Maggie Smith: a breakfast conversation

On Dutch Babies and Chinese Food

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, 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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Photo by Devon Albeit

A few years before Covid — those ancient days of commuting long distances and on-site office parties, cubicles and hallway Xerox machines — my wife, Susan, inhabited a small(ish) work space at Random House, where she is an interior book designer and has been for twenty years this April. I arrived at her office one evening after a bunch of appointments in the city, and while I waited for her to get ready to leave, I read the various posts she had on the walls of her space. Tacked directly in front of her, at eye level, was poet Maggie Smith’s Good Bones. It was not a broadside; Susan had printed it out and used thumbtacks to hang it where she could see it, every minute she was working on turning manuscripts into beautiful books, which is what she does in her quiet, Susan-like manner.

When Good Bones was published in 2016, many of us were living in an unthinkable world of sorrow so deep and visceral that it was ineffable. And this is the problem with sorrow: it knows no words that are strong enough. I am reminded of Toni Morrison telling Elissa Schappell in a Paris Review interview that she thought the problem with writing about sex is that it isn’t sexy enough. Sometimes, words won’t do. But then: the question — during times of violence, emotional disarray, life change, trauma — of what do we tell the children looms large. How to be a sense-maker when the world is defying sense, logic, reason. How do we put one foot in front of the other. How do we do it. A least a million readers asked themselves this same question, and found solace in Maggie’s words.

And of course, part of the inevitable question of being associated with a particular work that has gone viral is that it runs the risk of obscuring the artist’s other work. This might have, could have, happened with Maggie, but it didn’t. There was the brilliant collection Good Bones, the lifesaving Keep Moving, Goldenrod (which I keep on my bedside table), and a beautiful, genre-busting memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I read Maggie’s gorgeous work back to its earlier days, to Lamp of the Body, the chapbook The List of Dangers, and The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison. Her work lives here with me, never too far from reach.

Kind of a lot of stickies.

Maggie and I first began communicating not over poetry (or memoir, or essay, although we were in conversation for You Could Make This Place Beautiful), but music: we both found ourselves in conversation on (of all places) Twitter, with Matthew Caws of the wonderband, Nada Surf. One of my closest childhood friends, Ira Elliot, is the drummer for Nada Surf and has been since 1995. A small world. Maggie is a big fan; I am a big fan. Thus began our connection. And having spent a lot of time in the part of Ohio where Maggie lives with her kids, in close proximity to her extended family, I guessed that perhaps breakfast was foundational for her. I was right. I was also very pleased to see that I’m not the only person in the world who will happily eat Kung Pao tofu for breakfast, or a Dutch baby, or cake. But it’s the stuffed, grilled Hawaiian sliders-with-banana French toast that I’d really love to try.

So I asked her: where do you stand on breakfast, Maggie Smith?

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? 

During the week I start the day with coffee only—a pour over, extra strong—in part because I’m not hungry first thing, and in part because on school day mornings I’m busy waking my kids up and off to school. They make their own breakfast in the morning—yogurt and granola, instant oatmeal with toasted pecans added in, cereal with milk, or fruit with a side of meatless sausages—and it’s not unusual for me to eat leftovers a couple of hours after they leave the house: Chinese takeout, maybe, or leftover pasta my mom sent home with us from Sunday dinner. I had microwaved Kung Pao tofu and string beans at 9am this morning! On the weekends we’re not rushed, unless my son has an early soccer game, so I sometimes make buttermilk pancakes or a breakfast casserole, or I have a box of donuts delivered.  

I've found that the children of breakfast people tend to grow up to be breakfast people. Is this true in your case? Did you grow up in a breakfast-loving household? Are your children breakfast people? 

I’m a baker and a lover of baked goods, and so are my kids; we love breakfast because it’s socially acceptable to have cake as your meal—pancakes, waffles, muffins, French toast, a Dutch baby. (In fact, the first Mother’s Day after my divorce, I made a buttermilk fudge layer cake with cocoa cream cheese frosting, and the kids and I each had a huge slice for breakfast.) I don’t remember breakfasts being a big family meal when I was growing up, though we did have Pillsbury cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning. That I remember well.

I know that you do a lot of traveling; is there anything that you long for/have to have/must have/carry with you in the mornings when you aren't home? (I used to know an editor who traveled with a specific brand of loose black tea, his own little paper tea bags, and a tiny Brown Betty so that his morning routine was as unchanged as possible. This might seem excessive.)

Traveling while vegetarian can be a challenge. I almost always travel with a few protein bars, some almonds, a little dark chocolate, and some Starbucks instant coffee packets. I like to have a strong cup of coffee first thing, and those hotel room coffee machines are almost always terrible. I’d rather have tea than weak coffee.

Maggie: Hawaiian slider rolls stuffed with cream cheese and sliced bananas; dipped in a batter of egg, half-and-half, and cinnamon; then grilled on all sides.

Me: STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

What is one of the more extraordinary breakfasts you've had? Where were you?

In the Short North, the arts district of Columbus, Ohio, there was a restaurant in the 90s and early 2000s called Dagwoods. Dagwoods had the best brunch in town, and it was walkable from my apartment. My usual was the gingerbread pancakes with raspberry compote, pink raspberry butter, and real maple syrup. They also had an incredible chocolate chip focaccia French toast. It was my favorite breakfast destination, and I was so sad when they closed.

You've written about chocolate cheesecake, Hawaiian slider rolls, French toast. When you're making breakfast for your kids and it's a special occasion, what is on your table? 

My kids’ favorite special breakfast is French toast sliders, which I told The Kitchn about a couple of years ago: Hawaiian slider rolls stuffed with cream cheese and sliced bananas; dipped in a batter of egg, half-and-half, and cinnamon; then grilled on all sides. We eat them with our hands, dipped in puddles of maple syrup on our plates. My personal favorite, though, is buttermilk pancakes. I use the recipe in my old copy of America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book, its pages stained and splattered, and it’s never let me down. I also make a Dutch baby often, with a recipe from a Bed and Breakfast owner in North Carolina, where I stayed more than 20 years ago. Here it is if you want to give it a try!

Dutch Baby, courtesy of Maggie Smith

It's a quiet weekend morning; your schedule is open and there's nowhere you have to be. Do you prefer to have breakfast in or out? What would be the ideal scenario for you?  

I always prefer to have breakfast out, because that way I don’t have to make it or do the dishes! Columbus, Ohio, is a terrific food town. I love taking my kids out for the sweet potato hash or lemon ricotta pancakes at Northstar Café; the giant breakfast burrito or chilaquiles at Starliner Diner; the Italian herb egg strata and coffee donuts at Cherbourg Bakery. And strong black coffee, refilled often, no matter what.

I’m with you on the coffee, my friend, all day, every day. Thank you, Maggie!