The Kitchen Spy: At Home with Rialto’s Jody Adams

In The Kitchen Spy, we visit local restaurant insiders’ home kitchens and force them to open up their fridge, drawers, and cabinets.

Photo by Fawn Deviney

Jody Adams’s kitchen contains a fancypants Italian espresso machine, stacks and stacks of cookbooks, and an envy-worthy stash of fancy knives. But the most important items there largely have nothing to do with cooking at all. There’s the empty canister that used to house daughter Roxanne’s baby formula, which now is a home for pens and utensils (she’s now 20). The tassel from son Oliver’s college graduation cap hangs on the vivid blue closet doors (he’s 25). Roxanne’s old hand-painted piggybank holds court on the windowsill, not far from Oliver’s plastic army figurines.

“My house is filled with things that have meaning. It’s not stuff for the sake of stuff—it all has some kind of meaning,” Adams says. Trinkets pile up, and the ones with significance find a home. “It kind of bubbles to the surface, and washes ashore—you find something on the floor, and pick it up, and put it on the windowsill and there it stays,” she says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams has lived in her Brookline home for about a decade, and the kitchen is the same as when the family moved in. “If I was to do it myself, of course I would blow it up and start again,” Adams says. “A perfect kitchen wasn’t a priority. It was more about a family house. Having a kitchen we wanted to cook in was important, of course.”

The Rialto and Trade chef-owner does cook, about once a week–a mix of stews to stock the freezer, recipe tests for The Garum Factory, the cooking blog she runs with husband Ken Rivard, and, of course, late-night meals after a long night at the restaurants. “If there’s nothing [in the kitchen], I make a quick tomato sauce and make a quick pasta puttanesca which is the best thing to have at night,” Adams says of her go-to snack. “Or, potato chips and beer. If all else fails, it’s potato chips and beer.”

Ahead, Adams talks coffee, condiments, and the Scotch she breaks out for special occasions. (Also, do keep your eyes peeled for the unofficial kitchen mascot, a pug named Velma.)

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams’s kitchen knives are mostly gifts. “What’s important about this collection is those are the knives I use at home,” Adams says. “You can tell they are all varied, and these are not the knives a professional chef would go out and use in a restaurant.” Far left is a carbon-steel paring knife purchased in Paris, one of Adams’s most prized tools. The two porcelain knives to the right of it were a gift from Ming Tsai after Adams appeared on his cooking show. “The one that’s sort of ripply in the center, that’s a Kramer knife–Ken gave me that,” Adams says.

Adams incorporates rosewater into desserts, and orange water into sweets as well as fish dishes. She also likes to use pomegranate molasses to accent chicken and eggplant.

Preserved lemons are huge in the Adams-Rivard household, used "in everything from fish to chicken to risotto to salads—it's enormously versatile and brings a fermented lemon flavor," Adams says.

Saffron, a gift from one of Roxanne's friends.

Adams makes her own herbed salt, blended with dried bay leaf, thyme, sage, fennel, and coriander seeds. "It’s always next to the Morton's or Diamond kosher salt."

"I think that’s really important when people date their spices," Adams says. "Otherwise, I say, 'how old are these?'" Her golden rule for throwing them out: one year.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

This, right here, is Velma, the family pug. “Velma is always looking up in the hopes that we give her food,” Adams says. The vivid blue of the door behind Velma was inspired by a room Adams fell for on a trip to Spain.

In the kitchen, you'll find books of a more reference nature. "These are the, 'how long do you cook wild rice? What's the best way to pressure-cook beans? Let's look it up,'" Adams says.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

"If you want to sit down with a book and think about a Turkish combination of flavors, you will find that in the living room." Chefs that inspire Adams include Paula Wolfert and Giorgio Locatelli.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams's most prized books: An original edition of Joy of Cooking; The Making of a Cook by Madeleine Kamman; and, of course, her own cookbook, penned with Rivard.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

The cover-less number is Joy of Cooking. "I have had that probably for about 30 years," Adams says. "It's just been through the wringer. I like the older editions better."Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

"I have had that for 35 years," Adams says of The Making of a Cook. "I think that [Kamman's] basic techniques are really, really good. It’s the school [of cooking] that i learned from."
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

"I look at our book because they are great recipes, but I don't always remember the proportions," Adams says.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

“I cook two geese every year for Christmas, and take them my mother’s house and we all have geese for dinner. Those were the wishbones,” Adams says.

