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:


  1. Cooking school is just kindergarten. It teaches you the basic techniques you need to lear and you need to learn the basic techniques perfectly.

  2. 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."

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.