Interview with Writer Tamar Adler

“We have this whole idea that to be anti-materialist is somehow to be reverent, and to be materialist is to be fallen. Meanwhile, if we were just genuinely materialist, that would make us reverent. I guess that’s why I like cooking. That is reverence, as far as I can tell. So is how you treat people; it’s all the same stuff.” —T.A.

I am a tremendous fan of the writing of Tamar Adler—in particular, her 2011 book, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, which speaks about eating and cooking in a way I have never encountered before—as if she is only writing about food as a way of speaking about other things: how to live, our relationship to each other, to what might be called God—to the very most important things about life and living. Her prose is exquisite and her tone is humorous, helpful and calm. She has cooked at Chez Panisse, among other restaurants, and counts among her supporters Michael Pollan, Michael Ruhlman and Alice Waters, who wrote the introduction to her book. I met with her near her home in Brooklyn at a little restaurant she chose, where we recorded this interview amidst the steadily increasing chatter around us in the early evening in fall. —Sheila Heti

I. I JUST WROTE A BOOK AND I WANT TO WRITE ANOTHER BOOK

THE BELIEVER: I wonder what your experience of time is.

TAMAR ADLER: Not space?

BLVR: No. [laughs] I’m not interested in that. But time—it seems like the way you explain to people what to do with food—it necessitates so much patience. And when you’re doing these things so lovingly to the food and paying so much attention to your ingredients, I wonder if readers don’t think, as I did, “I don’t have the time to do that.”

TA: I’ve noticed that I’m really deliberate. I like to be deliberate about things, and if I don’t do things in that way… I think this is something about myself, but if I’m not deliberate, things can go badly, and then you have to spend more time in the long run. Do you know the Long Now society? I think I take more of a long now perspective.

BLVR: I know them, yes, they’re fascinating. So what kind of book did you think you wanted to write when you set out?

TA: You know how literature is transformative, but instructions and recipes aren’t? I had this idea of something that could—it would not be a device to convey a message. I didn’t feel like I had a message, exactly. But I felt like I had a way of...