Meet the Team

Daniel Kim

Queens, NY

Daniel did his five years on the line (Manhattan, dinner service, the punishing ballet of it) and then, quite sensibly, stopped. He develops recipes now from a quieter Queens kitchen and, like most reformed restaurant cooks, tends to make the food his parents brought with them from Seoul in the eighties rather than anything he was ever made to plate in a dinner rush. Holds strong, almost religious views on cast iron. Will, gently, ask you to stop washing it.

11 articles

Elena Rivera

Astoria, NY

Elena trained as a chef, did her time in a couple of Manhattan restaurants, and like so many women with both talent and sense, got out in her early thirties. Writes now about the unglamorous workhorses of a home kitchen - Dutch ovens, sheet pans, a decent thermometer. Comes from a Puerto Rican mother and a Dominican father, with childhood Sunday lunches in the Bronx that were rarely, if ever, small. Deeply suspicious of anything cooked quickly.

12 articles

Jenny Chen

Flushing, NY

Flushing-born, Taiwanese-descended, and cooking, by her own account, from the precise moment she could reach the stovetop. Jenny writes mostly about knives and recipes - though if you get her started on cutting boards she'll go eight hundred words without apology or warning. Maintains a stated, clinically intense interest in dumplings of every stripe - xiao long bao, pierogi, momos, manti - and a running list of fillings that almost certainly shouldn't have worked but did.

9 articles

Marcus Johnson

Harlem, NY

Oakland-made, Harlem-landed. Marcus spent his twenties ricocheting between Bay Area restaurants, moved east for love, and (as one does) stayed for the city. He writes about serious heat and not much else. Pizza stones, cast iron, deep fryers, the righteous cruelty of a properly preheated induction cooktop. Carries on a long-running, entirely private argument with himself about whether searing is a technique or a personality trait. Writes the kind of reviews that assume, quite correctly, that you actually plan to use the thing.

14 articles

Margaret Sullivan

Manhattan, NY

Margaret has been cooking (by her own reckoning) for fifty-two years(!), a stretch that covers three children, a full career in publishing, and (at last count) four distinct waves of kitchen-equipment fashion, most of which she sat out. Writes about the things she actually uses - mixing bowls, baking sheets, a properly sharp peeler, the knife she's had since 1987 and has no intention of replacing. Unsentimental about anything that breaks. Partial to roast chicken, butter in any quantity, and recipes that fit on an index card.

9 articles

Omar Haddad

Brooklyn, NY

Omar writes about tableware and glassware - the small, unglamorous objects that decide, quietly, how a meal feels. Born in Beirut, spirited away as a child, Brooklyn-based now and for years, though the kitchen he measures all others against remains, inevitably, his mother's. Uninterested in gadgets. Profoundly interested in things that last a lifetime and then some.

7 articles

Priya Patel

Jersey City, NJ

Priya's cooking begins with whatever's in the pantry and, depending on the hour, ends somewhere entirely unexpected. A home cook of about fifteen years with an almost religious affection for pressure cookers, rice cookers, mortars and pestles, and any small single-purpose gadget most people dismiss until they own one. Gujarati roots, a Midwestern childhood, and a cooking style that has drifted in about a dozen directions since - which we consider, around here, a qualification.

9 articles

Sarah Walsh

Brooklyn, NY

Park Slope, born and determinedly remaining. Sarah is a home cook with a baker's patience. the sort of person who reads cookbooks in bed and means it. She covers anything that plugs in - stand mixers, toasters, coffee makers, the lot. Holds strong, quietly held opinions about all of them, and will, if pressed, tell you precisely why your bread machine was always going to disappoint you.

12 articles