Chic lunch
when
adam met
rachel
Rachel Roy: What are you ordering, Adam? Adam Rapoport: Do you want me to start? That would be so ungentlemanly! OK, I’ll have the local tomatoes and the scampi ravioli. RR: I’m getting the scampi, too. When you’re eating with an expert, you just want to copy whatever they’re having! AR: My wife always orders something different from me, because she feels like she’s supposed to, and then she regrets it. RR: How did you get into food? AR: This is very armchair psychiatrist! Growing up in DC in the seventies, herbs came from a jar. There was no arugula. You had underripe tomatoes year round, and green beans came from a can. If there was broccoli, it was cooked for an hour—smarmy green, soggy, and mushy. But my mom was a good cook. I was the youngest, so when my brother and sister were at school I hung out with my mom in the kitchen. I still thought boxed macaroni and cheese with ground beef mixed in was the best thing ever invented, though. RR: I grew up in Monterey, a gorgeous place very close to the Bay Area. It’s a community of very happy, chic hippies. We lived on the poorer side of town, but the fields of Salinas that John Steinbeck wrote about were my visuals. I still long for the sea. My mom is Dutch and my dad’s Indian. He always had three jobs, and one of them was as a nurse in a psych ward. He’d make friends with the people in the cafeteria, bring home leftovers, and curry them. I didn’t love Indian food as a kid, but I appreciate it now. So does my 12-year-old! After college, I learned how to make stuff that most other people know how to make; I don’t need recipes for exotic dishes. And I had to teach myself to make all of those typical, Leave it to Beaver meals that I thought I was missing out on! Everyone’s house seems cooler than yours when you’re growing up. What was the first dish you learned to cook? AR: My house was all about meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and iceberg lettuce, and the first thing I learned to make was a really good omelet. My father could cook two things: omelets and tuna casserole
FA S H I O N W E E K D A I L Y. C O M
with potato chips. He made the omelets on a good, old, French steel skillet. The butter would get all brown, you’d pour the eggs in, and you’d have the perfect omelet in 38 seconds. In ninth grade, we were allowed off campus for lunch for 45 minutes and I’d bring six girls home and make them all omelets. RR: Fresh ingredients really do make all the difference. Everything I wish I’d known sooner, I make sure to tell my girls. Smells, even! We live across the street from Whole Foods, so it’s quite easy because all of the herbs just smell so damn good. AR: When I was in college in Berkeley, I was several beers into the evening at a friend’s house when I saw a jar of fresh rosemary on the table. I called my mom saying, ‘There’s that stuff that you put on your lamb chops! That green stuff!’ Northern California was always steps ahead of the East Coast and the Midwest, especially with Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. In California, I discovered actual Asian cooking and really good Mexican food. And grocery stores with wide aisles and 14 different kinds of peppers! Plus amazing produce at farmer’s markets. That dovetailed with the start of the celebrity chef movement in the early nineties. Did you have any pivotal foodie moments in Berkeley? AR: I was sort of a dork; I subscribed to Gourmet as 20-year-old straight kid. I’d take girls out to restaurants in San Francisco, which was a big thing. But I’d read about those places in Gourmet, saw the pictures, and wanted to go to places like Zuni Café, for the roast chicken with bread salad. At the time, I knew this wasn’t normal. RR: I’m sure the girls appreciated it! No one’s taking you out to restaurants like that in college. AR: I’d get dressed up, too! Other San Francisco food memories include burritos in the Mission. I went to this place, Altena Taqueria. Those big carne asada burritos! And grilled steak with fresh avocado? I’d never had a fresh avocado before I moved to California. Now I’ll put an avocado on absolutely everything. I was awakened: As much as I loved the food I ate growing up, there was a whole other world out there.