20th Anniversary celebration with culinary creatives Julia Turshen, Christina Tosi, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fanny Singer, and Will Guidara

Summary

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Design Matters with Debbie Millman

20th Anniversary Celebration with Culinary Creatives

Guests: Julia Turshen, Christina Tosi, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fanny Singer, Will Guidara
Date: November 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This special 20th anniversary episode of Design Matters celebrates the intersection of food, creativity, and life design through conversations with culinary visionaries: cookbook author Julia Turshen, Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi, acclaimed restaurateur and writer Gabrielle Hamilton, design entrepreneur Fanny Singer, and hospitality leader Will Guidara. Through revisited interviews and memorable stories, host Debbie Millman explores how these guests have designed not just their food, but the arc of their lives, illustrating the creative process in the kitchen and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Julia Turshen: The Art of Recipe Writing

Segment starts: 04:20

• Early Passions and Education:
  • Turshen recounts her childhood obsession with cookbooks and family support in following her interests.
  • Chose a liberal arts path at Barnard (studying poetry and sculpture) instead of culinary school to become a better communicator.
    • Quote: “When you know, you know… if I knew how to communicate effectively, I could do anything. I already knew how to cook. I didn't want to go to culinary school.” — Julia Turshen [05:51]
• Creativity in Recipes:
  • Links between writing poetry and writing recipes: both require concise, evocative communication.
    • Quote: “Writing a recipe and writing a poem are very similar. You're trying to convey this idea as economically as possible.” — Julia Turshen [06:59]
• Recipe Testing:
  • Discovers recipe testing as a teen, seeing it as a less obvious but vital career in food.
  • Emphasizes the importance of empathy for home cooks and the need for flexibility and experience in adjusting recipes.

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2. Christina Tosi: Joyful Experimentation in Baking

Segment starts: 12:41

• Inventiveness as a Teen:
  • Daily cookie and improvised “Rice Krispie treats” experiments in high school pantry with whatever cereals were on hand.
    • Quote: “The Rice Krispies rarely had Rice Krispies in them... it became the look on their face when they're bonding with this crazy, kooky Rice Krispie treat… the kitchen became the place where I could ask the question, what if?” — Christina Tosi [13:27, 14:43]
• Embracing Picky Eating:
  • Tosi was a selective eater as a child; sweets were her domain of control and delight.
  • Did not try a raw tomato until age 18, highlighting her transformation into a curious chef.
    • Quote: “I think it was one place that I could actually have control and drive people a little crazy. I don't eat that. I mean, I eat sweet...” — Christina Tosi [18:03]
• Creativity as a Calling:
  • Transitioned from applied math/engineering studies to the French Culinary Institute.
  • Saw the kitchen as a space for exploration, autonomy, and creativity.
    • Quote: “I had a voice in my head that was like, I want to be creative for a living. And that was something that was not a part of my upbringing... so I kind of set out to figure out what that was.” — Christina Tosi [22:20]
• A Relentless Work Ethic:
  • Sped through college, craved direct experience, and excelled in professional baking.

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3. Gabrielle Hamilton: Merging Cooking and Writing

Segment starts: 25:59

• Prune’s Origins:
  • Opened Prune in 1999 in NYC’s East Village, aiming to provide top-quality food in a relaxed, inclusive space.
    • Quote: “I wanted a place you could go after work or on your day off if you had only a line cook's paycheck but also a line cook's palate.” — Gabrielle Hamilton [03:03, replayed at 29:25]
• From Writer to Chef and Back:
  • Letting go of her writer identity provided clarity and purpose, only for the two paths (writing and cooking) to merge later.
    • Quote: “I said to myself, like, you're not a writer, lady... you're a cook. And it was incredibly liberating... miraculously, the two paths reconverge.” — Gabrielle Hamilton [26:25]
• Cultural Shifts in the Industry:
  • Changes over two decades: from personal touch and small gestures to corporate branding and commodification.
    • Quote: “What used to be...citizen restaurant has become...an unruly and colossal beast... What was once your personality has now become your brand.” — Gabrielle Hamilton [32:57]
• Pandemic Reflections:
  • Closing Prune in March 2020 was emotionally and spiritually exhausting; the closure symbolized industry-wide uncertainty.

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4. Fanny Singer: Home, Memory and Intuition

Segment starts: 39:40

• Food Memories and Sensory Experiences:
  • Recounts her first taste of gelato in Italy as a transcendent childhood memory.
    • Quote: “The taste...was intoxicating...I wanted to merge with this food, not just to eat it, but to experience it.” — Fanny Singer [40:04]
• Instinct in the Kitchen:
  • Advocates tossing salad with hands for intuition and better result.
    • Quote: “You have to toss salad with your hands...it acquaints you with what your dish needs and helps you feel more intuitive about...corrections that need to be made.” — Fanny Singer [42:55]
• Food Sharing as Affection:
  • Views sharing and “stealing” food from others’ plates as a gesture of intimacy and curiosity.
    • Quote: “I've always bristled at a date who's like, I'm ordering my dish, you're ordering your dish...what's the point?” — Fanny Singer [44:41]
• Distaste for Precision in Baking:
  • Finds baking’s demands for exactness incompatible with her personality; prefers improvisation and bold flavors.
    • Quote: “I just didn’t have the mathematics or reflexes for baking... I’m very happy to go back to salad.” — Fanny Singer [47:18]

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5. Will Guidara: Designing Hospitality and Culture

Segment starts: 48:34

• Hospitality as Design:
  • Inspired by restaurateur Danny Meyer, who brought intention and creativity to hospitality, not just food.
    • Quote: “He was the only person in America...bringing the same amount of creativity and intention to what was happening in the dining room...” — Will Guidara [48:59]
• Building Culture through Language and Care:
  • Meyer’s “isms” created a culture where caring is celebrated, not dismissed as uncool.
    • Quote: “Where people stop pretending to care less in order to be cool. But rather the environment celebrates the people that care more.” — Will Guidara [51:43]
• Learning from Diverse Experiences:
  • Guided by advice from his father, worked both at the corporate level and on the restaurant floor to become well-rounded.
    • Quote: “There are corporate smart companies...and there are restaurant smart companies...my dad wanted me to learn from different companies...and take the best from each.” — Will Guidara [53:28]
• Creativity Fueled by Business Acumen:
  • Emphasizes that financial health is essential to creative hospitality.
    • Quote: “The more resources you have to invest in being creative, the more creative you can be.” — Will Guidara [45:45, also 55:58]
• The Importance of Hands-on Work:
  • Simultaneously doing accounting and purchasing made abstract business concepts real and fostered deeper understanding of both sides of operations.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Writing a recipe and writing a poem are very similar... you're trying to convey this idea as economically as possible.”
  — Julia Turshen [06:59]

