Inside the Kitchen: Seven Questions with Lana Lagomarsini

Gosh, there are so many. From childhood, it’d be eating at my grandmother’s table after coming home from school while waiting for my mom to pick me up. My grandma would make great quantities of food, but she lived alone in a three-bedroom house. People from my family were always in and out. There was always someone there, whether it was my cousin or my uncle, so she always had some kind of good food going on there. There were collards involved, there was fried chicken involved. She made incredible fried chicken, and she fried it in a pan. She always made really good sweet potato pie. There was some debate in my family about who makes the best fried fish, so I’m just gonna let that rest. I don’t want to get involved.

But so many of my memories are around the table with my family in some way or another. Even now as an adult, so many of my memories still start at the table.

Of course, the food is important, but I think it’s more about the overall experience. That’s what takes something more casual into fine dining: that level of service and special feeling. It’s hospitality personified. That’s how I like to think about fine dining. You don’t have to ask for anything. We, as a kitchen, just feed you everything. Servers are getting things for you before you even realize you might need it. That kind of stuff. There’s a certain level of attention to detail, and the small things are really where the difference is made. That’s the best part of hospitality.

Now that the restaurant’s open, a lot of people ask me, “Are you trying to get accolades? Are you going for Michelin? Are you going for this? Are you going for that?” And the truth is, I think when you cook for those things, you’re not cooking for the reason you should be cooking.

I’m so happy to have a space that’s my own that I get to come to every day and cook my food. That people are liking it and responding well and coming at all is great. So my biggest goal for the restaurant right now is just to keep that energy going and create good food and a good experience for people. If I can do that for the rest of the year, I would consider it a successful year.

Here in New York, there are few restaurants that have opened up recently that I have in the back of my mind. But I still haven’t been to Kabawa, I’m ashamed to say. So that’s the top one on my list for sure. I’ve always wanted to go to Singapore and eat at Odette. Their food is just so beautiful. As far as destination, I want to go to Lyon really badly and eat there. My friend is actually competing in Bocuse d’Or this year, so I might try to go down. I would also love to go to Copenhagen just to catch a vibe of a food scene there.

My background is in journalism, so I’m really interested in researching a lot of what I do, and there’s a lot of storytelling in my cooking. My approach to cooking is lighthearted but serious.

It’s hard to describe exactly. I like to have a good time, but I also like to be serious in the kitchen. I’m a Libra, so I like a lot of balance. I would say that my food is somewhere between fine dining and comfort food. I’m a little bit of everything.

I have one dish: mofongo. My parents instilled the love of plantains in me from a very young age because my father is half Puerto Rican. I know how it’s made in theory, but I’ve never made it. I just want to go and eat it somewhere. I remember the first time I had mofongo when I was in Puerto Rico with my family, and that was it. I was like, “Oh, this is the best thing I have ever had.”