At 16, Dirt Candy’s Legacy Is a True Team Effort
At the end of October, Dirt Candy is commemorating its 16th birthday with an entire week of celebrations: a throwback to the original 2008 menu on Oct. 30; a free Sweet 16 birthday bash on Halloween (RSVPs required); an installment of The Great Canadian Beer Hall on Nov. 1; and a Saturday brunch on Nov. 2. Tickets go on sale on Sept. 30 at 9 a.m.
For years, chef Amanda Cohen made every dish on the menu at Dirt Candy, her groundbreaking restaurant that’s been open since 2008. If there was an eggplant tiramisu on the menu or a mousse made out of mushrooms, you could bet that she was the one who came up with it. Her mind, an irreplaceable force in the world of dining, is one reason Dirt Candy is still here today.
The first iteration of Dirt Candy was a tiny storefront on 9th Street that would eventually be home to Superiority Burger, another iconic New York vegetarian restaurant. In 2015, it reopened in a bigger space on the Lower East Side. In that time, Cohen has amassed James Beard nominations, Michelin stars, reviews in the New York Times, and lifetime regulars. “I’ve had customers for 16 years,” she says. “We’ve all gotten gray hair, but we’ve all been in this together.”
Then came the pandemic. After years of serving vegetables every which way, Cohen used that time to plant seeds. She would approach chefs in her kitchens with strange and unusual requests. Could they make strudel out of beets? What about ice cream using bok choy? If they could, the dish would earn a place on the menu. Eventually, with their name beside it.
Unlike most restaurants where the head chef assumes creative ownership and credit over each and every dish that comes out of a kitchen, Dirt Candy acknowledges its team of chefs for their individual contributions to the menu. They’re encouraged and recognized for experimenting, and for pushing themselves intellectually to create dishes you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
“At this point, it’s 25% me,” Cohen says of the Dirt Candy menu today. “The rest is them. They do most of the work.”
Each season, the entire menu changes. “It’s like starting a new restaurant again every three months,” says Andrew Duong, a sous chef. And while Cohen comes up with the ideas for many new dishes, others start with her staff. They’re using seasonal produce — fairytale eggplants, rainbow chard, and candy cane beets — to tell stories about where our food comes from, and where vegetarian dining is headed. It’s a continuation of the legacy the restaurant and Cohen herself started 16 years ago.
For a closer look at how that legacy has evolved, we’re telling the backstories of the dishes (and people) who’ve contributed to it, in 16 dishes from the past two years. They’re glimpses, yes, into what awaits you on your next visit to the restaurant, but more importantly, they’re examples of a restaurant kitchen where collaboration and creativity really are put into practice. And that, to Cohen, is a legacy worth celebrating.
Chefs Megan Starnes (back left), Monique Fishley (front left), and Michaela Duke (front right) start preparing dishes for our Resy photo shoot.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Starnes drops the eggplant caramelles into boiling water to cook them.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Sous chef Megan Starnes
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Plating up the eggplant caramelle dish requires many different components.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Sous chef Andrew Duong
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Duong starts getting the asparagus lasagna ready.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Asparagus lasagna squares, ready for plating.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
The lasagna is almost ready to be photographed.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
The lasagna gets a final drizzle of sauce before it gets a grating of cheese.
Chef de cuisine Maria Herrera
Duke works on Herrera’s beet strudel dish.
Photo by Aaron Richter, courtesy of Resy
Duke’s zucchini soup dumplings get a nice steam before getting plated.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
A final dusting of citrus sprinkles goes on top of Duke’s fennel roll.
Sous chef Michaela Duke
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Onion rings get added to Duong’s onion chawanmushi, which features caviar made from seaweed.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Pastry chef Rachel Bossett
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
Putting the final touches on Bossett’s green curry doughnut.
Bossett’s bánh mì is made of bok choy ice cream.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
The team takes a quick break together for a photo op.
Photo by Aaron Richter for Resy
More From Resy
Onion Tartare By Chef de Cuisine Maria Herrera
Fall 2022
Some dishes — making doughnuts, for example — are meant to challenge chefs to learn new skills. Others are inside jokes between Cohen and her staff. “Amanda made me do this because she knows I hate raw onions,” says chef de cuisine Maria Herrera.
