Anna Polonsky

EVERYONE EATS        |        MARCH 10, 2020

Anna Polonsky

FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR
OF POLONSKY AND FRIENDS

polonsky and friends is a branding and design consultancy for those who use food as a beacon for change. They support mission-driven, food-related projects initiated by some of today’s most interesting chefs, activists, and brands.

Founder Anna Polonsky has worked in hospitality her entire career and earned accolades from numerous organizations, including Forbes Magazine's 30under30 and the James Beard Awards. For 7 years, she was a partner and US director of Le Fooding, a disruptive restaurant guide and event company recently acquired by Michelin. Her roster of consulting clients included LVMH, MasterCard, Pernod-Ricard, Nestlé Waters, and others. In 2014, she co-founded The MP Shift, the first 360 degree creative agency in hospitality, providing concept, graphics, and interior design services to an international clientele.

In 2019, encouraged by a chaotic political context, Anna took a new turn. With polonsky & friends, she seeks to apply her strategy and creative direction skills to clients who are working daily towards more inclusiveness, sustainability, craftsmanship and wellness.

INTERVIEW BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY CRANNA

ANNA'S STUDIO IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Anna’s studio, OSTUDIO, where polonsky & friends is based, is full of her favorite items to nosh on throughout the day. Highlights were the veggie heavy sausages from Seemore, the chestnut paste from A La Mere de Famille, Vermont Creamery Creme Fraiche, Sir Kensington mayo, IKEA dill mustard and Dr. Cow smoky nut cheese.

BREAKFAST

I don’t eat breakfast, I only have coffee. When we’re home, we’ll do a French press, although right now we’re renovating our house so I’ll go out more for my coffee. I’ll usually get an americano from my husband’s coffee shop OCAFE, or make my own coffee at the studio with Panther coffee beans. What’s funny is I never ate breakfast and everyone always told me it was terrible not to. Now it’s trendy and is called intermittent fasting – I find that hilarious.

LUNCH

For lunch I’m typically at the office. We’re based in a multi-cultural neighborhood so there are lots of Dominican and Mexican places around. I’ll typically get a chicken soup at the Dominican restaurant which comes with some noodles, some yuka, some spices – it’s a great chicken soup. Very simple.

DINNER

Dinner is when things get serious. We’re out a lot because my husband and I both work in food. We’ll try new places or we’ll go to some of our favorites. We love Aidan and Jake – they have two places, one in Greenpoint called Chez Ma Tante and one that opened at The Wythe Hotel called Le Crocodile. Right now we go to Le Crocodile every week, pretty much. It’s serious French cooking. I never eat French food in New York but those guys... it’s just so good. We always get some charcuterie (they make most of them in-house), they have the best french fries I’ve ever had (they fry them in peanut oil), and then they have this crazy dish that’s orzo cacio e pepe. The steak frites is also great, but what’s most amazing is they have 15 desserts on the menu. They really invested in the pastry department which nobody does anymore. I always get the profiteroles which is my favorite thing ever. My husband’s best friend is Ignacio Mattos so we go to Altro Paradiso, Estela and Flora Bar a lot. And I love Via Carota and I Sodi for Italian food.

If we’re home, it’s pretty simple. We do a lot of stews. I love a one pot dinner. It could be sausage and broccoli rabe pasta, it could be lentil stew. My husband is from Latin America so we often use staples like sweet potatoes and avocados. Lots of rice stews. There’s also this thing that I grew up with called Trash Rice where basically anything that’s left in the fridge at the end of the week, we put in rice. Sometimes there’s leftover salami, sometimes it’s onions, sometimes it’s tomatoes – whatever’s left goes in!

DESSERT

Dessert is my favorite thing.

Ice cream is number one. I’m obsessed with ice cream. We have a lot in our fridge. Our go-to is Van Leeuwen. We always get the vegan chocolate. (We’re not vegan but we love the cashew milk.) And then we get the non-vegan pistachio from them, which is insane. Actually, the two together are great. We also like Haagen Dazs a lot. And we love profiteroles, which are great because they’re just mixing ice cream with cake.

We always bring Poilane shortbread back from France or London. We’ll either eat them as-is or put dulce de leche over them or we just mix them in ice cream. Anything works, it’s a great base.

And chocolate, I would say, is a big thing for us. I like Tony’s Chocolonely, but my current favorite is called Plaq – they’re based in Paris. It’s probably one of the first “bean to bar” brands in France. Traditionally in France, beans are mixed with lots of other things such a cocoa butter, nuts, etc. Plaq is more purist, they’ll extract the chocolate in house and just make it into the bar. I also like Casa Bosques. Rafael Prieto is a peer, he’s a creative director, but he also has this chocolate brand. He’ll do really interesting packaging and he’ll collaborate with a lot of chefs and artists.