• “The kitchen became the place where I could ask the question, what if?”
  — Christina Tosi [14:43]

• “I wanted a place you could go after work or on your day off if you had only a line cook's paycheck but also a line cook's palate.”
  — Gabrielle Hamilton [03:03, 29:25]

• “You have to toss salad with your hands... it really acquaints you with what your dish needs.”
  — Fanny Singer [42:55]

• “The more resources you have to invest in being creative, the more creative you can be.”
  — Will Guidara [45:45, 55:58]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:20 — Julia Turshen on recipe writing, testing, and creative process
• 12:41 — Christina Tosi on baking, experimentation, and her path to pastry
• 25:59 — Gabrielle Hamilton on starting Prune, balancing writing and cooking
• 39:40 — Fanny Singer on food memory, culinary intuition, and kitchen improvisation
• 48:34 — Will Guidara on hospitality design, company culture, and creative empowerment

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Concluding Note

Through these lively conversations and reflective moments, Design Matters illustrates that creative careers—whether in food, design, or hospitality—are shaped not just by passion and talent, but by an ongoing process of questioning, intuitive experimentation, and purposeful culture-building. The 20th anniversary celebration is a testament to how food can be as much about design as about flavor, and how the way we create and connect at the table shapes our broader lives.

Transcript

[Christina Tosi]

I love to bake because I love to eat.

[Gabriel Hamilton]

I wanted a place you could go after work or on your day off if you had only a line cooks paycheck, but also a line cook's palate.

[Debbie Millman]

From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode in celebration the 20th anniversary of design Matters, we'll hear from some of the food writers, chefs and restaurateurs Debbie has interviewed over the years.

[Fanny Singer]

I've always bristled at a date who's like, I'm ordering my dish, you're ordering your dish.

[Will Guidara]

The more resources you have to invest in being creative, the more creative you can be.

[Julia Tershen]

Well, we're done. I know where I want to go to school.

[Capital One Announcer]

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[Interviewer]

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[Debbie Millman]

Debbie and her guests have been making this point for 20 years. Design Matters because everything made by people is designed, from our lamps and furniture to our apps and logos and bikes and buildings. Everything has been thought through by somebody or teams of somebodies, including our food. The way it's prepared, the way it's served or packaged, the way it's presented. Over the years, Debbie has interviewed a number of people who have spent their careers not only making and serving food in new and delicious ways, but also thinking and writing about it. On this episode, we're going to play some excerpts from our interviews with a few of them. Let's start with Julia Tershen, the cookbook author and food writer. Debbie interviewed her in 2016.

[Interviewer]

I read that you always loved and coveted cookbooks and that when you were a kid, you couldn't fall asleep before reading a cookbook in bed. And I understand that your mom used to send you issues of Gourmet magazine to your sleepaway camp. Yet you studied poetry and sculpture at Barnard, where you went to college. And I read that you briefly dabbled in the harmonica as well. But why did you decide to go for a liberal arts education versus going straight into culinary school? At that time?

[Julia Tershen]

I feel like I need to revisit the harmonica. It's an interesting question because I do feel so unbelievably fortunate that I've known what this thing is that I love to do my whole life.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you are so lucky.

[Julia Tershen]

And I feel even more fortunate that I grew up in a family where that was so supported and encouraged to the point where I think my parents the assumption was I would go to culinary school and I would open a restaurant, and that seemed like a linear path for someone who was interested in food. That has never been the career I wanted to Have. And so when it came time to, you know, think about college and stuff, I, you know, I loved food, I loved cooking, but I also loved being a student. And I particularly loved writing and growing up with parents and publishing. That always felt like something that would have some part in my life. And it felt like a really comfortable place for me to exist. My mom took me to Barnard on a college tour because it was nearby where we live, so I could see what a college tour was like. And I was like, well, we're done. Like, I know where I want to go to school.

[Interviewer]

Really that easy to please.

[Julia Tershen]

I feel like when you know, you know. So it was. I mean, I could talk about Barnard for an hour for the whole show. I mean, I just loved it. And it was kind of similarly a place where I think your passions were really supported. And I always felt like if I studied English and studied writing and specifically poetry, if I knew how to communicate effectively, I could do anything. I already knew how to cook. I didn't want to go to culinary school. I wanted to really learn to be kind of a more well rounded communicator.

[Interviewer]

So what about the sculpture aspect?

[Julia Tershen]

The best part about sculpture is it's how I met my best friend Yvonne, from college, and he and I were in the same sculpture class. That was really. Because going to Barnard means you have full access to Columbia, which is kind of a great thing. And so for an extracurricular activity, I thought, when else am I going to have access to this huge sculpture studio and like, learn how to weld metal and all these things that I've never done again? But I'm really glad that I learned how to do so. That was just pure fun. But I actually do think both. It's funny you bring it up. I think both sculpture and poetry influence a lot about how I construct recipes and cookbooks and things like that.

[Interviewer]

In what way?

[Julia Tershen]

I have this whole theory about poetry, about writing recipes, because I think maybe it's how I justify spending a fortune on a college education about poetry. But I think writing a recipe and writing a poem are very similar. I think you're trying to convey this idea of something as economically as possible. You're trying to get the point across and give your reader in both places enough information to get it. Because you can really, in a recipe, go on and on. You could write a whole book about how to bake a cake or even scramble an egg or something. Like if you really get into nuances and you're trying to just stick to the page. And to me it's the same thing in poetry. And hopefully reading a recipe has the same effect, which is it really brings something to life. It makes you want to get in the kitchen and transports you. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What made you decide to start working as a recipe tester? I know that you got this extraordinary job to be an assistant on a book that would be a compliment to a show that Mario Batali created called Spain on the Road Again. But what gave you the motivation or the impetus to start as a recipe tester as opposed to a sous chef?

