Alison Roman Wants You To Use Better Kitchen 'Materials'

Plenty of folks have things go viral. Everything from YouTube videos to the occasional unfortunate article blows up from time to time. But recipes tend not to inspire quite the same level of devotion.

Unless they’re by Alison Roman.

Alison's recipes in The New York Times are so beloved that some inspire devoted hashtags and make people wax poetic. Her work is straightforward, always delicious, often economical, and just far enough off the beaten path.

Now, she’s using her cult following to show off her new favorite kitchenware brand, Material.

Alison gets sent lots of products for potential endorsements - she has nearly two hundred thousand Instagram followers - but she didn't feel compelled to work with any of these brands until she was sent some Material knives.

Alison was gobsmacked by how great they were, and when the team approached her about becoming a strategic advisor, she jumped at the chance. The difference, she says, is all in the quality and philosophy: “I like that it’s a less-is-more approach. That very much resonates with me and my attitude towards cooking in general. They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel or give you more stuff to worry about. Material’s giving you the stuff that you need. It’s like, you need a kitchen tool, we’re going to make it look good and function well, and that’s that. It's a no b*llsh*t approach, which I really appreciate.”

Alison's own work follows a similar idea - she describes her recipes as "highly cookable" - and her book, Dining In, is full of tricks for using things you'd usually waste (kale stems!), simple but novel ideas (anchovy butter!), and hacks to make your life generally better and tastier. In short, her stamp of approval is a big deal.

But it looks like Material deserves it. Founded by Eunice Byun and David Nguyen, veterans of the fashion and beauty world, the company was born out of a love of both food and design. I spoke to Eunice about the brand, and she said that as the pair began to experiment more in their kitchens, they discovered that, "there was a disconnect between the passion that so many people share with each other through food and the tools and products that they utilize to cook. I think because we both come from industries with such shared love of products, we wanted to bring that same kind of connection into the kitchen. Since we launched last year we've seen that message resonate. There's a desire for home cooks to have access to better quality, long lasting stuff, but ultimately people want to feel a sense of pride and joy when they pick up their knife or their whisk."

In order to position themselves as a happy medium between luxury kitchenwares and the kind of tools that get shoved in a drawer and ignored for years, Material has chosen to make just a few things, and make them well. Unless you're a professional chef, you probably only need three knives: one chef's knife, one paring knife, and one serrated bread knife. So that's all the knives they make. Do you really need more than one slotted spoon in your kitchen? Probably not. But you do need one.

During our interview, Alison was in the midst of making herself some eggplant. There are rhythmic chopping noises throughout the recording, and when she's not cooking for work, she's making snacks for herself or thinking about how to improve on her last idea for roast chicken. Alison clearly cares about making sure her readers know that to make great food, "You don't need a ton of equipment. You don't need really fancy or expensive ingredients. You also don't need superlative knife skills. People have been doing this for centuries." Owning a few good things is enough.

Alison and the Material team are going to keep working together, and getting to keep saying what she already believes in general about a brand she believes in is a bit of a dream for Alison. Pretty soon, she hopes to get to design a tool with them based on something she already uses. And for her, nothing is better than that.