I am today is such an interesting thought process. And I figured that you must have be referring back to journals, but maybe it is just kind of the confines of human memory. I do have journals. I have – they're packed away somewhere. And I'm sure at that age, I don't even know if I have those, but they're probably filled with like, you know, and today I walked the dog. I went skinny dipping for the first time or something. No, I think I don't know what this is and I want to do some research about it, but I have a cute memory for detail.
11:02And I do send all the books that I ever write out to the people who appear in them long before the books ever make it into the public sphere. And the corrections are so close to nil. So that's something I don't know how to account for. But apparently not only are the corrections nil, but they are people respond with, wow, that's exactly right. Or that is how it looked or was. So I'm not quite sure how that happens. That must be a really satisfying response to get as a writer. A big theme in the book is this idea of fact-checking the past. And it seems clearly that you have been impacted by writing for The Times as long as you have.
11:45And having fact-checkers call your, you know, older mother like up in her mountain home and correct like whether or not she cooked something for you 50 years ago. It's pretty rigorous. I'm grateful for it. I was trying to think what was my first published writing piece long, long ago. To go through the New York Times, there were four editors. Whatever. I have a tendency to sort of saturate, to sort of elide or saturate or hyperbolize, just to add a little something. and the New York Times is like, sorry, Charlie, not happening. Was it Thursday or Friday? Was it 2.10 p.m. or 3.30 p.m.? Even for a stupid essay about what, radishes or a tomato sandwich, etc.
12:38But I've really come to rely on it. It turns out that you don't have to embellish in any way and that sometimes the spare facts or details on their own say so much more than your sort of schmearing. Yeah. I mean, especially when you have the source material that you have, the family that you grew up in is so colorful and unusual that I think if you were embellishing, the reality of it maybe would be less potent. It's a truth. The quieter you are, the more resonant it can be. Is that what you tell your students? What do I tell them? We talk about everything there is to talk about with writing. But I think it's Robert Louis Stevens who just said, why not just say what happened?
13:24That's a really powerful thing to hear as a younger person, I think, especially in this day and age where everyone is saying all kinds of things online all the time. And also obfuscating things and then overstating things. So I was like, could we just follow that as a dictum, perhaps as an edict? This episode is brought to you by Tempo. We are all really busy this time of year, and sometimes cooking is not an option. Though we crave a healthy, creative, home-cooked meal that an Uber Eats delivery or slice of pizza isn't going to satisfy. Tempo is a smart solution. Delicious pre-made meals, creative and always interesting, arrive to your door perfectly portioned for lunch and dinner and ready to eat in just two minutes.
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17:32That's A-U-R-A frames dot com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. When I was reading the book, I was curious if you felt any pressure to be including food scenes in Next of Kin just coming off of your career as a chef and the previous writing that you've done, because I feel like there really are not a lot of food scenes beyond smelling ratatouille on the wooden spoon that you were being spanked with as a child or something like that.
18:09Come on, that's a beautiful scene. I mean, it's so evocative. I was cooking with my spoon and sniffing it and thinking, Like, what would that feel like? I didn't want to put any food in this book. I remember when I wrote Blood, Bones, and Butter, which was ostensibly a chef memoir, a food memoir, there was a lot of pressure. Or maybe people were asking me to put recipes in. Are you going to include recipes? And I was so, I don't know, righteous about it. I was like, no, man, I'm writing a memoir. I'm not going to sort of value add. Like, well, if the writing sucks, at least you get a recipe in the back or something.
18:49I really felt adamant about winning or losing on the terms of the form. So this is a memoir. If you want a recipe book, I'll do that. And I ended up doing that next. But for now, there's no recipes in this book. I felt the same way about Next of Kin. I didn't want to have it be a food book. I wanted to have it be a literate memoir. And so I didn't want to include any of that aspect. And it's not a book about food. It has nothing to do with my life as a chef or in the restaurant business. It's all about family. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because you were obviously running a restaurant during some of the events that happened in the book.
19:32And I think you only even mentioned Prune by Name once. You keep on saying, like, the restaurant over the writing. And I was kind of paying attention to that and thinking about how it felt like you were trying to, you know, have family be a kind of separate box. But obviously food was a huge part of how you were raised and, you know, running restaurants has become a thing in your family. So there is some kind of tie there. Yeah.
