Hometown Food Hits NYC, Grandma’s Recipes are Cool Again
Something we’ve noticed lately: New York is having something of a hometown foods movement, and chefs are showcasing foods that incorporate their earliest influences. Some are even devoting whole restaurants to it. Examples are popping up all over the place: Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen will bring Nashville hot chicken to NYC, the Sussmans brought Detroit flavor to Berg’n, Alex Raij is whipping up her mother’s rabbit escabèche at La Vara, Marcus Samuelsson’s Streetbird Rotisserie celebrates street food that feels oh-so-familiar, and the new Major Food Group sensation Sadelle’s takes its name from bagel maker Michelle Weller’s grandmother. Rather than the fusions and emulsions of the early aughts, chefs seem more and more to be embracing the idea of simple foods that remind them of home. And we are into it.
Why? Because it turns out that what tastes like “home” to some people usually tastes like “delicious” to us. There’s something heartier, more comforting, more nomnomnom delicious about food that’s so obviously made with love, about recipes that were perfected around family dinner tables, as opposed to tested and tweaked in a test kitchen. And what better reason to have a dinner party than to share with your friends the food that made you love food in the first place – the foods that your parents and grandparents celebrated with, shared with their own friends, and probably, if you were a fat kid like us, bribed you with.
So here, we share some of our own hometown foods, which trickled down to us from places far from NYC and now can cheer us up after the worst subway ride, or on the coldest winter day. Some are sweet, some are salty, but all of them taste, to us, like home.
Lizzie:
My dad grew up in a Swiss Mennonite town called Berne, Indiana, and my mom grew up Jewish in Chicago. And while I don’t love everything that comes out of those two food cultures (not a huge fan of pickled herring or “Perfection Salad,” which is Jell-O with celery and carrots in it), there are some things it feels like I couldn’t live without. Here, the Rosti Potatoes and Broomstick Cookies that were a highlight of every trip to Berne, and the Lox, Eggs, and Onions, that I love to whip out at a Sunday brunch.
Katie:
When I was young, I travelled through Ireland with my 4 Irish grandparents and tasted the foods that defined my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ dinner tables and holiday menus. It was rustic, country fare that was hearty enough for a farmer and that now feels apropos to the farm-to-table tendencies of today. I love to recreate these recipes and reinterpret them for my own friends and family and I find that, when I do, I get no complaints.
Easy Entertaining Shepherd’s Pie
Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding
