Daniel Breaker

EVERYONE EATS | MAR 26, 2021

Daniel Breaker

ACTOR, SINGER AND LOVER OF FOOD & DRINK

Broadway vet Daniel Breaker currently stars as Aaron Burr in Hamilton (temporary closed, unfortunately). His Broadway credits include Shrek the Musical (originating the role of Donkey), Book of Mormon, and Passing Strange, with earned him a Tony nomination. Breaker also stared in the movie adaptation of Passing Strange, directed by Spike Lee. Other movie credits include Limitless, Sisters, Shrek the Musical and Red Hook Summer. Breaker can be seen on Showtime’s Billions, as well as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mozart in the Jungle, and a new series on Peacock, announcement coming soon. Breaker is also a singer/songwriter releasing his first album later this year.

Breaker’s love of stage and film is only matched by his passion for food. An avid home chef and mixologist, Breaker dedicates untold hours in his Brooklyn kitchen exploring the unending joys and discoveries that come from the culinary arts and the vibrant city that houses a bounty of culture and cuisine.

INTERVIEW BY LARA SOUTHERN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY CRANNA

DANIEL'S NEW YORK CITY APARTMENT

Daniel's Brooklyn kitchen is bursting with every ingredient imaginable - from Morrocan saffron to homemade hot sauce. His home is built for gatherings, something he's been seriously missing in 2020.

BREAKFAST

It’s interesting to see what my life was like before compared to what my pandemic quarantine life is like now. Breakfast isn’t as elaborate these days but there are some things that don’t change - homemade biscuits are still there. Biscuits will always be in my life.

For now a “typical” breakfast is a cortado and, if I’m in a hurry (which I usually am because I wake up so early) a poached egg on a slice of Bien Cuit pain de mie. If I’m feeling fancy, I’ll throw in some sausages, like the merguez that I make from scratch.

LUNCH

Sushi from Osakana, like a little bowl or bento box or something from there, or a rice ball from Rice and Miso. If I have time, it’ll be somewhere where I can sit and eat – unless it’s colder and I can’t do that as much, in which case it’s usually quick.

DINNER

Dinner is always an event. I feel like breakfast and lunch often act as placeholders until I can start on dinner, which I’m usually thinking about all day long. Just this morning, I was running errands trying to get Legos for the boys and I popped into Eataly like, ‘I need some lamb, some mafaldine pasta, and some scallops in the shell, and I’ll just figure out what the fuck I’m gonna do with that as the day goes on.” I’m truly thinking about it while I’m making my coffee, ‘Which farmers’ markets are open today? Where on my trajectory can I get seafood? What’s my plan?” It’s a real joy.

Yesterday I braised some pork shoulder in milk with pears and cloves and a whole lot of garlic. A friend of mine who has a farm upstate just dropped off half a pig. I’m going to use parts of the head for a paté, and then experiment with some of the hocks and ground pork she sent me.

DESSERT

I am always making ice creams. And lately, I’ve been really into popsicles. I brought to set four different popsicles - a roasted rum banana chocolate dipped one, a fancy creamsicle with satsuma sorbet and sheep’s milk yogurt, a really good mint with a chocolate drizzle, but the real winner was an oat black sesame popsicle. Sweet potato pies are also an old family thing we make.

Every once in a while, there’ll be something that inspires me to build a dessert dish – most recently I was at a store that had these tapered beeswax candles from Cyprus, that smelled like the best kind of honey, so I wanted to figure out how to serve a dish next to this candle. What I came up with was a three-layer chamomile honey cake, piped with thyme-infused whipped cream, a Meyer lemon curd, next to a burnt honey ice cream.

I feel like there are different waves of inspiration - sometimes I’ll wake up and want live Dungeness crab. I’ll try to build something around that, which typically means going to the Chinatown in Brooklyn and getting more of the good stuff: lemongrass, bok choy, and ginger. I tend to buy whatever’s in abundance at the farmers market. I’ll figure out how to celebrate what’s currently thriving.

SPEED ROUND

Dream dinner guest?
This is tough because there are people that I think of and fear they’re going to be very uninteresting ... Dominique Crenn would be my #1, for all the reasons: the way she cooks, the poetry she uses in how she cooks, she’s sexy and gorgeous, everything about her, her whole aura. She’s a fighter and a survivor.

Weirdest eating habit?
My undying love for a roadside diner bacon cheeseburger deluxe. Or a bodega “chopped cheese”.

Most overrated food trend?

Donuts. Don’t get me wrong I like a donut, but there are so many more interesting pastries. Why don’t Americans try to make a decent fucking croissant?

Cooking playlist?
My go-to albums to cook to are Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim and Studio Uno by Mina. And during the holidays, it’s all about Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ album.

Cocktail of choice?
A mezcal negroni is my go-to. But right now I’m experimenting with a cocktail I’m calling “From Morocco with Love” with a saffron-infused mezcal, these Moroccan bitters with fenugreek, a honey syrup, lemon, orange blossom and rose.

Favorite neighborhood restaurant?
La Vara.

If you were a food you’d be [blank]?
Little Gem lettuce.

Whose routine would you love to see on Everyone Eats?
David Chang was the first thing that popped into my head. Francis Mallman’s routine would be really interesting. He’s like, “I get up, I fish, I bury something in the ground with some coals and I’m surrounded by models.”

