Kristen Kish, How Are You So Hot?

The interview series “How Are You So Hot?” is a thirsty journey into fascinating people’s attractions, peculiar charismas, and every other thing we want to copy about them. 

Out of the categories of strangers who dramatically improve my existence—musicians who soundtrack this life, writers who expand this brain—I only feel the urge to thank people that write the recipes I make. I feel like they’ve not only given me something, they’ve made me seem talented—especially if I’ve used their work to woo friends and entice crushes. Kristen Kish—who was first introduced to the non-Michelin-starred world when she won season 10 of Top Chef in 2013 and now competes on a new cooking show, Fast Foodies—is one of those chefs. 

Kish’s inventive, encouraging 2017 book, Kristen Kish Cooking: Recipes and Techniques taught me to double-cook mushrooms, convinced me I could make barley special enough to serve at a dinner party, and defied categorization with dishes like squash filled with coconut custard and brown butter (neither dinner nor dessert—somehow, just a treat). This dish encapsulates Kish’s culinary style: peculiar, specific, delicious. In the surge of fame that followed her (twisty!) Top Chef win, Kish defied some workaholic expectations for chefs, took a break from working in restaurants for a few years until 2018, when she opened her first restaurant, Arlo Grey, in Austin.

The attention to detail and precision is legendary at the mostly women-staffed Arlo Grey, which Kish has privately nicknamed “Arlo Gay.” Kish’s dishes are often an inside joke with herself about her beloved Midwestern diet as a child: One dish is inspired by Hamburger Helper, and she says she’s had a hard time convincing servers to include that detail when speaking to diners. (Kish and I spoke while the storms were in Texas; she gratefully confirmed that her staff was holding up alright; since the pandemic, the restaurant has been closed to diners, although it’s still offering takeout and delivery.)

In a time when chefs are far removed from their guests, Kish returned to the screen. Alongside two other chefs on Fast Foodies, Kish recreates legendary fast food meals for celebrity judges. Her exactitude has range: It applies to pleasures like a Portillo’s hot dog as much as it does reimagined Hamburger Helper or an acorn-squash sweet-savory conundrum. Nothing is treated with less than boundless, loving fidelity.  

VICE spoke with Kish about her approach to being a generally winsome, deliberate, and talented person. (We also hoped that these qualities, like her recipes, would rub off.) Basically, we wanted to know: Kristen Kish: How are you so hot?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When do you feel most like yourself, in a good way, in the world? 

When I’m cooking or when I’m talking about cooking to an audience. I feel so confident in my answers. I’m relatively self-conscious and mildly socially anxious in large groups of people I don’t know. If I’m not doing something with my hands or something with a “purpose” with my brain, I feel really, really uncomfortable—but if you give me a stove or ask me to show you how to do something, I feel so confident in what I’m doing, because I feel like I have a purpose. 

When I’m at the restaurant, I find greater pleasure than cooking at home: I’m cooking for an audience, I’m cooking for somebody. Without people to enjoy it, what’s the point? If my partner, Bianca’s, not home and I have to feed myself, nine times out of 10, I’m going to order delivery because I find zero joy in cooking for myself.

On the flip side of that, I feel most confident when I’m at home with my partner, freshly showered with nothing in my hair, and everything just looks like a cotton ball.

When do you feel least like yourself, but it’s exciting? 

When I’m not in control of my surroundings. It’s exciting because it means I’m doing something way outside of my comfort zone. It can even be something as simple as being in a large group of people without feeling like I have a purpose! 

That wasn’t always the case. When I was living in Boston, doing one of my first or second jobs. There were days—pre-Uber days—that I’d rather walk five miles in the snow to get to work than take public transformation. I just couldn’t sit or stand on the train, because I felt like I didn’t have a purpose. I felt so anxious: I would sweat in the middle of winter. It was really bad. Thinking back to how I was so incapacitated, then to now, where I’m able to manage that feeling, there was excitement along the way, because it proved there was growth. 

What’s something you fell in love with for the first time recently, and what do you love about it?  

I fell in love with the practices of taking care of myself from the inside out. I wasn’t always the healthiest person. I used to smoke nearly a pack a day. It was being a young kid in the industry, trying to figure out and mask the feeling of struggling with myself, trying to identify who I was. Now, I work to take care of myself. The idea of living longer became more appealing. With food, the way I feel now is: Food is joy, food is feeling, food is my job. 

What food textures do you find most appealing?

OK! Yeah, OK! I gotta say… honestly, it’s the texture of when you have something crunchy, but not hard. Like a baked meringue—so it’s crunchy, but it dissolves, mixed with a custard or whipped vibe. That can be translated into savory, like pavlova. Or beautiful filled tortelloni enrobed in a cheesy, light sauce with crispy panko bread crumbs. Soft and fluffy with that small bite of crunch: that’s my absolute favorite. 

What accessory, literal or figurative, do you put on for a fresh feeling of hotness?

I have this ring that Bianca got me for an anniversary that’s on my right hand. This ring has these little grooves in it, so any time I start to feel like, Ew, I just want to wash my hands, I take a little pin and clean out the lotion that’s in the grooves of the ring. It feels so satisfying, but it also, like, resets everything. It just makes me feel like I ran myself through a car wash.

Oh my god, I am so jealous of that. I want a ring I have to clean out! What other little details do you love paying attention to in your life right now?

I’ve always had a weird soft spot for older Korean or older Asian people, probably because I was adopted and I didn’t grow up with someone who looked like me in that sense. I’ve always had this empathetic nature towards them. Now, that has grown into feeling empathy for so many other different people I interact with on a daily basis.  

I was always a nice person, but I don’t think I’ve always been an empathetic person. It’s difficult being empathetic, because you carry and over-care for someone you spent a minute with, and you become worried for that person. That’s something Bianca has. It’s a fantastic quality: She will feel for and see people in a way that I wouldn’t have ever been able to do. Through her, I’ve found the importance in it.

A lot of your talents are really public, or are put to use around lots of other people. What’s a skill of yours that we don’t know about? 

I’m really good at folding boxes. As a kid, I used to fold my brother’s pizza boxes when he worked at Pizza Hut for like a dollar, so he didn’t have to do it. Bianca and I are in the middle of a move, so we’re packing many, many boxes. I’ve found great pleasure in it. 

This stems from my dad being a packaging engineer. He designed all the crazy packaging vessels for all sorts of products. I would go to work with him, and I loved to fold the boxes and score the boxes with these big machines. It’s so similar to cooking, because it’s this idea of doing something with my hands: pottery, building boxes, even stacking books on a bookshelf. I like to physically see a transformation with what I’m doing right in front of my eyes. 

Follow Maggie Lange on Twitter.