EO

What does it mean to be yourself?

AR

[Laughs.] God, you asked me on a weird week. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

EO

Tell me more.

AR

I think about it kind of constantly, if I’m honest. It’s tough because that’s advice that people give anyone in regular life. It’s something you’re told when you go to a party or meet new friends. It’s something that’s repeatedly told to children. But the way that it translates professionally, I find to be even more of a challenge, because I think most people in their day-to-day life, whether they’re a lawyer or a doctor or a writer, can’t be themselves, “in life.” But if you have to professionally be yourself, you are sort of left with the constant question of who that person is because you have to constantly focus on being that. And I think for me and for anyone who is a “public figure,” there are so many successful examples of how to be but that doesn’t mean it’s the path for you.

I think it’s a gut-check-thing. Does this feel authentic? Does this feel natural? Does this feel easy? Does this make me feel more secure, more happy, and more fulfilled? All the things that we seek, I think by “being yourself” you achieve. And I think we all know the difference when we’re fake to someone at a party, and then we check-in and think, “Oh, that did not feel good, that was bad." I think the same thing translates professionally, where you think, “Oh, I did a thing, and that wasn’t really me.” [Laughs.] I don’t know, at least for me, there’s no worse feeling. I really hate it.

EO

And how has that developed over the years?

AR

I’m sure there will be people who do really deep dives on this in the future and study what it means to grow up in real-time in front of people. It’s kind of wild, right? Because we haven’t really seen it before.

EO

I agree. We haven’t had this much access, attention, or resources before. This combination is so foreign that no one knows what they’re doing. We’ve normalized the anxiety and need to have an opinion about everything that’s rarely often grounded in any tangible informed history or personal experience. I don’t think it registers with people how “public figures,” have to wake up each day and turn the machine on; it’s hard doing and being the thing. My new thing recently is that I ask people for grace—if I’ve done something wrong or vice versa just please give or show me grace.

AR

Everybody’s doing their best. You have to kind of assume that. And there are those…

EO

That don't get it? Do you have a litmus test or cues that alert you that you’re on the path to feeling good?

AR

I don’t know. I’ve tried to chart my own check ins and think, “Why did I feel so bad that day? Why did I feel so good that day?" What about the external forces, because I think we’re always looking for it. Those moments where you feel bad but want to feel good, and get out of that bad place. So you think, "Okay, I’m going to go do that thing." And there isn’t really a magic element for me, but I will say that I have noticed and feel secure being comfortable with the fact that I am very much addicted to work and producing things. And I notice that when I am not writing, especially, or I’m not cooking or some combination of the two, where I’m not doing either, I get into a very dark place and my self-worth goes down a lot. I’m like, “Oh, well, I’m not worth anything because I’m not contributing anything—I’m not making anything." [Laughs.]

EO

Has that always been the case?

AR

Yeah, I think so. There’s a certain personality type that gets into certain careers, and I think a person that wants to cook in a restaurant shares a specific collective psychosis, which is neurosis that we all possess, and sometimes it shows itself in different ways. But being useful is really important to people who work in hospitality, and I don’t work in restaurants anymore, but I still consider myself in the service industry in that I’m of service to people. And I feel if I’m not providing that service, if I’m not producing something to contribute, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m terrible at taking vacation. I love to go on vacation, but I love to go on vacation with my laptop. I love to write on vacation, I love to cook on vacation. I love to do the things that fill me up to return to work. And that’s when I feel most like myself and I recently realized that it doesn’t even matter if people read the things that I’m writing. And I used to think that it was about getting attention but it’s not; it’s just something I need to do for myself. Because even if nobody reads the thing that I write, I’m still working and making, which is important to me.

EO

I recently interviewed the designer, Martino Gamper, and he said that he needs to make or write things down when they come to him so that he can move on to the next thought or have his mind clear so that he can receive it. If you’re not engaging with your ideas constantly you are then disrupting your workflow.

AR

Yeah, it’s a clearing of energy. Everybody is driven by some sort of purpose which can mean so many different things to so many people. And I have a pathological need to feel like I’m always working towards fulfilling my purpose and being useful. And I feel like that has always led to me being good at what I do because that’s what I feel the most like myself. That’s how I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

EO

So, let’s take it back to Los Angeles. I’m from LA.

AR

[Laughs.] Oh cool. Same.

EO

And my fun fact we share is that you have my half birthday, September 1st, and I have your half birthday.

AR

I love that. Is that March?

EO

Yeah, March 1st.

AR

Oh My God! Fun. Are you 1985 too?

EO

[Laughs.] No.

AR

Okay. You seem very young. [Laughs.]

EO

No, if that were the case, that would be amazing. But no, I’m ’94.

AR

[Laughs.] I was just thinking; you don’t have to tell me.

EO

Where did you grow up?

AR

In the Tarzana and Sherman Oaks area.

EO

Where’d you go to school?

AR

I went to Chaminade, which is in the West Hills. It’s near Calabasas.

EO

[Laughs.] In your Kim Kardashian bag. I’m familiar with the Chaminade girls.

AR

It’s a weird school. I don’t know anyone who went there. Everyone’s always asking, “Oh, did you go to Campbell Hall or Buckley?” [Laughs.] And I’m like, no, I went to Chaminade. Though we played all of them in sports…

EO

You guys wore navy-blue uniforms, right?

AR

Yeah. It was a bizarre choice. I went there because my parents were split up so the school districts were weird and then they tried to get me into El Camino, but they wouldn’t accept me...

EO

[Laughs.] Wild! That’s where my mom went.

