What Chefs Want to Talk About- Nostalgia Cooked - No.2

Nostalgia Cooked
June 16, 2026
No. 2

“Hands, please”

The question every chef has been asked a hundred times and never wants to answer again; the most important ingredient in your kitchen that you probably aren't thinking about; and three things worth your time this week, including a parasite that's about to make your summer cookout more expensive.

Coffee, then read on.

— Chef Tim

Questions You Should Actually Ask Chefs

If you've ever met a chef, you've probably asked one of these questions:

"What's your favorite thing to cook?"
"Did you go to culinary school?"

They're perfectly reasonable questions. They're also the kinds of questions many people naturally ask when they meet a chef for the first time.

The challenge is that most chefs have answered them hundreds of times. It's a bit like asking someone, "How's your day going?" It's a friendly question, but after hearing it often enough, the response can start to feel a little routine.

How can you really gets a chefs talking? Ask one of these:

1. What ingredient are you most excited about right now?
2. Where's the best place you've eaten lately?
3. Who's the most best kitchen you've worked for?

Then, you'll probably hear about a farmer, a fish, a pepper, or some obscure product; a list of restaurants they can't stop thinking about; or stories about mentors, lessons learned, and the places that shaped them.

Why? Most conversations between chefs revolve around getting better and these questions help us do that.

So the next time you meet a chef, you know what to do. Trust me, you'll get a much better answer. But, you might get stuck listening to a twenty-minute rant about cabbage, salt, or a new oyster farm someone just discovered.

Salt Might Be the Most Important Ingredient You're Not Thinking About

Himalayan pink salt should stay in the Himalayas and never come out. Leave the pink rocks where they lie and cook with something else. At this point it feels less like a seasoning and more like a crystal that got a really good publicist.

It's pretty. I'll give it that. It looks great sitting next to the stove and somehow finds its way into every Father's Day gift guide. But if you're looking to buy a cook a really great salt, skip the pink rocks. Get them a box of Maldon. Better yet, seek out a small producer like Barrier Island Sea Salt or Lange Salt out of Charleston. Those are the salts I've been reaching for lately.

Salt has always been valuable. The word salary comes from the Latin word sal, meaning salt. Thousands of years ago people traded it, fought over it, and built economies around it. Today we treat it like the least interesting thing in the pantry.

In every professional kitchen I've worked in, we've used Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Not because we're all part of some secret salt club, but because it dissolves beautifully and seasons food consistently. Swap it for Morton and suddenly that recipe you've made a hundred times tastes completely different. That's how powerful salt can be.

Here's the thing: most people are terrified of salt. And I get it. Nobody wants to overdo it. My wife thought salt would raise her blood pressure, so she never cooked with it. Ever. When I first added the correct amount of salt to a dish when cooking with her, she thought I was going to turn myself into a salami. But if there's one common thread in home cooking, it's that most food is under-seasoned.

How to fix? When you're cooking, taste often. Add a little salt. Taste again. Then maybe add a little more. The goal isn't for food to taste salty. The goal is for it to taste more like itself. Better tomatoes. Better steak. Better potatoes. Better everything.

Salt isn't glamorous. It won't trend on social media. But if you want to become a better cook overnight, pay more attention to salt over gadgets. Your guests will thank you for it.

Top Tip

Few wines love a salt-crusted ribeye as much as Malbec. Its dark fruit and velvety tannins wrap around well-marbled beef while leaving room for the mineral crunch of Maldon on top. Catena Zapata is a great place to start and easy to find at most wine shops.

Buell's Booth
Slide in, grab a seat. Every week, one question and one comment straight from the counter.

"Do I really need a good peeler, or is mine fine?"

Yours is probably not fine. My mom has had the same peeler for fifty years, and my old sous chef used his grandmother's out of pure nostalgia. I get the attachment. But a dull peeler is just a bad peeler with a good story, and sentiment won't save your potatoes.

What I use: the Mercer Culinary Y-Peeler Set, about $8 on Amazon. I order it once a year and it survives a full year in a professional kitchen. When it finally gives out, you spend $8 again and move on.

"After you wrote about anchovies last week I tried melting a few into the butter I was using to finish my pasta sauce on a Tuesday night. My family had no idea what was different but everyone kept coming back for seconds."

Now that's good counter talk. Nobody at that table tasted fish. What they tasted was something they couldn't name but couldn't leave on the plate. Anchovies dissolved into fat become something else entirely. Nice work pal.

The Nostalgia Table

The second Monday of every month · 7 o’clock · Eight seats. Location shared by post the week of. Subscribers receive first word. Write for a seat