Hillary Dixler Canavan Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine and each week I talk to the most interesting women and culinary creatives in and around the world of food.
Today's guest is Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurant editor of Eater. Hillary joins us today to talk about Eater's first ever book. It's a cookbook titled “Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes from the Authority on Where to Eat and Why It Matters.” If you love restaurants and you love cooking, you will enjoy this book very much. Hillary tells us a little bit more about the making of the cookbook and what restaurants made the cut. We also chat about Hillary's career and we talk about some interesting moments in food media history, like the Gods of Food, Time Magazine brouhaha from a decade ago. Anyone remember that? Anyway, we adore Hillary here at Cherry Bombe and I'm so excited to talk to her. Our chat was recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. Stay tuned for Hillary.
This episode of Radio Cherry Bombe is supported by our friends at OpenTable. The holiday season is here and lots of us are looking for places to gather so we can celebrate with friends, family, and colleagues over a beautiful meal. That is where OpenTable comes in. OpenTable has curated guides to the best special occasion spots, plus filters that allow you to easily discover nearby restaurants that are great for groups. Oh my gosh, I'm guessing a lot of you know the drama of trying to find a restaurant to accommodate your group. I have lots of siblings and nieces and nephews, so I need all the help I can get with restaurant reservations during the holidays and then, when there are birthdays and other special occasions throughout the year. OpenTable is here to help you and me plan celebratory meals with ease. To book your next reservation, go to opentable.com or the OpenTable app on your phone. It's that easy. A little housekeeping, tickets go on sale this Thursday for our 2024 Jubilee Conference. It's taking place Saturday, April 20th,yes, 4/20 at Center 415 in New York City. Jubilee is a wonderful day of conversation and connection and great food and drink. It really is a magical day, and it's the largest gathering of women in the food and drink space in the whole US. Visit cherrybombe.com for more details and we'd love to see you in April.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Hillary Dixler Canavan, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
First, we are going to talk about this fantastic cookbook. I'm holding it in my hands, “100 Essential Restaurant Recipes.” Now, Eater is not known for its recipes. How did the idea come about that we should do a cookbook?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
The conversations with Abrams predated my work on the book, and those conversations were led by Britt Aboutaleb, who is our VP of development.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love Britt. Hi, Britt.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah. Britt rules. Britt was a huge collaborator in the book. It was a conversation between Eater and Abrams, which resulted in this seven-book deal, the first of which was going to be-
Kerry Diamond:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You just buried the lead, a seven-book deal?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Well done.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
It's a seven-book deal.
Kerry Diamond:
Who gets that except Danielle Steele and Stephen King?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I know. It was so exciting when Britt announced the deal. We knew going in that the deal would comprise at least one cookbook, at least three or four guidebooks, and then two other books, TBD. I feel like the guidebooks, which are coming next, the guidebooks make a lot of sense for Eater. We do maps all the time. It's one of Eater's core strengths.
Eater really innovated and set that up as a way of telling stories about restaurants and as a user experience in restaurant coverage, but with the cookbook, I think we approached it pretty creatively about what's the Eater version of a cookbook.
We had been running recipes on site and most of the recipes we'd run on site up to that point, had been either excerpts from other cookbooks or we did have some original recipes by that point, but what we really wanted for the first cookbook was to focus on restaurants because that's what Eater is known for, is our expertise when it comes to restaurants. Before I started outlining or anything like that, I knew the concept would be recipes from restaurants.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
What I also really wanted, and I'm really happy to say that I got it, and I feel like I achieved it with the book, was along with recipes, I wanted to just pack the book full of intel that could only come from restaurant professionals. Along with recipes, there's sidebars, there's shopping lists, there's as-told-to's, there's idea lists from not just chefs, but managers, bartenders, sommeliers, and folks beyond just the restaurants who have a featured recipe. The actual list of contributors is really expansive.
