It all started at a seedy hostel in Fort Lauderdale. A couple of buddies and I had decided that for spring break—we were in our junior year at Yale—we’d pile into our cars and head south for some much-needed fun in the sun. Given our budget, nobody protested when I offered to make the meals provided they pitch in for ingredients. (They knew that I’d begun cooking with my stay-at-home dad when I was just a kid, so they weren’t too worried.)
Every night at around six, I’d fire up the big grill, and as the smell of the seafood or steak made its way through the hostel, my friends would emerge from their rooms to gather on the palm-shaded patio. Needless to say, there was a lot of beer. So the responses to my efforts tended toward the hyperbolic. “You’re awesome, man,” one well-lubricated friend told me on our last night in Florida. “You should be on the Food Network…you’d show up that Emeril dude!”
He probably doesn’t even remember making the comment, but for some reason it stuck with me. When I got back to school, in fact, I began looking into what it would take to mount a show on the local public-access station. By the time fall term rolled around, I had raised a bunch of money, put together a team of talented friends, come up with ideas for episodes, and even attempted a few storyboards and scripts.
The show was about good food and college life, so we shaped the episodes around themes like back-to-school barbecue, tailgate party, and blind date. I’d introduce the situation, talk about the ingredients, and then demonstrate how to prepare and serve the meal. Believe it or not—we certainly couldn’t—the show was a hit. The people down at the station told me that between two and three thousand people were tuning in at any one time.
As you can imagine, my friends found the whole thing pretty hilarious. Seeing my face on television became the subject of running jokes, and they never resisted an opportunity to riff on the size of the sausages I’d cooked up on the tailgate segment or the time I’d forgotten to wash the mushrooms. (Interestingly enough, the guys who gave me the hardest time seemed to be intimately familiar with the details of every show.)
Word of the program spread beyond the campus, and soon I was getting comments from people I’d never even met. One day I went to the bank, and as I slid my deposit slip under the window, the teller shouted, “Hey! Are you that guy with the cooking show?”
Another time I was loading groceries into my car in the parking lot of the supermarket and a young guy with dreadlocks came running up. “You’re Dave, right? The guy with the cooking show? I was wondering if you could send me the recipe for that beer bread you made last episode—I need to make that!”
Just before we went into production for our final episode, I got a call from New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser, who had heard about the show. A few weeks later, she and a photographer came up and spent the day crammed into my third-floor apartment with the crew, the cameras, and the furniture we’d pushed aside to make room for a set. A month or so after that, I had an e-mail from Ms. Hesser telling me the piece was slated for the following Wednesday’s issue. I had no idea what to expect, so I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
When I woke up Wednesday, my first thought was to get my hands on a copy of the Times. The sections of the paper had been put together out of order, and Dining In was at the very back. A big, cartoonlike drawing was splashed across the front page, and I wondered what story might be leading the section. Then I caught a glimpse of the text. “Dave Lieberman, a senior at Yale…”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Unfortunately, neither could I read the story—I was already late for history.
After class, I plopped down on the steps outside and read the entire 1,800-word article. Then I turned on my cellphone for the first time that day. “You have four new voice messages,” said the familiar female voice. Two were from major publishing houses and two from network TV shows—the callers had all seen the story and wanted to speak with me as soon as possible.
By the end of the day, I had scheduled two days’ worth of meetings in New York City. On top of that, CBS’s Early Show was planning to come to New Haven; MTV was interested in meeting with me; and the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows had requested that I overnight them tapes. Every time the phone rang, I expected it to be one of my friends telling me it was all a big joke.
When I got a call from California, I was sure the jig was up. “I saw the New York Times article and thought it was really great!” said an overly enthusiastic voice at the other end of the line. “You see, we’re salad growers out here in California, and we think you could really help us reach the young audience we’re shooting for. We’d like to send you some product.” A few days later, a FedEx man arrived at my apartment bearing a large, climate-controlled box filled with delicate organic greens. No joke.
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