[Julia Tershen]

You know, there's so many jobs in the food industry that I don't think are that obvious to people who aren't in the industry all the time. And it's something that I love to talk about because I think there's a lot of roads in this kind of small world that you can take. And I was really introduced to the concept of recipe testing when I was in high school because my dad, for the short period of time when Rosie o' Donnell had a magazine, he was her art director.

[Interviewer]

And that was the Red Book magazine that turned into Rosie.

[Julia Tershen]

Yeah, exactly. And I went to high school in Westchester. I would take the train into New York City as often as I could. I would meet my dad at his office, which at that point was across the street from Greg, and I would hang out in his office, which meant for me, hanging out in the test kitchen, which I, up until that point, didn't even know that was really a thing. There's this amazing man there, Frank, who tested all the recipes, who ran the test kitchen, who kind of took me as his intern. I think he was very generous because I was this guy's daughter just hanging out. But I was like, put me to work. And he really taught me how to test recipes and taught me that this was a life you could have and a career you could have. And I was always trying to, you know, if something in a recipe said it should be sliced thinly, I would try to show off to Frank and slice it as thinly as I could so you could see through it. And then he was like, you know, this is. We're testing recipes for home cooks. Like, you don't have to impress me. Just show me how you would do it, like, at home. And that's always stayed with me. So that was really kind of my entry point.

[Interviewer]

How exactly do you go about testing a recipe?

[Julia Tershen]

That is a great question, because there's not really a definitive answer to it. To me, it's different based on what recipe I'm working on. And whether I'm helping someone write their own recipe based on something they cook, or if I'm taking an already existing recipe and kind of developing it, or if I'm testing my own, it all comes down to. For me, I write the recipe, I print it out. I'll just take you through the logistics. I print it out, I take out all of my measuring cups and spoons and scales and all the things I don't actually use when I'm cooking, but I use when I'm using testing. And I follow the recipe to the letter as if I were making it as a first time cook at home, without any previous experience on that particular recipe. And as I'm working on it and testing it, I am taking notes constantly. So I just go through it. And you go through one at a time and a few of them you have to make over and over until they're right. It's hard with testing recipes because you're not just making dinner, you're trying to make the best possible version of what this thing is, this really technical undertaking. But I really work on home cook recipes, so I try to be as relaxed about it as possible.

[Interviewer]

If you were making spaghetti and meatballs and the meatballs had a list of ingredients, if you made the meatballs and then tested and tasted the meatballs after they were created and realized there was too much salt or there was too much pork, how do you know how to adjust to get the right combination? So you only have to make it one more time, or is it really just a crapshoot and you make it over and over and over and over again?

[Julia Tershen]

I think, I mean, first there's no such thing as too much pork.

[Interviewer]

Bravo.

[Julia Tershen]

I think it comes down to just experience and have it. You know, at this point I've made meatballs like so many times. But I also work on recipes I've never worked on before. So it's really about going into the testing as informed as possible and trying to guess what things I'll be troubleshooting anyway. And certain things you can adjust on the spot. And certain things you do have to make again, like a meatball is a good example. I'll make the mixture, I'll cook off a little bit, and if it doesn't taste right, then I'll add more salt to the whole thing and try it.

[Interviewer]

See, I was imagining you making this giant butt over and over meatballs and spaghetti, bringing it to the table, testing it and saying, hmm, needs more salt. Time to make it again.

[Julia Tershen]

That happens all the time with baking Recipes, because you can taste a batter or a dough or something before it goes in the oven, but there's no real way to totally see how something's going to come out until it comes out of the oven. So baking recipes are the ones that I usually end up testing a few times over.

[Debbie Millman]

Julia Tershen from 2016. Christina Tosi is a pastry chef and food writer with David Chang of Momofuko. She co founded the Milk Bar. She's also the author of several cookbooks and a memoir. Debbie spoke with her in 2018.

[Interviewer]

I know when you were in high school, you made cookies every day. You would bake all night instead of going out. But one of the things that you made were Rice Krispie treats, but you would amend them with anything but Rice Krispies.

[Christina Tosi]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

So talk about how that happened.

[Christina Tosi]

My poor mother. I would always search out at an early age. Like, I'd literally walk into the pantry, and I'd be like, I'm gonna make cookies. Like, it was just a given. I'm gonna make cookies. I'm gonna make brownies. And then I became obsessed with this pursuit of the Rice Krispie treat. When I 10th grade, I would make a batch of Rice Krispie treats every single night like clockwork. And I'd cut it up into eight squares and bring it in for my girlfriends. And we eat them outside the lockers every day.

[Interviewer]

It must have been very popular.

[Christina Tosi]

I tell you what, it was. It became a very demanding thing. But the Rice Krispies rarely had Rice Krispies in them. And what I loved about that pursuit was I was just going into the pantry. We never really kept Rice Krispies in the pantry. We always kept, like, whatever cereal I wanted to eat with milk. And I started falling in love with mixing and matching them and going, what if I put. What if I make a Rice Krispie treat but with only this kind of cereal or with this and this kind of cereal? With this kind of cereal and sesame seeds or that kind of cereal and butterscotch chips or what have you. And what I found amongst my girlfriends was they all loved something different, right? And they loved the pursuit of, like, the surprise and delight of, like, what's it gonna be today? And then making the request for the thing that they had fallen in love with the week before. And, I mean, it takes maybe maximum 10 minutes to make a rice Krispie treats.

[Interviewer]

10 minutes in your world, Christina, not mine.

[Christina Tosi]

I mean, I had it down, though, Debbie. I used the same pot. I had, like, cut up the stick of butter into how many, you know, Rice.

[Interviewer]

Well, I think you use twice the required butter.

[Christina Tosi]

One of the secrets to a great Rice Krispie treat that no one will ever tell you is that you should use way more butter than any recipe.

