In today’s episode, we speak with our guest Gaby Dalkin, Los Angeles-based celebrity food influencer, chef, and cookbook author.
In this interview, Gaby shares how she left her fashion PR job to attend culinary school, before entering the world of full-time blogging in 2009. Since then, she’s quickly become the “go-to girl for all things California” and superwoman behind the digital cooking empire and blog, What’s Gaby Cooking—attracting millions of people monthly to her social media platforms and profiled in People, Glamour, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and more. Her thriving brand has helped her monetize content and book major collaborations, such as her popular line of cooking products for Williams-Sonoma.
Listen as Gaby chats about how she landed her first cookbook deal, developed her personal brand messaging, and grew a multi-channel digital cooking empire from the ground up.
In today’s episode, we speak with our guest Gaby Dalkin, Los Angeles-based celebrity food influencer, chef, and cookbook author.
In this interview, Gaby shares how she left her fashion PR job to attend culinary school, before entering the world of full-time blogging in 2009. Since then, she’s quickly become the “go-to girl for all things California” and superwoman behind the digital cooking empire and blog, What’s Gaby Cooking—attracting millions of people monthly to her social media platforms and profiled in People, Glamour, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and more. Her thriving brand has helped her monetize content and book major collaborations, such as her popular line of cooking products for Williams-Sonoma.
Listen as Gaby chats about how she landed her first cookbook deal, developed her personal brand messaging, and grew a multi-channel digital cooking empire from the ground up.
TRANSCRIPT
Kirk Bachmann: Hi everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, I’m speaking with Los Angeles-based cookbook author, chef, and food writer Gaby Dalkin. Known as the go-to girl for all things California and superwoman behind the digital cooking empire and blog, “What’s Gaby Cooking?” which started back in 2009.
Today, her site, which houses original recipes, meal plans, lifestyle and travel content attracts millions of people every month to her social media platforms. And it continues to grow, with over 900,000 followers on Instagram. “What’s Gaby Cooking?” has also been profiled in “People,” “Glamour,” “The New Yorker,” “Better Homes & Gardens,” “Los Angeles Times,” and more.
Gaby has also authored four cookbooks, including “What’s Gaby Cooking?” “Everyday California Food,” and “Take It Easy: Recipes for Zero-Stress Deliciousness.” She’s also known for her popular line of products from Williams-Sonoma, including seasonings, salsas, infused oils, cheese boards, cocktail mixers and more. Gaby currently lives in sunny Los Angeles with her husband, Thomas, and daughter, Poppy.
So join me today as we speak with Gaby about what a day in her life looks like, building her brand from scratch, and the key ingredients it takes to become a successful food blogger.
And there she is! How are you?
Gaby Dalkin: Hi! I’m so good. How are you?
Kirk Bachmann: I’m great. I’m exhausted after that intro. I’m not going to lie, Gaby. This is probably the best part of my year.
Gaby Dalkin: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. This is going to be such a great podcast.
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. We’ll have a lot of fun. My wife insisted that I say, she’s a fan!
Gaby Dalkin: What’s her name?
Kirk Bachmann: Her name’s Gretchen.
Gaby Dalkin: Hi, Gretchen!
Entering the Food World
Kirk Bachmann: Oh God, she’s going to love that! She’s going to love that.
I did a little bit of digging. I’m going to dive right in. It sounds like you come from a family of doctors, but you took a little bit different route. You ended up leading a fashion career, and you became a private chef. You got into the world of blogging. I’m just going to let you go for a minute. Talk about your love of cooking. What prompted you to dedicate your career to making people smile through food? It’s beautiful.
Gaby Dalkin: Thank you. It’s my favorite part about my job. Yes. I come from a family of doctors. I went to pre-med in college. About halfway through, I was like, “What am I doing? This is not for me.” I love helping people. I think that through-line carried through to where I ended up.