Kerry Diamond:
How in the world did you narrow the list down to 100?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
It was hard. I would say things started with just the outreach and to compile the outreach list, once I got the assignment that I knew I would write the book, I started writing down things that I knew I wanted in there. Then, I opened it up to the whole team and I said, "What do you think should be in Eater's book? What to you feels like we must have that?"
I then reached out to well over 200 places. As you know, from working on this sort of an anthology, but when you're relying on so many contributors, some decisions got made by who said yes and who said no, or rather who said no, and I'm happy that we didn't get that many no's. Then, when we moved into recipe testing, that was one moment where there were not too many, but there were some recipes we just couldn't make work at home.
The way we approached recipe testing, we worked with a recipe tester named Louiie Victa, who is credited in the credits of the book. The skillset that Louiie brought that was really helpful. Louiie is a multihyphenate. She's a photographer. She's a recipe developer, a recipe tester. Her background, which was so helpful, is that she's a retired line cook. She was working at one of Jose Andres's restaurants in Vegas.
What was so helpful about Louiie's restaurant background was that she was really well-equipped to decipher what was actually meant by some of the instruction, where it's like, "Oh, on the line, I bet they're doing it this way." Then, because Louiie has that background in recipe development as well, she was really great at understanding how it happened at the restaurant, and then at home, the easier way to do it is this.
Then, we were really careful about checking with each restaurant, with each chef about here are the changes we're proposing to make this more home-friendly. We gave people the chance to weigh in, and we didn't want anybody to be surprised or caught off guard by any of the changes that we made.
I tried as much as possible to acknowledge what those changes were, either in the headnote or in the notes section of the recipe. Really, for the reader, the book really does offer a testament to what's happening at the restaurant while also balancing the needs of a home cook.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so hard to translate restaurant recipes to home recipes. You all did a great job.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
It's just a different way of cooking. At home, you're not cooking with a team, that's thing one.
Kerry Diamond:
Right, nor are you preparing things for days. No one's doing your mise en place.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Right. You're doing everything yourself with far less space, and for most of us, far less expertise. Things that are quick for someone with a lot of experience aren't so quick if you're doing it for the first time.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm sure a lot of them made you super happy, but tell me which yes made you totally high five the rest of the Eater team? What were you in the Slack channel saying, "Gang, you won't believe who we got?”
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I mean, a lot of them. Some of the ones that I'm happiest about, I love old restaurants. Institutions are very important to me. The number of institutions in the book, that is something I was really happy about, getting yeses from places like Keens or Tam O'Shanter. I was thrilled to have Chez Panisse in the book, so iconic, so important.
On a more personal level, getting a yes from the Summit Diner, which the first recipe in the book was huge for me. I'm from New Jersey. Diners are very important to me. That was one where I was thrilled to get a yes. Then, another one I was really thrilled to get was the recipe from Una Pizza Napoletana.
I think one of the elements of the book process was that it wasn't just restaurants saying yes to Eater, it was folks saying yes to me. I've covered Anthony and Una Pizza a really long time. I wrote a piece, I think maybe back in 2014, I used to have this column called Eater Elements about his pizza. It was one of the most in-detail stories I've seen about how he makes pizza.
I think ever since that article, there's been trust there. I was a regular when I was in San Francisco. Not only did we get the recipe, but he gave us Joe, designed for home cooks, and it works. It was like, "Of course it works. He is really good at this."
Kerry Diamond:
Have any of these recipes slipped into your own repertoire?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Oh, yeah. I find the way that I use the book, backstory here is I have a three and a half year old. I am not in a season of life with lots of free time for big project cooking, but I pick and choose pieces from a lot of the recipes, and those have been really incorporated. Zoe Komarin from Zoe Food Party, her beet, orange and broccoli roast salad side, I make that a lot. I also sometimes make that in the air fryer instead of in the oven, and that's an easy, great side dish.
Kerry Diamond:
What do you love about that dish?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
It's just one of those things where it's a combination I wouldn't have thought of on my own. That's what chefs are so good at. Then, it's dusted with curry powder. There's just element after element I wouldn't have thought to combine. Then, you put it together. It's easy and it's so flavorful and so delicious, and it's beautiful too.