20:00Maybe I blew it. I mean. No, no. Maybe the idea is to be like prune, prune, prune or chef, chef, chef and sell it to the whole food world. And not does it I mean, I guess I'll ask you back. Did it feel like I abandoned my readership by not writing about food? Or am I allowed to collect a new readership by? Because I think it's I mean, it's a question for me. I think people who read about food and chefs and also us in the industry, we have larger minds, or I don't want to say larger minds, but like we read other books. We're not – we're an educated crowd or we – am I right or wrong? I'm not sure.
20:44No, I mean I wasn't disappointed. I think I felt like it was a choice that you were obviously making. You could have included more restaurant scenes if you wanted to. You could have included the things you were eating at these moments in time. And, you know, I obviously don't know you very well, but I do think that you are an iconoclast. You want to do what you want to do. And I felt intentional to me that you wanted to not include details about the restaurant because you didn't want people to talk about it as a food book or as a restaurant book. You wanted it to be like a family memoir. That's exactly right.
21:13I really have a fucked up brain. And so I – or my ego is really fragile, maybe. Let's just say that. So I'm never sure. Am I a writer? Am I a food writer? Am I a girl writer? I always have this defensive stance, which I'm loosening up and letting go of the older I get. But I have been very defensive of like, am I just a dishwasher? Can I really be a real writer? Like, I really want to be. I didn't want to put food in it. No, and I'm not trying to like drag you back down into the food writing side of it, despite the fact that this is ostensibly a food related podcast. I think even what you say about not wanting to have recipes in Blood Bones and Butter, I think it would have been a disservice to that book to have recipes because the narrative is really the point and the writing and the prose is the point.
22:09It's interesting to hear you say bring it back down. And I don't know if I invent this or you're agreeing with me. Or this is how I felt. There's something I've always felt a little bit like I'm in the ghetto. Like if I write only in food publications or only about food that there's like a larger universe that I want to be part of. And I think this may be false. Sam Sifton told me something so helpful years and years and years ago that when I was describing this kind of defensive like, I don't know, I'm just a little food writer, a hyphenated writer. And he said, you know, everybody picks up the paper.
22:51And who knows what they read above the fold or in section A? Everybody reads the food section. And for me, it was really revelatory. I'm like, ah, the food section, it's true. And it can be kind of your Trojan horse in a way. You can write your food essay, but really get what you really want to say into it if you are clever. No, I completely agree with you. And I don't think of food writing as like bottom of the barrel or less than. I think that it's just been such an expanding element of culture over the past however many decades. And I think like the quality of writing and food writing has increased so much that to me, I think it's a credit to food writing to have your essay appear in that section of The Times.
23:33But I can understand how maybe people who, especially people who don't cook, I think maybe look down on like food writing as a concept. That's interesting. I think it's done both. It's gotten better and worse. Yeah, because there's more of it. So I feel like I work in two arenas, food, cooking, and writing, in which everyone seems to feel entitled to call themselves like a chef or a cook or a writer. And when you – you know, it's just so funny. There's no barrier to entry in a way. Whereas if you said like, well, I'm an opera singer or I'm a major league baseball player, people are like, whoa.
24:07Or I'm a pediatric oncologist. It's understood that not any Joe can do that. Right. But cooking is like, oh, I have a recipe. I throw parties or I write, I have a story to tell. And, you know, it's just... Yeah, I think it is interesting to see like both sides of those things at once, especially in like the sub stack era where everyone can have a newsletter. I think that's obviously great that like people can be sharing things on a platform. But, you know, there isn't like major league newsletter writer. I know I get lost as a result, I must say. There's a lot to take in. I don't know how to find what I should be seeing or reading or eating or knowing.
24:49I find it so disorienting. I love a guide. I love an ambassador, a curator. Yeah. That's like the benefit of newspapers, I guess. Yeah. And someone whose opinions you, their subjectivity is revealed so you can understand what their point of view is and then decide whether you agree or not. Mm-hmm. It's interesting to think about that in terms of your own books and your own kind of like subjective nature as the person telling the story. I feel like you seem to be thinking a lot about your family and like learning a lot about them while writing the book. And I'm curious if that process kind of taught you anything about yourself.
25:28Yes, I had to really check in with how fully I embraced the gestalt of my family. Yeah, good word for it. adherence to so many actually very great things, and then maybe some self-satisfaction and self-charmness with our own eccentricities and brutalities that it was important for me to relinquish. And I was glad to do it. I had been very proud of the Hamilton way. And I think some of the sort of, you want to call it the core values of the family really needed to be rethought and rejected. There's a line in the book, you say something like realizing that you were made interesting by the fact that you were related to interesting people.
