Big Night | Katherine Lewin
Intro: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Efron movie, surrounded by TWA plaid cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Katherine Lewin: I'm Katherine Lewin and I am the founder of Big Night, which is a shop two shops in New York City, and I'm also the author of a cookbook with the same name, big Night Dinners, parties and dinner parties
Suzy Chase: Down the street from me here in the West Village is my favorite shop in my neighborhood. Big night, it's my go-to for gifts in particular, the beautiful Taper candles. I also love the Dinner party and after Party Candle, and I don't know what it is, if it's like a post pandemic thing or a lazy home cook thing, but I love your shop because I can use it to add on to my dinner with a beautiful olive oil or a tin fish or noua frozen dumplings. I could go on and on about my love of Big Night. So what was it about the dinner party concept that inspired you to open Big Night?
Katherine Lewin: First of all, do you just want to come station yourself in my shop and tell people walking in what it's all about? Because you just nailed it.
Suzy Chase: I'll be right in the window.
Katherine Lewin: Perfect. Great. We can get you a whole display there. The idea for Big Night came to me in peak lockdown, part of the pandemic, so holidays of 2020, I was watching on social media just the way that people had doubled down on cooking like these lavish meals and not just because it was the holidays, but I think October into December, people were just, it was getting colder outside. People were just cooking to have something almost to do, and people that were in my life who had never spent much time in the kitchen were suddenly doing these project meals and they were baking bread. And I was just astounded by the amount of cooking focus, I guess, content I was seeing on the internet. And it struck me that we were all cooking more than ever, but we were only able to gather. No one was having dinner parties, we were having dinner with our families, our pandemic pods, maybe just one roommate or your spouse.
And I really miss dining in restaurants for sure, but I found myself really missing looking at all my friends around the dinner table and having the night sprawl out before us and just eating and drinking and hanging as the party moves from the dining room to the living room. That's what I missed. And I started thinking about how dinner parties were going to feel really special and sparkly when it was safe enough to have them again. And what if there was a place that both inspired and empowered people to host again? Because I had the feeling that none of us were going to remember how to do that. And I mean, I certainly felt like that. I think the first dinner party I had post pandemic, I was like, where are my platters? Do I even have platters?
Remember how we were even afraid to have share plates on the table? There was just so much that felt unfamiliar and how do I do this again? And I imagined a place that made hosting feel fun, but also accessible. You don't have to cook the whole thing from scratch. You used a perfect word. It's like there are so many little finishers that you can use to sort of amp up anything and make it feel dinner party worthy. And even if you're not somebody who knows how to roast a chicken and you have no interest in that, there's a world of dinner party for you and this store is going to help you find it
Suzy Chase: A world of Dinner party for you. Oh my God, I love that. What's crazy about the pandemic is I used to have dreams of sitting around the table with people and talking, and I told my husband, I was like, Bob, this is the weirdest dream, but I had a dream. I was at a dinner party. He's like, nothing crazy happened. I said, no, we were
Katherine Lewin: Just talking,
Suzy Chase: Just eating and talking.
Katherine Lewin: Yeah, normal stuff. Well, stuff that was normal before the pandemic and then became the stuff of dreams.
Suzy Chase: Yes, the stuff of dreams. So what does it mean when you say any night can be a big night?
Katherine Lewin: That was the ethos that I opened the store with, which is a big night to me is any night at home that feels special. And any night can be a big night because contrary to maybe what we've been led to believe or what we've seen in media about the perfect table, the perfect dinner party, the perfect spread, any night can feel like a big night if you put intention behind gathering people around a table. And that intention could be in the form of truly take out in your prettiest bowls and platters. It could be awa dumplings that everybody has a DIY dumpling bar situation that they roll up to at the party. The ethos is really about any night having the capacity to really create a connection with people and the store is here to really help make that happen around food specifically.
Suzy Chase: Now in the book, you talk about having people over doesn't have to feel as exciting as going to a restaurant. Is that what you're talking about, having noir dumplings on pretty platters and make your own adventure type of thing?
Katherine Lewin: Well, I think I've always been interested in restaurants as a dining experience in conversation with your at home restaurant, your living room as a dining experience. And I think it's because I know it's because before this job, my last job, which was also a dream job, was that I was the editorial director of a website called The Infatuation, which is a restaurant discovery and review site. And so for the six years prior to opening Big Night, I was eating in restaurants for a living, which again, dream job and editing the work of other writers who were doing the same and just thinking a lot about what it meant to be in a restaurant, what it means to be a diner, what it means to have a great restaurant meal, what makes a restaurant special. And thinking about all of that, I think really informed thinking about, okay, well what are some of those sparkly magic restaurant qualities that we can bring home?
