With two James Beard Foundation award-winning cookbooks, positions at Cooks Illustrated and Serious Eats, regular New York Times recipe bylines, and more than one million subscribers to his YouTube Channel, Kenji’s culinary credibility is undeniable. 

In conversation with Vicky, Kenji shared his unconventional career path. After graduating from Dalton in 1998, Kenji attended M.I.T. as a biology major intending to be a scientist. But following a summer job as a cook, Kenji discovered that he enjoyed the restaurant kitchen’s fast pace and immediate results – a dramatically different experience than his work in biology labs. Kenji said that he was always interested in how things work and his eventual focus on the science of food was a natural segue. 

In a lively conversation about the Dalton Plan, both Kenji and Vicky felt that they benefited from Dalton’s child-centered pedagogy, an approach they agreed was more accepting of the whole student. Kenji recalled that he felt well-supported at Dalton and was able to take risks and pursue what he wanted to do – which included music, arts, and dance. Both said that so much of Dalton was about managing time. Vicky remembered using the progress chart to track Assignments, and Kenji said that he’s getting better at time management: “I have a lot of pans in the fire, and I’m lucky to be able to do what I do.”

The audience’s enthusiasm carried through to the reception where Kenji signed the final book almost 1 ½ hours after starting. Not only was this an enjoyable evening, proceeds went to the Alumni Scholarship Fund bumping it to just over $500,000.

Bios

J. Kenji López-Alt is the two-time James Beard Foundation Award-winning author of The Food Lab and The Wok, and the host of “Kenji’s Cooking Show” on YouTube, with over a million subscribers. He is a New York Times recipe columnist, the Chief Culinary Advisor of Serious Eats, and the author of the best-selling children’s book Every Night is Pizza Night. He lives in Seattle with his family.

Vicky Bijur ’71 started her literary agency in 1988. She represents fiction and non-fiction and has served as president of the Association of American Literary Agents and as chair of its Ethics Committee. Many of the books she represents have been on the New York Times bestseller list and have been New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her clients have won awards including James Beard Awards, the Knight Fellowship in Science Journalism, Edgar Awards, the Hammett Prize, the Hillman Award for Book Journalism, and the Inkpot Award for Excellence in Cartooning.  Several of Vicky’s books have been filmed, including Drive with Ryan Gosling; Still Alice with Julianne Moore; The Man Who Knew Infinity with Dev Patel; and forthcoming Lady in the Lake with Natalie Portman.