[Interviewer]

Doesn't that just make everything better? Way more butter.

[Christina Tosi]

Yeah, does. But that tinkering that falling in love with, I think also, I love to bake because I love to eat myself. But I also love to see the joy, the expression on people's faces that I bake for. It's not about me. I'm an introvert. I'd rather just hide in a corner. But it becomes the look on their face when they're bonding with this crazy, kooky Rice Krispie treat or this cookie or whatever it is that I've dreamed up. But I have been tinkering in the kitchen from a very early age also, because with the Rice Krispie treats, I would play this game of, like, well, what happens if I add too much butter? Zing. That's like, now we're talking. But I'd go like, what happens if I add too much marshmallow? And I'd be like, eh, that's not really my thing. But I would constantly question the rule that was put in front of me, but only in the kitchen. I was, like, a total rule follower in every other place of my life. But the kitchen became the place where I could, like, ask the question, what if? And that is a really big part of, like, my guiding principle. Just asking the question, like, what if? I totally get what the rule is, but what if?

[Interviewer]

Now, given your career today and given what you've just told us, I think people would be shocked to learn that you're actually a picky eater. You were a picky eater as a kid. You didn't have your first raw tomato until you were 18 years old, girl.

[Christina Tosi]

I still remember that day. Cause I was about to throw that out there for you. I remember the time and the place. I had gone to the University of Virginia for my first year of college to the engineering school. Cause I was like, great. I like a good challenge.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that and applied math. We'll get to that in a minute.

[Christina Tosi]

And I remember sitting outside at this, like, sandwich shop with this guy that had become my buddy because he had all of his engineering classes with me, and he was a little bit of an outcast, as was I, at this fancy school. And he was ordering a sandwich, and I was, like, getting a cheese sandwich with mustard, which is like my go to. He was like, yo, Toes, why don't you get some like, tomato on there, some lettuce. And I'd be like, nah, I don't do that. That's not. I'm not here for that. And I remember, like, the light going off being like, a tomato could be cool. I don't actually even know what that tastes like. Which is crazy to think that I spent summers growing up on a farm that always had tomatoes. Or I'd be like, don't bring that near me. I'm here for cheese. I'm here for bread.

[Interviewer]

What was the response? Did you like it?

[Christina Tosi]

That moment was a really big tipping point for me. And I always loved dessert. And I know exactly what I like in dessert. I know exactly what I don't like in dessert. Cause I ate so much of it, and I still do. But that opened this incredible universe of, like, wow. I've never even had that before. I've never had this. And I think one of the things that drove me into the curiosity that I have in the kitchen and with flavors is because, I mean, I basically limited all the flavors that I had access to up until that point. So, I mean, like, I mean, I didn't know what arugula was. I definitely never had an avocado until I was, like, in my 20s. And it was like my taste buds were coming alive and awake in a deep, exciting way, and I couldn't get enough of it.

[Interviewer]

Why were you so picky?

[Christina Tosi]

My poor mother? Probably because it was fun to be picky. Because when you're a rule follower, like, you have no control. I am the lowest on the pecking order in a family of women that are all Scorpios. I just get steamrolled. And I think it was, like, one place that I could actually have control and drive people a little crazy. I don't eat that. I mean, I eat sweet. I would eat sweet corn. Anything with butter and sugar. And flour and chocolate.

[Fanny Singer]

Boom.

[Christina Tosi]

But like, anything else, mostly, no. I like orange, but if it's creamsicle, not a real orange.

[Interviewer]

And.

[Christina Tosi]

Cause, like, when you can have cheese pizza every day or Mac and cheese every day, why would you let anyone know that you're interested in eating anything else?

[Julia Tershen]

True.

[Interviewer]

Yes. I could and often have had pizza three times a day. I consider it a food group. So your mom was an accountant. Your dad was an agricultural economist, and you've said that they were the most passionate accountant and agricultural economist you could ever meet, and they wanted you to find something you were passionate about at university. That being the case, Christina, how did you end up majoring in applied Math and Italian at James Madison University.

[Christina Tosi]

So I transferred from UVA because I didn't see myself there. I didn't realize in leaving high school that I knew myself pretty well. Going to college was a given. You certainly weren't gonna argue with two people that worked their booties off to make sure that you got a great education. And it was brass tacks like, you can do whatever you wanna do. Which was what they would say was, you can do whatever you wanna do, but you're getting a college degree. So I went to uva and I realized really quickly that I stuck out like a sore thumb. And I. Cause I'm really casual. I'm casual and I'm kind of unapologetically casual. I've always, from a young age, liked to sort of march to the beat of my. From these like colored culottes that my grandma would sew as a great example. I ran competitively through high school. And when you run competitively in high school, you wear like the matching, like the equivalent of like a running jacket but for a varsity jacket. And you have all these uniforms and you wear the fancy running clothes. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna do that. I cut my hair really short and I would wear these obnoxious shorts that were like spandex with obnoxious textures on them. Or instead of like the warm up pants, I would wear pajama pants that I liked because I don't know, I just kind of liked going into a crowd and knowing that I needed to assimilate and that I would, but also making very clear that I was only. I was going to play by the rules, but like, that I needed to have my space in a room. And when I went to uva, it felt like there was nobody else that understood the need for that space. And engineering school wasn't the right place for me. I ended up, like becoming obsessed with all of my applied mathematics classes and I took languages as my electives. And those were the two things that I woke up every morning excited to go do. So I transferred. I was like, I want to be happy. I work hard to follow the rules to be happy. And those are the things that made me happy. So I studied them and I got the heck out of college, got my degree and got out.

[Interviewer]

You got it in three years, I believe. Right? You wrote it up.

[Christina Tosi]

So you're pretty intense. I mean, I was like. I was. I knew that college was not gonna be the thing that I held onto forever. So I was like, let's get this Done.

[Interviewer]

Was there any part of you that was imagining doing something with applied math when you graduated?

