Is there a greater love language than food? You could buy my heart with Ina Garten’s coconut cake, some king crab legs, or a heaping tower of chocolate-covered honeycomb. But there are also plenty of food-related gifts — a farfalle-shaped candle! A rhinestone chocolate chip cookie necklace! — that would make a food- or drink-obsessed person really happy this Valentine’s Day.  

It’s easy to please a food-lover on such a famously indulgent holiday. (No one ever turned up their nose at caviar and Champagne), but we’d like to offer a few more alternatives for the person who has already done many a lobster dinner, and whose pantry shelves overflow with heart-shaped Le Creuset cookware. They’re the person who orders for the table (whether you agree or not), and they know how to make an elaborate layer cake. You can’t give them something expected, like an Instant Pot. It’s safe to assume they already own every mug ever made or sold at Anthropologie. And don’t even think about getting them a Dutch oven: They already have one in a signature color. These are the gifts they won’t see coming, but will adore — dare we say, savor. Many, if not all of the Valentine’s Day gifts below are also able to be shipped to your loving arms in a matter of days, and given that capitalism’s most cherubic holiday is just around the corner, the time to order really is now. 

Below, we’ve rounded up food-related Valentine’s gifts for everyone on your list, from your pasta-loving partner to cast-iron snobs, wannabe wine experts, and everyone in-between. (If this list still doesn’t cut it, get them a good old-fashioned gift certificate to Williams Sonoma, which will cover all the bases.)

For the bucatini enthusiasts

The Sfoglini Pasta Club (One-Year Subscription)

Love carbs? Invigorated with bottomless curiosity about obscure pasta shapes? A subscription to Sfoglini’s Pasta Club is a slam-dunk gift that includes four quarterly shipments full of fun surprises, but each one is guaranteed to feature six bronze-die cut, slow dried pastas (classics and specialty varieties) as well as six accompanying recipes. Saffron malloreddus in a killer ragu may well be in the future for your lucky recipient.

Where to Buy:

• $215 at Sfoglini

For the amaro nerd

Matchbook Daytrip Strawberry Amaro

Matchbook Drop Shop produces this unique amaro, made with leftover strawberries from the Mattituck Lions Strawberry Festival, them combines them with nettle, quassia, jasmine, rose, and nutmeg fruit for a bright, complex, and fruity aperitif. It makes an affordable but exciting gift for those who love a spritz or a bitter sipper before or after a meal.

Where to Buy:

• $35 at Matchbook Drop Shop

A little something for the person you just started seeing

Chocolate sardines are trop chic right now, and are the perfect small, slips-in-your-bag gift for cheekily impressing a food lover — tinned-fish and chocolate-craving folks alike.

Simon Coll Milk Chocolate Sardines

Where to Buy:

• $9.6 at Mountainside
• $9.97 at Amazon

Sardines en Chocolat au Lait

Where to Buy:

• $41.04 at Amazon

For the person who swears you can only get decent pizza in New York

Di Fara Pizza Classic Neapolitan Pizza (2 Pies)

Nothing says “I love you” like the best Neapolitan pie in the five boroughs.

Where to Buy:

• $89.95 at Goldbelly

For the situationship with a serious sweet tooth

Saigon Cinnamon Roll Phone Case

OK, but how fun is this hyperrealistic cinnamon roll phone case, which looks iced to perfection and swirling with brown sugar? The only downside is that every time you take a mirror selfie, you’re guaranteed to get a craving for Cinnabon.

Where to Buy:

• $40 at Etsy

For the person with whom you eat takeout four nights a week

PeachCAUS Korean premium spoon and chopsticks set

Listen, we all respect the Drawer O’ Leftover Takeout Chopsticks, and we honor the classic wooden variety for its reliable service. That being said, high-quality utensils really can make even a humble DoorDash meal feel more romantic. Grab two sets so that you can both scarf in style — or all four if you’re feeling fancy.

Where to Buy:

• $24 at Etsy

If their love of food is rivaled only by their love of the Criterion collection

A24 Films’ Scrounging: A Cookbook

Did the 12-scoop ice cream sundae in Home Alone rewire their brain? Do they squint at the screen with intense concentration during the breakfast spaghetti scene in Elf? This super-fun cookbook from A24 Films collects and catalogs all of those bizarre pantry recipes from modern movies — think The Breakfast Club’s Pixy Stix sandwich and Kramer vs. Kramer’s “divorced dad French toast” — plus features an introduction by Matty Matheson.

Where to Buy:

• $43.22 at Amazon

For the person who drinks four cups of coffee a day

Bestinnkits Smart Coffee Cup and Warmer

Next to fancy olive oil and local bakery gift cards, smart, self-warming coffee mugs can be such a fail-proof present for boyfriends, girlfriends, they-themfriends, in-laws, emotionally remote uncles, and anyone who drinks hot beverages. As writers who are always glued to their desks, we sure would appreciate the gift of consistently hot coffee without the need to make repeat trips to the microwave.

Where to Buy:

• $26.99 at Amazon

For the person who dreams of competing on The Great British Bake Off

Dessert Person: Recipes and Guidance for Baking with Confidence

Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person is for the baker who toggles between chocolate chip cookies and 18-tier croquembouche (if you know, you know). The photographs beam off the pages, so even a baking novice will want to show off this cookbook on the coffee table.

Where to Buy:

• $18.65 at Amazon
• $34.95 at Bookshop

For the person who can never decide what they want for dinner

STUNFASSOO Food Decider

Six o’clock rolls around, and you start discussing what you should have for dinner. Is it taco night? Or do salmon hand rolls sound better? What about Sichuan? Oh wait, but then there’s Italian… The next thing you know it’s 8:51 PM, you still haven’t made any progress, and you’re losing options by the second. Never again with this handy dice. It’s a cheeky way of helping an indecisive partner be a better dinner companion.