I love the tahini yogurt sauce from the La Vara Pipirrana salad, and that's a really good dip. There's some of the other ideas, like some of the no recipe recipe pasta sauces. I use cheddar bolognese with chili crisp. I've done that a bunch of times. Stuff like that is more my speed for this time of my cooking life.
Kerry Diamond:
Which recipes have kind of bubbled up on social media? It's always fun to see what everybody's embraced and is sharing.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I've noticed, not surprisingly, the Mushroom Adobo from Kasama, which is in the brunch chapter. I've seen that crop up on social a lot. That recipe is so good and it's so doable. That one is really within reach of even a beginner home cook. I've seen that one a lot. I've also seen the Cacio e Pepe from Monte Verde in Chicago a lot. That doesn't surprise me as a social play. We know noodles, cheese.
Kerry Diamond:
You have one of the most iconic American restaurant recipes in the book, a Zuni Cafe's chicken recipe. Tell us about that one.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah, that's another one where total institution must have. When I reached out to Zuni, one of the things their then Exec Chef Nate and I talked about was the truth of the matter is the Zuni Cookbook, which is itself a bestseller, an iconic important cookbook, we don't need to just reprint that chicken recipe, right? It exists. It's perfect.
He had this idea, when I explained to him what the cookbook was about and what we were going for, he was like, "What if we try a different method?" He's like, "I'd like to work on developing a grilled chicken recipe that brings some of that spirit home." I was like, "That's incredible."
Now, he went above and beyond, not every, I can't think of many other examples of a chef doing recipe development for this book in that way, but he felt really passionate about it. The end result is a grilled chicken recipe where you sort of are using your grill to evoke some of the same smoked, fire cooked flavors that you would get at Zuni because they have a hearth and in classic Zuni fashion, really good instruction.
I think Zuni's cookbook is so, it's such a good teaching tool, and I feel like that spirit carries into this recipe where if you want to learn how to spatchcock a chicken, read this. This is really legible, doable instruction. I think that it really sums up the spirit of the book where it's this iconic restaurant recipe, here's a way you can actually do it at home and it'll work.
Kerry Diamond:
I was so happy to see it. I mean, the late Judy Rodgers who had Zuni Cafe was such a legend. It's really a remarkable dish and a legendary one for a reason, but that's exciting to hear that Nate is updating it and kind of giving it a second life.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Again, that is just one of the, I think, really unique things about this project and this cookbook is the effort and care that went into it on both ends, right? That was his effort and care. Louiie took effort and care in her work. I took effort and care in the curation and the writing and the figuring out who could tell this story of American dining. I'm pleased that you caught that recipe.
Kerry Diamond:
It's interesting. So many people want restaurants to be preserved in amber, but that's really tough for the people who run them and cook at them.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah, I think the preserved in amber element of this book is also sort of worth poking at because one of the recipes I really wanted to include that had been edited, tested, was in the manuscript really up until very late in the process, the restaurant announced its closure. That was a conversation I had with my editor at Abrams about whether or not we could keep the restaurant, and then she decided that she would rather take it out.
I think that made sense as a call, but also because restaurants are so ever-changing, there's no way in which this book won't in some ways be a moment in time of the day it was published, because to me, it's inevitable that these restaurants won't exist forever. That said, I think the mix that we have has, of course, huge staying power, and even if any of these restaurants were to close, their impact will continue.