The copper pot on the far left of the stove was a gift from chef Gordon Hamersley, after Adams departed Hamersley's Bistro, where she was the opening chef de cuisine. The rest of the pots were purchased in Paris. Why copper? "It looks awesome, even if you don’t polish it," Adams says. "I love the weight of them, and I love how evenly they cook. ... They are really fucking heavy. So there is that. It’s a workout."Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Above the range is a locally made bread crock, a gift from Share Our Strength founder Billy Shore. The Portuguese seafood pot on the right was a gift from chef Jasper White.Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Above, bowls that Adams and Rivard picked up on a trip to the South of France. “You can buy a set of one pattern but I loved the variety,” Adams says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Home is also the headquarters for The Garum Factory, a blog produced by Adams and Rivard. Rivard photographs all of the recipes at home (here, he’s photographing bread from Rialto for the restaurant website).

Used for mise-en-place for the blog, these bowls are all no more than two or three inches across.Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Various utensils, used for styling food. Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

A variety of bright and colorful linens.Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Left, son Oliver’s plastic army men; right, daughter Roxanne’s piggy bank. “I don’t think of myself as getting sentimental, but as I look through these, I think, ‘God, I am so freaking sentimental,” Adams says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

And now, we’ve reached the fridge.

Various pickled and homemade projects include: pickled eggs, preserved lemons, pikliz (a spicy Haitian pickled cabbage), harissa, preserved kumquats, and assorted vegetables pickled with curry.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

The condiment shelf contains: Sriracha ("the kids use it"); Ketchup ("we hardly ever use"), peanut oil ("that we use"), Tobasco sauce ("we hardly ever use it"), oyster sauce, and maple syrup.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

The white jars contain homemade yogurt, while the petite tubs are sweetened fromage blanc. Adams also loves Liberte's lemon and coconut yogurts. Also: "I put ginger in everything," Adams says.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams freezes her specialty flours, to extend their shelf-life. Also in the freezer: frozen venison sent by Rivard’s brother, who hunts deer in Texas, and jumbo ice cubes for cocktails. There is also a batch of “Oliver’s Chicken Stew” in the freezer, a recipe that can be found in Adams’s book. “We always seem to have it around. It’s a stew I developed when he was a baby, he’s now 25,” Adams says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

“Coffee is a really big part of our early day,” Adams says. “I only have two cups of coffee a day–two cappuccinos–so they have to be good.” Which is why Adams and Rivard use an industrial restaurant-quality machine from Pasquini, which they’ve had for about 10 years.

These espresso cups, from Astier de Villate, were purchased at ABC Carpet & Home in New York. "They were $100 each. So we have two, and we love them," Adams says.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

A Mazzer Luigi espresso grinder is used each morning.Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams and Rivard "mix it up" when it comes to espresso favorites (like this George Howell roast), but often purchase coffee at nearby Cafe Fixe in Washington Square, which sells Barrington beans.
Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Adams and Rivard prefer Grappa and Scotch when drinking at home, but will occasionally mix it up with Negronis and Dark and Stormys. “I think we have had that Pimm’s for 15 years or longer,” Adams says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

The household favorite? Oban.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

Taking a breather and snacking on cheeses and bread from Rialto with Rivard. “We don’t sit around drinking–this is something we would do in the evening, not in the afternoon, unless I’m on vacation,” Adams says.

Photo by Fawn DeViney

And for the grand finale: a bonus shot of Velma, luxuriating on a patterned rug, because how could we not?