Tamar Adler’s career is a testament to the deep connections between cooking and writing.
A celebrated chef and James Beard Award-winning writer, she has spent years refining her craft in both kitchens and on the page. Whether she’s developing a recipe or shaping a sentence, her approach remains the same: trust the process, embrace imperfection, and focus on the essential.
On The meez Podcast, Tamar shared insights on creativity, discipline, and the parallels between the culinary and literary worlds. Her philosophy is one of constant refinement—an understanding that both writing and cooking require patience, endurance, and the courage to iterate.
5 Insights on Leadership, Discipline, and the Creative Process
The lessons Tamar has learned from kitchens like Chez Panisse and Stone Barns have shaped not just her cooking, but her writing as well. Below, we explore the key principles she applies to both crafts—offering a guide for anyone seeking to strengthen their creative practice.
1. Writing is an Extension of How You Cook
Tamar’s time working alongside culinary visionaries like Alice Waters and Dan Barber instilled in her a profound appreciation for ingredients—not just as elements of a dish but as stories in themselves. This perspective shapes how she translates the culinary world into words, capturing the beauty and full potential of every ingredient.
Lessons That Shaped Her Writing Philosophy:
- Respect for Ingredients = Respect for Words: At both Chez Panisse and Stone Barns, she absorbed the philosophy that every part of an ingredient matters. Tops and bottoms of vegetables, braising liquids, lesser-used cuts—nothing was wasted.
- Simplicity as Strength: Chez Panisse taught her that simplicity doesn’t mean a lack of depth. Writing, like cooking, highlights what is essential rather than overcomplicating.
- Storytelling Through Sensory Details: Working with ingredients directly from farmers gave her a deep connection to food’s origins—a perspective she carries into writing, making her descriptions rich with texture, taste, and history.
One of her fondest memories at Chez Panisse encapsulates this philosophy perfectly. She recalls saving the artichoke braising liquid—a concentrated, savory elixir—and being validated by Russell Moore, who was the only other person who insisted on preserving every drop.
"From then on, we had this wonderful thing where both of us were always grabbing the very, very, very end of stuff and drizzling them into everything."
2. Cooking and Writing Are Very Similar
Tamar acknowledges that while some chefs—like Gabrielle Hamilton, Shana Lowe Benayan, and Cal Peternell—excel at translating their culinary vision into words, being a chef doesn’t inherently make someone a great writer.
Chefs already have a primary medium of expression: food. But when a chef is also a skilled writer, the result is truly extraordinary. It’s one thing to experience someone through their bologna sandwich or oyster omelet, but when you encounter their voice in words, the experience becomes nothing short of amazing.
While not all chefs are natural writers, Tamar sees striking similarities between the two disciplines. Both require:
- Endurance and Discipline: Writing a book—especially editing—demands the same long hours of meticulous focus as working a kitchen shift. "It’s a marathon and a sprint. Complete focus, unmoving. Who cares what else is happening?"
- Problem-Solving Under Pressure: Just as chefs must adapt during a busy service, writers must push through deadlines. "You can delay a deadline by a day or two, maybe a week, but eventually, the last ticket comes in."
- Unwavering Determination: The ability to complete a grueling service translates to the perseverance needed to finish a book. "If a chef has a book in them, they’re more likely to finish it than anyone else. You can’t really deter a chef from doing something."
Tamar even compares chefs to Navy SEALs when it comes to resilience.
"In the zombie apocalypse, we’d take chefs over SEALs. I don’t know anyone else that I have such complete faith that the problem will be solved. The thing will be done."
3. Create a Mise en Place for Your Writing Process
In the kitchen, mise en place—the practice of preparing and organizing ingredients before cooking—ensures efficiency, focus, and fluidity. For Tamar, this philosophy extends beyond cooking into her writing process, especially when faced with an intimidating project.
When approaching a new book or article, Tamar follows a process that mirrors mise en place:
- Take one step at a time – “I’m just chopping the onion right now.” Instead of worrying about the entire dish (or book), she focuses on each task.
- Outline visually – She covers a wall in her office with post-it notes, each representing a scene or key idea. “That’s all I had to do. Not think about words, not think about anything else.”
- Build layers of preparation – Before writing a single sentence, she jots down character backgrounds on large pieces of paper.
- Translate thoughts into text – To avoid overthinking, she dictates the post-it notes aloud and has them transcribed before starting to shape the narrative.
Mise en place in writing is about trust. If you focus on each small step at the moment, the finished work will come together seamlessly.
“When you’re picking the basil leaves off the stems, you’re not thinking about that. You’re just thinking leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf.”
4. Write Every Single Day
Writing, like cooking, requires practice to stay sharp, but for Tamar, daily writing isn’t a strict habit.
While she may not write every day, she knows great sentences emerge from iteration—just as great dishes come from trial and error. The parallels between writing and cooking are clear:
- Repetition builds intuition – Just as a chef instinctively knows when an ingredient is perfectly cooked, a writer sharpens their ability to craft strong sentences through consistent practice.
- Failure is part of the process – Most drafts won’t make it into the final piece, just as most recipe tests won’t result in a signature dish.
- Experience creates mastery – A chef doesn’t have to overthink how much salt or acid a dish needs after years of cooking. Likewise, a writer develops a feel for structure, rhythm, and word choice after countless pages of writing.
- Results aren’t immediate - The act of doing the work—writing, experimenting with recipes, leading a team—ensures that when a crucial moment arises, you're ready.
Both writing and cooking demand patience, with the best work emerging from unseen hours of preparation.
“You need to have a block of marble before you can chisel. Every time I think I have a good sentence in a book, it’s because I’ve written a thousand words around it.”
5. A Project is Never Finished
How do you know when a project is truly finished? According to Tamar, the answer is—perhaps—it never is. The idea of perfection is a moving target, an unattainable ideal that exists only in the mind.
Tamar likens this process to making tomato basil sauce—an effort she once repeated obsessively, trying to perfect a flavor that only truly existed in her imagination. Over time, she realized there were countless ways to achieve the goal, and that “good enough” could be both satisfying and successful.
If you’re struggling to decide when to stop tweaking and refining, consider these guiding principles:
- Have you improved it significantly from where it started? If so, you may be closer than you think.
- Are you striving for perfection, or simply making small changes out of fear? As Tamar notes, perfection doesn’t exist outside of the mind.
- Is the deadline approaching? External constraints often serve as the necessary push to stop.
- Are you proud of it—at least some days? As Tamar experienced with her first book, one day you might love your work, and the next you might doubt it. This back-and-forth is normal.
- Would further changes materially improve it, or just make it different? Sometimes, iteration reaches a point of diminishing returns.
The key is to acknowledge that, while no project may feel truly finished, it can be enough.
"Am I working as hard as I can, or heading in the direction that I want to be going? Yes. How close am I to the deadline? Okay, I’ve got to stop now."
Conclusion
Creativity—whether in the kitchen or on the page—is an ongoing process of refinement.
For Tamar Adler, mastery isn’t about achieving perfection; it’s about embracing the work itself. A dish can always be tweaked, a sentence can always be reworked, but at some point, the process must give way to completion.
Her philosophy is a reminder that great work isn’t about getting it right the first time—it’s about showing up, trusting the process, and knowing when something is enough. Whether you’re balancing flavors in a sauce or shaping the arc of a story, the best results come not from chasing perfection, but from the act of doing, learning, and refining along the way.
Listen to our full conversation with Tamar Adler on The meez Podcast