Kerry Diamond:
What does “Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes” say about the state of restaurants today?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I mean, I think it says that dining across the country has never been better, and I think it's not for nothing. This project happened after the pandemic that was so devastating, so many restaurant closures, and I think the fact that even after that, we're still able to put this together, that there are so many restaurants doing such amazing work, shows the resilience of the people who make restaurants happen of the larger dining scene, even after the stress test of the pandemic restaurants continue to matter.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. Today's show is brought to you by Alex Mill, the clothing company that's all about superb craftsmanship, high quality fabric and timeless design. I know and love the people at Alex Mill. They're a small, creative team based in SoHo, and they are obsessed with every detail, I can relate to that, whether it's getting a pocket just right, the feel of a classic fair isle sweater, just so, or producing those great jumpsuits that so many creative folks wear by. I want to tell you about a fun collab that Cherry Bombe is doing with Alex Mill. They've taken their classic Britt work jacket in recycled denim and produced a limited number of them in a pale pink using botanical dyes, very cool. The jacket is a perfect layering piece and something you'll keep in your closet forever. I'll be pairing mine with jeans, a striped shirt and a scarf or a bandana, depending on the weather. You can also throw it over a dress, a light sweater, and yes, one of those classic Alex Mill jumpsuits. The Alex Mill Cherry Bombe jacket is available exclusively at the Alex Mill Mercer Street store in SoHo, here in New York City. Definitely stop by or give them a call to shop and learn more about the timeless, stylish world of Alex Mill. Visit alexmill.com. The new holiday issue of Cherry Bombe's Print magazine host with the most is here with Culinary Superstar, Molly Baz on the cover. Inside, you'll find profiles on amazing folks, lots of hosting tips and delicious recipes perfect for your holiday gatherings. You can snag a copy at cherrybombe.com or pick up a copy at a retailer near you like Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York City, now serving in Los Angeles and Matriarch in Newport, Rhode Island. Check out cherrybombe.com for our complete list of retailers. Let's talk about your career. How did you wind up at Eater?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I have been at Eater for over 10 years at this point. I ended up at Eater because I was in restaurants first. When I started at Eater in 2013, the mix of folks there was really, almost 50/50 of you either got there from your restaurant and food obsession, or you got there because you were in journalism and you wanted to do this kind of journalism. I was firmly in category one, but I do have a secret past as an editor at my college, Arts and Culture Weekly, which was always this fun thing I did that my theater friends didn't understand.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about your restaurant time.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I started working in restaurants in 2008 or '09. It was the recession. I was a college class of '08, I graduated, was doing the theater thing, and then all the money went away. Many theater folks, I needed to work in restaurants.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, I didn't know about this theater side. We need to talk about that for a second.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you on stage? Did you want to be a performer?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I did perform, but no, I didn't want to be a performer. I wanted to do directing or literary management, and in college, I interned in the literary department at Steppenwolf, which is a major creator of New American plays. Then, after college, I did my apprenticeship at Seattle Rep and I was an artistic apprentice and I did casting and I was in Seattle when the economy fell apart.
I think there are elements that overlap well with theater and restaurants and theater and journalism. Mostly, I love a group project. I love to collaborate. I love working with people and that's got both and with restaurants. I knew I needed to work. I needed money, I needed to work, and I already loved restaurants.
Actually, advice from one of my mentors at Seattle Rep, the late Jerry Manning, who's this incredible artistic director, amazing casting director. He cast the original production of Rent in New York, just amazing guy. Jerry, his advice was always like, "No matter what field you're in, work for the best. Find the best person you can. Work for them, learn from them."
When I was looking for work, I decided I would do that with restaurants too. I saw a Craigslist ad for front-of-house staff. They didn't say what it was, but I was looking at little clues in it, and I was pretty sure it was going to be April Bloomfield's restaurant in the Ace Hotel.
That specific ad to apply, they didn't ask for a resume, they did ask you to send an email introducing yourself and two paragraphs about the last great meal you had. I was like, I'm pretty sure this is April Bloomfield's restaurant. I'm going to write about brunch at the Spotted Pig.
I worked at the Breslin. I was hired before the restaurant was open, so I was doing all of this. She was doing menu testing in the kitchen there and the hotel is in the basement. It was in this basement with no windows because it's a hotel. I would sit in this little cubicle and try on the phone to sell these special menu tests upstairs for room service.
I'd to sell these specials on the phone as room service, and I was really good at it. I worked in room service. As the restaurant approached opening, we did all this training with Stumptown and I was like, "That sounds interesting. I'll train with Stumptown." Then, I was being a barista. Then, I started serving in the lobby.