26:28It's true. I loved my proximity to the colorfulness, the charisma, the larger than lifeness of my parents, my siblings. It's whatever. It feels very great to be on a, what do you want to call it, a winning team, even though I don't know that we're such a winning team. But you know what I'm saying? Like, we were a big family in a small town, a colorful, well-known family in a small town. Being raised with principles, whatever they may be. And some of them being like, don't be mediocre, don't be normal, be unique, be special, be different. Our whole shtick was to be contrarian. I always giggle at my mom who, when we would be in the car and pass, you know, someone had hit a skunk or a skunk had ejected its aroma.
27:27and my mom would just insist that we roll the windows down and take huge inhales where most people would be pinching their noses and she was like take that in breathe it breathe it and you know so that's emblematic of how we were raised did she truly like the scent or did she just think it was good exposure therapy i think she loved the scent and i'll tell you the truth i do too i think it's i mean it has to be at a distance if your dog's been hosed it's really bad it's too too ammoniated, but in the distance now, it's something that I do also cherish. What about the scent of gasoline? Also. Yeah.
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28:00Yeah. I think there's certain, I don't necessarily have that gene, but at least I like cilantro. Yes. Yes, I do too. Maybe that's all kind of related somehow in the brain. I mean, I think it does taste like soap, but you love the taste of soap. It's not a dispute of you have the gene where it doesn't taste like soap. You understand the soapy quality of cilantro. It's a yes and. That's funny. It's like, I love skunk, and it is offensive to some people. Yeah, but in the distance, it's like a reminder of whatever, nature or earth, something we could make up. I love in the book also you're talking about your dad's ideology of beauty.
28:40You say diamonds and burlap, this kind of high-low. I'm curious if you were going to define your own, if there are any words you would kind of pull in. Yeah, his diamonds and burlap aesthetic was evident everywhere in our house, in his clothing, in his car. Like he had a truck, but he also had a cute little car when he needed one for the city life. He had a real diamonds and burlap. It's true, a high-low aesthetic. He also, I think, was all about the show. So it was all about what's being presented, what you could see visually. He was a set designer. It was all mise en scene completely. I don't know what's wrong with me, but the way I was wired, I guess, is really about the infrastructure.
29:33And maybe this is so stupid to call it this, but like inner beauty. what I lack in sort of external expression of beauty I think I work very hard to define internally so I really like beauty of system and I would say a motto of mine my whole career has been it's not fun unless it's fun for everybody and that's true of raising my children and having a family and running the restaurant. I don't like the customer to harm the employee. I don't like the employee to harm the customer. I don't like the front of house to harm the back of house or the back of house to screw around with the FOH. So for me, it's just not fun unless it's fun for everybody.
30:23So how can we make this whole system work? Same with raising children. It's, boy, do I not want to sit on the floor doing a crowd, like making Legos. That's just not fun for me. But I'll find something that we can all enjoy. Yeah. So, because you don't want a miserable mom. Well, what do you do when it's not fun? You just figure out a way to change it up. There's a way to find what can be fun. I think the childhood dinner table does not have to be a place of torture for anyone. So how can we make this work? I understand that you're children and you're going to need to eat sort of beige food. But I'm a grown woman and I need to eat things that have flavor.
31:08So let's make this work out. I always feel like thinking about chefs feeding their children is so interesting. These days I feel like some people that I follow are making their own baby food for their kids and doing all of that. Is that something you ever dabbled in? I'm sure I've pureed homemade stuff with an immersion blend. And it's not that hard to, like, boil the shit out of something and then puree it and give it to your kid. But I was not a precious, you know, curating their meals. It's sort of the joke. It's like the cobbler's children who don't have shoes. Right. The poor children of chefs who don't really have gourmet food.
31:45They eat nuggets at home. But actually, no, I mean, they've eaten very well. I'm sure. Yeah. Do you take them out to restaurants? Well, you know, now they're grown. and I did take them out to restaurants for a period and then stopped when it wasn't fun or certain restaurants you could take them to and then it's really fun to take them out now and as they got a little older and could eat more things and enjoy more things. Now they want to work in them. What do you do about that? My oldest son really is so attracted to it But he just did an Iron Chef competition at his college among the co-ops where they each have a— That's so cute.