I switched my major to business. I ended up graduating with a business degree and going into fashion PR and marketing after school. That was back in 2009. If everybody remembers, it was a rough year for the economy.
Kirk Bachmann: Everyone. Yeah.
Gaby Dalkin: The company I was at right out of college folded. Thankfully, I had babysat and worked while I was in college. Playing tennis there, so I had some money saved up. Rather than going to get another job right away, I decided to enroll myself in culinary school. It was a really small program here in L.A. I didn’t want to take out any loans. I wanted something that was a little bit affordable. I went to a small, once-a-week program for a year, and somehow managed to get a job as a private chef on week two, which is hysterical. If you saw what my fish looked like those first few weeks of culinary school – at my private chef job – it would be appalling. It was so sad.
Kirk Bachmann: But you were learning. You were learning every step of the way.
Gaby Dalkin: 100 percent. I threw myself into the culinary world. Honestly, I didn’t really know where it would take me. I wasn’t planning on staying in food, but I was in culinary school. I was working as a private chef, and I started my website, “What’s Gaby Cooking?” – which was just a little bitty baby food blog at the time – to chronicle my way through school and show my friends and my family what I was learning. It was a hobby.
It slowly started picking up steam. The blog developed over time. I left one personal chef job to get another personal chef job once people started hearing about me and I was a little better about networking. That was like you said, in 2009.
Fast forward fourteen years later, I haven’t left the culinary world. Never plan to. I don’t private chef anymore, but I couldn’t love where I am [any more]. I generally think people who like to cook and like to eat and enjoy bringing people around your table are good people. I feel like I’m in really good company. I love what I do.
Kirk Bachmann: I see the word celebration a lot. Is it all about celebrating community being together, food, putting smiles on people’s faces?
Gaby Dalkin: I’m a glass half-full kind of person. I choose to wake up and be happy every morning. I love feeding people, and feeding people makes everyone happy. I celebrate every day, whether it’s having breakfast with my daughter, or having a dinner party with friends on a random weeknight. Whatever it is, I love giving that to people. The fact that I can do that for millions of people online that I don’t actually get to see every day is a real highlight for my career.
Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t it amazing how food can just be that common denominator. It just puts everything on the same level.
Gaby Dalkin: It’s a great equalizer. Everybody has to eat, so everyone just wants a great meal.
Messages and Mentors
Kirk Bachmann: What came first? You have the platform to reach people. You’re doing it through food. Was it your love – obviously you’ve got a personality and you have the technical know-how, and food was just the medium? Or is it, “I’ve got a message I need to get across to people about food and this is how I’m going to do it”?
Gaby Dalkin: It was the first of those. I did not know what my message was. I actually didn’t know what it was for quite some time. I knew – actually, I don’t know if I knew exactly what I stood for for the first couple years. I remember right when I started the blog, I kept applying to be on Food Network’s “Next Food Network Star.” They would be like, “What’s your personal brand statement?” I literally couldn’t tell you. I could tell you today, but I couldn’t tell you back then.
It took quite a bit of time for me to really develop my voice and what I stood for. It was not until I started working with one of my mentors to hone in on the branding of “What’s Gaby Cooking?” I just word-vomited to her for like a week straight. She came back to me and she was like, “Well, Gaby, you’re this California girl-next-door that makes everything accessible.”
I said, “It was that easy, Laurie?”
“No.” But when you take a step back and you look at someone else’s messaging, it’s easy to look [and see] “Oh, all these things are what make Gaby Gaby, and here’s how to say it in a really eloquent way.”
Kirk Bachmann: I was going to say something about a mentor. Can you talk about that mentor or others?
Gaby Dalkin: I’ve had a lot of incredible mentors in my life. Laurie Buckle is one of them. She used to work in the publishing side of the world. She was at Meredith – all the “Better Homes & Gardens”, all that kind of stuff. She was at Bon App [Bon Appetit]. I don’t remember. She came from the publishing side of things. She is probably a little bit younger than my mom and really helped me develop what “What’s Gaby Cooking?” was as far as writing it down on paper and putting the message out there. I could keep those nuggets of information in my brain every time I’m writing a blog post, every time I’m on a TV show. What am I trying to say? What’s my story and what’s my brand?
