Claire Olshan

EVERYONE EATS        |        OCT 24, 2019

Claire Olshan

FOUNDER OF DADA DAILY

Claire Olshan is the founder of DADA daily, an aesthetically minded snack food company. Previously, she was the founder and Creative Director of Fivestory, a luxury multi-label boutique on the Upper East Side for nine years.

Prior to starting Fivestory, Claire got her bachelor's degree at NYU in fine arts and masters degree in contemporary art at Sotheby's Contemporary Institute. Claire then went on to assist the curators at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Directed the contemporary art gallery RENTAL in New York.

While art and design have been Claire’s focus in the last decade, she has always had a passion and curiosity for all things health and wellness. Claire sets out to bridge the gap between design, entertaining, fashion and food with DADA daily.

INTERVIEWED BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY CRANNA

CLAIRE'S HOME IN MANHATTAN

Claire whipped up her every-morning green juice while we talked Almond Cows, rolling all her food in nori and her aesthetically minded snack food company, DADA daily.

BREAKFAST

Green Juice (spinach, cilantro, celery, cucumber, lime, green apple) and an iced matcha with almond milk. Usually, I make the milk myself with this crazy snazzy machine called an Almond Cow. It makes anything into milk! You open it up, put in a bunch of stuff, close it, press a button, add some water and TA-DA: you’re officially a farmer.

LUNCH

I'll have a salad – usually farmers market greens, one whole avocado, cilantro, fennel, lime juice, Hawthorn Valley carrot ginger sauerkraut, chopped up pretty fine. Sometimes anchovies. And then rolled in Emerald Cove nori, like a hand roll. I’ve been doing this since I was 11 and haven’t gotten sick of it yet. My new discovery has been this “Bitchin’ Sauce” that I found at Whole Foods. Sometimes I’ll add a little of that in the hand roll (cilantro flavor) and it’s almost TOO good.

DINNER

Dinner is my favorite meal of the day. Before I eat, I always put greens in my stomach in order to alkaline the body (sometimes before I leave for a restaurant). I got a degree in integrative nutrition so I’m always thinking how to eat things in the right order and combine things in the right way to ease digestion.

I love soup. Pea, squash, green soup – anything – chicken soup. I’m vegan probably 80% of my life, so soups feel like a warm fuzzy way to fill up. There isn’t a single soup that doesn’t pair well with DADA cauliflower popcorn as croutons. We also just launched GUACPoP (the guacamole version) and those will definitely be my new go-to soup topper.

When I do eat protein, I usually go for a sea creature of sorts: grilled salmon (so boring and yet I can’t quit it), salmon roe (another addiction that I put on top of every Japanese restaurant order), or uni (the uni toast at Altro Paradiso is mind blowing).

DESSERT

I am fully addicted to chocolate. Like on another level. I eat one full bar of chocolate or three DADA truffles after dinner every night... it’s almost like brushing my teeth. No matter what time it is, what state I’m in, what I had eaten for dinner – the chocolate MUST find it’s way into my cozy nightcap. So when I say I’m addicted, I mean three chocolates to me is baseline. It’s like nothing. It’s like now I’m starting at zero. And then anything I do on top of that is a little bit excessive.

BUT! The plus side is that there are zero grams of sugar in our DADA dark chocolate... no dairy, no gluten. It’s about six ingredients and super clean. And I actually feel good on them. There’s also Schisandra berry in our chocolates which is an adaptogen and helps with stress in the body. So it’s basically healthy, right?

SPEED ROUND

Dream dinner guest?
Dianne Vreeland. Because you always want a dinner guest who has out-of-this-world / that-can’t-be-true stories. You want someone who is just the right amount of crazy. She is also the chicest woman on the planet. The combo of those three things would make her the perfect dinner guest.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
Great Jones.

 

Weirdest eating habit?

I wrap everything in seaweed and I eat fermented food at every meal.

 

Any vitamins or supplements?
My morning green juice is all I need.

Best snack between meals?
DADA cauliflower popcorn, for sure.

Go-to comfort food?
Smoked salmon and creme fraiche on a fresh baguette.

Go-to market or grocery store?
The Union Square farmers market and Eataly.

Recent food discovery?
Bitchin’ Sauce. I can’t seem to find something that doesn't taste good with it.

Favorite seasonal treat?
Immune boosting, vegan, milk chocolate, elderberry BOOB truffles from DADA! 10% of proceeds go to the Carriage House scholarship program – a program that educates women in underprivileged communities on the birthing process. #treasureyourtatas

Go-to cookbook?
River Cafe.

