Why Cooking is Caregiving, with Chef Hillary Sterling | Better in Person

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Stephen Dubner interviews chef Hilary Sterling about her path from Brooklyn restaurants to executive chef at Chisiamo, where she blends Italian cooking, New York identity, and live-fire technique. The conversation explores sensory cooking, mentorship, restaurant economics, leadership, and how early family food experiences shaped her style and standards.

Main Topics: Hilary Sterling’s culinary identity (Priority: 5/5): Sterling describes herself as a New York-born chef shaped by Brooklyn, Montauk, and Italian influences, and by a desire to cook food that feels honest, rustic, and personal rather than overly formal. Cooking by senses, not just rules (Priority: 5/5): A major theme is Sterling’s belief that great cooking requires listening, smelling, touching, and watching food closely—rather than relying only on thermometers or rigid formulas. Mentorship, apprenticeship, and kitchen discipline (Priority: 4/5): Sterling recounts early kitchen experiences, including being pushed hard, learning from mistakes, and developing skills through repetition, observation, and direct instruction. Hospitality and leadership style (Priority: 4/5): She emphasizes fairness, teaching, and real-time feedback as a boss, contrasting constructive, hands-on management with the abusive kitchens of earlier eras. Food memory, family, and taste preferences (Priority: 4/5): The exchange about soup, fish stew, canned potatoes, and mushy textures reveals how family upbringing and childhood food experiences strongly shape adult taste and emotional response to food. Italian food, New York, and authenticity (Priority: 5/5): Sterling argues that Chisiamo is not simply ‘Italian’ but Italian through a New York lens, highlighting regionality, fresh ingredients, and the difference between Italian-American assumptions and Italian cuisine. Restaurant economics and scale (Priority: 3/5): She explains the operational realities of running restaurants—labor, food costs, negotiation, volume, and menu development—while noting that success depends on staying true to one’s voice.

Key Arguments: Sterling argues that cooking is best learned through sensory awareness—listening to the pan, watching glisten, touching food—because food is real and must be understood in real time. She contends that strong leadership in kitchens should be fair and instructional rather than dictatorial: show, explain, and do together. She believes her best cooking emerged when she stopped trying too hard and allowed rusticity and personal style to guide the menu. She says her background did not include a natural love of refined food; instead, childhood ‘mush’ and basic, sometimes canned, meals helped motivate her search for better cooking. She distinguishes between cooking for 40 versus 400, arguing that smaller scale permits more precision, but volume can still be done well if the cook adapts. She frames Chisiamo as a restaurant that honors Italian food while also expressing her New York identity, especially through dishes like rainbow cookies and regional Italian references. She argues that restaurant success comes from honesty about who you are, not from trying to satisfy every expectation or mimic legacy institutions. She notes that the economics of restaurants are a constant negotiation over food, wine, labor, and supply-chain relationships, requiring active purchasing and price management.

Data Points: years in the kitchen before mastering a key pork lesson: 7 days - She was told to ‘be one with the pork’ and spent a week practicing pork tenderloin cookery before returning to sauté. pork tenderloins overcooked: 100+ - On her first busy night on sauté at Mesa Grill, she overcooked more than 100 pork tenderloins. restaurant kitchen staff: 70 - She says Chisiamo has about 70 people in the kitchen. chipolini onions purchased last year: 28,000 pounds - She cites this as an example of the scale and negotiation involved in purchasing staple ingredients. rabbits purchased last year: 6,000 - She mentions 6,000 rabbits to illustrate the volume of food procurement for pasta service. tuna order for Thanksgiving: 40-50 pounds - She describes calling fish purveyors for 40 pounds, wishing she had 50, for a tuna crudo special. chef offers considered: multiple purveyors - She says she compares prices by calling several fish suppliers and negotiating terms. restaurant groups under Union Square Hospitality Group: around 20 - Dubner notes Chisiamo is one of roughly 20 restaurants in the group founded by Danny Meyer. chef career span: 25 years - Sterling references cooking pork and evolving as a chef over roughly 25 years.

Pivotal Quotes: "If you have burns, that means you're not paying attention." — Hilary Sterling: She points to a burn scar while discussing the hazards of live-fire cooking and kitchen focus. "Be one with the pork." — Hilary Sterling: A chef’s instruction that became a formative lesson in intuition, patience, and sensory cooking. "I think we were being honest with who we were." — Hilary Sterling: Her explanation for why Chisiamo succeeded and resonated with diners.

Implications: The episode suggests that great hospitality depends on authenticity, sensory skill, and humane teaching. For chefs and managers, it argues for leadership grounded in clarity, fairness, and self-knowledge—not just technique or prestige.