Debbie Millman: A Breakfast Conversation

On Coffee and More Coffee

For subscribers both free and paid:

In the coming months, Poor Man’s Feast will be featuring breakfast conversations with a wide variety of artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. It will almost always include a recipe.

Each conversation will be released for paid subscribers only and live in the archives. Free subscribers will have access to a portion of the conversation, as always. A portion of the proceeds of every breakfast conversation will be donated to a number of organizations dedicated to feeding children at both the macro and micro levels, beginning with Save the Children.

Thank you - Elissa

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Photograph by John Madere

I find brilliant podcasts to be a great comfort, and I am highly selective when it comes to them. It started here: more than twenty years ago, I was driving to New York from my mother-in-law’s house in Farmington Connecticut, it was an early Sunday morning, and I heard Krista Tippett interview Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, then the chief rabbi of Great Britain. Hearing these two greats of divinity and thought, I was nudged off the highway and onto the shoulder in the early haze of a New England morning by the combination of distraction and focus, to listen closely and scribble notes on a used Starbuck’s napkin with an eyeliner. Thus began my true understanding of what good conversation is, and its possibilities.

Few podcasts — that’s a strange word for what this was; it was an intimate and revelatory dialogue — have had a similar effect on me. In conversation format, they necessitate the host do two things that are anathema in our culture of distraction and me-first-ism: they require that the host ask, and listen. And Debbie Millman is among the few astonishing hosts who do this, and do it brilliantly and with great generosity. Over the years, I have listened to her conversations with Temple Grandin, Indigo Girls, Celeste Ng, Chip Kidd, Rick Rubin, Megan Rapinoe, Steven Heller, Cheryl Strayed, Jacqueline Woodson, Dani Shapiro, Nick Cave and Bob Faust, Anne Lamott, Tim Ferris, Krista Tippett, Maira Kalman, Priya Parker, Hrishikesh Hirway, Oliver Jeffers, and so many others, and every one of them has delighted, enthralled, moved, and educated me. I was honored to be among Debbie’s guests when Motherland came out in 2019 (I had an epic headcold that day), and she was the first person to ask me about the place of music in my life—a question I neither expected nor had a suitable answer for that would not leave me weeping. Debbie’s Design Matters is about the broader world of creative culture, and seems to me to be rooted in Dieter Rams’ key for good design: that it be honest and authentic. Every one of Debbie shows is, profoundly so.

Over the years, I have had the honor and pleasure of getting to know Debbie, who also is the author of the seminal Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Interaction of Art and Life, and Why Design Matters, and is the Chair of the Masters of Branding Department at School of Visual Arts, and the editorial and creative director of Print. A born-and-raised New Yorker, she lives with her wife, author Roxane Gay and their dog, Max. Their lazy-day-breakfast ritual makes me swoon.

As a fellow New Yorker with certain ideas of what breakfast is, I am not surprised that Debbie’s days must begin with a cup of coffee. Here’s what she told me.

Of all meals, breakfast seems to me to be the most personal and ritualistic. What is on your table every morning? Does it change on the weekends? 

I am a creature of habit and there is absolutely nothing—nothing—that I can consider doing in the morning before having a cup of coffee. But it has to be a very specific kind of coffee, as I take my coffee very seriously! I’ve been buying my beans in bulk from McNulty’s Tea & Coffee, a heavenly 125-year-old shop on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village that has been one of my all-time favorite places to visit for decades. Several years ago, after moving in with my wife Roxane [Gay], she got into the gloriously generous habit of setting up the coffee-maker to go off before I wake up every morning, and then bringing me a cup while I’m still in bed. This is especially kind of her, given she only drinks her coffee from Starbucks (don’t ask).

While my first cup of coffee is always consumed at home, I often stop for a yummy iced-latte from Sullivan Street Bakery en route to my office at the School of Visual Arts. As for any accompaniment; sadly, I am not much of a breakfast eater. Frankly, it is the only time of day I am not really hungry, so I have forsaken it without much thought for most of my life. When I do indulge in “breakfast food,” it is usually during weekend brunch wherein I will devour a classic Eggs Benedict (sans ham) from the Empire Diner or the Huevos Rancheros from Cookshop, which is the absolute best in the world. (EA: Agreed.)