AR

Yeah, that’s where I wanted to go, because my best friend was going and she lived in the district, but the districts we lived in were too far from my parent’s houses, respectively. They wanted a place that was close enough to both of them. And I’m not Catholic. I don’t know why I went to a Catholic high school. [Laughs.] I thought, this is weird—you guys, people go to mass. What is this? So that was interesting. But yes, I grew up in the Valley. I think being the product of a divorced household impacted me more than the location. My households weren’t especially volatile but the situation and circumstances made me want to be very independent.

EO

Are you an only child?

AR

Yeah, I’m my mom’s only child, but my dad has two other kids that are younger than me. I mean, I’ve come to these conclusions through so much therapy. [Laughs.]

EO

Right.

AR

It’s part of the reason I decided I was going to move and leave home. Then go to work in a restaurant and not go to culinary school. It’s how I was able to decide that I was going to drop out of college and move to San Francisco. And it’s why I moved to New York. All these decisions that I made, without money, without really knowing what I was doing, I think, was entirely based on the fact that my whole life, I felt like I was already on my own but could make it. It kind of bred this really intense independence. And so, I felt very primed to do the things I wanted because I was used to being on my own.

EO

What happened after high school?

AR

I moved from LA, and went to Santa Monica City College for a while, for a year and a half. And then I moved to Santa Cruz to go to school there.

EO

Oh, you went to Santa Cruz?

AR

I didn’t go to the University of California, Santa Cruz. I was living in Santa Cruz and went to Cabrillo Community College. I was there for maybe nine months, 10 months. It was not for me. I worked as a nanny for these Google and tech adjacent families, which was really funny.

EO

When I was 19 years old, I was working at the Promenade [in Los Angeles] and this woman who was a producer and singer-songwriter on Drake’s second album, Take Care, asked me to be the nanny for her kids. She invited me over to her house in Brentwood on Mandeville Canyon Road and I spent the day with her kids, and I thought eh, I should probably move to New York and go to college. [Laughs.] I was tempting fate and while it would have been a fun way to break into the entertainment industry, I wanted more autonomy and security than only ever using being liked as my only currency.

AR

Whoa, that’s crazy. Yeah, I was living in the Los Gatos area when I was hard at work for the families working for Google. This was so long ago, before those types of people were ultra-wealthy, but these families worked in tech and for Apple but it wasn’t the big Apple empire that we know today.

EO

Right. But it was brewing. Let’s pour one out for the past and future nannies to be. [Laughs.]

AR

[Laughs.] I was taking classes and working as a nanny, and it was so beautiful. I love the natural beauty of Los Gatos. But ultimately, I didn’t quite fit in. I don’t think it was necessarily the right place for a 19-year-old me. I moved back to LA, to West Hollywood, and got a job at Sona, a restaurant where I wanted to work. I knocked on the back door of the restaurant and said, “Hi, I’m moving back to go to culinary school. Well, I need a job so I can move back while attending culinary school so that I can pay for culinary school.” [Laughs.] And the guy who answered the door was the pastry chef. And he said, "Well, the chef isn’t here, but I can talk to you about it." And I was like, “Okay, that’s really nice of you.” I don’t know why he did, but I’m glad he did. And he told me, “I don’t think you should go to culinary school. I think you should work for me if you want.”

EO

Was it helpful advice?

AR

Yes, definitely. And he was told me, "If you hate it, you hate it, but most people go to culinary school, they spend $50,000, they’re in debt, and then they go to work in a restaurant, then they’re like, 'I hate this.'" He told me that most people hate working in a restaurant; it’s really hard and you don’t make any money. And I told him that I think I’ll love it. He hired me as an assistant in the bakery across the street, where I cut marshmallows, and I put little decor on top of baked goods. They would just give me any menial tasks where I couldn’t fuck up too badly. [Laughs.] I still fucked up a lot, but I knew I loved doing this. That turned something on in my brain where I felt I was doing something, by working a real job. That’s when I realized I really liked to work, you know? And I thought this was great, and I was making $7.25 an hour, I could afford my rent, I didn’t have a car. And I didn’t need to. I didn’t have any bills, I didn’t have any credit cards.

EO

You walked to work?

AR

Yeah, I walked to work. But eventually things shifted and I realized I wanted to work more in the restaurant. [Laughs.] I was the person who came in at 8:00 in the morning and would put the finishing touches on things. I was not doing any real baking or making anything.

EO

Okay, but yet you still registered that information as, “Oh, I’m in the right place, I’m just not doing the right thing.”

AR

Yeah, and I would watch everybody else doing the thing and I was like, that’s what I want to do. I want to make something. And we would bring over the trays of certain dessert items for the restaurant that they could use for service, and I would be the one to drop them off. And I remember being like, “This is the energy I want to be around.” And it was chaotic and crazy and loud, and everyone was busy and so quiet and focused. Everyone was doing their job and it was so intense. You walk in and you’re like, "Oh My God, I’m so stressed out a little bit," but I then I said, "I like that, I want to be here." So, I asked if I could ever work there, and they’re like, "Well, there’s only two positions and they’re taken, but we’ll let you know," and eventually someone left and I reminded them that I wanted to work there. And they said, "Okay, let’s see."

EO

How old were you when you started there?

AR

I was 19, almost 20. I started at the bakery when I was 19 and then I worked there for a full year, and then I left the restaurant right before I turned 21, so I was there at the company cumulatively for a year and a half.

EO

Tell me more about the restaurant.

AR

It was a crash course in learning anything you could possibly want to learn about pastries and baking. And we read a lot of books and we tried new things and it was very one-on-one learning. It was me, this other woman, Karen, and our boss, Ron, and he taught us so much. We would think up things that we wanted to make, I’d be like, “I want to make an ice cream that tastes like this,” and he was like, "Okay, here’s how we do that."