I’ve had other really incredible mentors. Janet Hayes, who is the CEO over at Crate & Barrel has been a huge mentor of mine and a giant cheerleader. I think that’s a really important part of finding your footing in a career, looking up to people and asking them if they can chat and help and grab a coffee. You can bounce ideas off of them. I feel very fortunate that I have a lot of those people in my life.
The Business of Blogging
Kirk Bachmann: Oh, I love that.
Let’s talk a little bit about trailblazing. We’ll go all the way back to 2009 again, when you first started “What’s Gaby Cooking?” When blogs and YouTube and – I’m giving my age away here – basically anything social media related was virtually nonexistent. You’re forging this new uncharted path. Who knew that fourteen years later it would be what it is today. What was the real impetus behind starting a food specific blog in a world where it didn’t even exist?
Gaby Dalkin: It was really the early days of blogging. There were very few people who were doing, and even fewer who were doing it well. My godmother actually had a very small little food blog. She messaged me one day and said, “You should really follow the Pioneer Woman. She writes all these fun stories about cooking and falling in love with her husband and having kids.”
I started following Ree, who’s now a friend. It’s weird how it all started. I was obsessed with reading her love story, and how she wrote, and how she put a recipe with some of her stories. That’s why I started “What’s Gaby Cooking?” because I was about to start culinary school. I was like, “Well, I can tell these stories, too.” I’m not nearly as good of a writer as Ree. The woman is such an incredible storyteller. I am not that, as far as writing all these – whatever. She’s just a better writer than I am.
Kirk Bachmann: Millions of followers would beg differently, but go ahead.
Gaby Dalkin: Ree’s really good at telling this love story and crafting it and publishing it in pieces. I write very stream of [consciousness]. I write like you’re in my kitchen with me, and I’m talking to you right here, and that’s how I’m educating you. It’s just different strokes for different folks. That was kind of the impetus for starting “What’s Gaby Cooking?”
“If she can do it, I can do it, too.”
Kirk Bachmann: I love it. Many of our listeners are aspiring food entrepreneurs, let’s say, and I imagine most people know that running a business, a blog, it’s full-time. It’s a lot of work. There’s undoubtedly a huge learning curve, especially when it comes to the dollars. How does this make sense/cents, pun intended. Was it a learn-as-you-go mentality back then?
Gaby Dalkin: As far as monetizing it?
Kirk Bachmann: Yeah.
Gaby Dalkin: Yeah. It’s really interesting, because I have so many friends who will look at what I do now, and they’re like, “We want to quit our jobs and go into content creation.” Regardless of whether that’s food, fashion, beauty, whatever, but the money isn’t there when you start. When I started, “What’s Gaby Cooking?” back in 2009, 2010, it wasn’t even remotely profitable for four or five years. I private cheffed the entire time until I decided, “What’s Gaby Cooking?” is making a decent amount of money. I’ve got money saved up. I can afford to make this jump and see if it works. If not, cool, I’ll go back to finding another job.
But the money really wasn’t there. It was a learn-as-you-go. I started putting advertisements on my site. I started doing small brand deals for a couple hundred bucks here and there. As my audience grew and I got better at advocating for myself, I just started adding. Instead of a $200 blog post, now it’s $400. It was a real learn-as-you-go. Eventually, as I became a little bit more of a force, a management team approached me, and they helped really develop the business part of that, and all that kind of stuff.
But I’ve worn every hat. I’ve done every aspect of “What’s Gaby Cooking?” So now, while I have help with a lot of different things, I scrapped it all together to start.