32:30That was so fun. So fun. And then my younger son is a bar back in the city. Anyway, they understand the restaurant business. Yeah, I'm sure they do. How do you feel about the current state of restaurants here in the city, post-COVID, new era? Yeah, I don't think I'm savvy enough. I don't really know what's going on. I can't tell. So are people getting paid properly? Are the operators doing well? I worry about everyone, as I did during COVID when we had the shutdown. I was like, oh, this is a great opportunity. everything is shut down the world is instantly aware of how important we are and how much they need us and want us that we are yes we are restaurants but we are some kind of i mean we really act as a public utility in a way especially in new york where people don't necessarily have the space to have people over to you know escape their lives the profound longing that people had to get back into a restaurant was, I think, very instructive.
33:42Like, ah, we really, really matter in your lives. This is where you've proposed, where you've broken up, where you have celebrated. It has nothing to do with the food. Yes, it's the nice girl at the door who welcomes you in and the gal behind the bar shaking your cocktail. Like, all of it matters, the soundtrack, et cetera. But really, it's just my life has transpired in these spaces. so I wonder how it's going for everyone because I thought we should have fixed some things while we were closed I thought we really should have fixed some super broken systems I have personally in my little space but I've always done that, I've always created the restaurant and operated it the way I think it should go but I don't know what's going on in the larger world I have to ask other people I haven't been out Is that a reason why you haven't reopened Prune as like a full service restaurant in the way it used to be?
34:40Is it easier to make it like whatever your version of sustainable is in a private concept? that's very true it's it's so weird and funny how I've always thought that you're supposed to expand and grow and I did that with prune of course you started with five dinners and you're like well you better get seven dinners and now we better get lunch and oh let's put brunch on and then should I get another space should we do more just to make more money or get your margin larger somehow and it turns out this is so funny it's kind of like Marie Kondo-ing your closet You sort of get rid of all of the excess, and now you know what you have to wear and what you have to work with, and it's more fluid.
35:22And I mean that in every way. Like, it's more lucrative. It's smarter. It's more sustainable. There's no waste. Here's my fun fact about the new prune. It used to take five front-of-house and back-of-house people about 17 minutes, six nights a week, to take out all the garbage and recycling and compost. It takes me now about five minutes one day a week to do it. And I still make the same money. That's crazy. And there's less managing and operations and all of that to deal with? Zero. Wow. I know. I've skinned the cat, but I couldn't have done it at the beginning of my career. It's only because I have a, I mean, you don't say Rolodex anymore, but the Rolodex is thick.
36:08And the phone, and I don't have a phone, but the phone rings every day. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Had I been early in my career, I don't think I could have done it this way. It's so fun. Everyone gets paid a ton of money. It was the answer for me. And it's also very fun in there. Yeah, it feels like being in, obviously it's a restaurant, but it is like a home as well in terms of the warmth inside of it and the people that you have working for you there all seem to really know each other and like each other, which is the way that you want to feel in that space. It's not fun unless it's fun for everybody.
36:43Yeah, I say. That's the tagline. My parents' one for me was they taught us about type two fun, which is something that isn't fun in the moment, but it's fun to tell somebody about after. Oh, I'd like that. I'm borrowing that, if I may. You can take it for your grown children. I don't know what that did for me. Maybe it turned me into a storyteller because I was always thinking about how would I tell this story in a way that's entertaining to somebody else. You're not going to like this now, but boy, are you going to like it later. Yeah, it's going to be funny to talk about it. So I was reading the book and I learned that you're a Scorpio, which I am as well.
37:18And I'm curious what you did for your recent birthday. Happy belated birthday. Happy birthday to you. Thank you. What's your date? November 10th. I'm the 6th. Well, we're going to Vietnam in January. My wife bought fancy tickets on the plane because she can't sit in the back. Yeah. And so I get to enjoy her needs. And so we're going to Vietnam in the front of the plane. And I'm very excited. That's the birthday big trip. And on my actual day, I shared it with two Scorpios dear friends. And we have a lot of overlapping friend group. And we piled into prune. And I ordered takeout tacos from El Diablito.