Dinner party playlist?
The DADA #MakeDecadenceARitual playlist.

Best kitchen hack?
I have about 57 of the Caviar Kaspia napkins – I use them as my kitchen dish cloths or placemats (and then of course have actual napkins). I always say to people, if you find a restaurant you’re obsessed with and you have memories from, you should steal a napkin every time you go and incorporate them into your life.

Allergies?
I avoid dairy. (Or I’ll eat it and pay the price.)

Favorite restaurant?
Gino’s (RIP), Antonucci's (for the food), King and Estela.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
Walking home after dinner.

Secret food hack?
Ghee.

 

Who would you like to see on Everyone Eats?

Gwyneth Paltrow, but a real one. Like a hidden camera version where we can really see what, ya know, “does a body good” (as those '90s milk commercials would say).

 

Cocktail of choice?
Dirty vodka martini with lots and lots of olives.

Where do you most feel like The Regular?
Sant Ambroeus in Soho, American Bar, Lucky’s in Montecito and West Taghkanic Diner upstate.

THIRD SCOOP

How has starting a food company changed the way you think about food?

Well, one it’s changed the way I entertain. I invite people over all the time and you always want to offer them something, and throwing a bunch of baby carrots in a bowl is sometimes just kind of sad. I’m not even just practicing what I preach, I really mean it. If you throw DADA into a bowl, not only is it the perfect bar snack and a great accoutrement for a drink, but it’s a really good hors d'oeuvre. Or if someone is coming over and you just want to put some truffles out while they have a tea or a coffee. So it’s actually, just behaviorally, made my life very easy.

Also, it’s made me really mindful of what’s in the snacks that I eat. Obviously, at DADA, we pride ourselves on really high level ingredients and really clean, clean, clean nutrition panels. And I never realized that all these companies that I used to eat had secret things in them. And the hierarchy in which ingredients are listed is really important. If a snack brand is telling you that they’re giving you a spinach chip and spinach is sixth in the ingredient list, that means it’s minimal, and you just have to be very wary of things like that. There’s a ton of stuff that I’ve learned and opened my eyes to – even something like nutritional yeast. A lot of nutritional yeast has MSG in it and they don’t have to tell you that. So I had to go running around looking for really clean nutritional yeast or pea protein leaves. Some pea protein leaves have gums in them, like Xanthan Gum. You just have to really trust the brands that you eat and you have to look into everything that they’re doing to trust that they’re actually putting muscle behind finding the best quality ingredients.

You’re known for being a great dinner-party host. What would be your top three tips for beginners?

One big thing I always say is to over-buy as you’re buying ingredients for your dinner party, and use them as table decorations. It’s really easy, you can’t fuck it up. Just put a bunch of lemons and limes in the middle of a table, put an artichoke, put an apple, put a pear. Go to your bodega. Buy a thing of flowers, rip the stem off and just flutter them around, maybe some votive candles. People will be really impressed.

Another trick is to have everything in one place – a guest shouldn’t have to get up. Create an edible, experiential centerpiece. Obviously buy the DADA Dinner Party Hack Set. I’m not joking. It’s literally your consummate hostess in a box.

I love place cards because 1) people feel really special when they see their name on a dinner table even if you’re in your sweaty Soul Cycle outfit and you’re eating sweetgreen. If your name is on a table, your guest feels really special. And 2) put people together that you think would hit it off. There’s almost an excitement in the fact of two people who don’t know each other sitting beside each other.

Playlists are really important. And make sure you have really good people. Don’t invite assholes to your dinner.

How does your food philosophy translate to being a mother?

So you have a child and you see that the human body is actually this pristine perfect machine when it’s not touched by society and it’s a real gift to keep that body as clean as possible. So with my son I was a crazy person. I wouldn’t let him eat anything processed. I wouldn’t use anything chemical. I used coconut oil for pretty much everything. Coconut oil and breast milk for the first 6 months of his life was all I used and you really get to see what a wonderful magical thing the body is and how a human body runs. At this point he’s 16 months, so I’ll let him splurge sometimes, but not often.

It has kind of brought my standards to another level. I’ve taken away all toxic cleaning materials and we only really go to the farmers market now. I’ll only really eat protein when I know where it comes from or if it’s of a certain standard. I think when you have a kid your standards get really high and you have to hold those standards for yourself. As he grows up, I’m never going to stop him from eating crap, but I know for a fact that if I keep him clean, he’s not going to feel good when he eats it and he’s probably not going to want to eat more of it.

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