Kirk Bachmann: My favorite part of that share is that I was going to say something by how intimidating is this? But it almost feels like you’ve just faced those challenges head-on rather than getting intimidating and pausing, it’s like, “Let’s innovate. Let’s pivot.” That word, pivot. Still, you were pivoting before people pivoted.
Gaby Dalkin: I’m a big believer in pivoting. I’m also a big believer in not hearing, “No.” If someone tells me no, “Okay, cool. I’ll go find someone to say yes.” I don’t take “no” well.
What’s Your Story?
Kirk Bachmann: That’s a great skill. Here at Escoffier we just launched, in January, a brand new online food entrepreneurship program. Blogging, social media is a big piece of it, opening up your own business, that sort of thing. Without giving any secrets away, are there any specific skill sets, or even this idea of perseverance or grit, what is it that you would say to a classroom to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Gaby Dalkin: I’ll give it all away. I’m an open book. I think when you’re starting a career and you’re figuring out where you want to go, you have to figure out who you are. What’s your voice? What do you stand for? For lack of a better word, what’s your brand?
I think I fumbled a lot in my first couple years because I didn’t know what that was. When I figured it out with my mentor, things started hockey-sticking up. I think whether you’re starting a restaurant, whether you want to be a photographer, whatever it is, you have to figure out that nugget, because then you can use that for everything you do. That was the biggest turning point for me. So I would say to all these people who are starting, do that. Really think about what you want to say. What’s your story?
Kirk Bachmann: Incredible advice. Yes.
Here I’ll make you blush. Your personal brand, in my opinion, is really based on a sense of community. You land on your site. It’s warm. It’s inviting. It’s approachable. It’s easy to navigate. “Oh my gosh! Look at all this.” The recipes are not intimidating. They’re intoxicating. They’re inviting. You’ve mentioned in an interview that I read that “Food doesn’t have to be fancy, homemade, everything from scratch. That’s not the world that we live in anymore. I think, you think, people just really appreciate being together.” Quote, unquote. Really well said. I don’t know if you remember saying that, but you said it.
You’ve talked a little bit about how you’ve developed your own brand. Some of it’s serendipitous. Have you seen, Gaby – let’s just talk about the pandemic just for a minute. Coming out of that, going through that, have the dynamics of people’s needs changed, even recently, in your opinion?
Gaby Dalkin: I think Covid was such an interesting time for us personally. We got pregnant. We had a baby. We were very careful about seeing people. Then, when the world kind of started to open up again, it became very apparent to me as the head of “What’s Gaby Cooking?” that everybody just wanted to see their friends. That didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if you were buying pimento cheese from Safeway and bringing it to someone’s house for a barbecue, you were going. People don’t say no to invitations anymore.
The dynamics changed in that people want more entertaining recipes that are approachable so they can also bring people around their table. They want to feel like they’re a rock star in the kitchen and have the confidence to say, “Yeah. I can cook for six of my friends. I don’t have to make a 75-hour lasagna. But I feel good about what I put on the table.” I think that’s become more apparent in the last couple years.
Kirk Bachmann: Well said. This next question’s kind of unfair. Fourteen years forward, would you have done anything differently? But you don’t have the luxury of knowing what you know now.
Gaby Dalkin: No, probably not. I think failing is really important. And we certainly failed doing many things. I worked with brands I probably would never work with because, “Well, it’s $500. That’s a lot of money.” I needed to pay my rent, but it’s not really something that was true to what I stood for. No, I wouldn’t. I think all those experiences help you learn and become a better business owner.
Being True to the Audience
Kirk Bachmann: You said a minute ago that you have the luxury now of having some other people to help with business. A huge part of branding is also centered – even in my business – on how we interact with our audience – our students in our case, your customers in your case. Your viewers. You’ve also stated, quote “I’m in the business of customer service and making people feel comfortable in the kitchen. If it’s not me answering their questions, then it’s a total sham.” Unquote. That’s really powerful. Is that really important for you? And is it challenging to maintain that level of excellent customer service – Unapologetic customer service – with your accelerated growth in the business?