38:04And we mucked it up in there. Did you do a birthday cake? Oh, and I bought frozen. It wasn't Sara Lee, but it's like Venezia eclairs, mini eclairs. And I arranged them in a nice, you know, kind of croquembouche style on an elevated tray. It was so easy and fun. The cocktails were fresh and made to order. The food was takeout. The dessert was frozen. And I did something that all of my friends have been asking me to do for years and years and years, which is could you actually just be at your party? And that's what I did. I was very available. I love that. It's like the perfect gift to yourself and to other people that you're not going to be in the kitchen chopping things up the whole time.
38:51It's a lifetime's truth that I am working, working, working, working, working, working, working, working. And then just when I'm finished and I'm ready to have a drink with everybody, people start being like, this was great. Thank you so much. And they're on the way out the door. And I'm like, wait, I just got here. So it's like as you get older, you get wiser and you get to take out tacos and sit down with your friends in your restaurant. So good. I love that. I like sharing it also. It's not all about you. Yeah. It's funner for me to be in service to others. Do you have a lot of Scorpio friends?
39:26I do. I have also a lot of Scorpio friends and I'm feeling very haggard right now at the end of Scorpio season. I have like one more close birthday. But I was saying before that I am I don't think I'm allowed to have any more Scorpios in my life because I have like no more capacity for birthdays. Do you love being a Scorpio? I think some of these people are very attached to their signs. Yeah, I mean, I honestly wasn't before I realized how many people in my life were Scorpios. And then I kind of felt like, well, if I have this weird draw to all of these people and they have this thing in common, I love them, then I love that for myself as well.
40:02And you associate it with traits that are associated with your sign. I associate it with intensity, not necessarily in a bad way, but I think that all of my friends who are Scorpios are able to like instantly get deep on something. They have a good time, but there's just kind of like a depth of connection there. Strong agree. Okay. Strong agree. I've always wanted to turn this into an astrology podcast. Oh, I'll come back for that one. Do you know your moon and your rising? I'm Sag. Oh, both? Sag rising. And I don't know my moon. Okay. I think it might be also Scorpio, but I have to take a look.
40:37Oh, wow. Okay, I'm a Libra rising Gemini moon. Oh, wow. I have to learn more about it. Well, on the next astrology podcast, we'll talk about it. I want to play a rapid-fire game to close today, so I'm going to make you play some favorites. You can just tell me the first answer that comes to mind. I'll do my best. This is where I panic. It's going to be okay. Okay. Your favorite season for cooking? Well, can I actually tell you my least favorite? Yeah. I find it very hard to cook in the spring. it's such an anticipated season and you can't wait to get out of winter and you finally get your hands on what the first fava bean or whatever and then it disappears and it's not reliable and you can't count on it and so I find spring the most frustrating even though you've been waiting for it and you can't wait to see these green things again also I'm not a big ramps fan and ramps are on everybody's menu in the spring and I'm like I feel like ramps are only a big deal because they're one of the first things that are available, and people are just fiending for anything that isn't a root vegetable.
41:41That's right. That's right. Even though it's not very good. I mean, they're nice, but they're very expensive for what they are. They're just so funky. To me, it always tastes like when you've diced your shallot two days ago and you open the container. Think of it like skunk. Yeah. All right, I will. Your go-to breakfast? Just a cup of coffee and maybe at around 11 a.m. a salted hard boiled egg. Your go-to late night snack. Well, that's also going to be a salted hard boiled egg. That's so funny. It's like this idea that you're cooking or, yeah, you're just like grabbing whatever the F there is to eat.
42:27I mean, you could go to the bodega and get some chips, you know? Yeah. I can't eat shit. It makes me feel bad. Eggs. They're really handy, you know? Your favorite special occasion New York restaurant? Oh, babe. I'm really going to fail you here. Okay. Special occasion Levodor. 100%. That is so fun. Great restaurant. A favorite New York bar? eel bar that's that's a good one for us to it's sort of equidistant between my workplace and my home yeah and i can get ashley to go there anytime she'll agree winner uh the last book that you read and loved oh uh laurie will ever's care and feeding have you read that no it's been on my list oh she's such a good writer it's so funny and she does a great job cool okay finally a fictional food scene like from a book or movie or something made up that you want to eat you're shaking your head i couldn't find it not a single like children's book movie anything
43:40okay i'm the word i mean and this is where you learn about me that i'm such a bad foodie because i don't barely give a shit about food it's not true like i love to eat and but i don't watch food movies particularly, and I'm not those. I'm terrible. I'm the worst. No, I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'll come back for the astrology podcast. We'll come back for the astrology. Yeah. Your favorite thing about being a Scorpio. Don't make me talk about food. This is terrible. Are you sorry you invited me? No, I think this is such a fun conversation, and it's very much in service to the book itself, which is maybe next of kin is not.