Any vitamins or supplements?
Does wine count as a supplement? Malvasia.

Five items always in your kitchen:
My hot sauce, saffron, Meyer lemons, tamarind and anchovies.

Favorite cookbook?
I don’t really follow cookbooks for recipes, but I like to look at them for techniques. I love the back half of Daniel Humm’s first Eleven Madison Park cookbook – what he does with a carrot oat crumble, and the techniques he uses to make accompaniments to things. I have a lot of cookbooks that I like to flip through for fun. Dominique Crenn’s is constantly out on my counter. The boys over at Contra and Wildair have a great cookbook called “A Very Serious Cookbook.”

The only cookbook that has had a real long-term effect on me is GingerBoy, by a Melbourne-based chef. I spent three months in Sydney and this book really opened up my eyes. It’s essentially what an Australian would do with Asian food, but with access to all this bizarre, amazing seafood that comes out of that part of the world.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
My favorite place, Broadway Panhandler, has now shut down. That’s where I learned about kitchen supplies. Another place I loved was called Cook’s Companion, which is also closed, that was next to another favorite, Sahadi’s. Whisk opened up in their place, which is good but doesn’t quite have the depth and variety that they had. Korin, a Japanese restaurant supplier and knife purveyor is now my go-to.

Best snack between meals?
If I’m cooking, usually what’s around is some dried chorizo, some bread and three cheeses – a goat, a cow and a sheep. That’s my go-to. I’m all about the pickles – I have these pickled ramps and some pickled spruce tips that I made that I like to tuck into.

Biggest food splurge?

Highest quality seafood I can find.

Recent food discovery?
The food delivery service Natoora has been a phenomenal learning tool as to what’s in peak season right now. I’ve really been into delicata squash and honeynut squash lately. I treat the delicata almost like a twice-baked potato – I roast it, mash it, top it off with some crab and then bake it again. And the honeynut I’ve been roasting and then topping with this bizarre mixture of roasted pureed and strained corn folded into fresh ricotta.

Last thing you ordered for delivery?
The eggplant and noodles from Win Son are in steady rotation. And this pizza place called Norms – it’s fucking phenomenal.

Where do you feel most like The Regular?
The Beatrice Inn, Catana Kitten and Cote.

THIRD SCOOP

You famously created some spectacular backstage eats while performing in Hamilton. What were some cast members’ favorite dishes, and were there any special requests?

So I have a coffee and matcha station in my dressing room which are always in heavy use before or at the top of the show. During the show, I have satsumas or chocolate-covered pretzels out – things to nibble on. But on Saturdays, which we call “SNOB” (Saturday Nights on Broadway), we have a party where the more elaborate things show up. Like pulled pork sandwiches with kewpie mayo and sriracha, or this Korean hot dog I did with kimchi ginger mayo cilantro. People always love the baby back ribs, the pulled pork sandwiches, and lobster rolls. I have a crockpot and an induction burner in the dressing room and we would do a lot of elaborate brunches.

I make a good, straightforward mac and cheese, but also do an haute cuisine spin on a mille crepe. I think those two things (high brow and low brow) can live in the same place. I have a dream of one day owning an upstate diner where you’ll get a great burger and a classic shrimp and grits, but where you'll also get a sweet potato gnocchi with rabbit confit just to elevate it a little bit.

What were the most memorable food traditions your family had when you were growing up?

My formative years were in Western Germany before the [Berlin] Wall came down. We were twenty minutes away from France, and so there are a few dishes like Knödel, ouladen, schnitzel, Gluhwein … but for me, the lifestyle of the place is still in my body. There’s a celebratory, communal quality to it, which so many different cultures have but there’s something specific and special about my days living in these bucolic fields of Western Germany. My dad was in the army, but we lived off campus. The dollar was strong and we rented out this house between two churches that had fallen on hard times – this place was palatial. This big stone building on a steep hill with plum trees, apple trees and cherry trees. Family friends would come over and we’d go apple picking and load them up in the Toyota van, take them over to a cider house and three weeks later would have dozens of cases of apple cider in recycled Fanta bottles. There are some specific dishes and ingredients that are special, but it really is the idea of living in a place where you could scoop up the earth and eat it with a spoon.

I feel like 70% of food is nostalgia. Let's take pho for example. I didn’t grow up eating pho but it taps into something – maybe my mom’s chicken noodle soup on a cold day when I didn’t want to go to school. It has those universal flavors that tap into memory. We eat not just to survive but to recall something from our childhood.

Has this year amid the pandemic been stifling or inspiring creatively?

It’s such a bittersweet period. It’s tragic that there’s so much suffering going on and I don’t know where my money is going to be coming from, but I’m happy to have this time to move at a pace that I want to move at, and I am relieved just for a moment to not have to go to midtown at 5 o'clock every day.

It’s a little easier now, but I was unraveling quite a bit at the beginning. I struggle with depression in general in life and I had a tough go of it when everything shut down initially – which was then exacerbated with the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the subsequent protests.

But I was able to get on my bike and ride around, and had the time to write a lot of music. I think I wrote about 25 to 30 songs in two months which I’m now putting together into an album. Being back in the kitchen is also super therapeutic.