Where to Buy:

• $9.99 at Amazon

If you forgot to make a reservation, it’s three days before Valentine’s Day, everywhere is booked, and you’re panicking

Veselka Complete Ukrainian Dinner (4 People)

If you haven’t booked a restaurant for the big day, don’t sweat it. What your crush really wants is to be spoon-fed some of New York City’s best borscht on a (faux) bearskin rug at your place. Veselka has been a Ukrainian staple in the East Village 1954 (the new-ish location in Williamsburg is also delightful), and you can order a smorgasbord of pierogi, borscht, stroganoff, and more right to your door. 

Where to Buy:

• $149.95 at Goldbelly

Or, if you’re willing to pay a fortune to score the ultimate dinner reservation…

Noma LA Dinner Reservation

Get on the waitlist and pray that you’ll score the privilege of paying $1,500 per person for bragging rights that you ate at the West Coast iteration of the best restaurant in the world.

Where to Buy:

• $1500 at Noma

If they live to eat (fancy tropical fruit)

Rincon Tropics Seasonal Mixed Fruit Box (Medium)

This 4-5-pound box of seasonal fresh fruit is tailored to what’s in season — right now it might be passionfruit, blood oranges, Eureka lemons, limes, cherimoya, Meyer lemons, and mandarins. Your morning yogurt bowl or smoothie is about to get epic.

Where to Buy:

• $47 at Rincon Tropics

If they are happily in the cult of hardcore martini-lovers

Maison Balzac Black Bow Coupes (Set of 2)

You see the pure bliss on their face when they take the first sip of an ice-cold Belvedere ’tini. Here’s an idea: why not learn how to make your partner’s favorite cocktail, and serve it up in this set of these too-perfect, bow-embellished glass coupes from the comfort of your home? 

Where to Buy:

• $215 at Maison Balzac

So they can sear a ribeye in style

Smithey Cast-Iron Skillet

Gifting someone personalized, engraved cast iron feels like the cookware equivalent of getting matching tattoos. Perhaps it’s the hardiness and enduring nature of the gift in question — treat your cast iron well, and it can last for generations — but it would make for such a strong declaration of love. Smithey will engrave its cast-iron cookware with the name or message of your choice, and the No. 12 (12-inch) skillet is perfect for the occasion.

Where to Buy:

• $220 at Smithey

If they’re all in on the pistachio mania

DS & Durga Pistachio Eau de Parfum

It’s 2025 and pistachio’s reign in the current cool-flavor hierarchy remains strong. For the food-lover who wants to smell like a scrumptious artisanal pastry, DS & Durga’s cult-fave Pistachio perfume is just the ticket. While it is, naturally, very pistachio-forward, it’s a complex and nuanced gourmand fragrance with notes of cardamom, patchouli, almond, and vanilla — and yet feels grown-up, bearing no resemblance to a saccharine Bath & Body Works spray. A warning, though: Sniffing your wrist can be addictive when you’re wearing this scent.

Where to Buy:

• $80 at DS & Durga

Valentine’s Day chocolate that’s a little something different

Vosges Haut-Chocolat Chocolate Forest Mushroom

Definitely one of the groovier chocolate creations we’ve ever seen.

Where to Buy:

• $105 $95 at Vosges

For the baker with quirky-chic taste

Puppets and Puppets Cookie Claddagh Ring

Not a day goes by when I don’t think of Puppets and Puppets’ chocolate chip cookie-themed jewelry collection. If you’re someone who loves a baker, this eccentric yet chic take on a classic Claddagh ring is perfect. The gold-plated conversation piece features black rhinestone “chips.”

Where to Buy:

• $175 $123 at Puppets and Puppets

A trompe l’oeil that delights the senses

Gohar World Biscuit Tin Candles

Food-shaped candles have never looked cooler, and the Italian family-run company Gohar World, which operates out of Milan, has been leading the pack with its realistic and romantic creations, including this faux-tin of a dozen mini cookie candles.

Where to Buy:

• $90 at Selfridges

For the hot sauce addict

Momofuku Chili Crunch Sampler

Tell someone you think they’re hot stuff with some hot stuff — more specifically, this five-pack of Momofuku’s cult-fave chile crunch, which includes hot honey, black truffle-infused, extra-garlicky, and extra-hot versions of the now-classic condiment.

Where to Buy:

• $81 $57 at Momofuku

For the cute gardener

The Magnolia Company Meyer Lemon Gift Tree

This baby Meyer lemon tree may be small nowm but will grow into a mature tree up to 10 feet tall, blossoming in the spring and producing sweet Meyer lemons in its very first year. It includes growing instructions, and (hopefully) like your love, will yield its own gifts for years to come.

Where to Buy:

• $120.95 at Amazon

For the wine snob who loves to lounge

Kolo Willer Cord Faux Fur House Shoes

Are they so clearly wine-related? Maybe not to the naked eye. Look, if you want some novelty wine slippers that say “Wine Time,” they’re out there—knock yourselves out! These are just really good-looking, super-comfortable house shoes from Kolo, and they pair perfectly with a pét-nat enjoyed while loitering over the kitchen island or kicking back on the patio, watching the sunset. Comfy clothes are true romance, baby. (Bonus: They’re unisex.)

Where to Buy:

• $95 at Topdrawer

For the coffee lover who already has the fancy machine

Stumptown Hair Bender Coffee (5-Lb. Bag)

The gift of nice coffee is classic, but how about the gift of five pounds of coffee all at once? A pillow-sized 5-pounder of Stumptown’s crowd-pleasing Hair Bender costs $90, lasts about a month in a two-person coffee-loving household, and is most likely fresher than what you find at grocery stores.