Gaby Dalkin: It is still just as much of a priority as it was when I said that. I don’t remember what interview that was, but I do remember saying that.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s powerful.
Gaby Dalkin: It is equally as important today as it was then. I do. I respond to every single question on my website, on my Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter. If you have a question, I will answer. Most commonly, I do it via voice note now because it’s faster for me to talk to you than it is for me to type. That’s just part of my job. I know there are many people in similar situations as me that have people responding to all of their DMs. If that’s what works for them, cool. That’s what works for them.
But I attribute a lot of my success and the success of my brand to my audience. I couldn’t do everything I do without them. I couldn’t host all these incredible dinner parties all over the country and the world unless they were ready to come along with me. That comes from developing their trust and being there for them. If someone’s having a problem in the kitchen, I can look at the picture they sent me pretty quickly and tell them what I think they should change, or how to remedy whatever in the kitchen, and helping them. That’s such an important part for me, I’m never going to give that up.
Kirk Bachmann: Brilliant. If we could talk a little bit about the social media piece. I don’t want to get over my own skis. In your opinion, Gaby, has the influencer marketing environment evolved the way that it should, in your opinion, over the years? Tough, right?
Gaby Dalkin: That’s a tough question. Gosh! I think it’s incredible, the opportunities that “content creators, influencers, entrepreneurs” are getting. I have some very amazing opportunities on my plate right now that I wouldn’t have had five years ago. This industry wasn’t where it was five years ago.
I don’t know. I think it’s a tricky line to tell with social media. I think so many people are so obsessed with it. A lot of people have to remember that it’s not everything. If Instagram disappears tomorrow, you still have to be able to operate your business outside of that. It’s not the end-all, be-all. I think you’ve got to take all these platforms with a grain of salt and make them work for you while they can. But you have to also know. For me, WhatsGabyCooking.com is a website I own. That is my hub. Everything is housed there. If Facebook or Meta or everything they own disappears tomorrow, or TikTok goes away, I still have my home.
Kirk Bachmann: Super great advice. I didn’t have this question before, but now that you just said that: any thoughts on sponsored content?
Gaby Dalkin: I think sponsored content, when done well, is incredibly powerful. We get hit up by various brands and PR agencies. I turn about 85 percent of them down before even sending them off to my team because it’s something I know I can’t stand behind. It doesn’t matter how much money they have. If it’s the biggest dollar in the world, I can’t work with XYZ because it’s not something I would ever use in my life anyways. But, when you do find a great partnership, it’s incredibly powerful to be able to tell a brand message through someone like me and make it easily digestible for an audience.
Kirk Bachmann: I love the integrity around that comment. The questions just keep flowing. To that point, are partnerships critical – I’m thinking like a student – to the ecosystem that you live in?
Gaby Dalkin: Yeah. It’s so funny. I was making this diagram of what’s going on in “What’s Gaby Cooking?” right now. There are eight facets to it, and there are eight revenue streams that go into “What’s Gaby Cooking?” Sponsored content on my website and social media platforms is the most lucrative, for sure.
Planning the Calendar – Personal and Professional
Kirk Bachmann: At the top of the hour, we use the term superwoman. There’s so much on your plate – again, pun intended. We’re so grateful that you found time to chat with us for a little bit. I absolutely love it.
Without all the detail – and I know you are on the clock – what is a day in the life? What’s most important to you? You mentioned your daughter. You mentioned your husband. You mentioned what’s important. From a business perspective, where do you center your priorities?
Gaby Dalkin: Every day looks very different for me, but my priorities are A) keeping my audience happy. I’m answering all their questions. I spend a lot of time doing that every day. Outside of my family stuff.
