LISA TADDEO

The best-selling author on caviar, pasta platters and why she loves writing about food.

- HANNAH-ROSE YEE

The most decadent meal I've ever had was with my now husband. We were in Indiana when I was working on Three Women and we had no money and no furniture in this very tight rental. It was Valentine's Day and he had ordered caviar from this really great place in New York. He definitely put down a credit card; neither of us could afford it. And then he made macaroni and cheese with an insane amount of lobster. A precursor to this, he hasn't done anything like that for me in years. I bring it up once a week, like, remember the caviar? That doesn't happen anymore. But it was amazing. We sat and ate it on moving boxes because we had nothing else.

My husband and I both love to cook. I am good at making my mother's Italian recipes, and he is really good at everything... We both love to go out to eat, and our daughter does too, but only because we give her an iPad. We've been, since she was very young, associating food with watching television, which normally we don't let her do. So she's like, 'Can we go to a dinner place?' She doesn't call it a restaurant, she calls it a dinner place. Going out and eating as a family was something we really missed during the pandemic.