Inside the Kitchen: Six Questions with Chef Lucy Field of Per Se

My mom's roast chicken. It sounds simple, but it's the meal I've eaten more than any other in my life, and it's never once gotten old.

Coming home from school to my mom's roast chicken. The skin was perfectly golden, the whole house smelling like it before I even got through the door.

My brothers and I still call it “delicious chicken” to this day, and whenever any of us comes home, no matter how old we are or how far we've moved, that's what we ask her to make.

My mom is the backbone of our family, and that chicken is basically the physical proof of it. She was the one who held everything together in a house full of boys, and cooking was always how she did that, not with big gestures, just by showing up every single day and making sure we felt taken care of. She never made a big deal out of it. She'd just come home from a full day herself and spend hours in the kitchen making something she knew we loved.

That chicken means something different to me now than it did as a kid. Back then it was just dinner. Now I understand it was her way of saying she loved us, every single day, without ever having to say it out loud. I think that's the real reason I became a cook, not because I wanted to make beautiful food, but because I watched someone show up for the people she loved through food, over and over, for years, without ever asking for anything back. That's the standard I actually measure myself against, even in a kitchen like Per Se.

I'm still early enough in my career that I'm more focused on becoming the cook I want to be than on a restaurant of my own, though I'd love that someday. Right now my goal is to keep working in kitchens that push me and inspire me.

The French Laundry.

Honestly, it's always evolving. With every new restaurant and every chef I work under, I pick up something different, and my philosophy shifts a little each time. I'm someone who's just genuinely curious about the world, and I think that curiosity is really at the center of how I cook. I don't think I'll have a fully finished answer to this question for a long time. I want as many culinary experiences as I can get, because each one shapes the way I think about food a little more.

A bacon cheeseburger from J.G. Melon, easy. It's the best burger in New York. It’s always perfectly juicy and thick, the bacon crispy, almost burnt in the best way, and there are jars of Dijon mustard just sitting out on the old wooden tables, covered in green and white checkered cloths.

My dad and I would always go before Rangers games, just the two of us, sitting at the same table in the back corner, eating burgers together before heading to the game. It's still our favorite thing to do together, and every time I walk in, I'm right back there with him.