Where to Buy:

• $105 at Stumptown

For the messy chef

Hedley & Bennett Minimalist Apron

Every home cook needs a reliable apron, and this minimalist version from Hedley & Bennett has everything you need: pockets and a lifetime guarantee. The aprons are made in America from 100-percent cotton and come in chic, muted shades of green, blue, black, and more.

Where to Buy:

• $76 at Hedley & Bennett

For the aesthete

Eat Nunchi 6” Jelly Cheesecake With Letters

You’ve probably spotted Lexie Park’s cakes all over Instagram. The jiggly pastel-hued confections are made with flavors like peach, lychee, and persimmon. They’re only available for local pickup in Los Angeles and tend to sell out fast — keep a close eye on her Instagram account.

Where to Buy:

• $120 at Eat Nunchi

For the teetotaler with fab taste

Ghia Le Spritz (16 Pack)

Described as a “nonalcoholic aperitif,” Ghia is definitely for grown-ups. The brand’s canned option, Le Spritz, is available in a slew of interesting flavors, including sumac & chili and lime with salt. The classic Ghia soda is a balanced and nuanced combination of flavors like elderflower, lemon balm extract, and riesling grape juice, and the ginger kicks things up with a hint of spicy zing.

Where to Buy:

• $80 at Ghia

The pizza oven that will make your summer cookouts extra-special

Ooni Karu 12 Pizza Oven

Ooni’s pizza ovens are wildly popular for so many reasons — mainly, how quickly they whip up tasty pizzas and flatbreads — but best of all, they’re easy to set up, so they’re ready in minutes to host a pizza party for two, 20, or however big your crew is. These sleek workhorses are multi-fuel so that you can get cooking quickly with wood, charcoal, or gas (and they kind of look like spaceships, too).

Where to Buy:

• $349 at Ooni

And while you’re at it, make everything else taste like pizza

Brightland Pizza Oil

It’s a best-seller for a reason: Brightland’s Pizza Oil is a zesty, herby condiment made with oregano, jalapeño, and green pepper for pizza-fying anything your heart desires.

Where to Buy:

• $28 at Brightland

For the tinned fish fan

The Original Tinned Fish Candle

The packaging makes this charming little candle look like an actual tin of fish, while the vanilla aroma makes it smell, well, a lot better than sardines. 

Where to Buy:

• $26 at Tinned Fish Candle

For the person who appreciates little luxuries

Sophie Lou Jacobsen Everything Nice Butter Dish

French-American designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen is known for her head-turning cocktail glasses and home decor (her nickel-plated spiral coasters have been in my favorites tab for ages). Unsurprisingly, her take on a butter dish is fanciful yet functional. 

Where to Buy:

• $60 at Areaware

For the food-lover who looks up the menu before you dine out

TASCHEN Menu Design in Europe Book

This fun, visually pleasing book makes a great conversation piece but is also encyclopedic in terms of its depth. (It’s 448 pages!) This TASCHEN behemoth is where a love of food intersects with intriguing design and waves of nostalgia for restaurants where we may never get to eat now, but we can at least pretend we’re just trying to pick our entrée.

Where to Buy:

• $70 at TASCHEN

This excerpt was originally published in Pre Shift, our newsletter for the hospitality industry. Subscribe for more first-person accounts, advice, and interviews.

Running independent bars and restaurants takes a special kind of passion. This is the first in a three-part series, in partnership with Verizon Business, sharing how the people behind some of our favorite small businesses make it work. From February 9-22, join Verizon for Small Business Days to see how they’re sharing the love.

This week, we’ve covered how one restaurant couple overcame a tumultuous opening day and what it’s like to run a small business with your spouse—in your own home.

For the final installment of this series, we gathered expert tips for effective partnership (in life and business) from some of our favorite restaurants across the country. Read on for that advice.

You have to divvy up the work

“They say if two people in any partnership agree all the time then one person is not needed. Our advice would be to find strength in your differences.” —Tiffani Ortiz and Andy Doubrava, chefs at The Catbird Seat in Nashville

“[My husband] Ulysses is the one who creates the magic in the kitchen. I am the creative force behind our online presence and the guest experience that keeps people coming back. I don’t pretend to be an expert in cooking or menu decisions, and Ulysses doesn’t interfere with my vision for how we want Campo to be seen.” —Adriana Alvarez, co-founder of Campo é Carbón in La Puenta, California

Similarly: “[My husband] Michael and I have two kids and a lot competing for our attention both personally and professionally. We’ve found things work best when responsibilities are divided based on strengths. For example, Michael leads on design and creative vision for KNEAD’s restaurants, while I focus more on operations and execution. This structure and clarity helps avoid overlap and makes decision making efficient, while still allowing us to collaborate with each other at the end of the day.” —Jason Berry, co-founder of Knead Hospitality + Design in Washington, D.C.