And then what are some of those qualities that purely they exist in a restaurant for a reason and there's no need to feel pressure to recreate them at home? So I think my feeling is that we often think, oh, special occasion, I'm going to go out on the town, I'm going to go to a restaurant. And with Big Net, I've really thought about, well, what if it's a special occasion and we're having it at home and how do we make that sparkly, sexy, restaurants magic come to life in the ways that it can at home? And then how do we relieve ourselves from the pressure of things like the food arriving hot to the table at a restaurant? We're not doing that at home. We don't have to worry about that. It's okay if that doesn't happen. But I love restaurants so much, and I think a lot about how they can inspire some of the sparkly moments at home too.
Suzy Chase: We're putting the dinner table together for maybe a regular family dinner or a dinner party. And on page 68, you tell us to stop worrying about everything matching and just set the table. I mean, what a relief. So talk a little bit about that.
Katherine Lewin: It's so funny. People ask me all the time like, oh, you just must have cabinets full of all of the matching dinnerware from your store and beautifully stacked neat collections of these different flatware glassware. And when I tell them it is truly a mishmash at my house, I don't think I have 12. I know I don't have 12 matching plates. I think I might have three of this kind and three of this kind. And I've had the store for three years. And I remember thinking at the beginning, maybe once I've been at this and we're making enough money that I can take home some of the inventory, maybe one day I'll have a set of 12 that matches and three years later I don't. And that's because I just feel like a table feels so much more alive when you're choosing what goes on based on how you actually feel and what you're serving, not just like, well, here's my set of 10 plates that all match.
Here they are. I am definitely, I match my table to my mood and to the meals mood, and I love that I can also think about mixing and matching to create something that feels just special to that day. So I guess when I say stop worrying, it's because I feel like we've all been fed imagery of these beautiful Martha Stewart tables, which if that's your jam to create the most symmetrical and perfect table that could be photographed from every single angle and look gorgeous, then by all means do it. But for all of us like me who are maybe a little bit more chaotic and set the table from the heart of just like, oh, I have 12 minutes before this party starts and what do I want to put together? There's room for us too. What I talked through in the book is let's just take it layer by layer by layer as opposed to what's my tablescape concept and how am I going to make that happen? So this was really inspired by people coming into the store and saying like, oh, I don't have eight plates that match. If I'm having this dinner party, should I buy eight right now? Do you have eight plates that match? And our answer is always, you don't need to have eight that match, but let's find you some that bring you joy, and you can maybe mix those in with what you have already.
Suzy Chase: I interviewed the owner of Maman and she doesn't have anything that matches either. She just stays with the blue and white theme, but she doesn't care about matching,
Katherine Lewin: And I'm sure her tables look spectacular.
Suzy Chase: Yes, every time. So often I go to a dinner party at someone's house and it's stuffy and so uptight, so how can we set the tone for our dinner party so it's not stuffy or uptight?
Katherine Lewin: I think that that feeling of stuffiness comes from feeling like you step in and someone is really taking the cue of entertaining seriously, where they feel like all the onus is on them to bartend, to lead the conversation, to introduce people, to set the table, to get dinner on the table at the right time. And I think that stuffiness comes from this feeling of almost pressure. I love to immediately when people walk in kind of hand them the keys to their own destiny in some way. And I'll use an example, which I talk about in the book a lot, but when it comes to sort of that first drink that people have in their hands when they walk in, they always hate when I feel like people are waiting on me to fix them a drink because usually I'm busy doing other things. And I also feel like people want to be useful.
You walk into someone's house and you're like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. What can I do? What do you need? And I love to answer that question with, well, you can take yourself over to the spritz bar and put together your ideal spritz. And that's just one example of immediately sort of giving the keys to someone else and saying, I set out this bar for you to make your perfect drink. I have all the ingredients. I have a little recipe card for you. Go to town, make your perfect drink, and you might also meet somebody while you're over there and check up a conversation with somebody that you haven't met yet. There's so many ways to turn a dish or a drink into something that people can do themselves, and whenever you see those opportunities, grab them because it will take so much pressure off of you, and people have a lot of fun. It's really fun when someone has created an experience for you to get your hands dirty in. That's how I feel.
Suzy Chase: So I've heard you talk about how you used to do copywriting for J Crew and you were drawn to telling the story of the products. That right there to me is the essence of Big night.
