My Life in Meals: Brad Leone

"Cooking, it's a bit like therapy for me. I love cooking. I always have, ever since I was little. I don't understand people who don't like to cook."

Illustration by Clara Arnold

Brad Leone is a cook, father, former Bon Appétit staffer, and the host of the YouTube shows "Makin’ It!" and "Local Legends," whose second season premiered on April 17.

I can still smell my parents’ house — just the smell alone of walking into the house triggers memories. Fortunately, my parents cooked. My mom always had something on the stove. They both worked, but it was a really important thing to them that we sat down to eat together. I remember my mom’s chicken soup and her pasta sauce, which in New Jersey we called “gravy” because in New Jersey you just go rogue and make shit up. All her recipes fell into that format of low and slow, all-day cooking that filled the house. So when you came in and out of the house it was in different stages of aromas.

My mom would hit me with a wooden spoon when she caught me stealing her meatballs. She’d always brown them in the cast iron first, and for the sauce — which was beautiful — she’d throw a pork chop bone in there for flavor and then let it simmer all day. I would always be stealing a meatball. I’d come inside and just fish them out with a spoon and pop the whole thing in my mouth and then just run out of the house again. God it pissed her off. 

Where I grew up was a little over an hour from Manhattan, but it got country quick. 

My dad was a mailman. He was a carrier, the guy with the bag. He walked seven miles a day all through Livingston, New Jersey. Whatever calories he burned, he made up for with beer. Outside of work, he was kind of a cut off jeans, 70s rock and roll going out digging for frogs kind of guy. Once he blew his back out catching snapping turtles to make soup. He should have lived in Florida.

The first time I shot a deer, I got choked up and cried. I was a teenager and I was embarrassed. My dad came walking over. He said, “I’d be worried if you weren’t crying.” So as much as he was like an unrefined person in certain ways, he also had a lot to him, especially in the nature and outdoor stuff.

Deer tenderloin is like beef on crack. Just this awesome, perfectly cooked tender piece of game meat. We used to make steak and eggs with it. I remember cooking it before school, a couple times a year or something, and it just being very simple but so good and flavorful.

My parents were big Emeril Lagasse fans. Bam! They would go down to New Orleans once a year — they loved Cajun food. My dad got on Emeril’s show one time. He and my mom were guests in the crowd. They got these t-shirts made that said “pork fat rules” and they had a picture of a pig on them. Emeril would always cook and then call people out of the crowd to test what he’d made — brilliant concept, I love it. Anyway, they spot my dad and they’re like, this guy's a lunatic in the back with this pork shirt on. So they called my dad down and he went up there. We still have it on VHS. 

Everyone hates bell peppers. But they’re part of the Holy Trinity of Creole cooking. Trick is they need to be fresh — like actual, land-ripened produce. I know this cause my dad had a garden. He used to make a crawfish étouffée and you put bell peppers into that. You get a bell pepper at the supermarket, and it was probably grown in Mexico or California if you're lucky. Maybe Canada. It's just lacking flavor. It's lacking everything. But you grow one, and not only do you have the whole process of seeing it develop and grow as a kid, but then it's night and day as far as flavor and texture and aroma.

I worked in the cafeteria at Hidden Valley in exchange for a ski ticket when I was a teenager. Just stupid cooking. Hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries. Everyone was just high. I mean, I was just smoking pot and trying to get a free season pass. It’s the only reason why anyone worked there. We would throw Skittles off the lift and try to hit people’s helmets. We called helmets “Skittle Bouncers.” 

Food is like music, it’s a universal language. A big pivotal moment for me was when I started working in the test kitchen at Bon Appétit. I was probably 28. I was coming from this one world with limited exposure to the outside and now I'm seeing Vietnamese food and actual Korean food and actual Italian food and all the different regions in Italy and Spain and the scene and Australia and South America. That's when I fell in love with Japanese cuisine as well — real sushi, not just the stuff in a strip mall in a suburb.

The front of house is as important as the food. Going out to a restaurant that's good and that cares about service and it's not just some tattooed dickhead from Williamsburg who doesn't want to be at work and just throws the food on the table and forgets about you...if you go to a place that really takes service seriously, that's a hardcore restaurant. 

I love a spot. I'll go on vacation and if I find that good little spot that just really did it for me and I can walk there from the hotel, I’ll go back three times in a week. 

I don't consider myself a chef. A chef is someone who cooks for a service and works with people on a continuous daily thing as a job, not just having friends over and stuff or cooking for a YouTube camera or something.

Mother Nature is the best artist and also, like, the best cook, know what I mean? I take inspiration from it, which is why I don't ever really cook the exact same thing twice. It's kind of like painting. Some people are really good at recreating to a T someone else’s masterpiece. I don't have no interest in doing that. I like taking a little of the purple, a little red. It's the same thing with food, right? I got this pepper and that olive oil. I'll use the maple syrup. I just kind of rip around. The more and more I cook, the less I care about complexity. Simplicity is really everything.

Cooking, it's a bit like therapy for me. I love cooking. I always have, ever since I was little. I don't understand people who don't like to cook. It’s like, what the fuck, you just eat?