44:16It's not a food book, but it's a great Gabrielle Hamilton book. Oh, that's nice. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for failing. Thanks for letting me fail on your show. No, no, you can't. I won't let you end on that. Say thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.
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45:21I had to Google that and man, that stuff is nasty. So you can cook confidently without wondering what's in your pan. Stop cooking with Toxic Cookware and upgrade to Our Place today. Visit fromourplace.com slash taste and use code TASTE for 10 % off site-wide. With a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping and returns, you can experience this game-changing cookware with zero risk. That's fromourplace.com slash taste and use code TASTE for 10 % off site-wide. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière. An exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story.
46:09The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus. The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you.
46:52Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on three things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. Nicola Olivieri, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you, my friend? Good. Thank you so much, Matthew. And you? I'm really sad, actually, because I'm not in Italy. I just returned from an amazing trip, and we had the opportunity, Mauricio Leo and I, to come up to your incredible bakery, Olivieri 1882.
47:38It's in Arzignano, which is near Verona in northern Italy. And you and your brother, you guys just showed us everything. You're such great hosts. And I can't wait to talk about Panettone. I'm just thrilled. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the introduction, Matt. And it's always a pleasure to hear from you. We had a special good time when you were in Italy. And you're always more than welcome to come back to visit our bakery. Speaking about panettone, of course, it's our main product. Me and my brother, Andrea, we take care of the company every day. And for us, panettone, of course, is very important, as you saw a couple of weeks ago.
48:28For us, panettone is the main product, and we dedicate a lot of time searching for new ingredients, the best one. We don't like to have any compromise on the quality of ingredients. But especially I will talk about the natural sourdough that you already saw. And as you saw how much we are obsessed with the quality of Lievito Madre, which is natural sourdough. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the Panettone straight up because it is a very special product. I've purchased it, I think, for two straight years. And it's naturally leavened, which makes it have just such an incredible texture. So different from the panettone as we maybe used to.
49:18Tell us, our listeners, who maybe don't know what panettone is. Describe the traditions around panettone in Italy and really how you think about this as a very unique product. Basically, Panettone was born a lot of years ago here in Italy, especially for Christmas. It was a kind of bread or cake, I would say a leavened product just dedicated to Christmas. Because here in Italy, we have a lot of tradition about in every period of the year, we have some new products. for example for easter we have colomba which is a kind of uh of panettone but made uh in a different shape uh we have a lot of different uh type of products uh every period of the year so basically first of all initially it was a um a typical christmas uh christmas cake and basically i would say it's something between a cake and a bread you know a lot of times i heard of panettone in US named as a bread.
50:36But it's not, I think, because as you saw, it's more a pastry creation. Yeah. A more rich bread because it's rich, especially our recipe, it's very rich in butter, it's very rich in egg yolks. It has a lot of fruits, a very high quality artisanal candy fruit so it's not a simple bread and it's not a cake you know it's something in between I would say but in the last years fortunately especially here also in Italy the panettone is not more for Christmas but it's becoming a product that we eat all year round yes in a different shape for example in Easter we have Colomba but also in summer we have the the summer panettone you know with some different fruits so right now here in Italy it's becoming something very popular during all the all year long yeah so it's not more like only a dedicated dedicated Christmas product well it's very and for our bake for us as a baker I would say it's one of the most difficult product that we can do.
51:54Because as you see, as you saw here in our bakery, despite comparing, for example, to a bread, which is also very difficult to make it if you do it with the natural sourdough. With panettone, we have two more kind of mixes inside. We have more steps of natural fermentation that we need to manage very well in order to have a product but super soft as our panettone is. And also the texture, you know, like a well texture as the panettone should be. It is incredible to see it made. I mean, it is absolutely a long process. It's one of the most difficult breads you can make as a home baker. I know Mauricio has done it and has a recipe on the perfect loaf.
52:44And it's just astonishing how you can do it at scale. It's multiple mixes, it's multiple rises. And it has this really like handcrafted appeal to it when you receive it because it has that crown, that beautiful crown that is perfectly shaped even when shipped over to America. It segues to my next question. You and your brother, Andrea, you guys really were smart to go online. And you told me during our visit that you were one of the first bakeries to actually sell Panettone directly to the United States. Tell me a little bit about how you acknowledged this American market for Panettone and how Olivier Re1882 has done such a cool job of really just getting it into the American home at great cost and at great lengths.