Kerry Diamond:
Hillary, you know I see the one woman play in my head, right?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I started serving in the lobby, and at the time in 2009, the Ace Hotel Lobby was a really cool place to be.
Kerry Diamond:
That was a happening place.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
It was a happening place, but I had to work my way up too, because I didn't really have a lot of experience. I started with breakfast shifts and my strategy, I mean, I would just upsell the stuff. I would tell people, and it was all true, we were making our own orange juice. I'd talk about the fresh squeezed orange juice, get people to buy it. I'd talk about who the chef was, get them to buy more food, that kind of thing.
I got to work my way up towards cocktail shifts, which were busy. I was making really good money doing that. At some point, maybe, I don't know, within my first few months of it really getting going, I knew that I was loving it. At the time, I was working for free for Roundabout Theater Company, which is a big theater company in New York. I was doing script analysis and stuff, and I had this moment of, it didn't feel good to work for free, and people in the arts are asked to work for free a lot.
I had this moment of, I am a trained professional. This is not good for me. I don't think this is fulfilling. I will only do theater that pays, theater that pays or my own projects. That's what I did. It cut down on the amount of theater I was doing, but I was loving the restaurant work. I was having fun. I was excelling.
It's not actually Meritocratic restaurant work tips, it's not. There's all these baked in biases, but compared to theater, it was so much clearer why you were making what you were making. I sold more, I get a better shift. You get this, then you get that. It was so clear. Then, I started feeling like, this is for me. I like it here. Not all of my coworkers did like the work.
I remember at about a year in, I was working on a show in the Fringe Festival, and there was a job posted on Craigslist that was an office manager job at Momofuku. I applied to that and I was doing my interviews for that job at the same time I had a show in the Fringe Festival and realizing I was more excited about the Momofuku job than the show, was a real light bulb moment for me.
Kerry Diamond:
An office manager job?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You were going to get off the floor. What was that about?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I wanted to make a career out of restaurants. I saw at the Breslin, the people who were long tenured, there were bartenders who were seasoned, this is what I do for a living. There were chefs, chefs and cooks, this is what I do for a living, but among the servers, the people who were in it as a career were all managers, and I wanted to think about management as an option, restaurant management, but I'd only been serving for a year.
They had a policy that I really respected that was like, I really wanted to be a server in the Breslin, not in the lobby, but their policy was to be a server. You had to start as a busser. You were on a 30-day work your way up, and I really respected that, but there was no world in which I would stop cocktail waitressing to earn what a busser makes. That wouldn't be good for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Lucky for us, you got a job at Eater.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you leave the restaurant world for Eater?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I had been at Momofuku over two years, and while I was at Momofuku, I went from office manager to being Dave's assistant. I worked on the PR and events department. While I worked for Dave, we launched Lucky Peach and the launch of Lucky Peach, really, I always think about it turned my head where I had been pretty committed to this idea of what I thought I wanted. Then, once we were working on a magazine, it's like, I think that's what I want.
I got really inspired by that and wanting to do something that was more overtly editorial. I got a job very briefly at a dating website that was an executive date experiences editor. It was my job to come up with ideas for dates that they could sell like Groupon for dates, and that involved managing freelance writers who were writing copy, editing copy. It was like a crash course in that, but it wasn't the right fit.
I stopped that. Applied to work at Eater. It was my second time applying. My first time I applied was to be an associate editor at Eater New York. I did not get that job. I was so sad. Then, I applied to work at Eater again. It was a job on the national site. It took a few months between when I applied and when I had my first day, but the rest is history.
Kerry Diamond:
The rest is history and lucky for us, you wound up there because about a decade ago, you wrote a story that led to us launching Jubilee, which is our annual conference, which now is the largest gathering of women in the food space in the entire United States. If you've been to Jubilee...
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Incredible.
Kerry Diamond:
... and enjoyed it, you have Hillary to thank.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
That story was called, By the Numbers: Women and the Food Events Circuit. I wrote this story in the wake of this moment that had happened in November 2013 where Time Magazine published the Gods of Food and there were no women, and they had this huge family tree of important chefs, no women either.
