Amanda Cohen is the chef and owner of Dirt Candy in New York City. From the beginning, Cohen has helped creatively share our message in New York City. When NYC introduced plant-based items on school menus, she joined the No Kid Hungry New York team in an Instagram Live session sharing her experience with plant-based items and why expanding options was important to kids. She’s also always the first to share advocacy posts on social media to help get the word out to her community.
Cohen is part of No Kid Hungry’s Leadership Council. Along with other leaders from different industries, she provides strategic guidance and helps broaden our reach with corporations, foundations, individual donors, media and policy makers to raise funds, build awareness and advance our programmatic work. She is also the co-chair of the No Kid Hungry New York dinner.
We recently caught up with her to hear more about how she first got involved with No Kid Hungry, her leadership positions, and her thoughts on summer hunger. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about your restaurant Dirt Candy.
Dirt Candy has been open for almost 16 years. We consider ourselves a vegetable restaurant more so than just a vegetarian restaurant. We really love the idea of celebrating vegetables–we've been doing it for 16 years–and we're pioneers in the vegetable-forward movement.
What drew you to support No Kid Hungry? And how did you originally get connected with the organization?
It was so long ago! I think I had worked in restaurants that had participated in No Kid Hungry events. When I opened Dirt Candy, it was really the first big organization that invited us to participate. So, there's a special place in my heart that's reserved for No Kid Hungry. There weren't a lot of vegetarian restaurants that were invited to be a part of the events at that time. Now it's a different world, but I think we were probably the first, and it was really exciting for us to be able to be there with all the big guys who I really admired. I was so flattered that No Kid Hungry kept asking me back. I was like, well, I didn't do a bad job the first year, so I guess I can go back the second year!
Congress passed landmark legislation helping families increase their purchasing power at the grocery store during the summer months while kids are out of school, along with expanding a temporary pandemic-era rule allowing rural meals sites to package free grab-and-go meals for kids. Why do you think these changes are important?
For me, working with No Kid Hungry was like learning so much about food policy, particularly with the children. It actually makes a lot of sense why so many families struggle. Summer is such a hard time without that extra food kids get in school. I think these policies are amazing and it is really amazing that No Kid Hungry has been able to advance these policies and get them passed and change the way that the U.S. government works and treats kids in need.
Why do you think it's important for folks in the food and hospitality industry and space to be involved with No Kid Hungry?
I just think everybody should be involved, but chefs in particular. We’re in hospitality. We want to serve people. I don't think any of us come to the industry with this idea that I only want to serve one specific kind of person. I think we all believe that we want to serve as many people as possible, and working with No Kid Hungry gives me as much pleasure as serving people in my dining room at night. I do think all cooks, chefs and restaurateurs would benefit from that because work isn't that hard and the joy that you get from it is pretty astounding.
Your favorite food or drink at the moment?
We're coming into our summer menu, which we'll change any day now. We've been doing all the testing and every year we have a tomato dish that has similar components. There's always peeled and marinated cherry tomatoes, smoked feta, and tomato leather that we make. How it ends up is sort of a mystery until we start playing with it. We've done tomato cupcakes, we've done cakes. And this year, we're doing a tomato donut iced with smoked feta, cherry tomatoes on top and stuffed with tomato jam. It just makes me giggle every time I see it. The most fun thing in the world is a donut! You can't not smile when you see a donut; we've taken one of our most iconic dishes and turned it into a donut. It was meant to be, and it's pretty delicious.