[Christina Tosi]

After my first year of college, I remember, like, getting home and my mom would do this. When we were done with elementary school or middle school, we'd get home, she'd be like, cool, we're going to the farm. Let's go pack up your stuff. I remember getting home for my freshman year of college. My mom was like, like, cool, when you get in a job? And I'd be like, what are you talking about? I just. And she's like, when are you getting a job, girl? And she would send me to temp agencies. And because I'd be like, oh, mom, you're such a drag. Why won't you just let me be a college kid? And I had gone. Because they were like, well, what are you interested in? And I would say, math. And so they would, like, make me temp at actuary offices in places where like, quote unquote, professional mathematicians were, which totally. That's a totally legit thing. But after working the front desk there for a few days, I was like, I gotta get out of here. Like, I realized in graduating that there were certainly professional tracks for the subject matter that I had studied. But I think the one thing that kept tugging at me was, I don't want to sit all day. I want to be on my feet all day, and I want to be exploring, and I like to travel and I like to wander. And I had a voice in my head that was like, I want to be creative for a living. And that was something that was not a part of my upbringing. Being creative was absolutely a part of my upbringing. You've never met, like, a more artsy, creat craftsy family of women, but that was what you did in your free time. That was what you did when you got home from work. It was certainly not something you made a profession out of. And so I kind of set out to figure out what that was.

[Interviewer]

After you graduated, you applied to the French Culinary Institute. I did. Was that when you decided, okay, I want to devote my life to this? Or was it just more of a hey, let's see how this feels?

[Christina Tosi]

I had zoomed through college because I was like, I gotta get out, I gotta get out, I gotta get out, like, trying to sprint my way out, that the second I was out, I was like, oh, man. I didn't have a next step planned. I was working in a restaurant while I was going to college. Because I was like, I'm not here for frat parties. This is not my thing. I got a job in a restaurant because I was like, this is great. It'll be like the social hour of going to a frat party. But I'll be around something that I'm interested in, and I'll be making a living that's fun. I learn a skill set. And I became really obsessed with, like, restaurant culture, the sense of family that existed. And I would bake a ton at home and bring the baked goods in, and it kind of just triangulated itself to like, okay, well, what do you. What's the next step? What are you gonna do? And the only answer I could answer for myself was like, I like to make cookies. And I was like, great. That's an answer. Go. And the go for that was, okay. I have a college education. My parents are really big on education. And professionaliz yourself and professionalizing yourself, if you like to make cookies means becoming a pastry chef. And so I was like, great. Well, I want to go to the most difficult place there is, where the best restaurants are and where I will be put in a super intensive culinary school program. And the answer was French Culinary Institute. New York City. I mean, right there on Broadway and Grand amidst a ton of restaurants in a bustling city that never slept.

[Interviewer]

How'd you do in school?

[Christina Tosi]

Great. I was actually just at my alma mater last night and was telling a story. Someone was like, what are some of your culinary school memories? And I was like, well, I remember graduation mostly because I wouldn't let any of my family come because there was a little bit of a juxtaposition of my parents being like, what are you doing? A little bit, like, why would you do this? And I was like, the only way I'm gonna, like, they're gonna be proud is if I win. If I win every award. And so I was like, you can't come to graduation. Because I was nervous that I wouldn't, and I did. And then I was like, oh, they're not around. Okay, it's fine. That's my fault.

[Interviewer]

Good lesson.

[Christina Tosi]

But, yeah.

[Debbie Millman]

Christina Tosi from 2018. Gabriel Hamilton used to run Prune, the celebrated bistro in New York City's East Village. She's the author of several books, including Blood, Bones, and Butter, the Inadvertent Education of a reluctant Chef. Debbie spoke with her in 2020, when the pandemic was still going strong and much of the world, including Prune, had shut down.

[Interviewer]

It seems like from the moment you walked into the space that would become Prune, you felt an electricity about what that space could be. I think you described it as a blue electricity. And yet you were also mourning what you thought your life was going to be. How did you navigate between those two states of mind?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

Well, the first thing I did was closed the cleavage in my heart by letting go of the idea of being a writer and experienced an enormous wholeness when I stopped this, constantly looking over my shoulder toward what I thought would be a greener pasture of writing and a life of literary pursuit. And when I finally focused my eyeballs and my heart on one thing, I said, I am now a chef, or I wouldn't call myself a chef, but I'm. I said to myself, like, you're not a writer, lady, so let's get with the program here. You're just not a writer. You're a cook, so get with it. And it was incredibly liberating, believe it or not. It just sort of to have your feet all moving in the right same direction, to not be straddling two conflicting passions. And it gave me a lot of energy and purpose and meaning. And miraculously, having come to that, what I've often called the fork in the road and taken one path and mourned the loss of the other path. But the miraculous thing is that I didn't know is that up ahead, the two paths reconvere. And it was, as you can see, I'm laughing. And that's how I felt in the moment, too, as if I'd had a huge joke on the universe and I was the one having a fun time. I was like, oh, my God. Someone just asked me to write my first essay and it got published, my first published piece of writing, after I'd already said goodbye. So you just never know what's coming up ahead.

[Interviewer]

Did you have any trouble uncleaving your heart to get that space open again, to be able to wholeheartedly try and do both?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

No, I would say that was never a problem. I think the problem there on after was, how do you get the work done? That's a lot. I don't know about you, but I find writing takes some really substantial time.

[Interviewer]

It's brutal. I'd rather go to the dentist.

[Christina Tosi]

And.

[Interviewer]

I hate the dentist.

[Gabriel Hamilton]

From there on out, it was just sort of, how can I get to the page when I'm picking parsley all day and butchering fish, when I really need to be sitting down and writing with a clear brain? But add to that later, a couple of children and other distractions, and then it's just been a torment of time management, but nothing ever about a divided sympathy or loyalty or passion.

[Interviewer]

Prune was the nickname your mother gave you when you were a child. I'm wondering if you could read an excerpt about starting the restaurant It's a very different time in New York. 1999 New York City, the East Village.