“I think the more you can avoid looking over your partner‘s shoulder and trying to micromanage, the healthier your relationship will be.” —Sam Wood, co-owner of Adventure Time Bar in Denver

“Our biggest tip is to treat each other as equals. Sure, we each have our own strengths, but trusting each other makes everything flow smoother and happier than if one person starts bossing the other around.” —Dani Gaede and Rowan Jetté Knox, owners of Understory in Toronto

It sounds cliche, but communication really is key

“Some things may be hard to say or hard to hear, but a constant line of honest communication ensures everybody is on the same page and resentment doesn’t build. You can always work on things when you say them out loud, but keeping things to yourself, especially in a work environment, always manifests itself in unhealthy ways.” —Ham El-Waylly, executive chef at Strange Delight in New York City

“Humor can fix just about anything, so we use it to move past potential arguments. Also, we never talk about work in bed. Protecting our home as a safe space for life and not work is a good way to keep our core friendship and love alive.” —Sarah Welch, co-owner of Mink in Detroit

On the flip side: “One thing we’ve learned is that saying ‘Don’t talk about business during quality time’ isn’t always realistic. Our work is our life—it’s what we’re passionate about, what excites us, and a huge part of how we connect with each other. Trying to separate it completely can feel forced and, honestly, unnecessary. A tip we’d instead share is: Don’t treat each other like business partners; treat each other like partners who happen to run a business together. Use the deep knowledge you have of one another—the way your partner communicates, what stresses them out, how they receive feedback, what motivates them—to navigate business situations. When challenges come up, approach them with the same care, empathy, and respect you bring to your relationship. That perspective changes everything.” —Sofía Ostos and Fidel Caballero, owners of Corima and Vato

“Apologize when you were in the wrong. Disagreements and mistakes happen, but how you own up to them will define how you grow from them.” —Alex Jump, co-owner of The Peach Crease Club in Denver

“Don’t waste time or energy talking about [issues] that happen less than 3 percent of the time.” —Kasie Curiel, co-owner of Fonda Fina Hospitality in Denver

Finally, take some time away

“Book a staycation every month or two. Take yourselves out for a meal on your days off and treat yourself while also supporting the industry. We treat our ‘weekend’ like it is a vacation so that we can continue to get to know each other, even [after] 17 years [of being together].” —Claire Wadsworth and Nikki Hill, owners of La Copine in Flamingo Heights, California

“Before we started Nixta, I told [my husband and co-owner] Edgar that a nonnegotiable for me is a long vacation. I’m not talking about a long weekend; I’m talking about a month. So, every January, we go abroad somewhere and daydream for a while. Taking this time allows you to actually rest, think outside the four walls of your business, get reinspired, give the management team the opportunity to navigate their way without us ‘coming to the rescue,’ and to also show your team that there’s more to life than just work.”—Sara Mardanbigi, co-owner of Nixta Taqueria in Austin

A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from across the food world every day. Subscribe now.

It’s in the bathroom at Smithereens, and it’s in rotation at Cervo’s, Eel Bar, Hart’s, and the Fly. It’s at June Wine Bar and Rhodora. I knew Schmuck smelled familiar — and then, yep, there it was. I swear I’ve sniffed it at Tatiana, though my email asking for confirmation went unanswered. An Eater colleague clocked it at Elsa, and immediately bought one of her own (and then received another as a Christmas gift).

Sophisticated but not overwhelming, recognizably branded but not flashy, it’s the Wood Cabin candle from Keap, and in New York City restaurants, it’s become a modern classic as far as bathroom candles go. 

Both Nick Tamburo of Smithereens and Moe Aljaff of Schmuck wanted Wood Cabin after smelling it at other restaurants. For Aljaff, that was, specifically, Cervo’s, he said in an email: “I remember walking into their bathroom and thinking it smelled unusually good, which is not a thought you normally have in a restaurant bathroom.” With notes of cedar, palo santo, and fireside embers, it offers a “romantic, transportive quality” that pairs well the “the small, cloistered, and intimate rooms” of his subterranean restaurant, according to Tamburo.

Wood Cabin, which was launched in 2015, is Keap’s most popular scent. The owners of June Wine Bar have been fans of the company since its days as a small, Brooklyn-founded brand (it’s now based in the Hudson Valley town of Kingston) and have used the candle since June opened. It’s the first restaurant where Keap owner Harry Doull smelled his candles in the wild. 

“Our work with restaurants started organically and that’s still the case for the most part,” wrote Doull in an email. Hospitality clients, including restaurants, make up just shy of 10 percent of the company’s sales, though for some businesses “we offer bulk pricing and have developed ways to be better partners over time,” he explained. Doull, who grew up in a restaurant family, thinks the places that use Keap tend to share similar values around hospitality, artisanal production, and sustainability; restaurants can send back their empty glass vessels for Keap to reuse.

In NYC, there’s a referential quality to stocking your bathroom with a candle as commonplace as Wood Cabin; for some people, that’s actually part of the draw. “I’m skeptical of originality,” Aljaff wrote. “Most places that claim to be original are usually just louder about it. What we do is create a room made by what we’ve been inspired by and various details we like — from restaurants, bars, films, music, art, conversations, bathrooms — and put them together in a way that feels coherent.”

Keap calls its candles “natural luxury.” At $54.50 for a single candle, that luxury is a little easier to stomach than even bougier options like, say, Le Labo or Diptyque — especially when, as June continues to experience, diners still occasionally steal the candle.

Keap Wood Cabin candle

Where to Buy:

• $54.5 at Keap

If woody’s not your thing, here’s some candle inspiration from other NYC restaurants:

• Take some notes from the bathroom at the chic new wine bar Stars with its Le Feau de L’eau’s Violet candle, which has notes of pink grapefruit, tobacco leaves, and white pepper.
• Burger destination Red Hook Tavern burns Trudon’s Abd El Kader, inspired by Moroccan mint tea.
• Remind yourself of the now-closed Olmsted with the goth-y Apotheke Charcoal candle.
• Or, evoke Tokyo after dark: Takamichi’s Daidō is the go-to at seafood spot Penny.

This excerpt was originally published in Pre Shift, our newsletter for the hospitality industry. Subscribe for more first-person accounts, advice, and interviews.

Running independent bars and restaurants takes a special kind of passion. This is the first in a three-part series, in partnership with Verizon Business, sharing how the people behind some of our favorite small businesses make it work. From February 9-22, join Verizon for Small Business Days to see how they’re sharing the love.