EO

What was it like being on the ground in Los Angeles in 2004 at that moment in time? Was this around the time that the restaurant lady had a boyfriend who committed fraud in New York? [Laughs.] I just watched the documentary recently.

AR

[Laughs.] Oh yeah, so good, the...Bad Vegan? Amazing.

EO

This was a little bit later, right? This wasn’t the same time; it was around that time though.

AR

No, no, no, I don’t think so. Yeah, I think that was a little bit later.

EO

What was it like being in LA at that time cooking? Was working in the industry novel then? Or were you just out on your own and you found this new community?

AR

Yeah, I mean... this is going to sound really silly. But we didn’t, there wasn’t really a community because we didn’t have the Internet. Everybody kind of worked in a vacuum, I found my first job out of that restaurant on Craigslist. And I found my job after that on Craigslist too. You had to really do the work. You had to be like, where am I eating? What are the restaurants? You made the effort, you had to do your own detective work, you read the newspaper. You read a lot of cookbooks. That was the only way to educate yourself. And the access to education was much different with everything, not just cooking. But if you wanted to learn how to make clothes, you had to buy pattern books and understand things on a ground level. Now, everything is accessible to learn from wherever you are, however you want to learn it, and then become good at it or not. And at this stage, it was like, I didn’t really read food magazines, because I thought, well, those are for home cooks, and I’m a restaurant cook. I was like I’m...

EO

I was going to ask about this. I recently met another cook, and he was like, "I’m a home cook, not a chef." and I was like, what?

AR

…I’m a restaurant cook, I don’t relate to home cooks. I didn’t take that seriously, just because that’s a different version, what we do is high art, what we do is performance, what we do in the restaurant is passion, and talent, and it was an art form for me.

EO

Yeah, but was there someone that you were emulating? In terms of personality, did you encounter people, who in those early days really showed you what it meant to be a cook?

AR

No, not specifically. I had a lot of favorite books that I read. They were almost all men, just by virtue of the fact that there weren’t that many women chefs that were able to run restaurants and write books, and that wasn’t really available and scalable at the time, necessarily. It didn’t occur to me to think, “Oh, where are the female role models?” That never occurred to me. I just thought I like this person’s vibe; I like that person’s style–and that’s why I gravitated towards certain people. But the things that always attracted me to a certain chef or their style or their books, is the fact that they felt more singular then. And I think it was a lot easier to be yourself before the Internet, before you were constantly being shown what the other possibilities were.

EO

Yeah.

AR

I feel like younger people, especially those that are growing up now, can pick up their phone and point and say, “I want to look like this.” [Laughs.] And it makes me think, what if you didn’t know anything else? What if you were just

content with how you look? And that’s how I kind of think about me and how i ended up being myself and finding my cooking style and all that. I didn’t have anything else to really look to, or any person. Learning at the time meant getting inspiration from every place you ate, every book you read, every person you met, and every time you watched someone else cook. It’s like I was this little sponge, and everything was a manifestation of things that came together that make me that I am now. All of the things that I’ve experienced are filtered through this lens of me—I didn’t have anything else to look to. You do just have to be yourself. [Laughs.] Everyone I’ve worked with was just themselves. And had like real don’t give a fuck attitudes. I wasn’t a victim of restaurant abuse in the way that a lot of people’s experiences can be, but like they’re definitely intense work environments. People don’t always speak to each other nicely, and there isn’t a ton of kindness, but there is respect.

EO

[Laughs.] 100%. I have this theory that the best artists and writers are those who are explicitly in conversation with themselves. They are living in their interiority and we just get to witness that process at work. I’ve always been suspicious of those who only concern themselves with what everyone else is doing, because they fail to contribute anything meaningful. Can you speak to home your cooking sensibilities developed?

AR

In terms of cooking style, it has evolved drastically since then because by virtue of the fact that I wasn’t working in a restaurant, I was making like foams out of stuff, purees, and taking three days to make a sauce and doing all this shit that you can really only do and it’s fun to do in a restaurant. But at home, it’s the type of process where you don’t really want to do and nobody else does either. I evolved my cooking style once I got out of working in restaurants.

EO

Right, you were able to troubleshoot your process and simplify the rules because you had learned the importance of each maneuver.

AR

I think it’s like once you understand how to do something the most complex way possible, you can then determine for yourself what’s necessary. And that’s like doing something the right way versus the easy way. What are you sacrificing when you lose X ingredient, when you cut out the midsection, you know, is that worth the sacrifice to save the time or the money? I’m fielding all of these calculations constantly...

EO

Of what?

AR

Every time I write a recipe now, I'm doing it. Where I’m like... I know that you really should do it this way, but that’s so annoying or so expensive or so time-consuming. You won’t get X, Y, and Z, but you’re still going to get something really wonderful, and that’s worth it to me. And then sometimes I’m like, you really do need to do the annoying thing and here’s why. It’s not good without it, I promise, because I’ve done it. And so, I think like having all that restaurant experience, because after that restaurant, I went to other restaurants in San Francisco and New York, and then when I finally got out of restaurants like six or seven years into my restaurant career, I was really able to start examining like what my true cooking style was like as a home cook. But none of that was done in the service of performing for people. Again, this was still like pre-Instagram, there wasn’t a platform for thinking and making in the same way it is today.

EO

What was it like working at the Milk Bar? I moved to New York in 2014, and that was very much in the zeitgeist at that point, like waiting in line and getting the cereal milk ice cream and compost cookie. [Laughs.]