SPEED ROUND

Recent food discovery?
In Brazil, in Rio, there is a sort of passion fruit flan that’s insane. It’s really sweet. Probably a lot of condensed milk with the fruit. It's called quindim de maracujá.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
I recently revamped all my cookware with Great Jones, and then my husband’s ceramic’s brand Fefo Studio for serviceware, salad bowls, platters – it’s all handmade.

 

Last meal on earth?

Roast chicken with potatoes cooked under the drippings and some good country bread with the juice of the chicken. And ice cream.

 

Caffeine of choice?
Oatmilk cortado.

Best snack between meals?
I love any sort of dip, like hummus or fish salad. I also love herrings, especially the curried creamed ones from Russ & Daughters.

Restaurant you’re most excited to try?
Silo in England, the first zero waste restaurant.

Go-to market or grocery store?
We often shop at the Union Square Farmers Market. Citarella, specifically because I think they have some of the best fish (way better than Whole Foods). I like Kalustyan’s in Murray Hill – it’s a mecca for all sorts of Middle Eastern products. And Ottomanelli for meat. Natoora is my online grocery store – they've saved my life in quarantine.

Most underrated kitchen tool?
I was recently doing an event that included an apple strudel. I forgot how amazing those apple coring tools are.

Favorite seasonal treat?
Puntarelle (an Italian green), white truffles, and I love a tomato in the summer.

Go-to cookbook?
Notes from the Larder by Nigel Slater or The River Cafe Cookbook. Or the New York Times Cooking App – especially recipes by Melissa Clark, Dorie Greenspan and Alison Roman.

Cocktail of choice?
Always Yola Mezcal – so either a mezcal margarita or a mezcal negroni. Although I have fallen in love again with Gin & Tonics since Le Crocodile opened.

Cooking playlist?
I have a notorious playlist called Apero, which is the time before dinner in France. Nic Jammet will play it when I go to their place for dinner. I’ve been putting it together for years. It’s really chill – some jazz, Cesaria Evora – that sort of music.

Secret food hack?
The one thing I do (that I get from my husband) is shaving something citrusy or bitter on everything – lemon or orange peel or horseradish. It works on anything.

Any foods you avoid?
There is one thing I don’t like: sea urchin.

Favorite restaurant globally?
Contramar in Mexico City or L’ami Jean in Paris.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
I do yoga three times a week. And I try to walk as much as possible.

Foodie celebrity crush?
I know her but I love her – Anissa Helou. She’s the queen of Lebanense food.

 

Weirdest eating habit?

I love Heinz ketchup. It’s the one thing I don’t buy organic or boutique. I love pasta with cheese and ketchup. Grated gruyere and ketchup – amazing!

 

Favorite neighborhood spot?
Bar LunAtico – it’s an incredible jazz bar in Bed Stuy and the food happens to be delicious. They get all their bread from Saraghina which is amazing bread.

Last thing you ordered for delivery?
We don’t get a lot of delivery, but we do order Indian food on Caviar. We always get the same dishes – butter chicken and chana saag. During quarantine, we’ve also loved sustainable takeout sushi from the soon-to-open Rosella.

Dream dinner guests?
Louis Armstrong, Masanobu Fukuoka and Arianna Huffington.

Whose routine would you love to see on Everyone Eats?
Julia Sherman, who writes Salad For President. She keeps experimenting, creating different pastes and spice mixes and syrups – it’s just amazing.

THIRD SCOOP

What does food represent to you?

For me, food is really storytelling. I think about this question a lot because I’ve worked in food my whole life and sometimes you just wonder what’s the point a little bit. We’re not saving the world, you know what I mean? What I’m interested in is not so much who’s a cool chef. And I love to cook, but I’m not an obsessive cook. I’m just really interested in where a recipe comes from, if there was a funny history, or what it means culturally. It’s why I started my new company polonsky and friends. I had another agency that was great, but as we got bigger and bigger we were doing more food projects that were a little bit disconnected from history – food courts and Instagram restaurants. They were great quality and coming from great people, but what was missing was that there wasn’t any purpose bigger than having a cool restaurant. Now I’m really focusing on chefs and restaurants or activists who use food for a bigger purpose, whether it’s farming, sustainability, diversity, gathering people, or telling a story about a certain country or area. That’s what I’m really interested in.