Kerry Diamond:
Cherry Bombe's maybe about six months old at that point.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
We couldn't believe it. The cover was three guys, three chefs with their heads together. You should look it up if you've never seen it.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah, it was Dave Chang, Rene Redzepi, and...
Kerry Diamond:
Alex.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
... Alex Atala.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, I love that you called it a moment. That was certainly a moment. This comes out, you land an interview with the editor who put the entire package together. Tell everybody about that.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I reached out to the editor of that package to learn more about how it got put together, and I interviewed him about how did he decide who was a god of food, what were the criteria, how did the family tree get made? What was that process? I asked, "Why were there no female chefs on the family tree?" I sort of talked him through it.
I approached the interview as I just wanted him to talk and explain. I was friendly, but I pushed him to explain himself, and then I let his words speak for himself, which they did, poorly. He said, "We didn't want to fill a quota. We wanted to go with reputation and influence and no woman added," which is just not true.
Kerry Diamond:
As you can imagine, there were lots of follow-up stories. It was a very big moment for women in food because it really crystallized how women were being treated and considered.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
The Time Magazine issue was just a really high profile example of the sexism and misogyny that had been baked into restaurants, into the way media covered restaurants and chefs.
At Eater, we built off of that interview to continue to push at these themes, which led to the article that Kerry had mentioned about, I did By the Numbers, look at all of these food events because at that time, those food events, things like not just like the Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, but things like Cook It Raw, that was a huge part of how chefs gained influence and professional cred at that time. I wanted to look at how women were participating in that.
Kerry Diamond:
The MAD Symposium.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
There were a lot more food conferences back then. I have to say, they've kind of faded over the years. Of course, the pandemic had something to do with it, but they really haven't come back.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I have a very pessimistic theory about that. I think that when these events got called out for their lack of inclusivity, and I think when they attempted to address it, they also somehow lost relevance that their exclusivity is part of what made other chefs care. The moment chefs saw that it wasn't just the same 10 guys, they stopped caring. I think that's really sad.
Kerry Diamond:
Finally, someone is recognizing us, but still, there were plenty of people who had worked in this industry for a long time who either didn't think anything was wrong or didn't want to acknowledge that anything was wrong. Then, when that time issue came out, you couldn't deny it.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah, it's like that list of 13 gods of food did have women, but they weren't chefs. It was women working in other spheres. I don't remember, but yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Alice Waters wasn't even in there.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah, and I asked about that and it was just like, "We thought about it." I said, "Did you?"
Kerry Diamond:
That's an important thing to say. It wasn't that they just forgot to include women, they had a conversation and decided to exclude them.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
They decided it didn't matter.
Kerry Diamond:
He basically said that there weren't any women who deserved to be in that issue of the magazine. Your article comes out, my co-founder and I said to each other, "Somebody needs to do a conference for women and food," not thinking it would be us. Every other day or so, we're like, "Did anyone announce anything yet?" "No. Okay." Then, one day we just decided we were going to do it ourselves. Here we are. Next year's will be the 10th anniversary. Hillary...
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
... thank you for the inspiration.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I remember going to the first Jubilee and having the most fun. I remember even at that first one, everybody in the audience was so excited to talk to each other, to get to know each other. It wasn't just about the amazing presentations. It was the community you fostered by having us have lunch together, there was time to talk to the person sitting next to you to meet each other. That energy, it's really exciting that that energy has continued for 10 years and think about how much has happened.
That was 2013. It wouldn't be for another almost five years until the me too moment happened. I think of it as building blocks. Before, we could have the outright clarity of me too, we had to say, there's a problem and it wasn't just in the restaurants. It was in the media too...
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
... and helped pave the way for the stories of women in this industry to even matter.
Kerry Diamond:
I think we're in the midst of another revolution of sorts, especially for restaurants. I mean, I've certainly noticed there's a bit of a baby boom today for women in restaurants, and historically, that has been such a challenge for women who want to work in restaurants.
