Why Cooking is Caregiving, with Chef Hillary Sterling | Better in Person
with Hillary Sterling
22 Jul 20265 min read23m
TL;DR
Hillary Sterling argues that great cooking is fundamentally an act of caregiving, rooted in sensory connection rather than technical precision — a philosophy she learned the hard way by being told to 'be one with the pork' after botching over 100 pork tenderloins on her first night at Mesa Grill. She turned down a high-profile offer to run Union Square Cafe because she refused to inherit someone else's identity, choosing instead to build her own voice — which eventually led Danny Meyer to bring her to Ci Siamo. Her food aversion-filled lunch with host Stephen Dubner, featuring fish cubes and raw garlic, becomes an accidental case study in how food memory shapes taste.
Key Moments
Hillary Sterling
“I've never left a job because someone tortured me. I've left because it was time.”
Sterling reflects on the harsh kitchen culture she came up in, distinguishing between enduring hardship and knowing when to move on.
Sterling recounts what her chef told her after she overcooked over 100 pork tenderloins on her first night on sauté at Mesa Grill on Labor Day weekend.
“There's a moment where they glistened. This may sound so bananas.”
Sterling describes the sensory breakthrough moment — watching pork tenderloins glisten — that taught her what cooking truly was, without a thermometer.
Hillary Sterling is the executive chef at Ci Siamo, a live-fire Italian restaurant in New York City under Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she built her career at notable restaurants including Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and the Michelin-starred Avo. She recently published her debut cookbook, Amatza, and is known for cooking that prioritizes sensory intuition over rigid technique.
Takeaways
1
Sensory mastery beats rigid technique Sterling learned to cook pork tenderloin to perfection not with a thermometer but by watching it glisten — spending seven days staring at and searing pork until she could read doneness visually. She argues that tuning into senses like sound, touch, and sight creates a deeper, more reliable connection to the food than following regimented rules.
2
Turning down prestige preserved her creative voice Sterling declined an offer to run Union Square Cafe — one of Danny Meyer's flagship restaurants — because its established identity left no room for her own. That decision ultimately led Meyer's group to bring her to Ci Siamo, where she could build the concept from scratch and cook what she calls the best food of her career.
3
Cooking for others is caregiving, not performance Sterling frames her career not as artistic expression but as an extension of a caregiver instinct — she gets the same satisfaction packing her son's lunch as she does plating for 400 people at Ci Siamo. This reframe suggests that the most durable motivation in hospitality work is relational, not creative or financial.
4
Food memory shapes taste more than flavor does When Sterling tasted Dubner's fish stew, she noted it reminded her of what her grandmother would have made — immediately softening her resistance to a dish she'd otherwise dislike. Dubner's own observation: eating is as much about how you remember as how something tastes, a point Sterling's texture aversions (traced to her mother's cream cheese on Wonderbread) vividly illustrate.
5
Volume cooking demands a different kind of excellence Sterling notes that cooking for 400 at Ci Siamo forces trade-offs that a 40-seat restaurant never would — you can't produce ten perfectly intricate plates when you need a hundred. Her answer is to embrace rusticity deliberately, letting the constraints shape a style rather than fighting them.