Taking a Bite with Bittman
The New York Times’ famous food columnist comes to Pittsburgh.
By Victoria Bradley
Photography by Megan Wylie Ruffing

When The New York Times food writer and cookbook author Mark Bittman came to town, our office was abuzz with questions for one of the country’s best-known and most candid culinary experts. We had torn his “Minimalist” column out of the paper for years and bookmarked his witty tell-it-likeit- is food blog. (His How to Cook Everything day calendar is on my fridge, and last Christmas, I gifted it to two friends.) When his new book, The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living, arrived in the office, we prattled over it, a thick tome of personal and planetary health with approachable-looking recipes (without photos — gasp!). We were even more thrilled that the TODAY Show regular was coming to one of our favorite restaurants, Habitat, in the new Fairmont Pittsburgh Hotel. We understood the choice, fully, as Chef Andrew Morrison is a huge advocate for local food. Editor in Chief Christine Tumpson and Staff Photographer Megan Wylie were my esteemed entourage when I sat down with Bittman and Morrison — while the celebrity had his lunch.

Your “101 Recipes” columns, published in The New York Times, have become so popular. The one-liner recipes are so approachable. How do you come up with these?

Mark Bittman: They’re hard. It’s very idea driven. So we have to sit around and think for a while and sketch some out, and then take some away and add some more. For someone who is used to doing one recipe a week in a column, to do 101 ideas in a week is sort of insane. But it’s worked; it’s really been nice.

You travel a lot on book tours. Do you have a stand-by dish that you order in restaurants where you’re not familiar?

MB : Here you go [points to his salad]! I order what I think is arugula salad, and I get these fabulous poached pears with red wine-jellied beets.

Are you still living your “Vegan before 6 p.m.” lifestyle?

MB : I mean, I’m not as strict as I used to be. My lunches are mostly soups or salads. For breakfast, I had a banana, an apple, and a bag of peanuts. You want to try and minimize eating crap, and the road is a hard place to do that. But it can be done; it’s just a matter of being conscious.

I read your blog about the overcooked burger [eaten while on the road].

MB : Yeah, I was in Toronto for that. It’s not a great city. Pittsburgh is much nicer. I’m not just saying that. It’s beautiful here, really nice. Downtown looks cool. I ran along the river this morning, loved it.

And what about food in Pittsburgh?

Chef Andrew Morrison: There’s definitely more and more chefs doing more and more interesting things. There’s a growing food scene, which is exciting.

MB : What’s local?

AM : Well just about everything on your plate there is local. The arugula is local. The carrots are local. Obviously, all of the squashes. We’re getting a lot of stuff from the end of the summer. The summer is basically over, and we’re still getting tons of great lettuces and tomatoes.

MB : Use ‘em while you got ‘em!

AM : We get our beef local. We’ve got beautiful trout that we are doing tonight, which is an amazing fish. It is beautiful.

Mark, you spend a lot of time in the kitchen with chefs. Are you still learning new things?

MB : You know, I think anytime you cook with somebody, chef or not, you learn something. If you cook with someone who doesn’t know how to cook, you discover something about teaching. If you cook with someone who knows how to cook better than you, obviously you learn something. In the mid ‘90s, I cooked with chefs a lot, and I really did learn a lot of “technique-y” stuff. But in retrospect, I’m not sure I use that much of it because it’s too sophisticated. I don’t. Really, what I do is cook at home, usually for myself, or me and my wife and friends and family. And it’s hardly ever more than four to six people. I can cook a meal for 50 people, but it’s going to be four, one-pot dishes.

How do you turn on home chefs and write recipes that seem so attractive and approachable?

MB : No secret. I’m just doing what sort of comes naturally. Sometimes I think, “Oh, I haven’t done a dessert in six months. I guess I should do a dessert.”

How are we doing, as Americans, with our diets?

MB : Food, in America, is problematic. Fewer people are cooking at home than ever. Even many of those who think they’re cooking at home are heating up frozen meals and calling that cooking. Our school lunches are worse than those in much of the so-called Third World. All of these are problems that are killing us. Our war on junk food is going to have to mimic our war on tobacco. It has to be bigger than a campaign; it has to be a war. We have to take control of our food, know where it comes from and cook it ourselves. We have to take food seriously. It’s a big deal.

For more information, visit www.markbittman.com

Habitat, 510 Market St., Downtown. 412.773.8848. www.habitatrestaurant.com