I mean, restaurants are not hospitable places for working parents, but especially for women. I mean, working in a kitchen when you're pregnant, working as a server when you're pregnant, and then who's going to take care of your baby if you're working at night?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yeah. The challenges of being a working parent in the restaurant industry aren't close to solved yet. One of the things in our coverage Eaters, former editor-in-chief now publisher, Amanda Kloots, wrote a great, great feature about motherhood in the restaurant industry a few years ago where one of the things that she found was the women who most successfully navigated it were restaurant owners. It's like, "Well, if you own the restaurant, you can shape it around your own needs."
One of the trickiest things is for the restaurant workers is our lack of safety net in the USA that we do not have guardrails that come from the government policies. Instead, it's left to businesses to provide those guardrails for the employees. Restaurants are not, as small businesses go, they just aren't that liquid. The margins are tight. It's an expensive business to run. Famously, it's not a high profit business. Flexible schedules, paid parental leave, these are really big asks of small businesses.
That said, lots of restaurants are figuring it out because keeping employees is also important, especially in this labor market that we're in now where it's really hard to find good labor. Incentivizing workers to stay and build careers in your business is more important than ever.
Kerry Diamond:
It seems like a lot more restaurants and restaurateurs are rewriting the rules.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you see that?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
I definitely see that. I think there's been a lot of reexamining how to run a business when so much changed all at once, the pandemic happened, and then this crazy inflation, and the labor shortage. It's all these pressures. There's been all these new pressures put onto restaurants, some of which are familiar pressures, right? There were labor problems pre-pandemic. Inflation wasn't quite what it was, but the cost of goods had been going up.
Those weren't necessarily unfamiliar, but then, a full year of total disruption when it comes to how much business you were doing and how you were doing it, whether you were pivoting to takeout or operating outside, I think all of those pressures created a moment in which it was like adapt or die. I think some of those adaptations hopefully, can stick because one of the adaptations was to fix your workplace culture so that more people didn't quit.
I think that's huge. I think when you look at some of the business models of the places that have opened in the past two and a half, three years, you see more experimentation with the model. I think as more operators succeed with those experiments, that can shift the industry as one copies the other. I think the old way and the way that I was in the last gasps of when I worked in restaurants, doesn't work for today's restaurant workforce anymore.
I think that that's good. I don't think working in a restaurant should mean being cruelly yelled at. I don't think it should mean barely subsisting on your paycheck. Why? Why should it be that way? Why is that okay in this kind of work, but not in other kinds of work? It's ridiculous. I think we've now seen enough to know that you can make a wonderful product without being cruel.
The cruelty that we thought was necessary, it was like a necessary part of the brigade system to achieve the vision and succeed, isn't necessary because there are people doing it without it.
Kerry Diamond:
You've done such a beautiful job reporting on this over the years.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Hillary, we're going to do a little speed round. Tell me one of your favorite books on food or cookbook.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
In terms of a cookbook that I reach for regularly, Ali Slagle's “I Dream of Dinner.” Such a great weeknight cookbook.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your favorite food movie?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
“Big Night.”
Kerry Diamond:
Favorite kitchen tool?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
My Le Creuset Dutch Oven.
Kerry Diamond:
What's one thing that's always in your fridge?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Hot sauce.
Kerry Diamond:
Favorite childhood food.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Bagels.
Kerry Diamond:
How about your baby? What's your baby's favorite food?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Pizza.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your snack food of choice?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Tortilla chips.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have a motto or mantra that gets you through the day?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Done is better than perfect.
Kerry Diamond:
Last one, if you had to be stuck on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Well, I'd say Anthony Bourdain. Great conversation. I think an ingenious person who could help figure out how to survive on a desert island, and I think he's a person who, I mean, never ran out of things to talk about.
Kerry Diamond:
Hillary, you are the bomb 100% and this is a beautiful book, and I hope everybody checks it out. Thanks for your time.
Hillary Dixler Canavan:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Our theme song is by the band Tralala, Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.