In early January, Sydney Wayser and Isaac Watters—partners in both business and life—opened one of Los Angeles’s buzziest new coffee shops, Granada. What makes Granada so unconventional is the fact that it’s located on the lower level of their actual home, a situation enabled by LA County’s relatively new Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (also known as MEHKO) permit. The permit allows Wayser and Watters to legally serve coffee and food out of their house, with limitations on the number of staff and total annual earnings. In their Angelino Heights backyard, eager visitors sip cortados and eat pastries sourced from baker Sasha Piligian—and it’s been a quick hit. Here, Wayser explains how she and Watters make the setup work.

On opening the cafe

[We were] feeling isolated for so long, post-COVID, and then we had a daughter right after. There was a big chunk of time when we felt we were really missing community and we watched some of our favorite bars, restaurants, and coffee shops close. When we heard about the MEHKO permit, it felt like maybe we could make a community space. Having someone come over and have tea and a pastry in your house—that’s the coziest entry point to community space.

It’s about bringing people together and sharing art, ideas, and culture, like the older idea of a salon—to get together and to be people, not even in a networking capacity. My husband and I were feeling this so strongly, but everyone that walks in the door is feeling it, and they’re just like, I’ve been looking for this.

On creative and life partnership

I’m a musician and Isaac is as well. He also works in film and TV in set design, production design, and architecture. We do some interior design together; we built and designed our house that we live in. We’ve been a creative couple, collaborating since we started dating to being married to having a child, so [Granada] feels like another version of the same thing. 

On operating out of a home

When we designed our [house], we knew we wanted to have parties and events here, so we designed it—not knowing then—to be a perfect coffee shop, with a big, open floor plan and indoor-outdoor space with the garden. We made the public space downstairs, private space upstairs. 

But this is the house that we live in; the big thing that we have to do all the time is clean and maintain it so that it’s ready for people to come in. We have a 3-year-old, so she comes home after the coffee shop closes, runs around the house, and makes a pillow fort out of all the cushions on the sofa. We reset it in the morning before anyone comes in. Our hours are limited: When we decided to do this, we felt that if we’re going to share our home, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt our family time, so we’re only open when our daughter’s at school.

On managing disagreements

We agree most of the time and disagree sometimes, too, but we manage to really talk through [disagreements] and be mindful of each other. We try to lean into the idea that there’s no wrong answer; it’s just picking an avenue of how we want to proceed. It’s finding compromise and being open about feelings in the process. 

We love and respect each other so much that if I were to say “Let’s do this” and Isaac said “I don’t know about that,” I would also feel like, Well, I really like his ideas, so I’m sure what he’s saying is [right, too]. We both feel seen by the other person and like we can do what we think we are good at. Isaac gets to shine in some things, and I get to shine in others, and then together, we make a strong team.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

This excerpt was originally published in Pre Shift, our newsletter for the hospitality industry. Subscribe for more first-person accounts, advice, and interviews. 

In March, Molly Irani, co-founder of the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Chai Pani, is releasing Service Ready: A Story of Love, Restaurants, and the Power of Hospitality. 

In 2009, Irani and her husband Meherwan left their jobs to start an Indian street food restaurant, building the business from scratch. Through candid vignettes, Irani discusses the challenges she faced along the way, what it’s like to build a business with a partner, and how she incorporates parts of her own culture and traditions into her work.

Service Ready is a helpful peek behind the scenes for anyone in the industry charting a similar path. Here, Irani has shared an excerpt with us from Chai Pani’s opening day.

The Art of Jugaad
Excerpted from Service Ready: A Story of Love, Restaurants, and the Power of Hospitality. Copyright © 2026, Molly Irani. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.

Meherwan and I had been married for 15 years, so we knew how to work through challenges together. 

One thing I discovered early on about a strong partnership is knowing when the other person has reached their point of overwhelm. A gift that our long, shared history brought to our business partnership is the ability to read the signs and know each other’s tipping points so that we can step in when help is most needed. We relied on not falling apart at the same time. This helped our marriage as well as our business, and it prevented our staff from seeing us fight. There were countless times that we missed the mark, but we always tried to catch each other.

Staring at the cash register on Chai Pani’s opening day, I quickly realized we had no choice but to jugaad it.

“Jugaad” is a term used throughout India to describe the reliance on ingenuity to make something happen with what you have, instead of waiting to have all the right parts or pieces. Sometimes it means bending the rules, or getting inventive with your resources. Meherwan says it’s like figuring out how to make chai with a Zamboni (the ice-resurfacing vehicles at skating rinks) because that’s all you have, and why waste a perfectly good machine?

On opening day, with bloodshot eyes, Meherwan said, “I’ve tried everything; the register won’t print tickets in the kitchen. It won’t print tickets any fucking place at all.”

I didn’t think our brand-new food runners would be capable of getting the food to tables (and clearing them) as well as the tickets delivered to the kitchen—we needed more hands to pull it off. The only solution I could think of was to beg our beloved band of friends (who that day were finishing painting the restaurant) to put on clean Chai Pani T-shirts and spend the day carrying tickets from the register to the kitchen. Being the rock-star human beings that they are, they agreed to help run tickets. They were tired to the core, unshaven, unbathed, and spattered in paint—but they did it. If I’d had time I would have cried with gratitude.

We scrambled to set up for our first service. I had five minutes to learn how to work the ludicrous-non-printing register, we gathered the freshly hired, barely trained employees, and before we could blink there were fifteen minutes left until opening.

