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.
A day or two after that, the FedEx guy was back. “Dave, please let me know your thoughts,” read the note attached to the box. Inside was a gleaming, state-of-the-art professional-capacity blender with an LCD screen.
Concentrating on school became increasingly difficult. I’d find myself sitting in economics class, lost in some fantasy about the Dave Lieberman segment on the E! entertainment channel. Nights, I’d lie awake thinking about the dishes I’d cook for Leno and the sarcastic things I’d say to Letterman.
But Leno and Letterman never called back, and the friendly producer from The Early Show phoned only to tell me I’d been canceled. He gave me some story about Tracy Smith having to fly off to California, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. I was sure they’d seen the tapes and nixed the segment because they didn’t like me. To top it all off, I hadn’t seen the FedEx guy for almost a week.
As I began to study for my finals, I could feel the confidence draining from me like air from a spiked balloon. What had I been thinking, scheduling all those meetings in New York? I braced myself for the disappointment of my life.
My first meeting in New York was morning coffee with a top literary agent. I stepped into the elevator and was whooshed into the sky. The guy on the phone sounded tough and cursed liberally, so I’d pictured a burly businessman, but the slight fellow who emerged from his giant leather chair seemed soft-spoken and mild—at least until he started going off about the “shit-storm” that was headed my way. His office was lined with titles I recognized from the best-seller section at Barnes & Noble. “Are those all books you’ve done?” I asked him like an idiot. “Yeah,” he said. “Things have gone well.” Apparently they have.
My next stop was an early lunch with another literary agent. It took us a couple of minutes to get to our table at Citarella because we stopped at practically every other one along the way to say hello to one industry person or another. She introduced me to various bigwigs, who shook my hand and looked at me as though I were actually someone important. The dark-suited waiters addressed her by name, and after they’d cleared our entrées returned to the table with more desserts than I could count. “Compliments of the chef,” they said. Over lunch we talked about the exciting things we would do with a cookbook, and by the time we walked out of there I’d forgotten all about Letterman and was off on a dream about my soaring literary career.
I spent the rest of the afternoon riding the elevators of other fancy publishing houses, where editors greeted me warmly and talked animatedly about the things we’d accomplish together. We grazed bookshelves, thumbed through catalogs, and exchanged ideas about the kind of products best suited to my “image.”
At a quaint sidewalk café on the Upper West Side, I chatted with a producer from ABC over salads and rum and Cokes, then excused myself politely and sped downtown for dinner number two. By the time I found the group from the British production company—huddled around a low table in the dimly lit basement of The Mercer Kitchen—I’d braved an entire restaurantful of chic, black-clad people and was having major doubts about the outfit I’d chosen. But they welcomed me kindly and told me to order whatever I wanted. They also requested several bottles of expensive wine.
When we emptied onto Prince Street, it was well past midnight. Still, it somehow seemed perfectly reasonable when someone suggested we wander over to their office to view the tapes I’d brought along. They apparently liked what they saw, because as they showed me out of the cavernous, loftlike space they told me to FedEx copies as quickly as possible.
I hailed a cab and headed back uptown. It was a hazy night, but as the taxi made its way across Central Park, I could make out the imposing buildings rising high above the trees. I rolled down the window and breathed deep the damp night air. The day’s events blurred together, and I did all I could to figure out whether or not any of it had been real.
It had, of course, and the insanity has gone on from there. A couple of weeks ago, MTV’s College Television Network was at my place filming two segments that are currently playing in college towns across the country. I have a literary agent working with me on a cookbook and a broadcast agent who’s hooking me up with some of the most sought-after production companies out there. Who knew a college road trip would lead directly to a career path? Not me, certainly, but I can’t deny that I’m absolutely enjoying the ride.