5 Things We Learned At The Cherry Bombe Jubilee
Bon Appétit editor Christine Muhlke (center) sat on a panel at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee, while her son sat on her lap.
"I'm not good at doing what people want because I want to do things my way," Oakland chef, Preeti Mistry, told the crowd at yesterday's inaugural Cherry Bombe Jubilee, a day of discussions featuring some of the biggest names in food. Chefs Anita Lo and April Bloomfield, media luminaries like Christine Muhlke and Ruth Reichl, and others joined Cherry Bombe, a biannual magazine about women and food at NYC's High Line Hotel for a festive Sunday afternoon. Here are 5 things we learned from the women at the Jubilee:
- Cooking school is just kindergarten. It teaches you the basic techniques you need to lear and you need to learn the basic techniques perfectly.
- Go big or go home. When asked by moderator Katie Lee how she could enter a saturated ice cream market, then charge 3-4 times as much as her competitors, Jeni's Ice Cream founder Jeni Britton Bauer replied: "I just did it."
- Times are tough. Former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton thinks being a critic is harder now than in her heyday. She is not getting on a train to Brooklyn to wait in line for two hours at a restaurant that doesn't take reservations, she said.
- Balance is 1000% bullshit. Family life and work, and how the two fit together, was a prevailing theme — Muhlke even conducted a panel discussion with her son in her lap.
- Want to know how to have kids and a restaurant? You have to own the restaurant. Plus, working in restaurants is great preparation for parenthood: You get good at budgets, not sleeping and scolding.