20 Questions with Dirt Candy’s Amanda Cohen
In the Resy Questionnaire, we play a game of 20 questions with the industry folks behind some of our favorite restaurants. What’s your most memorable restaurant experience? Your favorite food movie? What restaurant would you want to time-travel for?
In this edition, we spoke to Amanda Cohen, the groundbreaking chef and owner of Dirt Candy on New York’s Lower East Side.
The Resy Questionnaire
1. Favorite thing you’ve ever cooked?
The next thing I’m cooking. I’m a perfectionist and there’s nothing I’ve ever created that I don’t think I can’t improve. But the most useful dish I’ve ever cooked is my portobello mousse. Years ago, Dirt Candy needed a new A/C system one sweltering summer and I didn’t have any cash. Out of the blue, my mousse won an award from PETA that came with a $10,000 prize. The day after it was announced, my A/C contractor showed up and handed me a bill for exactly $10,000. I didn’t get a cent of that money, but at least my customers were cool that summer.
2. Kitchen tool or equipment you couldn’t live without?
At home I have a garlic press that I’ve had for close to 30 years. It’s moved across the country and gone through several apartments with me. It helped me win “Iron Chef Canada,” and has cooked countless meals. I consider it one of my best and most reliable friends.
3. What pantry items would you bring on a desert island?
Nothing’s more useful than salt, so I’d bring an unlimited amount. Safflower oil because it’s so versatile and you can’t cook without oil. Golden Mountain Seasoning Sauce because it’s my favorite home flavoring. Chile flakes because I’m a spice addict, and, finally, a case of Espinaler olives stuffed with anchovies. I fell in love with these on a trip and I can eat them by the bowl. Plus, I can turn the cans into a beautiful set of glasses for my desert island home.
4. What’s your favorite place to get a slice in New York?
Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side. I’m very picky about my pizza and Scarr’s embodies everything I want in a New York City pie. When my staff has something to celebrate, we order from Scarr’s.
5. Favorite cookbook?
I would be a very different person with a very different life if I hadn’t encountered “The Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls.” It made cooking feel like a party, and everything that’s happened to me since is firmly the fault of Betty Crocker.
6. Your drink of choice?
A dirty Beefeater martini. If you drink vodka martinis I don’t think we can be friends.
7. Favorite food movie?
I saw Stephen Chow’s “The God of Cookery” years and years ago and it stamped itself onto my soul. Nothing has ever made me want to cook more.
8. Your ideal dinner party guests, dead or alive?
On principle, I’m against eating food with dead people. I just think that’s creepy and unhygienic. Also, what could they possibly eat? As for living industry people, I’d rather dine alone. Cooking for others in my home still makes me nervous, even after all these years. Plus, I hate doing the dishes!
9. If you weren’t a chef, what other profession do you think you’d take up?
Without a doubt, I would be a professional Solitaire Cash player. The ads say you can make hundreds of dollars a day. That seems like a win-win to me.
10. The greatest restaurant experience of your life so far?
When I moved to Hong Kong in the mid-’90s I was already a vegetarian and I was pretty used to what you could get at North American vegetarian places. When I sat down for my first meal at a Hong Kong Buddhist restaurant that served veggies, I was blown away. The variety of the dishes, the techniques I’d never even considered, and the fact that it was presented as a totally legitimate cuisine, changed my expectations for what vegetables could do forever.
11. Your greatest professional achievement?
Staying open for 16 years and getting rid of tipping eight years ago. It’s the best decision I ever made, no matter what the press (who doesn’t look at my books) thinks. Getting rid of tipping made me realize that there’s a better way to run a restaurant that does a better job of serving everyone’s needs — my staff’s, my customers’, and mine.
12. What single dish best describes your personality?
Fondue, because it’s not just a meal — it’s like fishing for cheese. There used to be an amazing fondue place in the East Village called Rotelle AG and going there taught me that if you’re going to go out for dinner, don’t count the calories and don’t hold back. Commit! Dive right in to a big bowl of molten cheese and start swimming around. We’ve only got so many days on this planet, so why play it safe?
13. If you could go back in time, which restaurant would you dine at?
Princess Pamela’s on Houston Street. The room was barebones, with two picnic tables and a piano, and if you wanted a salad she’d send you to the deli to buy the ingredients. But it was some of the best Southern food I ever had in my life. But more than that it taught me that personality was a big part of making a restaurant special. Eating at Princess Pamela’s was like being invited over to eat in her house. It was a privilege and an honor, and I’ve remembered those meals she served us long after I’ve forgotten meals at fancier, more expensive places.
14. Your favorite meal from childhood?
Pasta salad. My mom had a knack for them and I’ve never had one as good since.
15. What is your wish for the restaurant industry?
To be better. The system we have isn’t built to last, but if we all work together we can figure out something that works for everyone.
16. What do you wish you did better? What do you do well?
I wish I did everything better, and I don’t think I do anything well. But I get by.
17. If you could eat through a city for a day, where would you go?
I have a long list, but Bangkok is right at the top. A former sous chef of mine is from Bangkok and I’m trying to convince her to take me on an eating tour. But a day? Are you kidding? I’m not going for less than a week.
18. The one thing you can’t resist splurging on when you go out?
Champagne and caviar. Hardly the most original answer, but they both still make me giddy.
19. What do you value most in restaurants?
Personality. This city is full of white tablecloth fine-dining places that blur in my mind as they put rectangles of proteins on top of vegetables and cover them with sauce. The places that pull me in are the places that feel like I couldn’t find them anywhere else.
20. It’s your last meal on earth, what are you eating?
An all-you-can-eat buffet. You’d be surprised at how long I can make that last.
Dirt Candy is open Tuesday through Saturday from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m.
Deanna Ting is Resy’s New York & Philadelphia Editor. Follow her on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). Follow Resy, too.
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