Katherine Lewin: Thank you. Yeah, that's always been central. My background, so I was a copywriter and then an editorial. And I think the best retail has storytelling at its core. And the brands that I most resonate are the ones that are telling a story, not just about who that brand is, but about what it stands for and what its product stands for. And so at J Crew, the first job I landed there was not in copywriting, it was actually in merchandising, which was an incredible job to land in. The only problem was I found myself in spreadsheets every day, and I was like, how did this happen? I didn't take a math class in college and numbers are my enemy. How did I land in spreadsheet land? Those tools that I learned at that job really came in handy to inform the current of men. But anyway, I'm sitting there looking at spreadsheets thinking I'm supposed to be deciding how many pairs of men's chinos we buy, but instead I'm really interested in how did we name this colorway, dusty Rose?
And wow, it's so interesting that we're using a mill in Italy for Chinos, which I feel like most people would assume these are not Italian made. Tell me more about that. And so I realized that I was really interested in communicating that to the customer and how do you tell that story? And a term we always use is how do you romance the customer around that? How do you make them feel like, oh, this is a really exciting thing, and get them as excited as you are. And that is something that I have done over and I've tried to do over and over again a big night, which is we're a store that is full of the most amazing and interesting brands and products that I have curated, not just because of the stories that they bring, but then how those products can interact with each other. So if I could, I would have a long message to customers for every single product in the store, and they would probably think it was utter chaos. But we do try really hard, both our staff and also in the ways that we show up digitally to really talk about these goods and the people behind them. And it's been such a privilege to be able to help share the stories behind so many of the products that are on our shelves.
Suzy Chase: So I'm going to read from something you wrote on page 11. Before we go any further, I need to tell you something. I may own a dinner party shop, and I might have written a book about dinner parties, but here's my not so secret, secret. I'm an introvert. What?
Katherine Lewin: I'm such an introvert.
Suzy Chase: What? Wait, I'm an introvert. But you're on the Today Show. You're out and about. You're dipping and doing, you're here and there.
Katherine Lewin: Wow. Dipping and doing. I want to put that on my business card. Yeah. Well, first of all, as we know, introversion and extroverting is on a spectrum. So I'm sure I'm somewhere on the spectrum, probably not all the way introverted, but I really do get my energy from being alone. That's when I recharge. And again, with the stereotypes about what a good dinner party is, what a good host is, you sort of imagine this host figure flitting about the party with endless social battery, able to make conversation with anybody while also cooking and pouring and cleaning. And that is just not me. In fact, one of my favorite things is, and I talk about this in the book, to take about 10 minutes in the middle of any dinner party and hide myself away and take what I call a social nap, which is where I lay down in my bed and close the door and just have 10 minutes to myself when I need a little break. And I'll say that the sound of people having fun at my party when I am not physically in the room, they're just having fun on their own. It's one of my great joy in life, and I think let's normalize introverts hosting and not maybe having the capacity to be chitchatting and dip it and dein all night, but taking that beat for themselves. And then I come back and I'm ready for the rest of the night.
Suzy Chase: So I made the recipe for Party Chicken with Feta and Fennel on page 27. And my thoughts about the chicken is that the fennel brings in such a sweet kind of flavor to the dish, and then all the flavors of the feta, the mint, the scallions and lemon bring in such freshness. It was wonderful.
Katherine Lewin: The Party Chicken is named Party Chicken because I think that we've been fed a lie that roast chicken is a dinner party chicken. I don't think a roast chicken is a dinner party chicken. A roast chicken is actually not that much food, and I don't want anyone fighting over who's getting the leg and the thigh and the breast. And so the thing with Party Chicken is it's a chicken dish that I actually think is appropriate to be scaled up for a crowd. And then as you say, it has so many different elements in it that I hope the dish itself also feels like party.
Suzy Chase: I also made The Corn Salad I Think About All Year on page 113. And the tomatillo salsa really up kind of an otherwise mellow dish. It's the perfect recipe to ease us into fall, but it still feels like we're holding on to summer. Who doesn't love a corn salad?
Katherine Lewin: I think about corn salad all year until it's time for corn salad. And you can make corn salad all year, but it's like that peak corn moment when you have it and you're like, this is the climax of corn for the year, and I can't do better than this.
Suzy Chase: So reading through this book, I learned so many tidbits. And one was Stacey Mei Yan Fong was Big Night's first official employee, and for anyone who doesn't know, she has a book out called 50 Pies, 50 States and Immigrants Love Letter to the United States Through Pie. And I'm interviewing her and the episode's going to come out on election day, which I thought was hilarious.
Katherine Lewin: Amazing.
