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In 2000, J. Kenji López-Alt was looking for a summer job while on leave from MIT and was interviewing for a job as a waiter at a Boston restaurant. At the end of the interview, the manager told him that the chef had not come to work and that if he wanted to work, he could start working in the kitchen that evening. This started his culinary journey that would make him one of the most popular food writers in the world.
“For me, it was just a summer job that I loved, but I ended up sticking with it,” Lopez-Alter said of his decision.
Lopez-Alter is a two-time James Beard Award winner, and all three of his books were selected New York Times Bestseller list. His latest book, “The Wok,” is currently in bookstores and won him his second James Beard Award this year. His “Food Lab” column on his blog Serious Eats has become the go-to resource for seasoned professional chefs and home cooks on molecular gastronomy, and was the genesis of his first book of the same name, which was also a James Beard Award winner.He also writes a regular cooking column New York Times.
“I took the job mainly because my mom wanted to see my name in the New York Times,” Lopez-Alter said with a smile.
His YouTube channel has over 1.4 million subscribers. Additionally, he was recently appointed to the Seattle Arts & Lectures community curated series “J. Kenji López-Alt Presents.”
His first cooking job was another cooking job in a coed fraternity house at MIT, where about 80 percent of the residents were international students. He met his future wife, Adriana López, an international student from Colombia. He continued cooking until 2007, including at restaurants such as No. 9 Park with renowned Boston chef and restaurateur Barbara Lynch.
The demands of food writing soon began to draw him away from commercial kitchens. In 2006, he began writing regularly for Cook’s Illustrated. By 2008, he was employed by Serious Eats to write recipe programs for them, which led to him publishing a regular column on the platform and eventually publishing his groundbreaking book, The Food Lab.
“I think one of my main skills is explaining relatively difficult concepts in simple terms,” he said. “I do consider myself a writer more than anyone else. To me, the ability to explain is very important. If you can’t transmit knowledge, you can’t share it.”
Lopez-Alter moved to Seattle from San Mateo, California, in late 2020 to raise a growing family of two children. He also wanted to be closer to the cuisine, active outdoors and cultural lifestyle of the Northwest. With less traffic during the pandemic, many of the activities his family enjoys are just a short drive away.
“When we looked at the map, everything we wanted to do was 15 minutes away,” López-Alt recalls. “I can go to a concert on Friday night. I can go to a concert on Saturday night. In the meantime, if I want, I can go fishing. If I want, I can go to lunch time in the middle of the week. Go kayaking.”
As for his initials and hyphenated name, he points to a diverse upbringing and family. His writing and cooking reflect this diversity. Lopez-Alter was born James Kenji Alter in Boston to a German-American father, geneticist Frederic Alter, and a Japanese mother, Keiko Nakanishi, who grew up in New York. When Lopez-Alter married Colombian-born Adriana, the couple changed their last name to Lopez-Alter.
In 2024, López-Alt will continue to pursue his twin passions of cooking and writing. He will also add to his career. He is launching a podcast with Deb Perelman at the award-winning blog SmittenKitchen, and will also feature Perelman as part of a guest writer series he curates for Seattle Arts & Lectures.
In addition, the classically trained violinist will collaborate with the Seattle Chamber Music Society for a special event where music and food go hand in hand. Not bad for those just looking for a summer job.
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