If we talk about a real day in the life, I wake up. I hang out with Poppy for a couple hours. I go work out. She goes to do her thing. I do my thing. Thomas, my husband, works with me. We’re head-down from 9 to 4, basically, then again after Poppy goes to bed, we work for a couple hours at night. We’re always working, but we feel very grateful.
It just depends on the day. Sometimes I’m at the studio shooting content. Sometimes we’re doing video here. Sometimes I’m at a convention for a brand, being their spokesperson. No day looks the same, unless it’s breakfast with Poppy and the gym. Those are constants because those fill me up.
Kirk Bachmann: I love that. All too often. It’s changing. In the food world, we get all caught up. I love that you mentioned exercise, the gym. Super, super important. It’s uncompromised.
Gaby Dalkin: Yeah. If I don’t work out – I eat a lot of food. I could put down more food than the average human. I have no shame in that game. If you sat me down next to a linebacker, I’d eat more than him, period. It’s really important for me to keep my body – not in peak physical form, because I’m not like that, that good of shape – but working out is a really big part of keeping my brain and my body feeling good.
Kirk Bachmann: Getting back to content, cookbooks and so much more. I’m just curious about the editorial calendar. You said every day is a little different, but I imagine the planning is just critical. Is it three months out, six months out? Are trends changing so fast that you’ve got to balance that? It’s probably not easy.
Gaby Dalkin: I do love a content calendar. I live by a to-do list. Our content calendar is planned out probably two months ahead of time. We also have the ability to pivot on a weekly basis if we need to. Sometimes we do. Sometimes something comes up. I’m a new-found golf fan, so I didn’t know I was going to do a menu for the Master’s, but now I’m going to do the menu for the Master’s.
Kirk Bachmann: I just got a chill. I just got a chill. I’m a big golf fan. I can’t believe that. That’s awesome.
Gaby Dalkin: I watched “Full Swing” on Netflix, and that really…
Kirk Bachmann: I just watched it last week. If you didn’t love golf, you had to love it after that.
Gaby Dalkin: Do I think I’m going to be watching golf on the weekends? No. But can I appreciate the people behind it now, because I learned all about them? Should Rory and I be best friends? Probably.
Kirk Bachmann: Give him my number, please.
Gaby Dalkin: I wasn’t planning on doing a menu for the Master’s, but now we’re shooting it next week so it can go up before the tournament. We have the ability to pivot, but we do plan two to three months out. We know what holidays are coming up, what people are looking for. But my photographers are also very busy, and they shoot for really big companies, so we’ve got to get stuff on their books ahead of time because I’m not paying them as much as Taco Bell is paying them when they work for Taco Bell.
An Education in Cookbooks
Kirk Bachmann: It makes so much sense. Yeah.
What about cookbooks? What was the impetus for that? When did you start writing cookbooks?
Gaby Dalkin: My first cookbook, I think, came out in 2013. It was a small little cookbook all about avocados. I was in New York back in the day when blogger get-togethers used to happen all the time. I was sitting next to an editor from a publishing house. I was like, “So who’s next? Who’s the next Ree?”
He said, “I don’t need the next Ree. I need the next you.”
“What?”
“What would you write about?”
And I very jokingly said, “Avocados” because I didn’t know what the heck I was going to write about. It was really before I had developed my voice. This was in 2011. The book came out two years later in 2013. It was an incredible educational opportunity for me, and obviously it sold zero books because I had zero followers at the time. Maybe I sold a couple thousand copies.
I didn’t write another one until 2018. I remember, in 2016-ish, towards the end of the year, I got a call from this literary agent whom I desperately wanted to represent me with the first book, but she wouldn’t take me on. She called me and she was like, “I’ve been watching you, and I think you’re ready.”
Kirk Bachmann: Wow!
Gaby Dalkin: Okay! I hadn’t even considered writing another book at the time because my first one did so poorly. She brought me on. She had me write a proposal. She ripped it to shreds. It was a really incredible learning process for me.