Suzy Chase: So how did you meet Stacey?
Katherine Lewin: Oh my goodness. I met Stacey through what I think is one of the most magic portals of the internet, which is a cold email. She cold emailed. I mean, she was the first employee. And that was a big deal because I started this thing and it was just me and it was my best friend helping and my husband and my sister. And there came a point where I started to feel like this is not sustainable. I really need help. And not just help, but I really need, I want another perspective in the mix here. It isn't just about someone coming in and running the register. It's like, I've just been in my own head bubble with this store. Let's bring in somebody else too for the party and along for the ride. And I hadn't even posted a job posting. I had not even sent out signals into the universe.
I think other than sort of saying out loud to friends, like, okay, I really have to find somebody to come aboard. And she just appeared in my inbox. I mean, truly, she sent this email we had never met. I had no mutual friends with her. There's no reason that the email could have come at this time other than the universe. And she just said, Hey, I'm a fan of your store. This is my background. Would love to talk about potentially working together if that's something you might need right now. And that cold email launched a really beautiful working relationship, and I'm so honored to have had her along for the ride for so long, and also to be able to watch her incredible journey. Her book was in the finishing stages when we met, but I've sort of watched as she is gone through all the stages, submitted the manuscript, did the photo shoot, and then the book came out. And sort of watching her ride has been really amazing, and I'm so proud of her as well.
Suzy Chase: Oh, I love that. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the incredible Rebecca Firkser, who she worked on a project of mine a few years ago, and she's the best. And I love all of her recipe.
Katherine Lewin: She's incredible. I'm so, so fortunate that Rebecca popped aboard the book train and was the recipe developer on this book. And what a privilege to be able to creatively have a brainstorming partner to say, okay, let's talk about this chicken dish. I feel strongly that we need a chicken dish that we can rely on that can be in our back pocket chicken dish for dinner parties. I don't think I know. I don't have my ideal one yet. I'm envisioning it has this briny bite, this vegetable bite. There's some kind of grain in there. These are all the components I'm envisioning. And then I am not a professionally trained chef. So to have Rebecca come in and say, okay, here's how I think we're going to take that and make that attainable for people to actually do themselves. It's a lot of components. Here's how we're going to make that something that people can achieve at home, and just having that expertise. And also, if you know Rebecca, she's just wonderful to work with. So fantastic partner in making this book.
Suzy Chase: And she's an amazing writer. She wrote this press release for me that was so beautifully written.
Katherine Lewin: She's amazing. And
Suzy Chase: She has, what can't she do?
Katherine Lewin: She has a book coming out next year too.
Suzy Chase: I know, I'm so excited.
Katherine Lewin: It's called Galette and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
Suzy Chase: You'll have to have it at the shop.
Katherine Lewin: Oh yeah, a hundred percent.
Suzy Chase: So now for my segment called The Perfect Bite where I ask you to describe your perfect bite of a favorite dish,
Katherine Lewin: The perfect bite for me is one that feels like it's exactly what you need in that moment. And there's a recipe in this book that I fall back on over and over again. And actually this one, speaking of Rebecca, who is an incredible cook in all the things, she's a bean queen, Rebecca is, and we talked a lot about this dish that I had been wanting, which is a bean heavy staple that can be versatile and go with a lot of different things. And we started talking about the combination of beans and tomatoes, and we are in the perfect season for this dish, big beans and tomatoes. It's a simple dish, but it is one that gives you the comfort and coziness of a bean with the vibrant deliciousness of an in-season tomato. And having just made it again two nights ago in this, the season is we're still holding onto all of that fresh produce, but we're kind of getting cozy at home. And this bite is that personified in a dish. And it was exactly what I needed the other night. And to me, that's the perfect bite.
Suzy Chase: Did you have a baguette with it? Did you dip it? Was there any dipping?
Katherine Lewin: So I had it with kind of a Mediterranean meal. We did some quick lamb chops in a pan, and then we had that bean dish, and then we also had some olive bread on the side, so I was making little olive bread, beans, lamb tartine on the plate. It was lovely.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find you in New York City on the web and social media
Katherine Lewin: In New York City? You can find us at our two retail locations. We have one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the other in the West Village. You can shop us Big Night website, and you can find us on Instagram at @BigNightShop And I'm at @KKLewin
Suzy Chase: Thank you for writing this back-pocket hosting companion. And thanks Katherine for coming on the very first episode of Dinner Party Podcast.
Katherine Lewin: I am honored to have been here. Thank you so much for having me.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party Podcast series? Well, it's on Substack. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
