Why Cooking is Caregiving, with Chef Hillary Sterling | Better in Person

Hillary Sterling, executive chef of Chisiyamo in New York City, uses this Better in Person conversation with Stephen Dubner to argue that cooking is an act of caregiving and teaching as much as technique. The episode moves from hands‑on moments — Dubner lighting the wood‑fired oven torch, a side‑by‑side Cacio e Pepe pasta taste test, and Dubner’s ill‑fated fish stew that Hillary politely dislikes — into deeper stories about Sterling’s formation as a cook. She recounts starting restaurant work at 14 in Montauk, formative stints at Mesa/Mesa Grill (where a 2003 oven incident left a wrist scar), and a brutal apprenticeship learning to cook pork tenderloin until she could recognize the moment it 'glistened' and was perfectly medium‑rare. That anecdote illustrates her point: culinary judgment is often sensory and learned by repetition, not only by following rules or thermometers.

Sterling also lays out practical and philosophical approaches to running a kitchen. She emphasizes sensing (listening to pans, tasting, feeling texture) and hands‑on teaching: stop someone doing something unsafe or wrong, demonstrate, then do it together. She describes negotiations with purveyors (calling multiple suppliers for 40–50 lbs of tuna for a holiday special), big purchasing scale (28,000 lbs of cipollini onions last year), and everyday constraints of food, wine, and labor costs. She declined a slot at Union Square Cafe because she wanted freedom to develop her voice, eventually building Chisiyamo within Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. Throughout the interview Dubner and Sterling are candid when they disagree (fresh vs dried pasta, liking soup), but align on hospitality’s value: Sterling treats feeding people as immediate, tangible caregiving and seeks to teach others to cook with attention, fairness, and a respect for food’s cultural roots.