Our Founder Reflects on NYT Cooking & the Origin of Food52

Welcome to the latest edition of Food52 Founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly newsletter, Hey there, it’s Amanda, packed with food, travel, and shopping tips, Food52 doings, and other matters that catch her eye. Get inspired—sign up here for her emails.

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Last week, New York Times Cooking celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its incredibly successful cooking app. In truth, the app’s success was more like 20 years in the making. The Times had wanted to digitize its vast recipe archive since the early 2000s, but due to a lot of internal to-ing and fro-ing (something the Times specializes in), it took more than a decade to take the leap. The extended maceration has proven worthwhile—they got it right. They understood their readership’s long held desire for inspiration, recipes they can trust, and a place to be heard about it. The app shines not only because of the breadth and quality of its content but because of the wacky and endearing commentary from its readers.

It may seem odd to highlight one of our competitors, but Food52 owes some of its origin to the Times (where I worked for 11 years), and I’ve always believed in rising tides and all that. I was working on The Essential New York Times Cookbook, a compendium of the most noteworthy recipes from the Times’s 170-year-old archive, when Merrill, my co-founder, and I decided to start Food52. One of our inspirations was the Times’s bountiful recipe coverage from the 19th century: It was generated almost exclusively by readers. As part of my research, I’d also put a notice in the Times asking readers for their “most-stained recipes.” I received thousands of detailed and colorful responses, many of which are sprinkled throughout my book.

These two signals—the desire for home cooks to have their recipes celebrated in a respected publication and then to be able to chat about their cooking experiences—helped shape Food52.

NYT Cooking hasn’t yet embraced publishing its reader’s recipes; it sticks to recipes and resists having an aesthetic or point of view about lifestyle, or getting into how recipes fit into a larger whole, with products and other home content. Those are the things that we do! There is room for both approaches. I’m a loyal NYT Cooking fan. Maybe you are, too. But you’re here for something else.

Now, before I lose my job, let’s move on to some of those other things that you come here for:

As part of our monthly ceramics series, All Fired Up, we’re featuring Bombabird, whose scalloped serving bowl and soap dish I have my eye on.

We’re doing a pre-sale this week on this season’s advent calendars—we are competitive about maintaining our reputation for having the best selection, so see what’s in store.

Chef Jeremy Salamon from impossible-to-get-into Agi’s Counter in Brooklyn came by to show us how he makes his Chilled Buttermilk Borscht.

César, from our Test Kitchen, roasted a garlicky, herby pork tenderloin while it was nestled inside a baguette. He says not to call it a sandwich…but it is!

Our Schoolhouse team recently joined interior designer Katrina Hernandez in her Santa Monica shop for a chat with local designers about product collabs and interiors trends. They left the menu in the good hands of Amy Holt, the photographer, food stylist, and recipe developer behind Peas Thank You, who shared her sunny California Morning Ritual with us.

Before I go, I leave you with a cartoon and a recipe to make when you don’t feel like cooking. Step 1: Open tinned fish. Step 2: Open box of crackers. Step 3: Slice lemon.

Have a great week!

Amanda