53:36Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much, Matt. Yes, as you say, we were, I would say, the first one here in Italy as a bakery online. because our website was already online in 2015, 2016, I think. And we trained a lot during these years online. We sold just a few pieces in that period. It was not very common here in Italy to buy Panettone online 10 years ago, for example. but that kind of approach helped us a lot during COVID because when the COVID arrived we were basically ready to scale up and to start and approach a new different type of market so when COVID came here in Italy basically it was Easter and we were just being awarded by the Gambra Rosso, which is the food leading for the Italian guide about the best Colomba.
54:46So about the best panettone for Easter, for example, here in Italy. So, and we were the only one selling online. So basically we started from that point. Also because selling panettone online is a very different type of company. Yeah, we are a bakery, of course, but if you sell online something it's a it's a very different company you know usually uh we also have a different kind of market uh type of market such as for example b2b we we sell a lot around the world uh in a boutique in some food boutique you know wine shop and all this stuff like luxury department stores and all these kind of shops but it's very different to to sell online so basically we We trained a lot during COVID, especially the first year.
55:38And after one year, we thought that we were ready to approach other markets, not just Italy online. We always thought to be a global brand. And for example, as a B2B company, we cover more than 76 countries. And so this kind of approach, our curiosity, our ambition led us to start also the American website. because we really like USA. We are in USA a lot of times. And always we said, why an American customer in 2020, you know, he cannot buy a panettone, a fresh panettone as our Italian customer can do it in our bakery or in Italy everywhere, you know? So basically it was the first point and we wanted to be the first mover.
56:42So we've been the first mover we still are the only one Italian company that sells online just baked panettone from Italy to United States still after four years so we're very happy with it so we start this journey and right now the American website is I would say it's more important for sure right now than the European one So that's an interesting point because I think a big moment for your company has a really cool story. You wake up one morning and you realize quickly that the New York Times had written about your Panettone and Florence Fabricant wrote about it. But then later on, it ends up becoming the number one panettone and wire cutter, which we know is such an influential website and publication that covers products.
57:43And they rarely cover food. But for some reason, they decided panettone was the one. And you're the number one panettone. What's it like waking up and realizing that the New York Times has just written about your company? Yeah, the first time when we started the American website, Olivieri1882, it was not known as a brand in the US, of course, because we started just to approach the market. And so we had just, you know, very few orders just from some people that we know, you know. So it was like two or three orders, you know, per day, so nothing. Uh, so basically, uh, we, we woke up and we, we went to the office and we saw like, you know, almost a thousand of, of orders.
58:36And we thought about maybe a bug in, in the website or something. A virus or something. A virus. Yeah. It was strange, you know, because it was, uh, uh, for us impossible, you know, to, to pass from your two, three pieces to 1000 orders. so yeah basically we we called our digital agency uh that we we help us to to manage the website and all this stuff and we say guys uh my there is something strange on the website maybe uh there is a bug or something else so they say yeah probably surely it's impossible that you you go through you know like three orders to 1000 in uh in one day so let us check and i will let you know within a day, you know?
59:21So yeah, we were quiet about it. So after five minutes, we received a call from the agency and they said, hey guys, did you see the New York Times wrote an article about you? So he said, no, we didn't see nothing. So it's better if you keep on going and if you push it and if you start to produce a lot, you know? So, and then my dad was scared about it because it was like, hey guys are you able to do it you know or you prefer to stop the website say what no well no we have to stop the website you know so uh it's it's a challenge that we need to that we want it and finally we get it so so right now uh we're going ahead you know and we were very good um with this uh with this challenge honestly all our teams uh were on on the on the on the on track you know, to satisfy all the orders and everything.
1:00:20How did you scale up? I mean, you go from three orders to 1 ,000 overnight. And we know, we just talked about this is a three-day process. You weren't staffed for it. Nicola, what was going through your mind and how did you figure it out? Yeah, it was, you know, it was very strange. And in that period, we had some workers that were in the shop, in our bakery here in Azziliano. So we used them. We asked them for help us in the production and also during the shipment in the warehouse. So everybody worked a lot, honestly, in that period. We had like a month, very, very hard. But everyone did a very great job.