AR

Yeah, it was fun. It definitely felt like we were being a part of a moment. It was exciting. Right when I moved to New York, I was like, I don’t want to work in restaurants anymore, but I do need a job. And my skill is baking and pastries. So, I needed to get a job that would hire me for that. And they were hiring, and so I got a job there and it still very much felt like start-upy, like no one really knew what they were doing. It was really chaotic, but it was really fun. It was really hard, we worked a lot, but at a really interesting time.

EO

But did you know your path at that point?

AR

I kind of knew. That was like the first time I worked somewhere where I was like, I’m going to do something else. But I didn’t know what, and I remember Christina Tosi was writing her first Milk Bar cookbook at that time and I was like, "Oh, that’s cool, writing a book." Seeing her write and make the book made me realize that so much of my job in that job and the positions that I had previously, and through my years in restaurants, was about teaching people techniques because I was their boss. When we would hire somebody, I’d be like, “Okay, here’s how we do this here and here’s why.” I felt like I was a good teacher because I had really great teachers starting out. I always asked so many questions when I was learning. Every other question I was asked “Why?”

EO

[Laughs.] Why?

AR

Because I’m always curious if there is a different yet more efficient way. I wanted to know why certain protocols are standard.

EO

Right.

AR

I wanted to do a lot of exploration. And so, in my teaching, I felt myself preempting their questions with the why, being like, here’s why we do this. If you don’t do it this way, here’s what could happen. You know, da da da. I liked that experience of teaching somebody how to do stuff. And I realized that when I was watching Christina Tosi make that cookbook, it made me realize that this form of writing is like teaching. I always thought I would be a writer. I thought I would go to college for writing. It was like the first way I learned to express myself as a kid, was through writing things. When I realized I could cook and write at the same time and that I didn’t have work in a restaurant, I saw it as a way out. It was a way that I could continue cooking, teaching, learning, and growing in a different way. But I didn’t think I could do it at the time; I was 24 years old and I don’t think I knew where I was going or what I wanted.

EO

What did New York change for you?

AR

I felt excited and that anything was possible. I moved there with no money, no apartment. I just knew I needed to get a job to pay rent. I didn’t have a backup plan; I just knew I had to do the work. At the time I just had one skillset. But I also knew it could lead to something else, and I’m going to put the word out, and eventually like a year and a half into me working before I was like this is not why I moved to New York. I was like, I gotta get out of here. I have to stop working in this way, because I don’t want to own my own restaurant. I don’t want to own my own bakery, and I don’t want to work for someone else forever. At this point, I had been working for someone else in restaurants for six or seven years, and I didn’t want to work as hard as I was working for someone else’s vision.

EO

It's really hard navigating the psychosis of giving your life over to someone else's vision. It's terrifying!

AR

I love to work so hard but if I’m going to do it...

EO

It needs to for me and mine. I couldn’t agree more.

AR

Yeah, exactly. I would love to work even harder than I am now. But if I’m going to do that, it has to be for me and something that I believe in and that is true to myself. And I hadn’t yet met anyone in my working path or position that I wanted to emulate. The people I’ve worked for have all taught me important things, but nothing where I was truly willing to dedicate myself and my life to where we were so aligned that I’m going to ride with you. I knew I needed to build my own path and do my own thing.

EO

To your point about asking why, most people don’t even have the perspective to stop and check-in why they do what they do day to day. It’s the Wild West out there. Can you talk about the process of navigating trusting your intuition? I feel like this is commonplace for most curious leaning people.

AR

Yeah, I think that collaboration with others was difficult for me. I love collaborating with people, but I am very singularly-minded, and I’m very decisive, and I know what I like and what I don’t like, and that can make working for someone else really difficult. That said, having mentorship is something I really crave even still today. I love advice, I love edits, I love feedback. I love other people weighing in so that I can grow.

EO

[Laughs.] Yes, I’m a student of collaboration myself.

AR

But I don’t like executing somebody else’s vision if it’s not aligned with what I’m doing. I think when I just first started out working, I was really good at that because I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have a vision, and I was just happy to be there. And then as I sort of grew into myself and was like, but I have my own tastes, opinions, and thoughts on how this should be—that became much harder for me to execute other people’s styles and ideas. And I was very fortunate from a very young age, to be empowered to explore my own tastes and my own opinions and develop my own thoughts and develop my own style. I would say that I wasn’t the ideal employee to that end. I was not the yes man type.

EO

It’s hard not to edit things in real-time. If it’s not an efficient or structured process my mind loses the plot. [Laughs.] I’m the same.

AR

[Laughs.] Yeah, that wasn’t really my vibe, but yeah, still like a formative experience for sure. But like any place you work, you learn so much either about yourself or about the skill. And I was actually talking about this with a friend the other day who’s a writer. She’s a bit younger than me as well, and she was like, so many people my age just think they should like to have a TV show or like to be in the writer’s room. And she was telling me that she also craves mentorship. We’re all just looking to learn from somebody! [Laughs.]

EO

Say more.

AR

I want to watch and absorb and pick up skills. My friend was telling me that she doesn't feel comfortable declaring what her needs are. She’s like, if I wrote a full show today, it would probably not be that good. And then it wouldn’t get picked up for a second season and then my career would be dead. She’s like, “I want to learn as much as possible, and I think that now everyone sort of expects instantaneous success, like they assume they’re ready for it this moment, but it's a lot of pressure.” At age 29, when I was working at Bon Appétit, I was approached to do a cookbook by my editor, and I was about to leave the magazine and to go to BuzzFeed. I didn't think I was ready to write a cookbook. I thought I had so much to learn about myself and my style, and even though I had been writing recipes for the magazine for four years, and had worked for five or six years before that in restaurants.