A line had begun to form outside as we buzzed around like bees on speed. Last-minute issues were resolved at breakneck speed. Ruby called from behind the bar, “Does anyone know how to make a lime rickey? It’s on the menu, but I don’t have a recipe.” James, ever calm, emerged from the kitchen wearing a crisp white chef’s coat and said, “None of us know how to make an uttapam. Can anyone help?” Angi realized we didn’t have any change for the register. Food runners looked like deer in the headlights trying to identify the endless array of dishes they didn’t know how to pronounce correctly. The “sound system” (Pandora played off my cell phone) wouldn’t play.

Then in the middle of the mayhem, Meherwan’s mother announced that we couldn’t open without having a Pooja ceremony. A Pooja is an Indian tradition that marks important events. It differs in detail depending on family background, but the practice stretches across religions and cultures. The common threads woven through most Poojas are: making an offering to God, blessing the space and/or people, and taking a moment for gratitude and prayer. I had no idea how to stop the frantic last-minute preparations for a prayer ceremony with customers staring at us from the other side of the door, but I wasn’t about to argue with my mother-in-law.

Fifteen minutes past the planned opening time, we gathered our crew into the front of the house. The already exhausted cooks, the increasingly terrified young food runners, the whole team paused the last moments of preparation and came together for a Pooja ceremony to bless the space. Meherwan’s mother assembled the ceremonial items; I’m pretty sure a coconut was cracked, a sacred photo was placed in a spot of honor, a bell was rung, and we held hands in a big circle, closed our eyes, and had a moment of silence—while the line of customers watched from the sidewalk.

This moment would never come again, and my mother-in-law knew it. She made us stop and give thanks, and ask God, or Grace, or each other for help. I’m deeply grateful for her guidance in that moment. The pause for centering that she made happen that day helped set us on a course that is uniquely our own and became an essential part of the scaffolding behind Chai Pani’s success. It helped us focus on what really matters. I’m sure some new employees were deeply moved, while others wondered what the hell they’d gotten themselves into—but together we took a collective breath and opened the doors to a line up the block. That line never went away.

This excerpt has been lightly edited from Service Ready. To read the full book, preorder it here.

The same ostrich has been popping up in my Instagram feed over and over lately. It’s a taxidermied beast that holds court in what I initially thought was someone’s house in Europe:

The bird I’ve been seeing in so many birthday social media stories, however, isn’t from an apartment in the Marais quarter of Paris; its residence is New York City’s Brass restaurant and Tusk Bar, which opened two years ago inside Manhattan’s Evelyn Hotel, and is designed to make you feel like you’re entering the opulent home of, say, a European art collector with great taste and, I imagine, an enviable 1stDibs wishlist. The space was designed by Islyn Studio, which says it’s “a love letter to the Parisian apartments of the 1920s.” As the studio’s founder and creative director Ashley Wilkins tells me, “We imagined it as a kind of French salon, an intimate antechamber and natural prelude to dinner at Brass. During our research, we came across the story of a Parisian apartment discovered untouched after decades, its rooms sealed in time until the passing of Madame de Florian at [age] 91.”

There are plush gold settees and ottomans, and parlor palms huddled over an oval coffee table and carpeted floors. Red curtains blur the divide between the oyster bar and the restaurant, helmed by chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabián Von Hauske Valtierra of Contra and Wildair fame. It’s the kind of environment, the Studio says, where “the air hums with an unhurried energy.” 

As with purse hooks and not horrible chairs, a restaurant that feels like a living room is never a requirement for me, but it’s always a plus. Something happens to me in spaces designed with this level of conviviality: when seated on one of their spacious sofas, my shoulders relax, my appetite grows, and, even if I’m dining solo, I feel less like a diner on a timer and more like a cozy person breaking bread with other cozy people. 

The years following COVID lockdowns has led to more and more bars and restaurants with this “home”-inspired design ethos, from the aspirational, like The Tusk Bar, to more casual, tchotchke-inflected spaces. During peak social distancing, many of us took a long, hard look at ourselves in those DIY foam mirrors and discovered a new appreciation for both community (RIP Zoom happy hours) and comfort (ah, the soft life of the WFH glory days). Folks turned inward, quite literally, to the creative catharsis of decorating their own houses; sofas got deeper, “performance velvet” achieved immense popularity, and Pinterest boards popped off with shag rug conversation pits. As restaurant doors reopened, the lounge that felt like a retro house party had potent appeal. Carousel in Bushwick opened in January 2024 with ’70s-style conversation pits that encouraged intermingling; Pearl Box, which opened the same year as Brass and Tusk, became an instant SoHo darling thanks to its retro-attic-like ceiling, red carpeting, and gummy candy-filled crystal dishes. These were places that felt like stepping into an Architectural Digest house tour — like entering a home we wished was our own (or, at least, that of a friend who included us on their invite list). 

In 2026, after a decade-plus of white-walled millennial minimalism, diners are increasingly gravitating toward a more personal aesthetic perspective. At Honeysuckle in Philadelphia (Cybille St. Aude-Tate and Omar Tate’s second coming of their restaurant Honeysuckle Provisions), the restaurant has a “free-flowing” living room feel with “comfy cognac-colored couches coaxing people to chill and chat,” as Eater reported last year. Then there’s Schmuck, from co-owners and bartenders Moe Aljaff and Juliette Larrouy, which opened in NYC’s East Village in January 2025 with a self-described living room space and curl-up-in-me Togo sofas.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, you can find Kissaten Corazon, with its mismatched armchairs and “Grandpa’s study” vibe, and chef Miles Thompson’s Baby Bistro, which serves its seasonal cuisine in a cozy Craftsman house (to critical acclaim). In San Francisco, chef Paul Toxqui’s Left Door (opened in 2023) embraces the appeal of being tucked inside the second floor of a Marina district Victorian house (the sumptuous living room begs for Hercule Poirot to mansplain a murder there). Finally, and perhaps in the most literal take on the trend, there was the dramatic rise and fall of Upstairs in spring of 2025, an Oakland cafe that was, indeed, located in an apartment upstairs from Snail Bar — until it was shut down for being a little too homey (the space didn’t have the proper commercial permits). 

