She was running a household with five kids on a very, very unreliable paycheck, so I learned a lot of that from her-structure and thrift and exotic flavors.Īnd then from my dad I learned just incredible generosity, and that the lighting matters and if people smell smoke it's a good thing and all the sort of mise-en-scène and how to take care of people and how to tell a good story and make sure the wine is flowing. And also from her I learned such a sense of thrift and cleanliness and order.

We had to eat very strange things-marrow bones and ratatouille and things that were not so exciting for children at the time, but now I love them and I cook that way. My mom, I learned definitely to cook and eat from her. GH: I think I am really the recipient of both of their qualities so evenly. How did each of your parents influence your cooking and your approach to running a restaurant? When I opened the restaurant, I ended up cooking what I grew up eating-what I knew very internally and inherently-so I named it after the time when I was called Prune.Įpi: You write a lot about your parents and the parties they hosted. And butter was all the sweet, good stuff.Įpi: And why did you name your restaurant Prune? So, blood, I was thinking of family and bloodlines, and bones, I guess I was thinking of making one's bones and maybe a few bones to pick. Gabrielle Hamilton: There was a cookbook that my dad had when we were kids-it was called Love, Time & Butter, by this chef named Joe Hyde, and I think that's always stuck with me.Īnd book's organized by those words. Why did you call your book Blood, Bones & Butter? In this interview with Epicurious, Hamilton opens up about her life in food, including what her parents taught her about cooking and hospitality, her idea of the perfect restaurant, and how being a chef is excellent training for having children.Įpicurious: Let's first talk about names. In addition to having an interesting story to tell, Hamilton is a talented and accomplished writer-she earned her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Saveur, and GQ. But as she reveals in her recently published memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Hamilton's culinary and personal background proved just the right recipe for running a successful restaurant. T welve years ago, when Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune, a 30-seat bistro in New York's East Village, she'd never run her own business, and despite 20 years in the catering industry, she'd never worked as a restaurant chef.

Blood bones butter