We went out and took the book to auction and picked our publisher, which was Abrams. We’ve subsequently published our last three books with them, and we just signed on to do our fourth book with them, which will be my fifth cookbook. It’ll come out next year.
It was just, we knew what we were doing the second time around, and Janice was such an incredible guide for me. I have the most amazing editor at Abrams, Holly. We’re now a very well-oiled machine and we can create this content for the books. But the book process takes 18 to 24 months to come to fruition.
Kirk Bachmann: It’s amazing. They say when you write a screenplay that you should write what you’re familiar with. What advice do you have for someone who wants to write a book?
Gaby Dalkin: I would say that. Definitely write what you’re familiar with. Write what makes you happy because it’s a really process of writing books. It’s not that much fun! It’s not glamorous. The recipes we test – we test all the recipes that go in my book a minimum of four times. It’s a lot of cooking the same thing over again and over again. A lot of tweaking. A lot of writing. The editing process is brutal.
But then, once it’s edited and it’s photographed and it’s assembled and ready to print, that’s when all the fun stuff happens, at least for me. I love the marketing and the PR portion of it. I love going out on book tour and meeting everyone in real life. That’s the pay-off for me.
And also, it’s not a lucrative thing. Unless you’re Ina. It’s a marketing tool. You can’t go into cookbook publishing and think that’s going to make you rich, because it’s not.
Kirk Bachmann: Most of the chefs that are on the show, as we wind down, I always ask: music, motorcycles or both?
Gaby Dalkin: Ooh… that’s a great question. I’m going to go motorcycles.
Kirk Bachmann: Really!? I love it. Enduro, or street bike?
Gaby Dalkin: I’m taking that as a metaphor for adventure and not the literal motorcycle.
What’s Next?
Kirk Bachmann: 100 percent. Some take it for both. Yes, they do.
What’s the future vision look like for “What’s Gaby Cooking?”
Gaby Dalkin: I want to just keep building my little mini-empire that we have. We’re doing another book, like I said. We just wrapped season one of a TV show. I think we live in this incredible time in the digital landscape where truly anything is possible. We just have to see what comes next. We’re always taking meetings and doing business development workshops and all that kind of stuff and brainstorming different ideas. I think the future for “What’s Gaby Cooking?” is very exciting. I think I’m going to have to start hiring more people, because it’s not something I can do all on my own. I’m trying to get better at delegating every day. Hopefully, I can make that happen and can continue to grow.
Kirk Bachmann: What’s Poppy or Thomas cooking?
Gaby Dalkin: Poppy is a crazy, amazing eater. I feel very lucky. Thomas is uber-healthy and is really good at grilling. He grills all of his food all the time. They’ll both eat everything.
Gaby Dalkin’s Ultimate Dish
Kirk Bachmann: I love it.
Gaby, the name of our podcast is The Ultimate Dish, so my final question always is, in your mind – it could be a memory. Could be real. What is the ultimate dish?
Gaby Dalkin: Cacio e pepe from a small little place in Rome.
Kirk Bachmann: Boom!
Gaby Dalkin: With a big glass of Brunello, to be honest.
Kirk Bachmann: And you didn’t even see the script. I love it. I absolutely love it.
Can I just tell you, I adore you? I thank you so much for spending some time with us. We got it wrapped up before your next call.
Gaby Dalkin: I would have stayed for another twenty minutes.
Kirk Bachmann: You’re absolutely delightful. Congratulations on all the success. We’ll keep following. My wife is going to go crazy.
Gaby Dalkin: For sure, tell her I said hi. If I’m ever in Colorado, I’ll keep you guys posted.
Kirk Bachmann: You are welcome any time. Thanks again.
Gaby Dalkin: Thanks, guys. Have a great weekend.
Kirk Bachmann: Take care.
Gaby Dalkin: Bye.
Kirk Bachmann: Bye-bye, now.
And thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast, where you’ll find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. You can also browse other episodes and subscribe.