Peter Glatz

When I hang out with other chefs, as a conversation starter, I’ll often ask them what’s their favorite thing to eat, or what they’d choose for their last meal. One would expect the responses to be something complex, and, well… cheffy. Surprisingly, often the answers trend toward simple dishes. My current boss, Chef Sean Brock, […]

My wife is not a picky eater. She starts out her mornings with a forkful of my homemade kimchi, straight out of the jar, followed by a glass of my home-brewed lemon-ginger kombucha. She’ll eat roasted bone marrow, raw oysters, grilled octopus, and beef tongue tacos. At Enoteca Maria in Staten Island, she even shared […]

I just got back from a lovely visit to New York, spending Easter with my daughter Anne’s family in their Brooklyn apartment. Admittedly, New York City is a bit of a culture shock to this old Midwesterner. There’s no place to park a car, the grandkids can’t just run outside and ride their bikes, and […]

I’ve been on a mushroom binge of late. I just finished watching the 2019 Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching it. Now I’m reading Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How To Change Your Mind which delves into the renewed interest in the therapeutic psycho-active properties of certain mushrooms. Because […]

My early childhood religious upbringing was predominately guilt-driven, and over the years, many of the things that have given me pleasure – such as butter – have been enshrouded in a veil of guilt. I was born in the 1950s and grew up on margarine. When I went away to college in the 70s and […]

Restaurants that care about the well-being of their employees make sure that their basic needs are met. At Audrey in Nashville, where I’m employed, work stops every afternoon for a half hour so the team can gather for a communal family meal. The responsibility of preparing family meal rotates through the kitchen staff. Recently it […]

I’ve really gotten deep into LSK recently. It’s been helping me unlock potentials that have always been there but I’ve never before noticed. I’m discovering flavors and aromas and colors that I’ve never experienced. It’s really been transformative! I’m not talking about micro-dosing with a new psychedelic drug, but rather an ages-old marinade from Asia. […]

The Japanese have a concept known as Mottainai, which expresses a sense of regret over waste. Mottai comes from a Buddhist word that refers to the interconnectedness of all things, living and non-living, and -nai means negation. Therefore, Mottainai is an expression of sadness over the wasted opportunity of things that have yet to reach […]

Tonight’s shift in the restaurant is over. I clocked in over 10 hours today and I’ve only been able to get off my feet for my half-hour family meal break. I’m very tired and my back and feet hurt. Even though I still have three more shifts ahead of me before my next day off, […]

This past summer, after my job as a cook at a summer camp in upstate Washington had ended, we decided to travel north and take a car ferry to Vancouver Island to visit Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Named after Queen Victoria, it’s one of the oldest cities in the Pacific Northwest and is […]

Back in 1973, I was a student at the University of Illinois living seven miles off-campus in a trailer park in rural Champaign County. On my drive home from classes, I used to pass a little fromagerie appropriately named “The Cheese Store.” I was 20 at the time and was just beginning to learn about […]

A definition of the verb inspire is “to make someone feel that they want to do something and can do it.” After I finished reading the recently published The Miracle of Salt: Recipes and Techniques to Preserve, Ferment, and Transform Your Food by Naomi Duguid (Workman Publishing), I realized how much this author has played […]