I had been working in the industry for so long, and yet still I felt like I was not ready because I had so much growing to do. I thought I’ll probably write a cookbook when I’m 40 and I don’t know if that’s about whether or not I thought I deserved it. But I just genuinely thought that’s something that you’d do after you accrued more knowledge, work, and dedication. I didn’t know that I was ready to declare who I was as a cook then. And that kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier, books are pretty permanent, but so is the internet. And when you like to declare...

EO

[Laughs.] I don’t think people put enough emphasis on the permanence of the Internet.

AR

In 2016, when I was writing Dining In, I was basically saying, this is who I am as a cook, as a person, here’s my personality. Would I write that book today in 2023? No. But audiences don’t really consider that these "public figures" can change and their priorities become different. I’m going to write a book this year or next, which is cool but it’s like the grace thing you were saying. I’m so proud of the books and all of the work I did when I was 20, 27, and 28. But it’s fascinating that at that age I thought I wasn’t ready because I wanted to live a full life before I decided who I am.

EO

[Laughs.] I’m going to die.

AR

[Laughs.] And then I’m going to determine who I am. Then I’m going to put pen to paper.

EO

I’m going to die, then I’m going to write that book. It’s truly the feeling I have! [Laughs.]

AR

Exactly. When I write these books, they’re very personal. There are so many stories in there–so many anecdotes.

EO

I was just going to say, as you were saying that, because I’m 29 now. I am constantly being faced with the reality, where I’m like, woof, there’s a book. There’s totally a book I’m dancing around. I feel like books are just personal observations that are just crafted into narratives that we pass off as if they aren’t our own making or maybe the public forgets that we’re implicated in the various meanings and truths we put forward, intimately.

But I want to stay on track because you skipped a step. You started at Bon Appétit at a really critical age of 26. I was curious if you started in the fall because maybe you had just turned 27.

AR

I did, yeah.

EO

What was that like? Everyone sensationalizes the story of you passing the infamous biscuit test but no one actually breaks down what happened next. Was there any pressure?

AR

I was a freelancer for a year and they wouldn’t hire me full time. They were like, you can come in three days a week. And I was like, I’ll come in four days a week, and I don’t care if you’re paying me for the fourth day. I was also working another job at the time to support myself.

EO

Of course.

AR

But I knew it was where I wanted to be. And I thought, okay I’m going to show up and work really hard and be good at this and they’re going to hire me one day. And they did. But it took a year. It took a full year of just showing up where they didn’t ask me to [Laughter.] and like being like, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. And I’d overhear someone talking about something and I’d be like, “I can do that! You want me to do that? I can do that!” [Laughs.] It was giving serious pick me, pick me, energy. I wanted to be there. I knew it was where I was meant to be.

EO

What was the reception of the magazine at the time? Was there an energy where people were talking about it?

AR

No, it was not cool, neither was it a culturally zeitgeist-y thing. It was a food magazine. I remember talking to some restaurant friends, and telling them that I’m working at a food magazine. They asked, “What food magazine?” And I was like, Bon Appétit. Then they asked, “The one for home cooks?” I was like, “Yeah.” They’re like, “Oh, weird.” No one cared and no one knew. But for me, I had a really big complex about never having graduated college. And I had a really big complex about being perceived as unintelligent. And because I like working in restaurants people are always so quick to be like, “Oh, you’re a baker. That’s so cool.”

EO

[Laughs.] Yeah.

AR

And I’m like, no, “I’m an artist.” [Laughs.] You know? You don’t understand. I didn’t say that, but that’s how I felt. I was like you are misunderstanding. Food is art, and this is life. I’m doing this because I can’t do anything else. I’m doing this because it’s my choice, my passion, because I love it.

EO

Right.

AR

And I always felt like I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about that. All my friends went to UCLA or UCSB, and I would visit them at school when I was working in restaurants. They’re all like, “So you’re a baker?” I’m like, yeah, but I’m really smart.

EO

[Laughs.] People are impossible. Trust me, I’m smart!

AR

[Laughs.] I read a lot and I’m smart. But now, I think if you were like 21 and you told people, “I’m a professional baker,” people would be like, “Oh My God. That’s so cool!” But there just wasn’t any cultural cachet at that moment in the same way. Like, it just hadn’t penetrated. At the time, it meant that you watched the Food Network and your mom cooked. But like no one was...

EO

The Food Network was so sleepy! [Laughs.] I remember it coming on and it was giving QVC or some bootleg Shopping Network vibe. Did the attention economy of food change while you were at Bon Appétit?

AR

Vaguely. It started to change, but it didn’t really change until I was at BuzzFeed and then took off by the time I had left BuzzFeed.

EO

Tell me about Buzzfeed.

AR

I didn’t care about working at BuzzFeed. That job was not for me because it wasn’t me. And I knew it immediately. There were a lot of people that worked there that were so good at that job, who were really lovely people.

EO

[Laughs.] What was the job?

AR

I don’t really know. I was like a senior food editor, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing there? It was kind of a mess, if I’m honest. They were trying something new and I was part of that, and it didn’t really work for anyone involved.

The job that I had at that time doesn’t exist anymore. They basically shut down that department. It became something else entirely. I don’t even know what that company is now, but all I knew was this isn’t for me. And I think it’s because deep down I knew that I really wanted to write books.

EO

How old were you at the time?

AR

I was 30 when I left. I started at Buzzfeed on my birthday.

EO

[Laughs.] Oh my, I’m so sorry.

AR

My worst birthday. [Laughter.] I knew it the first day. I was like, “Oh God, what have I done?” I cried every day. I thought I threw away my career. I ruined my life. What did I do? I was really frustrated. I couldn’t really continue working at Bon Appétit. There wasn’t room for me to grow. And I decided to take things into my own hands by leaving and trying something new. But I knew that it wasn’t right. But I had to go. I had to do something different. And around that time, in December of that year, was when I sold my first two cookbooks as a two-book deal. And as soon as that advanced check cleared...[Laughs.] I was out.

