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HVCT: Beauty is Truth and Truth, Beauty

Writer's picture: boxton9boxton9
Dec 22, 20221 min read

Updated: Jan 20, 2023

A Conversation with Dan Barber


I wrote Hudson Valley Chef's Table in a blur. At that point, I was doing a several extensive round-up features—Best Bars, Best New Restaurants, Best Burgers, etc.—for Westchester Magazine per year. I was also writing its restaurant reviews, its dining blog, and several columns. Meanwhile, a former editor of mine begged me to cover for her very pregnant restaurant critic at the Bergen Record. I did that work for 6 months. And STILL, I leaped at the opportunity to write this cookbook.


HVCT has 256 pages, 65 interview-based chapters, and lots and lots of recipes. I remember being pretty frazzled at this time.




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About Me

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I Was Supposed to Go to Grad School

Growing up in a large, loud family of 7, they use to call me “Pass Me The, Pass Me The” for the way that I’d try to doctor my dinner with whatever condiments were on hand. At about 8 or 9, I gave up on condiments and took control of dinner entirely, cooking out of a beat-up copy of The New York Times Cookbook that I still own, my little penciled-in annotations intact. I cooked for 7 people nightly, all throughout high school. By the time I was winding up college, I’d become a damn fine cook.

 

My father was a professor of American History. I figured I’d follow in those footsteps, teaching Dickens to 18-year-olds who were not at all interested. I gathered applications to doctorate programs, meanwhile, I took a job as a waiter in a busy catering company. The kitchen where I worked was perpetually understaffed—my cooking skills were quickly identified and I was press-ganged onto their crew. I LOVED it—the excitement, the creativity, the freedom, the trench humor, learning professional cooking techniques. There I stayed for several years while my graduate school applications gathered dust.

 

Cue me, later, a refugee from a crash-and-burn restaurant opening where I was not only the sous-chef, but also the loan application writer and babysitter for a chef/owner who had gone spectacularly off the rails. By then, I had a couple of herniated discs and no desire to stay in restaurants. I moved back to the world of words, and I’ve never looked back. 

 

Since then, I’ve been a restaurant critic, a national award-winning blogger, a food journalist, a travel writer, a columnist, a cookbook author, and the editor-in-chief of four Edible titles. I can’t wait to see what's next.

 

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