Nazli Parvizi thinks about food all the time and not just because, as a former professional cook and caterer, she has spent much of her life in kitchens.
As president of the Museum of Food and Drink in the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn, Ms. Parvizi said food fits nicely into her mission to educate. “Flavor,” the museum’s current exhibition, dips into science by taking visitors on a tour of what happens when people lose their sense of taste after getting Covid, for example. And a detour into history reveals how the search for spices led to colonialism.
“Our insatiable need for flavor and for sugar has really wrecked the world,” she said, “as much as it’s made it tastier.”
Ms. Parvizi, 47, lives blocks away from the museum in Dumbo. Every other weekend, her 11-year-old son, Cameron, and the family’s white golden retriever, Cora, are with her. When they’re not, she doesn’t lack for company. Her guest room is almost always occupied. And brunch at her place is “kind of an institution,” she said; as many as 30 people have been known to show up.
“When you’ve lived in New York since you were 18, you amass a large friend group,” she said.
CUDDLE UP I am deeply of the belief that Sunday is a day of rest. I love to sleep in, usually till between 8 and 10 o’clock. My kiddo likes to get up early and sneak in some screen time. So the first thing I do is hunt him down and take away his screen. Then usually we’ll cuddle a little bit. I have maybe one year left of when he’ll agree to cuddle, probably, so I’m taking advantage of it.
INFLATION My house is like a hostel, and people drop in. I have a friend in the neighborhood — she does 95 percent of The New York Times crossword, then she comes in so I can do the last 5 percent. I’m the closer. But it’s a random assortment of people coming in and out throughout the day, starting at brunch. Brunch has always been my thing. It started in my 20s, when I was living in Fort Greene. I do it because I hate brunch in restaurants so much. I refuse to pay 14 bucks for an egg. Actually, now it’s like 22 bucks.
Usually I make some version of huevos rancheros, a giant salad. There’s always some version of eggs and usually rice, like in a Persian or Turkish breakfast. It’s not usually a drinking thing. It used to be when we were younger.
CHUGGING ALONG After brunch is when I start the fight with my son to get him outdoors. He is an indoor cat. He is obsessed with trains. Sometimes we’ll walk the Manhattan Bridge so he can observe them, or we’ll go for a long walk in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Some sort of walk and train-related activity has to get done. Honestly, sometimes I’ll make up an errand just so he can get a train ride in. It could be we go shopping to a place like Eataly for the mortadella, sliced extra-thin. It’s so good. I had never had cold cuts in my entire life, then mortadella entered my life.
SUGARED UP, SCRAPPY Most of my life is food-focused. I live three blocks away from the museum, and in the afternoon I stop by. There’s a lot of candy for our current show, “Flavor,” which breaks down the entire sensory experience. There’s a jelly bean tasting, where you have to plug your nose and guess the flavor. My kid’s into it. Sometimes when we stop by it’s to pick up the laundry. We have tablecloths and rags and things like that. I take it back to my house to wash. I don’t mind. We’re scrappy there, very scrappy.
COOKS TURNED COMPETITORS Oftentimes, Sunday is the only day off for my best friend, Aaron Unger. Aaron and I started a catering company, Night Kitchen Catering, more than 24 years ago, and Aaron has been running it on his own for 20 of those years, though I always appreciate his acknowledgment of my amateur efforts in the early years. We like to do a family dinner together along with his wife, Sophie Amieva, and their kids, Leo and Miley, who are my godkids. Aaron helps me pull together an easy dinner, maybe kind of Persian-inspired. He’s the real chef, but I like cooking for him. After dinner, we like to play a game of League of Lexicons or Celebrity. It’s like charades on crack. We’re soooo competitive.
SUNDAY PART TWO They leave around 9 — Miley’s got school in the morning. And that’s when my night starts. I’m usually up till 2 a.m., or sometimes 3. This is when I put on a TV show, I clean up, I get organized. I don’t like to waste daytime hours on stuff like cleaning the dishes. I’ll call friends in the Netherlands to catch up with them, or I’ll call my brother and my mom in Massachusetts. We’re a family of night owls.
One thing I have to do before I go to bed is Connections. It’s the thing that haunts me. I do Wordle first thing in the morning to build my ego, then Connections at night to drop it. It’s the thing I do that helps me figure out if I’m going to have a good Monday or not.
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