To make a tartare out of onions — one that Herrera herself would like — she bathes chunks of red onion in warm water until they lose some of their bite. She shapes them into a tartare-shaped mound, and to drive the point home, she adds what she calls “onion fat” — white cubes of gelatin made from onion juice. “You get this fattiness,” Herrera says, “like you would with a beef or tuna tartare.”
Beet Strudel By Chef de Cuisine Maria Herrera
Fall 2023
It took Herrera many tries to get her beet strudel just right. First, she had issues with her dough, which tore in half whenever it was stretched. Then, there were the beets: They bled through the pastry, turning it red and soggy. The biggest problem, though, wasn’t the strudel — it was Herrera. She had never tried German strudel when she suggested making one out of vegetables. “I had to go and open my mouth,” she laughs.
After several trials, she settled for a dish that incorporates elements of strudel, even if it doesn’t look like one. It features three layers of mushroom mousse — with beets, tahini, and labneh added for color — and layers of flaky pastry.
Corn Tamal By Chef de Cuisine Maria Herrera
Summer 2023
Making tamales without animal fat can be difficult enough, but Cohen had another challenge for Herrera: Could she make tamales that didn’t just taste like an ear of corn, but looked like one, too?
“It’s not a traditional tamal,” she says, “but it’s pretty.” The corn masa is made with oil, instead of shortening, a popular vegetarian substitute, and chunks of baby corn. After it’s packed into a mold and steamed, it’s served swimming in sauce. Herrera tried pairing it with mole at first, but it was much better with a bright, corn salsa made with aji amarillo.
Brussels Sprout Carpaccio By Sous Chef Michaela Duke
Fall 2023
Last fall, chef Michaela Duke was determined to make carpaccio out of Brussels sprouts. To do it, she marinated the outer leaves in balsamic and koji, the Japanese fungus used to make soy sauce Once the leaves were plated, she added garnishes that could be used in actual carpaccio, such as capers, garlic, and discs of white onion. “You’re giving the vegetables more of a meat-y treatment,” she explains.
Fennel Roll By Sous Chef Michaela Duke
Spring 2024
Fennel salad can be turned into a cinnamon roll, in theory — but should it? This spring, Duke thought so. Her fennel roll features Castelvetrano olives and three kinds of fennel rolled into a Parker House roll. After adding butter, she wound up with a soft, savory pastry — “like the center of a cinnamon roll,” she says. It comes with garnishes that could be used in any salad: fennel flower, shaved olives, and colorful dots of preserved citrus.
Zucchini Soup Dumpling By Sous Chef Michaela Duke
Summer 2022
One of the hardest dishes to figure out was the zucchini soup dumpling. With classic soup dumplings, congealed pork fat is folded into a dumpling, and when the dumpling gets steamed, it melts into a hot soup.
“Vegetables don’t really do that,” Duke explains. After months of trying, another chef in the kitchen found a solution — on TikTok. They were watching a video about “reverse spherification,” the same process used to make vegetarian caviar or popping boba, when they figured it might work with zucchini broth, too.
Reverse spherification did indeed do the trick. “It bursts in your mouth,” she notes.
Eggplant Caramelle By Sous Chef Megan Starnes
Summer 2023
When Megan Starnes, another chef, heard that she would be working with eggplant, her first thought was Italian pasta. The next one? “How could I make that more interesting?” she asked. She landed in Morocco.
“I was thinking about tagines,” Starnes said, “and all the different accompaniments that come inside them.” Her eggplant caramelles are loosely inspired by tagines. The pasta gets served over butter made from saffron, cumin, and the zest of “every citrus in the building,” she notes. Beside them, there’s a schmear of jben, a fermented Moroccan cheese. “If I was eating this, I would scoop up a little bit of everything,” Starnes adds.
Pain au Champignon By Sous Chef Megan Starnes
Winter 2024
Starnes had never professionally made croissants when Cohen informed her that she was about to learn. “That’s not something people do in two months,” Starnes notes.
Then again, it wasn’t a normal croissant. The pastry, called “pain au champignon,” is filled with portobello mushroom mousse, the one that Cohen has become known for over the years. Starnes spent full days of work learning how to make sheet pastry, checking her work with colleagues — and videos on YouTube. As for the cappuccino-looking drink on the side? “That’s mushroom soup,” Starnes says. “You never know in this place. Everything is something else.”