On the heels of a year filled with third-space discourse, restaurateurs and customers clearly yearn for the level of intimacy and personality that the living-room-as-restaurant masters; it either taps in to our own, lived nostalgic experiences, or those that feel escapist, as is the case with Brass and Tusk. The desire for this immersiveness only seems to be growing in 2026. The goal, Wilkins tells me, is for “Spaces like this [to] shape the experience […] before a word is spoken or a drink is poured. They place guests inside a story, where atmosphere, texture, and light quietly guide how the evening feels and is remembered.”

There really is no place like home — all the better if the home comes with a great cocktail menu. 

I drive a Tesla. I bought it in 2022, when I knew a bit about CEO Elon Musk’s questionable character, but could never have foreseen his reprehensible antics in the years following. I wish I could sell the car, but I’m underwater on my loan by some $10,000 since its resale value cratered. I won’t be buying another.

I’m not the only one who regrets their purchase in LA. As Musk aligned himself with Donald Trump, erratically laid off scores of government workers, and promoted an AI chatbot that has praised Adolf Hitler and fueled revenge porn, much of the city has turned against the notorious carmaker. 

Nowhere is this clearer than the highly controversial Tesla Diner, which serves classic burgers, fries, and sandwiches to customers waiting for their Teslas to charge outside. The opening in mid-2025 was one of the most talked-about events in recent Los Angeles history. As protestors and Cybertruck diehards thronged to the diner seeking a cultural battleground, I was there covering the diner’s food from the beginning. My colleagues and I were initially fans of some dishes; less so of others.

Last month, as the Tesla Diner passed its first half-birthday, I revisited the restaurant to see how things were going. I regret to inform you that the food was — pretty dang good, maybe even better than when it opened.

I paid a Friday lunch visit with a restaurant publicist friend, Khuong Phan, who lives nearby. Phan (who does not represent Tesla Diner) passes by the diner often and says it’s usually mostly empty. The protests have faded away, as has the rabid Tesla fanbase. Tour buses occasionally drop off curious visitors in search of something to photograph. There was barely a wait for a charging spot or food. (When asked about the performance of the business, Tesla Diner didn’t respond to a request for comment.) 

I plugged in and ordered away on a screen. After about 20 minutes (a bit long for fast food), a server brought our order: Egg bites with kale and chopped mushrooms were nearly silken, and the fries were utterly crispy. The tuna melt was adequate, if uninteresting, but the well-toasted bread was light as air. The sloppy smash burger featured a profoundly beefy patty. The “epic” bacon was limp, though it was encrusted with an appealing blend of herbs and sugar. The cinnamon roll was a tad better than gas station-level, but the strawberry matcha shake, tinted with pandan syrup, was absolutely stellar. 

When the diner first opened, seasoned LA restaurateur Bill Chait led operations while chef Eric Greenspan ran the kitchen. A few weeks later, I returned to find the sizable menu greatly diminished, reduced to a few savory and sweet items, which I tried and found worse than at opening. When I wrote about it, Greenspan and Chait weren’t too happy about the article and told me as much over text. Greenspan left the restaurant after four months, but Chait still seems to be in charge (though the restaurant didn’t respond to confirm that). 

I didn’t have high expectations going into my meal this month, especially after reading a six-month retrospective in Autoblog. Other publications have picked up that story and piled on to the narrative of Tesla Diner’s “demise.”

The food, featuring sustainably sourced ingredients from nearby farms and ranches, would be celebrated in any other venue. But because this is Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner, every bit of food, served in absurd Cybertruck-shaped boxes, comes weighted down with cultural baggage. Sure, $98 (after tax and tip) was a lot of dough for our meal, but Phan and I ordered way more than necessary. An average meal might be $25-30, certainly not exorbitant for well-sourced fast food — and definitely less than a meal at Phil Rosenthal’s hyped-up LA diner Max & Helen’s. 

I don’t really ever need to go back to the Tesla Diner. The food isn’t revelatory or exciting. Musk once planned for the restaurant to act as a model for diners and charging stations across the world, but I don’t see that happening. Tesla just lost its title as the top EV carmaker. If the comments on Instagram and TikTok are any evidence, the diner, which was intended as a halo product to boost the company’s image, can’t escape the pull of the cultural black hole created by its erratic billionaire CEO.

The restaurant has gone into a strange purgatory, becoming something that feels wrong to like. There was a world where the Tesla Diner could’ve been great. It’s making decent fast food, at attainable prices, with farm-fresh ingredients that chefs could appreciate. It operates next to more than 70 EV charging stations that are hugely needed if America wants to wean the auto industry off fossil fuels. But after millions of dollars in buildout and thousands of negative comments on social media posts, the Tesla Diner barely has any voltage left.

There is an art to a proper meat pie, according to the Seattle chef and butcher Kevin Smith. The American pot pie frustrates him because it lets the pot do the heavy lifting. “The real way of doing it, for me, is to make a freestanding pie,” Smith says. The pastry should hold itself up, a technique cooks in England have honed over centuries. “That is so much more theatrical.”

Those meat pies — densely packed with beef shank in Guinness gravy, or chile tinged-lamb korma — anchor the menu at Little Beast, Smith’s new English pub. For Smith, who also runs the butcher shop Beast and Cleaver and the restaurants the Peasant and the Beastro inside it, the venture marks a return to his South London upbringing. “It’s very, very classic English food,” he says. Both London and Seattle can be cold, gray, and gloomy. In both cities, one needs food that “warms the bones,” he says, and coziness is the impulse of the moment.  