1:01:14And we learned a lot, you know, because as I said before, it's a very different company. Managing a company online is another thing. So, for example, right now, we have an experience that I would say, if you want me to sell a pair of shoes online, I would be able to do it. because it's completing another company. And so we had also the opportunity to learn a lot in that period. So basically, we had a very, very busy, busy month, Matt. How do you think about your panettone versus some of the U.S. boutique artisanal style panettones? okay um our panettone i would say it's a traditional italian truly italian one okay a truly artisanal panettone one as you say before some of our planet some of us panettone are more you know like airy bubbles panettone i don't like it it's a different it's a different panettone for us but the traditional one that we used to eat here in Italy is very different I would like that kind of texture more in a bread than in a panettone but as I said before, panettone for me is not a bread it's something more than a bread so for us our texture is more uniform more soft and to do this job we take care a lot of natural sourdough.
1:02:58As you said, also, we have a lot of types of natural sourdough in order to have different kind of texture. You know, we are very obsessed with it. I would say that in America right now, there is maybe a starting point, a beginning point of panettone production. I don't see a lot of producers. I saw some new, you know, some new bakers that tried to make some good panettone, of course. What we want to bring is our idea of panettone, which is the, you know, which is the traditional Italian one. It's very different also by the imported Italian brands that you already, or you used to see in chefs, in supermarkets in US, because that kind of panettone are more industrial.
1:03:54You're being kind when you call it industrial. You can buy a panettone at CVS for$5. And I think it's done a great disservice for what you're doing in Italy and some of the other great bakers in America. It's another thing. It's another market for us. So yeah, it's panettone, but it's different. Our panettone also, it costs more. uh it costs more than one one hundred dollars but there is a you know there is a meaning why uh you saw how many how many times and how many care we we took about the panettone you know we took four four days in total to make a panettone from zero to you know to to ready to to eat so uh it's very different honestly we think that uh bringing online a real artisanal panettone from Italy, you know, where the original panettone is made, it has a big value, you know, because it's super fresh and you can taste something that, you know, an Italian customer, as an Italian customer, I would say also, and this is super strange, that sometimes, most of the times, I would say a customer from East Coast in US have a panettone in less hours than in Rome, for example.
1:05:13Yeah. So it's truly unbelievable, honestly, but we are in 2025 right now. So we need to adapt also everything into the technology, as you saw, also in our bakery. We still are artisanal, but we like to bring value where it's possible also with machines, you know, and let our responsible, our managers, our bakers, to study more about fermentation, all the techniques. We have some good relationships with the University of Padua to study new types of natural sourdough and all this stuff in order to have a very good R &D. Yeah, I mean, it's$100, so it's not for everyone. But to be clear, you're baking it in your bakery, and then you're heading to the airport.
1:06:05And it's shipped on planes to two-day air, and you can get it in your home quicker than in parts of Italy. I think that's a huge, huge point here is to get it to you in the U.S. market as quick as possible. So this is the point, you know, so it's a big value, you know. So every day from here, from our warehouse, the Pone Tone is coming to Bernice Airport. We are very lucky because we are just half an hour from the airport of Venice. And every night there is a flight from Venice to the East Coast to New York. So basically, yeah, as we said, we are faster in East Coast than in some points in Italy, in South Italy or somewhere else in Italy.
1:06:53So this is a very good point, I think, because it gives the opportunity to the American customer to have a super fresh panettone that they never had, maybe, you know, in Italian way. Well, I brought mine back. I brought back panettone. I brought back bread from Italy. And honestly, it's special when you can get something baked in Italy fresh at your doorstep. I'm going to wrap it up there. I love what you do, Nicola. Thanks to you and Andrea for the wonderful tour. I hope we can hang out soon. For sure.
1:07:32This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergang Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skurzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.
From the publisher
Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village and is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef and the cookbook Prune. Her moving new memoir Next of Kin is an unflinching portrait of her dynamic family and its dramatic dissolution through death, betrayal, and time. It is a chef’s memoir with barely any food but plenty of propulsive writing. Today on the show, Gabrielle shares how she wrote this deeply personal book, how Prune is operating as a private restaurant today, and much more.
Also on the show, we catch up with Nicola Olivieri, the CEO of Italian bakery Olivieri 1882. The topic is panettone, which is one of our favorite holiday traditions. Nicola runs the bakery with his brother Andrea and has an amazing story about growing their business and making our favorite panettone around. The Wirecutter agrees.
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