EO

Why two books?

AR

It was just a deal that I got. It was like, we could give you a one book deal. And my agent was like, what if she gave you two books for this much instead? And they were like, okay. I mean, it wasn’t that simple, but they asked, “Do you want to write more books?” And I was like, “Yeah, I want to write books forever.”

EO

At this point, did you feel confident in your writing ability and have a clear sense of how to communicate your point of view?

AR

Yeah. I was nervous. But I was so young and excited. The permanence of it didn’t occur to me. I wasn’t scared of that yet. I was just like, “Oh, I’m writing a book. This is cool. What’s a book? I don’t know.” There weren’t that many things out there for me to look to. I just knew what I didn’t want, and I knew that I wanted to set myself apart, so I decided that I was going to make something that felt unique to me, special, and like nothing I’ve seen before. Specifically focusing on the photography style, writing, and the layout. I really wanted to make something new.

EO

Can you actually speak to this? When I was reading the New Yorker profile, they mentioned that when you were first crafting the concept and visual references for your show Home Movies, you were referencing High Maintenance and Broad City.

AR

[Laughs.] I don’t even know where that came from because I think it’s something that I said in passing. And then every person picked it up and then the New Yorker profile picked it up. I think I more just meant that I was striving for something funny or that doesn’t feel overly produced. For the book, I wanted it to feel bright because cookbooks at the time were very moody. They were very serious-feeling.

EO

Say more.

AR

It shouldn’t feel serious. This should feel fun, vibrant, and bright—like sunshine. And I knew I didn’t want to hire a food stylist. I knew I was going to do everything myself. I worked with the photographers that I wanted. We were going to shoot all-natural light. We’re going to do this authentically. I wanted to just cook and then have pictures taken of the food immediately. And that’s what we did. That’s how I’ve done all my books. But I feel like for the time that process felt pretty radical.

EO

My friends and I have this philosophy that everything should be cute and fun. If it’s not, you’re with the wrong person, or in a horrible place and simulationship. [Laughs.] Did you map out all of the recipes first and then get into the cooking of it? What was the editing process?

AR

I always start with the table of contents. I start with asking myself, “What do I want to make? What do I want this book to be about?” And for Dining In, the book was just about me, I guess. [Laughs.] Here are recipes that work that you’re going to love cooking, but in my style.

EO

Did you know those recipes were going to work?

AR

I didn’t know. There was no way to know. I’m always paying attention to what people are really responding to. But no, at a certain point, it’s important to trust yourself and have standards of what you think is good. There are recipes in that book that I wouldn’t particularly put in a book today but there are also a lot recipes that I would. I think it’s important to create from a really pure place. I always ask myself, “What do I have to say right now?” And work from there, whether it’s writing or a recipe, it’s all important.

I don’t ever want to let other people’s style influence mine in a way that feels unnecessary. And I think that also is a slippery slope where you get into comparison and you’re asking yourself, “Is that better than me? Well, I’m different from that. Is that better? Do people like that more? What should I be doing?”

EO

What happened when Nothing Fancy came out?

AR

I left BuzzFeed, I decided just to write books full time. I had, again, the same situation with the New York Times, where I was writing for them for a year and a half as a freelancer. And then I got the column at the Times, and then Nothing Fancy came out in 2019. And that did really well. And then there was a pandemic.

EO

How did working for the Times change the reception of your work?

AR

It gave me a different level of validation, I think, as a serious food person. That was my dream job, because it made me feel valued for my intelligence as well as my cooking talent.

EO

Did it make you show up for your work differently?

AR

Yeah, I think so. But I was also getting older, so I think that general maturation coincided with having more responsibility.

EO

So, you came up with recipes and submitted them to an editor to review? How did everything else come together?

AR

Yeah, I presented what I was thinking for the next four columns, which would be two months’ worth of columns, because it came out every other week. Then I would write the 500 words, and submit them with the recipe. I was very lucky they let me shoot everything. When it finally came around, I knew I wanted to do the column, but I wanted to shoot everything myself.

EO

Why?

AR

I liked the control and wanted things to look how I plate them and make them. And as soon as you let someone else cook your food, it changes everything.

EO

Did that change how people engaged your work?

AR

I don’t know if people internalize it as different. I often will do things that are more difficult or expensive, where I only notice the difference. If I didn’t style my own books, my life would be so much easier. But I have to do it because if I don’t, they don’t feel authentic to me and my story. If you see a recipe with my name on it, but I didn’t make that food that you see in that picture, I would say, “That’s not my food.” [Laughs.] I’m fucked up.

EO

Ha, that’s not my president! How did you negotiate that? How did you know that you wanted that to be the case when you went in? That’s so...

AR

I just knew immediately. I just asked but I think had it not worked, they wouldn’t have let me continue to do it. But it did work.

EO

But what was the culture at the time? Also, for the context, how was the magazine being received at the time?

AR

I don’t really know. I sort of just never went into the office. So, I was not really a part of the day-to-day. I was very much a freelancer, who had the column in the paper. I was submitting my work, working alone and then hiring the photographers and collaborating with them and the prop stylist to bring the plates, forks, and things to life. But there was not a big budget, right? We did everything in my apartment. I used a lot of my own plate ware. It felt very scrappy, but I liked that. I don’t feel comfortable with high production value. [Laughs.] I always want to feel a little scrappy.

EO

Let’s talk about Nothing Fancy.

AR

[Laughs.] People responded really well to it.

EO

Did you put any of the Times recipes into the book?