What are the biggest differences you see between restaurant culture in Paris vs. New York? What do you wish you could bring to each city that doesn’t currently exist?

Again, this is something I think about a lot because I work in both markets. I like that Paris is much more old school. Everyone’s been cooking for themselves and eating the same way for centuries, so restaurants are way less of a status symbol. Nobody name drops the restaurants they’ve been to. Now, I guess the foodie trend is global, but nobody there thinks you’re cool if you know about natural wine, it’s just a given. So I like that the French are way more chill, in that sense.

In Paris people aren’t trying to be new all the time. As a designer, when I work in New York, I always have to white-box a space and start from scratch. I love that in France, restaurants will just try to keep what was in the space before. It’s funny because now everyone outside of Europe is trying to replicate old school Europe style and they’ll pay a lot of money to make fake terrazzo and all of that. But that’s what so great in Paris is that they’ve kept the floors, the tiles – it’s a little more soulful.

But then I love the diversity in New York and the creativity and we miss all of that in France. Here, it’s amazing. You can have incredible Korean food and Japanese food and Mexican food and American food. In France, they don’t embrace immigration as much as Americans do. Paris has great Vietnamese and North African cooks, but France hasn’t given them the support and love that second generation immigrants get in the US food scene – like with Momofuku and Danny Bowien. I think Paris is missing a lot of that. They keep doing french bistros and wine bars. They’re really attached to the past.

It’s starting to change now because a lot of foreigners from Australia, England and America have gone there and opened restaurants. Hopefully we’ll keep the best of both worlds. There's a hospitality group there called Quixotic, and none of the owners are French, so they were some of the first to bring (not the tacky fusion stuff we’ve had since the '90s) a really cool mezcal bar, and a great korean fried chicken place. Those guys keep the tastefulness of Paris but are introducing new cuisines and were some of the first there to do mixology.

Both food and design are passions of yours – how do you overlap the two and when do you intentionally keep them seperate?

I would say that food is really my passion. I love design, but I use it to tell stories about the food. It’s probably why I’m doing pretty well, because food clients see that I’m not just a designer who’s going to impose a design vision. It's more, what’s your vision for the food and the dining experience and then I’ll create something. Right now I’m focused on mission driven people in the food space, and often activists are too busy acting to think about communication and image. Glamourising their activism is really important so I love to be able to do really cool graphics or create cool sets for them.

But I also will say that I’m opposed to over-design. As a designer you always want to add more ideas and details and I really try to restrain myself. At the end of the day the places I like the most are quite simple. They’re comfortable, they’re cozy, there is soul, but what really makes a place great is the food or the service.

In America there is this culture of starting your design from scratch and there is a lot of money available so people tend to build sets for restaurants, and that can kill the vibe. I can appreciate the quality, from a design perspective, but as a diner I just don’t love it. One place I often have on my mood board is La Buvette because it’s perfection without design. They found this old creamery with a beautiful terrazzo floor that’s imperfect, and there are old white tiles. I love the imperfect, beautiful old school places there – same in Mexico City.

ANNA'S SOUPE DE MOULES

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Serves: 8 people

INGREDIENTS

3 carrots, peeled and sliced finely
1 big onion, minced
3 leeks, minced
2-2.5 lbs of mussels, cleaned, scrubbed and debearded
1 glass of dry white wine
1/5 of a pound of bacon, cut into lardon pieces
1 pot of creme fraiche (about 8 oz)
16 oz of chicken stock
8 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt & pepper
Parsley (optional)
Dill (optional)

PREPARATION

1. Cook the mussels, white wine and creme fraiche together in a covered cooking pot until the mussels are open. It should take about four minutes.

2. Remove the pot from the heat and remove the mussels from their cooking juice. Throw away the mussels that didn't open, remove the ones that opened from their shells (throw away the shells) and set the juice apart.

3. At this point your cooking pot has been emptied. Melt the butter and olive oil in it, add the bacon lardons, the onions, carrots and leeks and mix it with a wooden spoon so it's all well coated. Add the chicken stock and let it all cook for an hour on low heat, with the cover ajar. Then add the cooking juice you previously set aside and continue to cook on low heat for another 10 min. Taste and season the juice with salt and pepper.

4. Add the mussels back in (about ten minutes before serving) and reheat on low heat if you had prepared the soup ahead of time.

5. Serve in shallow plates. I personally like to leave all the veggies in, but for a more sophisticated look you can filter them out of the soup and only leave the mussels in the liquid. I also like to add fresh herbs (such as dill or parsley) and a splash of olive oil before serving.

7. Serve with hot, thick slices of bread.

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