[Gabriel Hamilton]

At that point, New York didn't have an ambitious and exciting restaurant on every block, in every unlikely neighborhood, operating out of impossibly narrow spaces. There was no eater, no Instagram, no hipster Brooklyn food scene. If you wanted something expert to eat, you dined in Manhattan for fine dining with plush armchairs and a captain who ran your table wearing an Armani suit. You went uptown for the buzzy American Brasserie with bentwood caneback chairs and waiters in long white aprons. You stayed downtown. There was no serious restaurant that would allow a waiter to wear a flannel shirt or hire a sommelier with face piercings and neck tattoos. The East Village had Polish and Ukrainian diners, falafel stands, pizza parlors, dive bars, and vegetarian cafes. There was only one notable noodle spot, Momofuku, opened five years after Prune. I meant to create a restaurant that would serve as delicious and interesting food as the serious restaurants elsewhere in the city, but in a setting that would welcome and not intimid my ragtag friends and my neighbors, all the East Village painters and poets, the butches and the queens, the saxophone player on the sixth floor of my tenement building, the performance artists doing their brave naked work up the street at P.S. 122. I wanted a place you could go after work or on your day off if you had only a line cook's paycheck but also a line cook's pallet. And I thought it might be a more stable way to earn a living than the scramble of freelancing I'd done up until then.

[Interviewer]

Prune was born in the ungentrified and still heavily graffitied East Village, and from nearly the time you opened, you got extraordinary reviews. Were you surprised by the response?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

Initially, it was profound and overwhelming and completely surprising. The name alone, Prune, was a point of contention, as you can imagine. Everyone when I It's like telling someone the name of your baby before you have your baby, I guess. And people want to weigh in on the name and so sure, I guess Prune is a terrible name for a restaurant because it conjures like diuretic or poop jokes and old folks. I mean, I know that that about five years into my restaurant, the United Plum Board of California, or it was like the Prune Council of California asked if they could switch their name to Dried Plums. And I don't. I can't remember if there was a.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I remember that because Prune was so unsexy. Yeah, he made it sexy again.

[Gabriel Hamilton]

I can't help it. It was my name and it was true. And so I had to. And the whole restaurant was going to be about the food that I cooked naturally or that I really come from, like the food that my mother showed us and taught us and had us eat and those experiences. But it's a terrible name, apparently. But that was the first review that we got about, I don't know, six or eight weeks after we opened. And the first line of the review said, prune's the name and I like it or I love it. And we were off to the races from there.

[Interviewer]

Gabrielle, you've written about how since Prune opened in the East Village in 1999, the neighborhood has change tremendously in ways that reflect with exquisite perfection the restaurant scene as a whole. Can you elaborate a little bit?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

Yes. In the 20 years that I've been in this business, it changed while I was in it. And what used to be sort of, as I said in that essay, sweet, gentle citizen restaurant has become a kind of unruly and colossal beast. And for example, the waiter has become the server. The restaurant business has become the hospitality industry. What used to be the customer has become the guest, which sort of confuses a lot of the categories. What was once your just your personality has now become your brand. And the small acts of kindness, the way we used to just share our talents with each other, became things to monetized.

[Interviewer]

It feels somewhat terrifying, doesn't it?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

I wouldn't say terrifying, just alarming.

[Interviewer]

On March 15, you shut down Prune because of the pandemic. And now you and hundreds of other chefs in New York City and thousands around the country are staring down the question of what your restaurants, your careers, your lives will look like. How are you and your wife and co chef Ashley Merriman, managing?

[Gabriel Hamilton]

It takes a very long time, or it took us a very long time, I would say, to kind of drain all the fluids out of our hydraulic systems, literally and figuratively, to use this metaphor, as if you're a great ocean liner and crossing a vast sea and you've been doing it for 20 years, and suddenly to shut off all the engines and stop on a dime like that, with no port behind you in sight and no horizon either, no land on the horizon, to know where you're headed and at the same time, just to carry this metaphor all the way through that, you have to keep your propellers able and just lubricated enough to be able to turn back on should you figure out what your destination will be. So I don't know if that metaphor conveys to you exactly how profoundly exhausting the last four months has been emotionally and spiritually to have had a complete, abrupt cessation of income, routine, purpose, identity. Anyway, I hope I'm describing to you just by telling you that, how it's been.

[Debbie Millman]

Yes, Gabriel Hamilton In 2020 Prune never did reopen after the pandemic, but Gabriel Hamilton did recently publish a new book, Next of A Memoir.

[Interviewer]

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[Debbie Millman]

Fanny Singer all but grew up in Chez Panisse. Her mother Alice Waters's famous Berkeley restaurant. Fanny herself is not a professional chef. She's a curator and the co founder of a design brand. But she once co wrote a cookbook with her mother and she wrote a memoir that is also a cookbook called Always a Daughter's Recipes and Stories. Debbie spoke with her in 2020, also during the pandemic.

[Interviewer]

Fanny, yours was not a childhood in which sugar reigned supreme. But in Always Home you recant a memory that you, I think alluded to a little while ago of when you first tasted ice cream. And I'm wondering if you could share that memory from your book with us now in this short excerpt.

[Christina Tosi]

Sure.

[Fanny Singer]

Yes.

[Julia Tershen]

So this is.

[Fanny Singer]

I'm in Italy just to set the scene. I think we're somewhere outside of Siena and it was after my parents wedding. I was already alive at that point. I was, I attended that wedding and then we went to Italy together. So when I received the golden waffle cone in hand with just a modest ball slotted into it, I knew intuitively to apply it to my mouth. The smell was seductive, but muted by the cold. The taste on the other hand was intoxicating. The sugar used in that gelato produced a flavour that was completely indistinct from that of the fruit. It was meant to intensify. Which is to say it was exactly the right amount of sugar, neither too much nor too little. It had a platonic taste of strawberry, of the ripest honeyed late summer berries, so perfectly distilled that the taste seemed almost audible. It could not be confined to the realm of the tongue. So much so that I forgot that my mouth was in fact the best place to receive this newfound manna. I began to use the cone like a melting frozen marker to draw over the whole of my face. I wanted to merge with this food, not just to eat it, but to experience it. My clothes, my hair, all were victims of the brief but unforgettable encounter. I don't remember anything else about that day, and indeed, very little, if anything, about that trip to Italy. But I know that my memory of my communion with the gods of sugar and ice cream is firsthand and real, not merely something told to me or photographed. It is etched onto my palette alongside the most indelible of my life's food memories. I don't think my parents took a photo, nor did they try to stop me from selling every inch of my dress. They just looked at, looked on, at what happens in the moment that marks the end of two years of living on the planet ignorant of ice cream. And even though my parents returned to the sugar free regime and adhered to it with lamentable rigor, I think they were both pleased to watch me fleetingly lose my mind and flavor.