AR

No, they weren’t in the book, because I started the column as I was shooting the book. I already had the recipes lined up, they were all new and different.

EO

Ha, I remember when I was talking with Lena Dunham about Girls, and she mentioned that it was always interesting when people would respond to certain threads across seasons because as the current one is airing, they’re usually actively shooting the next one. The next season is already written by the time you’re experiencing the current one. It really changed my perspective and expectations as a viewer.

AR

[Laughs.] The timeline for everything is so fucked up. The way things appear to the public is so deceiving, they look entirely different from how they are actually happening behind the scenes.

EO

How did you feel when your recipes went viral? Any psychological effects?

AR

Yeah, it was cool. And there was no precedent, it hadn’t happened before. It happened with the cookies, and then it happened with the other things that I published in the Times. What a weird phenomenon. And I kind of thought, “Oh, I bet this will never happen again.” And then it happened again…

EO

It’s funny you phrase it that way because right before you got on the chat I scribbled down “food phenomenon,” because that’s what you are! [Laughs.] Before I give interviews and as I’m researching, I’ll write down these short-hand facts to keep me grounded in conversation and that was the last thing I wrote. I don’t think people realize you don’t control whether or not a piece goes viral.

AR

Yeah, I think people always assume there’s a lot more strategy at play that goes into me being who I am or how I show up in my work. I’m not mapping anything out!

EO

It’s like writing pop music, you can know what you love but you don’t know when you’re sitting on a hit.

AR

I’m only trying to satisfy myself at the moment. I don’t know what’s going to resonate with someone. I think that era of singular viral recipes is sort of a bygone era because there’s so many more now.

EO

[Laughs.] Everyone and their grandmother are famous now.

AR

Completely. There used to be eight major celebrities, and now there’s 8 million celebrities. No one can be the one. There’s never going to be someone Beyoncé ever again. Full stop.

EO

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I was watching Emily Ratajkowski’s High Low podcast episode with Hari Nef. And on it, Hari’s talking about how superfluous the modeling market is and how girls used to walk 70 shows and now most girls walk 30 shows. I was thinking about the 1990s and the era, introduction, and evolution of the supermodel. It was truly an art form when Naomi, Christy Tulington, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour, Helena Christensen, Claudia Schiffer, Kristen McMenamy, and Tatjana Patitz took the stage. It was high art because it was performance; they could actually channel and perfect the mood because they were constantly in conversation with each other on these rotating sets and behind the scenes, while also being in character. We’ll never witness this again in the same capacity. And it was so specific because only a handful of people were doing it. It wasn’t a grab bag of people. It’s so fucked up now because the industry has made it so that they prefer to cycle through people so rapidly so that they don’t have to pay a living wage.

AR

Oh, yeah. No one makes any real money. Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. It also becomes harder and harder to stand out. It becomes harder and harder to make it when everyone’s kind of making it, but not really...

EO

And we don’t name that as such. [Laughs.] On another note, how did the magazine writing differ from the book for your second book?

AR

Yeah, I think it was an evolution of the second book. I think it allowed me, for the first time, the space to really write from an “I” perspective because everything else, for Bon Appétit and for the New York Times before, was written from the “We” perspective. It all comes back to the brand!

EO

[Laughs.] One mustn’t ever be bigger than the brand!

AR

Anytime I wrote for Bon Appétit or the New York Times, it was written in a house voice. I was a representative of the brand. Anytime you read a recipe, you don’t know who’s writing the head note. The head note is the text that comes before the recipe, where it gives context saying, this soup is great for a blah, blah, blah. If you don’t have beans, you can use da da da. Kale is a great substitute. But I would think, who’s writing that? Nobody. It’s the New York Times or it’s Bon Appétit. But for the New York Times column, I was able to preface each recipe with a 700 word essay. That was accompanied by my “I.” And here’s my emotional connection to this recipe. And it was like a way for me to really exercise my writing, and I really fell in love with that as an outlet for myself.

EO

Did it give you license to try new things?

AR

Yeah, because it was finally me. BuzzFeed is not me. Like clips I had to write about, “18 bean recipes to get you through the weekend,” was not me. [Laughs.] But talking about the connection between cooking in March and using your pantry and one time when I was eight, this thing happened. I don’t know... I just liked getting personal. I liked getting more like...

EO

Have you always known yourself to be a storyteller?

AR

No, I actually feel like I’m a bad storyteller, but I have always known myself to be vulnerable and authentic and an over-sharer. I think that that connects well to the type of writing that I do. I’m not a fiction writer, I don’t think I could pull that off, but I really love writing from personal experience, but I also love writing, again, like in a service way where I’m like, here’s all you need to know about X.

EO

What has it been like with celebrities engaging in your food? The whole Taylor Swift moment?

AR

Fun. So fun. Really weird. I just thought, “You know who I am?” That’s so wild.

EO

Has it morphed into personal relationships, have you cooked for people like that?

AR

I haven’t cooked for people like that. You become Instagram friends, or say, “Hi!” when you see them at a party or whatever. I was at the Taylor Swift's Eras show last week. And I saw Mindy Kaling in the celeb box and like my seats were kind of close to them. And we had just messaged on Instagram earlier the day before but I’ve never met her in real life. And I’m a real fan of her work. [Laughs.] I think she’s wonderful. And I was with my sister, and she told me I should go say hi. I was like, I’m not going to say hi—we don’t know each other! She’s like, she knows who you are. You guys were just messaging. Just say hi. I was like, I don’t want to say hi, that’s so embarrassing. And then I decided, fuck it. I’m going to say hi. And I’m so glad I did, but I definitely was like, this is weird. You know, like we don’t really know each other. I went up to her and it was so loud. And I was like…

EO

Hey, hello, hi. I’m the problem—it is me. [Laughs.]

