© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Before I embarked on the Top Chef Las Vegas adventure, I gave a lot of thought to what my life would be like afterward, what I wanted to use my time in the spotlight to showcase and what I had to say to the American public while I had the chance. I wanted to make my 15-minutes-of-fame more like 20 minutes, by using it to affect positive change and therefore have a lasting impact both for me, and for other people.

As I’ve written here before, I believe in people eating a variety of tasty, healthy and nutritious food at a table united with their friends and family and the rituals of lovingly prepared food. I attribute our national nutrition epidemic whose symptoms are obesity and diabetes, to the popularity of processed foods and the decline of family mealtimes. I am as guilty as the next person, sitting down in front of the TV at the end of a long day–too tired to cook, but feeding myself regardless. I don’t know or care what I am eating, I am unaware of portion control, and I’m not really concerned with nutrition, quality or flavor. But when we sit down at a real table with other people, the meal is not only a good chance to engage with other people, but also a good chance to pay attention to what we’re eating. Is the food delicious? Am I full?

While most people rely upon supermarkets for their food, everything I need comes from one of our purveyors. Meat, vegetables, dairy and dry goods come in fresh through my front door daily. So going to a grocery store, as a chef and owner, is a rare experience and I am always fascinated. Aisle upon aisle of packaged, canned, frozen foods, and if the contents of their carts is any indication, people want all of these easy, cheap, processed foods. Meanwhile, fresh, whole foods are out of sight at the perimeter, hiding under the banner of “natural foods,” and hard to find even when you’re looking.

According to a recent study, the average American spends a total of 27 minutes preparing food a day, including clean-up. Moreover, they spend more time watching TV shows about cooking then they spend actually cooking. Apparently, we’ve become quite taken with the idea of cooking, but can’t find the time when it comes time to get up and actually do it.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

As I was incubating all of these ideas, I was asked to participate in a collaboration between UCSF and the KIPP/Gateway school. The KIPP/Gateway school had recently started an edible garden, modeled after the Alice Water’s edible schoolyard to teach kids about the origins of their food. UCSF became involved through an initiative to encourage families to dine together. Through extensive research they found that children whose families dine together 4 or more time per week perform better in school and less likely to engage in risky behaviors, including drug use, underage drinking and sexual activity. In tandem with these ongoing efforts, they asked me to teach the kids how to cook. Vegetables, specifically.

I visited the school and had a tour of their garden before making my way to the cafeteria, where the event was to take place. The cafeteria and attached kitchen were sad spaces. Much to my surprise, and disbelief, I learned that school lunch is not cooked in the kitchen, but instead packaged and delivered daily from an outside source. The kitchen, obviously not used for cooking, gave way to a cafeteria which looked to be underused for eating too. A conversation with the students confirmed these suspicions, that the students didn’t eat in the cafeteria because they didn’t like the school lunch provided and what’s more, that if they did eat a lunch packed from home, they preferred to sit in the classroom and eat at their desks. Plenty of the students skipped lunch altogether.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Last Thursday with the help and aid of several of my chefs at LCC, we taught kids from 5th grade to 12th grade and their parents how to cook vegetables and incorporated 4 basic cooking techniques. We roasted carrots, braised turnips greens, sautéed zucchini and steamed green beans. And then the students LINED UP to eat their vegetables. It was quite a sight. The parents and their kids sat together as a family and as a community at the table and really enjoyed that meal. Anyone involved that evening will attest that it was a monumental experience. The parents learned how easy it was to prepare tasty, nutritious, simple foods. One mom remarked that she was amazed how easy it was to cook vegetables so nicely and that she would use those recipes from now on. And the kids seemed to echo in a chorus, this is real food I would actually eat.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Though we certainly can’t change the way we feed our kids in school overnight, we can try. Showing how simple it is to cook real food, getting kids to think cooking is fun and helping busy parents to find time for their kids at the dinner table is certainly a start. Little changes make a huge difference in how we cook, and these little changes trickle out through a community every time a new person comes to the table. I felt so lucky to be part of that night, and if my Top Chef “fame” brings more of these opportunities my way, it’ll be totally worth it.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

When Padma first announced that we were having a dinner party that night in our very own house, I was so excited. I love dinner parties. I love attending dinner parties and I love throwing dinner parties.

I realized quickly upon arrival back at the house that we were not guests at the dinner party, of course, but I was just as happy to be cooking. Especially for an all-start line up of chefs, including the likes of Tom Douglas, Nancy Silverton, Tyler Florence, Govind Armstrong and Takashi Yagihashi? I was stoked about this challenge from the start.

I felt lucky to draw Tyler Florence’s knife and to be paired with Brian. When we opened the refrigerator to find a tub full of California staples, I was entirely at ease; I felt right at home cooking in our cozy kitchen with familiar ingredients to boot.

Dinner parties marry cooking and eating so beautifully, diners and chefs are often intermingling to create a real communality in the food, which is served with equal parts ceremony and humility. A great dinner party is marked by an interesting blend of people, after all, as much as the quality of the food on the table. It often inspires good conversation, new ideas and collaboration, for this reason, as naturally as it does full bellies and satisfying groans.

This June, a small farm in Casper, CA slaughtered 50 or so of their lambs. I drove up there to pick one up and brought it back to hang for a few days in my walk in refrigerator and then broke the whole thing down with my good friend and long time Left Coast Catering chef, Paul Tang. It felt truly momentous, butchering that lamb. So I decided to host a party to celebrate, with several lamb-centric courses and a smattering of my own all-star line up: Dan Ripley of Dan Ripley Catering; Jonathan Beile and Jennifer Spiegel of Fork and Spoon Productions; Yasha and Carrie Aginski, film producers; Edie Lerman & Kevin McCullough, top California cannabis defense attorneys; Paul Tang; my right hand lady and friend, Miss Marianne Jackson; and finally but not least, the love of my life, manager, PR agent and photographer of Face Collective, Henry Dombey. We ate lamb tartar, herb rolled leg of lamb, chard ravioli with lamb sugo and roasted rack of lamb with plenty of wine. And we ate until we were so full and so happy, the laughter in the room reached a volume that made speaking difficult. That night was for me, what life is all about–community, friends and great food.

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

I launched my private dining venue, 2150, in February with this kind of dining in mind: an intimate setting where guests and cooks could interact and share a common experience. A restaurant doesn’t always allow for the sharing of moments, and in fact seems hardened fast against them–consuming the life of its chef with hard work and discouraging her socialization with friends and family, let alone diners. But in a dining room, there’s more gray area between cooking and eating and I wanted to foster that kind of hospitality. The dinner party I threw to celebrate the opening of 2150 was where Marcia Gagliardi first encouraged me to go to the casting call for Top Chef in the first place. You could by now guess that I have a real affinity for dinner parties. The course of one’s life can change over a well stocked dining table.

The night we cooked for the Macy’s Council, I believe I caught a glimpse of the more human side of our judges. They were relaxed, enjoying one another’s company, engaging in forthright conversation and appreciating the food, even some of the less successful dishes. Of course they were also taking notes for their inevitable critique, but none of the dishes on that table were so bad as to taint the mood of that crowd. You could tell because they were actually enjoying themselves.

We had our own dinner party that night after we finished cooking made of wine, cheese, salumi and conviviality. Amidst the stress of this show, it’s nice to be able to put egos aside and come together once again, as we should, in the food.