Jordan Walters, 21, Dexter Callender, 20, and New York’s newest celebrity chef, Jonah Reider.
NEW York is famous for its culinary scene, but the hottest reservation in town right now is not a proper restaurant at all, but a university dorm room.
Last month uni student Jonah Reider, 21, decided to open a “restaurant” in the small living area of his campus accommodation at Columbia University. Now he’s booked out through Christmas.
What began with him cooking for a few friends who would all chip in for groceries, has become a foodie phenomenon.
“There’s a thousand people who have hit me up, trying to get a reservation, who are lawyers and magazine editors,” Mr Reider told The New Yorker.
The piece in the prestigious magazine is merely the latest in a string of articles espousing the virtues of the young chef’s cuisine, including write-ups by the USA Today, The New York Post, Slate and The Boston Magazine.
He’s always demonstrated a love for cooking. So much so that his high school newspaper ran a headline that asked: “Is Jonah Reider the next Martha Stewart?”
But while the recognition may have started early, he never thought he’d be fielding calls from talent agents and TV producers.
“Now I have hundreds and hundreds of people on the wait list. It’s definitely been annoying for my roommates to have people here all the time,” he told Slate. “It’s quite funny how many people have emailed me.”
The “restaurant”, called Pith, serves what’s been described as up-market modern American cuisine and has been taking bookings for every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. But the chef thinks he’s going to have to scale down in order to keep the university happy.
Mr Reider only charges for ingredients (usually $15-20 per guest) and doesn’t make a profit from his diners. For him, it’s all about the experience of getting to eat a meal, talk and listen to music with new people.
The success of the dorm room restaurant is evident and it has even racked up a bunch of five star reviews on Yelp.
“Jonah made foods I don’t regularly enjoy — celery, carrots, nuts — into innovative, exquisite, and efficient masterpieces,” wrote Ankeet B on Yelp.
“How frequently do you get to experience gourmet dining and dine with the chef who prepared it. Pith is an unparalleled New York experience that I highly recommend and is easily the best experience available in Morningside Heights,” wrote another Yelp user Timothy H.
The 21-year-old studies sociology and economics. When he’s not preparing the new menu, he’ll often be at his part time job with Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at the University and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
With the explosion in attention and media coverage this month, the university received a call from the health department and Mr Reider has had to limit his guests to students of the college in order not to risk being fined.
So for the time being, it just got that much harder to get a seat at one of New York’s most exclusive restaurants.
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