Tomato Doughnut By Sous Chef Megan Starnes
Summer 2024
Nothing is as it seems at Dirt Candy. Often, dishes that would be served as desserts just about anywhere else are turned into main courses. Take this tomato doughnut. “It’s a real doughnut,” Starnes says, “but it’s stuffed with sweet and savory tomato jam.” The “frosting” is made from feta cheese, and that flower-shaped garnish? It’s dried-out tomato. “We dehydrate tomato for a few hours,” she said. “It’s like chewy fruit leather — but tomato.”
Carrot Taco By Sous Chef Andrew Duong
Summer 2022
When Andrew Duong was tasked with making a dish using carrots, he turned to his Southern California roots for inspiration. “I had always wanted to do a taco,” he says. Using a vegetable sheeter, he sliced carrots into strips and shaped them into small, orange tortillas. The color looks like birria, but no: The filling is carrot dumplings. They’re stuffed inside with shredded Brussels sprouts, cotija cheese, and cilantro — and meant to be eaten by hand. “We’re not a very stuffy restaurant,” he adds. “We encourage our guests to have fun with their food.”
Asparagus Lasagna By Sous Chef Andrew Duong
Spring 2024
Kuku sabzi, a Persian herb frittata, was an inspiration for this take on lasagna. “I was inspired to incorporate as many herbs as you can,” Duong says. The lasagna, which was served this spring, features herbs, such as mint, cilantro, parsley, and chive. The through line is a bright Bolognese made with yellow tomato and asparagus. “It’s so far from your traditional idea of lasagna,” he says. “It’s so much fresher and more herbaceous and bright.”
Onion Chawanmushi By Sous Chef Andrew Duong
Winter 2024
Not all of the experiments work out. Earlier this year, Duong set out to make a flan using onions. “There are better ways to feature the onion,” he later concluded.
When he tried chawanmushi, a Japanese steamed egg custard, it went better. “We really dressed it up,” he says. “We used as many different types of onions as we could.” There are fried onions, in the form of onion rings, and onion-dip flavored sour cream. The star is the vegan caviar, made from seaweed harvested in Denmark. “It has the same texture and salinity,” he notes.
Rainbow Chard Vacherin By Pastry Chef Rachel Bossett
Fall 2022
Even desserts have to follow the rules. “Anywhere else, you could use chocolate and hazelnuts,” says pastry chef Rachel Bossett. “Not here. I gotta get a vegetable in there somewhere.” For the fall , she made rainbow sorbet using rainbow chard. She based the flavors off a salad recipe she found on Google, which paired rainbow chard with grapes, she said. She roasted grapes, until their skins blistered and started to wilt, and paired them with a thin meringue cracker. She serves the sorbet over crème fraîche.
Bok Choy Ice Cream Bánh Mì By Pastry Chef Rachel Bossett
Spring 2024
Dirt Candy could be the first restaurant to make bánh mì out of bok choy. The dessert, which is made from ice cream, is based on Bossett’s favorite takeout order. “It’s lemongrass brisket with all the usual fixins,” she says. The sorbet is made with lemongrass and bok choy; the meringue is meant to represent Sriracha mayonnaise, the cilantro is cilantro, and the red dots of gel — gastrique — embody pickled carrots. It’s tied together with a cracker on top. “Your baguette,” she says.
Potato Chocolate Frosty By Pastry Chef Rachel Bossett
Spring 2023
Growing up in Seattle, Bossett had a high school tradition: “French fries and a Frosty from Wendy’s,” she says. “That was my lunch many days during high school.” To make a dessert out of potatoes, she turned to that childhood memory.
Figuring out the Frosty was easy. “That’s already ice cream,” Bossett says. Making it taste like fast-food French fries was harder. The cake is baked with potato-infused butter and instead of puff pastry, she uses strips of fried potato — something she had never attempted in her 18 years of pastry making. “Why would you even try something like that?” she says.
Green Curry Doughnut By Pastry Chef Rachel Bossett
Winter 2021
Dirt Candy has served many doughnuts over the years. This one was created during the pandemic, when the restaurant served themed menus. To round out the Thai menu, Bossett made doughnuts that tasted like green curry.
“Anytime I can make a doughnut,” she says, “I’m gonna.”
Her non-traditional green curry is flavored with Thai basil, Makrut lime, and lots of lemongrass. For texture, she adds bits of toasted coconut and palm sugar meringue. “I had to dessertify it,” she says. “I tried to keep the spice down. Except for those little red chiles on top.”