Smith’s goal is to truly recreate a quintessential English pub. This, to him, meant rustic, a little dark, not at all fancy — just the kind of place where people can “come in and sling their coat over the back of a chair,” Smith says. So far, his homey pub has been a hit: Eater Seattle named Little Beast its Restaurant of the Year in 2025. 

It’s no longer time to speculate whether the British are coming; they’re very much here. Like Little Beast, British-style pubs and country restaurants are cropping up across the United States, with hotspots including Wilde’s in Los Angeles, Dingles Public House in San Francisco, the Bell in New Orleans (“an easygoing neighborhood joint with an English accent”), and the Chumley House in Fort Worth, Texas. In Chicago, the new Piccadilly Pub fashions itself as a “neighborhood chippy,” and in Philadelphia, the chef Ange Branca, whose Malaysian restaurant Kampar has been closed since last February due to a fire, recently ran Mod Spuds, a pop-up that served loaded English “jacket potatoes.” 

In New York City, chef Ed Szymanski has built some of the city’s most solid new restaurants around his own homesickness, including the English seafood restaurant Dame and the meatier “English bistro” Lord’s; chef Jess Shadbolt will soon unveil Dean’s, a British seafood restaurant inspired by her seaside hometown. And recently, sticky toffee pudding, one of England’s most popular desserts, has also served as a major source of inspiration for pastry chefs across the country.

It’s natural for any cuisine that’s been maligned in the global sphere to want a redemption arc, and for so long, British food has been the butt of jokes: mushy, beige, brown, bland — the kind of sadness that writer Aisling McCrea once ascribed to British people being “too repressed to cook food correctly.” For rising star NYC pastry chef Lilli Maren, who grew up in London, the goal of her work is updating British pastry classics “so that they’re actually good,” as she puts it on her Substack publication The Buttery. “I think the [bad] reputation comes from the pure fact that British food has to be tasted: It’s food that’s meant to be eaten, not to be looked at,” Maren says. Beige and brown mush is “bad PR” for its “beautiful flavors.”

Now, young chefs like herself, Maren says, are having a “similar journey” of realizing the “trove” of delicious food in their history and wanting to show it off with personality, a sense of humor, and, yes, better visuals, too.

Follow a few young British chefs on social media and you’ll quickly start to wonder why the cuisine has a bad name. Through short-form videos, places like Manchester’s Onda Pasta Bar (of viral “tiramisu drawer” fame) and London’s Fallow have become as much media brands as they are restaurants. From chefs-turned-creators, you’ll find bangers and mash that look undeniably delicious, roasted chickens swimming in luxurious drippings, and gravy-filled meat pies laden with so much butter that there’s no way they could be bad — lest we forget that butter formed the foundation of London chef Thomas Straker’s global ascent. 

“These people are generally broadcasting to a British audience,” says the London-based restaurant critic Jonathan Nunn, who runs the publication Vittles. Particularly, that’s “an East London, South London audience who are very plugged into what is going on in food culture internationally and what is going on in London restaurants, and wants to replicate those things in their homes in a way that doesn’t really look like dishes their parents made but are still recognizably British dishes.” 

According to Nunn, this social media moment is British people hyping up British food for British people. That this might influence the perception of British food to non-British people “is just a byproduct of that.” As “strange” as it is to think of British food as “exotic,” he says, “I think Americans are fascinated by [British food] in the same way anyone would be fascinated by anything ‘exotic.’”

Perhaps part of the appeal of British food in the U.S. right now is simply that it’s just different enough to be newly compelling. Fish sticks aren’t particularly en vogue, but good fish and chips? That pulls in an “overwhelming” demand, as Szymanski learned during his pandemic pop-up. Lending an air of intrigue, it’s on the menu at Wilde’s as “battered skate & mint.”

In recent years, American dining culture has largely been filtered through the lens of the French bistro, so maybe the rising English pub moment is an indicator that we’ve become bistro-ed out. The “new American” restaurant, the French bistro, and the modern English pub — these don’t offer wildly different food so much as they offer a sense of a change of environs. As concepts, they’re familiar enough to be easy, different enough to be destinations. “I think it’s very relatable [food],” Smith says, adding that “the food that people think is bad over here, as in English food, is actually what a lot of American food is based on.” Making British food for American audiences requires some concessions though: That’s why Lord’s also serves a Welsh rarebit burger and sticky toffee pudding pancakes.

All this recent Anglophilia has yet to even touch on the incoming British imports. Straker, who runs the London restaurants Straker’s and Acre, is set to open a spot in NYC soon, where London chefs keep hosting residencies (recently, Jeremy King and Emily Dobbs).

Iranian restaurant Berenjak came to the U.S. via LA this fall, and Indian restaurant Dishoom is planning a NYC expansion, following a wildly successful pop-up at Pastis last summer. Gymkhana, which is inspired by the “elite clubs” of India, opened in Las Vegas late last year, and the lavish Punjabi restaurant Ambassadors Clubhouse is set to open soon in NYC. “These are not small, quirky British restaurants coming in,” Szymanski notes. “This is like Coke and Pepsi.” 

It’s promising, though, that these specific establishments make up London’s new big-name exports, according to Nunn, as they help create a more well-rounded image of the British food scene. While London’s contributions to the U.S. have historically centered around the kind of St. John-inflected nose-to-tail gastropub, as reflected in stateside openings Little Beast and Lord’s, Dishoom and Gymkhana represent the essential nature of British Indian food.

“That’s as part of modern British food culture as anything else,” Nunn says. “That kind of hybridity being accepted as part of British cuisine on a global level, and being recognized as such, is a good thing.”