AR

[Laughs.] No. I just thought, “What if she doesn’t recognize me!?” And didn’t know if it was going to go poorly or well. I walked over and pointed to myself and said, “Eggplant!” because she had just made my Eggplant Parmesan and she responded “Oh my God. Hi!” I was like, hi. I felt so embarrassed for myself. [Laughs.]

I mean it’s the same with meeting anyone else, right? I’m not in this business to meet famous people, but I think most famous people are like, she’s a writer, she’s a comedian, she’s an actor, and she started at a time also where it was very different. I don’t think she interpreted it as me being like, I’m going up to a famous person. I think she read it more as I’m coming to say hi because she knows that I like her work. It was a mutual appreciation. [Laughs.] It was really cool.

EO

Does the food thing get old at times?

AR

Yes, but I still feel it’s the number one thing that drives me. And of course, I go through dry spells.

EO

Dry spells of what?

AR

Of not wanting to cook or not feeling inspired.

EO

And how long do they last and what does that feel like? Does your energy go to other places?

AR

Yes, sometimes it’ll go to writing, it’ll go to reorganizing, sometimes it’ll go to me planning something else, a different project.

EO

Yeah.

AR

I think I’m now in my era of wanting to expand, generally, which kind of feels like starting over a little bit, because I’m doing so many new projects that I’ve never done before.

EO

You made videos at Bon Appétit, right?

AR

I did, yeah. But it wasn’t... they didn’t have a YouTube channel the way that they do now.

EO

What has it been like venturing into that space? How has it changed how you relate to your practice or your brand?

AR

I don’t know. To me, it’s just an extension of it. It’s easy for me to do it. It’s not easy to make the videos, but it’s easy for me when we are filming, because I’m just being myself and I’m cooking food. Which are two things that I feel like I’m good at. And we document them, and then the hard part is getting the assets for social and picking the right thumbnail. It’s the dumb nitty-gritty of making the thing that feels most like work.

EO

[Laughs.] The admin. I hate it.

AR

Yeah. The admin sucks, but the filming is great. That transition is the easiest part. Could I just write books and turn the content into a YouTube channel and have a newsletter forever? Yeah. But could I do more? Could I do something different? I need to keep myself engaged and see how far I can go.

EO

You said you want to expand in a way which feels like starting over. What does that mean to you?

AR

It means longevity. It means dimension. It means evolution. I don’t want to do the same thing forever. I’ll always write books because I love writing books. And I’ll always cook because I love cooking, but what else is out there? What fun is there to be had? I’m using all of the tools that I’ve accumulated from all of the other work that I’ve done and experiences I’ve had. In the same way, I loved working in restaurants and I didn’t have any plans to do anything else until one day I had the idea to do something different. And then I did. And so now I’m sort of like, okay, I’m ready to do something a little different, but working in a magazine, developing recipes was an evolution of working in restaurants. I hope that like whatever it is that I do, I just want it to be a part of the last thing that I’ve done yet feels like I’ve moved into a new mindset and am working in service of the bigger picture.

EO

Did writing Sweet Enough: A Dessert Cookbook feel like you were closing out a chapter?

AR

Yes, it did. And I feel now that I’m starting to think about what my fourth book will be, I’m ready to do something really different. The first three books belong and live together. The first two were meant to live together really. The third one’s a bit of an evolution, but I think it’s a good button on that chapter of things and my life. But books take so long to make and by the time my next book comes out, it will have been five years since Nothing Fancy, which means seven years since my first book. These take a long time. It makes me think of how much I’ve grown. We’ve all grown in seven years, right? [Laughs.]

We don’t all have solid documentation. And because I put so much of myself into my writing and my cookbooks, I hope any person who’s really reading it can sense, “Oh, this is an evolved person, different from the person that wrote this one, but it’s the same person. You’d notice that in anybody making work over a long period of time. Filmmakers, musicians, writers, and artists of all sorts. And are shocked that this person has had a really long career. Not to bring it back to Taylor Swift, because I’m not that kind of person. Just kidding. [Laughs.] But she’s been writing and making music publicly for so long.

EO

It's been so long.

AR

Of course the music that she made when she was 22 is... different. [Laughs.] I appreciated what she said when she explained, "I can still admit that’s a great song. And I’m proud of it and I can still sing it. It’s great. We all love it. But I’m not writing that song today." Even though she’s still the same person that wrote it. And yes and no are both true. We have to be allowed to also evolve and grow. The only way to show that is through the people that know us most intimately and then on some occasion through our work, which is only a sliver.

EO

When did you learn that you had to let things go?

AR

I’m still learning. [Laughs.] I don’t know that I’ve really learned that. I think that that’s a work in progress. I have a hard time letting things go, but you have to, you have to shed the old in order to make room for new. You can’t meet the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with until you break up with the last person you dated. You have to make space and things have to go. You have to clean out that fucking closet. You’ve got to break up with that person. You’ve got to let shit go. But it’s harder for me to let things go that are not a physical item or a person that I’m breaking up with.

EO

Or food?

AR

Yeah. I don’t know, it’s weird. I don’t think anyone has it figured out and no singular person has the answers. And I think the people who proclaim to have, “peace,” are full of shit. I think it’s nice to know that whether we want to or not, we’re going to change, whether we’re aware of it or not. There’s evolution and growth. I know not everyone grows or evolves, but I hope that I’ll always be different. I hope to be different in seven years from now. Not different, but more evolved, more me, more comfortable, more feeling secure in how I show up for myself and for people in my life and in my work. And maybe in seven years from that, I’ll think, "Wow, seven years ago I didn’t know anything." I think we have to assume that we’ll only get better.