[Interviewer]

It's such a wonderful excerpt, Fanny, and so evocative. I can just see you with this little hand and this little cone and just trying to consume it from every possible pore in your body. Thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah, us.

[Christina Tosi]

You.

[Interviewer]

You write so beautifully about how you were brought up with food and around food. And you've written about how you don't think you were ever once told to use your knife and fork and go on to share how on it may have been the same trip to Italy. I don't know where pizza is consumed with a fork and a knife. You were regarded as, as a feral child brought up by a pair of pitiful Americans. And I also wanted to ask, is it true that you like to toss salad with your hands? I do.

[Fanny Singer]

It's been one of like the greatest tragedies of this pandemic is that you get like, if you're cooking for any more than just yourself, you have to use tongs or salad spoons or salad servers or whatever. And it's. I just, you know, Tamara Adler, actually we have. The two of us were talking about this early on in the pandemic, like, you have to toss salad with your hands. Like, you feel how much dressing is on there and like whether it needs to be, whether you need more, or whether you need more lettuce to help extend the dressing, if it's overdressed and, and then it allows you to just quickly, like, taste a leaf and make sure it has the right amount of acid or enough salt or, you know, these things that we used to do with a great ease. And especially, I think restaurant cooks are, are very familiar with that. But the home cook, I think, should be emboldened to toss salads with their hands. I mean, it just, it really acquaints you with what your dish needs and it helps you feel, I think, more intuitive about what the problems or the corrections that need to be made. But yeah, it's been a very tongue filled last few months, sadly.

[Interviewer]

I have been somebody for whatever reason, and I don't know why. I've always borrowed food from other people's plates, or maybe the better word is stolen. And I've been doing this for as long as I can remember. I see something on somebody's plate, maybe they're not eating it fast enough or they don't seem to want any more of it, and I'll, I'll just take it off somebody's plate. And I read years ago that when you do that, you're really showing how affectionate you are with somebody because, I guess, of the intimacy. So whenever anybody complains about my doing it, I just remind them that this is actually a sign of true love and intimacy. And you should just allow me to take it as is, as much as I want.

[Fanny Singer]

And you'd make very good bedfellows with my mother, who was always trying to proffer things from her plate to the mouths of others. So you guys. Yes, yes. Snug as a bug and a rug there with that behavior. But she's. I think there is something very generous about the, the take and the give, you know, that you. That there isn't. Like, you know, first of all, like, everything on my plate is mine. You know, I've always bristled at a date who's like, I'm ordering my dish, you're ordering your dish, and we're not gonna share. Like, what, like, what's the point? Like, I won't want, first of all, to taste as many things as I, as I can when I go to a restaurant, I'm interested in, you know, not just what might immediately appeal to me, but maybe another 10 dishes on the menu.

[Interviewer]

I'm like, well, see, I like to take food from other people's dishes, but I don't like it when they take from mine.

[Fanny Singer]

So I see. It's a one way street.

[Interviewer]

It's a one way street. I only want to take better one. I have a lot of food jealousy, I have to admit. I see something on somebody's plate and I want to try it too. But generally speaking, I like to eat everything on my plate, so I don't want to share. Oh, well, I guess I'll talk about that with my therapist. I know you and your mom share some interesting kitchen characteristics, as evidenced by your wonderful videos, but also some significant differences. And you've written about how anything requiring patience or exacting methodology or just about anything whatsoever that needs to be measured was bound to be foiled by what you refer to as her hummingbird attention span. And you're the same way. You cook with high heat, very fast, always with intense amounts of flavor and zero measuring. You have no interest in following recipes and generally exhibit what you've said or you described as a brazen ignorance of their wisdom when it comes to baking. So I was wondering if you can talk a bit about what happened during your first week of cooking in Chez Panisse as a teenager, making both gingerbread cake and custard.

[Fanny Singer]

Oh, yeah, that was, that was a dark period. I was about 15, I think, and I was kind of cycling through different departments in the restaurant, doing these like, mini stages. And I was in the pastry department for, I mean, a scant few days because in the first, like, day and a half, I managed to put 50% too many eggs into a custard. And I mean, 50%, that is a lot. That's a lot too many.

[Interviewer]

A lot of eggs.

[Fanny Singer]

It just basically came out like, it came out the consistency of like a coddled egg. I mean, it was just eggs, basically. And. And then the other thing I did was omit the molasses from a gingerbread had cake. And I was just, I mean, it was kind of a head shaking, like, we're so sorry, but she's, she's gotta go. You know, I was like, were you demoted? I, I was, I was expelled. You know, which is a hard thing to imagine, like telling your bosses, your boss that their daughter is like, too incompetent for your, for your department, just. And worried perhaps about some recrimination. But my mom was like, oh, I, I suspected that might be the case. I think I just didn't have the mathematics or the just reflexes for baking that is required to do it well. But I'm very happy to go back to salad. That was my. My very happy home. So I was back in the salad station within the week.

[Debbie Millman]

Fanny Singer in 2020. Earlier in this episode, we heard from Christina Tosi. Now we're going to hear from her husband, the restaurateur Will Guidera. Debbie spoke with him in 2023, not long after the release of his book Unreasonable. The remarkable power of giving people more than they expect.

[Interviewer]

By the time you graduated from Cornell, there was no question in your mind. You very firmly declare in your book that you wanted to work for Danny Meyer. The founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, which owned 11 Madison's park, still owns Gramercy Tavern, Marta Blue Smoke, the modern Union Square Cafe, and so many more. Why Danny Meyer, specifically?

[Will Guidara]

He was the only person in America that was bringing the same amount of creativity and intention to what was happening in the dining room as all the other great restaurants in America were to what was happening in the kitchen. Like, it's hard to become great at something if you don't have a hero to look up to. And there were plenty of celebrity chefs out there. There was no celebrity restaurateur except for Danny. He was the guy. And so when someone is the guy, well, that's the person you will work for.

[Interviewer]

While you tried to get a job there, I believe you worked as a management intern and then waited tables at Tribeca Grill. How did you eventually get an interview with Union Square Hospitality Group?

[Will Guidara]

Well, one of Danny's partners actually came to teach one of our classes at Cornell. And me, being a young, motivated kid at the time, made sure I got his business card before he left. And so I had a connection right to the top.

[Interviewer]

Your interview eventually took place at 11 Madison park, though you ended up getting a manager position at Tabla, another of Union Square hospitality groups, restaurants. And God, that was an incredible restaurant.

[Will Guidara]

By the way, the graphic design at Tabla. I think their logo was. I loved that logo. I loved that restaurant. Floyd Cardo's, the chef who passed away during COVID became like family to me over the years. And I believe to this day that his cooking was some of the best ever.

[Interviewer]

His raita was the best I've ever had, and it ruined me for all Raita, since there was nothing like it. You've said that Danny Meyer's management style made it cool to care. In what way did it become cool?

[Will Guidara]

You know, one of the things I say in the book is cult is short for culture. That so Many people, when they call one company a culture, okay, some people are just straight up cultish, and that's not okay. But like, when they call a company a cult, it's just because that company has a culture and their company doesn't have one. And so it feels like it must be a cult. Right. What Danny did expertly well was come up with shared language to articulate the ideals that we all wanted to aspire to embody. He came up with these isms, things that we could all rally around, things that made it easier to suggest and celebrate and reinforce or affirm. And in doing so, he created an environment where, when you were in it, you just wanted to thrive. Not in some cutthroat, you know, big bank kind of way, but thrive in an effort to care for other people. I've always believed that. That the successful evolution of a culture only fully starts to happen when the people on the team, when they're hanging out during like lunch break, or we call it family meal, people start talking about an amazing service experience they've received or delivered or a meal they've had or something like that, as opposed to how drunk they got at the bar the night before. Where people stop pretending to care less in order to be cool. But rather the environment celebrates the people that care more.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. When Danny Meyer announced that he was opening a restaurant and jazz club in the Flatiron called Blue Smoke, he asked you to be the assistant general manager. And while you were thrilled when you shared the news with your dad, while he did indeed recognize you were getting an incredible education in restaurant smarts, he also wanted you to learn how to be corporate smart. Did that surprise you? He really wasn't as excited about that opportunity as you were.

[Will Guidara]

Not only was he not excited, he made me quit. Now, you know my dad, you talk about intention. One of the many, many ways that I benefited from his intention was that he was surgical in helping me solidify the foundation of my career.

[Gabriel Hamilton]

Career.

[Will Guidara]

He insisted I work in every position, all the way up, and then also insisted that I not just work within one company as I tried to learn all the lessons required to one day start my own. He wanted me to learn from different companies that approach things in different ways. And he talked about the fact that there were two types of companies. And by the way, the word I use is restaurant. But I believe this, this idea applies to any company that has a corporate office and unit level stores, that they're corporate smart companies where the highest paid people work in the corporate office. Those are the companies that have more systems, more controls. They're normally more profitable businesses because of that. And there are the restaurant smart companies where the highest paid people work at the unit level. There's less systems, less controls, but there's more autonomy on the front line. And the experience at those places is normally better because of that autonomy and the sense of ownership and empowerment that the people who work there feel. He wanted me to work at a restaurant smart company and a corporate smart company in hopes that one day I could take the best from each in starting my own.

[Interviewer]

You turned Danny Meyer down. Was that hard?

[Will Guidara]

Yeah, I mean, it was hard mostly because I didn't want to turn him down. Right. I trust my dad enough to know that that was in a season where I respected, loved, and trusted my dad enough to know that if he was giving me advice after decades of doing the thing that I was trying to do, that it was advice I should listen to. And even if I didn't appreciate the short term impacts of that advice, that one day I'd appreciate the long term impacts of it.

[Interviewer]

You ended up getting a job with Restaurant Associates, and I believe you had two jobs. From 6am to noon. You learned how to inventory a walk in refrigerator, how to calculate cost of goods sold, how to order food and supplies, and then after lunch you would take off your whites, put on a blazer and a tie, and then start in with the numbers in the accounting department upstairs. And you've stated that it was impossible to overestimate how important it was that you were doing both jobs simultaneously. Why? How was that helpful to you?

[Will Guidara]

Anyone trying to grow in any sort of business should make sure that they spend a meaningful enough amount of time learning about the business side of the business. There's a lot of people in my industry, specifically who talk about how like, spending time with the numbers is a distraction for from their ability to be creative in the experience they're trying to offer, which is something I fundamentally disagree with. I think anyone who is really paying attention recognizes that the more resources you have to invest in being creative, the more creative you can be. Right. If you have a more successful business and you have more money to invest in building the best experience you can, more likely than not the experience is going to be better than someone that doesn't. But you need to manage the business effectively in order to earn the right to invest in the experience you're trying to create. Doing both of those jobs simultaneously, the accounting and the purchasing, what was great about it was okay. In the accounting office, I was learning the business side and the lessons I learned then would pay off in extraordinary ways later in my career. But doing that alongside the purchasing made the things on those spreadsheets not just a hypothetical, but something that I was seeing and touching and learning about and understanding on a daily basis. It was a unique experience, not one that everyone gets to have, but one that I would strongly recommend to those who can find it.

[Debbie Millman]

Will Guidera From 2023 you can hear the full interviews and hundreds of other interviews with a huge variety of creative people on our website designmatters.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The Editor in Chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

[Capital One Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[Interviewer]

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[Will Guidara]

Hey, it's Adam Grant from ted's podcast Work Life and this episode.

[Christina Tosi]

Is brought to you by ServiceNow.

[Will Guidara]

Now, AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.

[Debbie Millman]

That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies.

[Interviewer]

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[Will Guidara]

Platforms duct tape tools together. ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business.

[Interviewer]

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[Will Guidara]

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[Debbie Millman]

Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work.

[Interviewer]

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