Alison Roman

There is a very short list of cooks who can claim that a single recipe changed the way an entire generation shops, cooks and posts about dinner — and Alison Roman is on it twice. First came the salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread that the internet simply renamed #TheCookies, then the spiced chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric that became #TheStew, and finally the caramelized shallot pasta that carried thousands of home cooks through 2020. Roman writes recipes that feel like a friend talking you through dinner: confident, a little irreverent, and always more interested in flavor than fuss.

Born in Los Angeles and forged in serious restaurant kitchens on both coasts, Roman has built one of the most distinctive careers in modern food media — senior food editor at Bon Appetit, columnist for New York Times Cooking, author of the bestsellers Dining In, Nothing Fancy, Sweet Enough and Something from Nothing, creator of the beloved YouTube series Home Movies, and, since 2023, the proud owner of First Bloom, a tiny gem of a grocery store in the Catskills. This is the story of how a pastry cook from the San Fernando Valley became the patron saint of the unfussy dinner party.

TL;DR

• Alison E. Roman (born September 1, 1985, Los Angeles) is an American food writer, chef and internet personality based in Brooklyn, New York.
• She trained in restaurant kitchens including Sona, Quince, Milk Bar and Pies ‘n’ Thighs before joining Bon Appetit, where she rose to senior food editor.
• Her recipes #TheCookies, #TheStew and #ThePasta became social media phenomena; her shallot pasta was New York Times Cooking’s most popular recipe of 2020.
• She is the author of the bestsellers Dining In (2017), Nothing Fancy (2019), Sweet Enough (2023) and Something from Nothing (2025).
• She writes the hugely popular A Newsletter, hosts the YouTube series Home Movies, and opened the grocery store First Bloom in Bloomville, New York, in 2023.
• She is married to producer Max Cantor and welcomed son Charlie in January 2025.

Alison Roman key facts

Alison Roman: career timeline

From the San Fernando Valley to serious kitchens

Alison Roman grew up in the San Fernando Valley on the edge of Los Angeles, and like many great food people she arrived at cooking sideways. She enrolled at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to study creative writing, but at nineteen the pull of the professional kitchen proved stronger than the seminar room, and she left school to cook full time. It turned out to be the best editorial decision she ever made — the writing never went away, it just found a new subject.

Her training reads like a tasting menu of 2000s American cooking. In Los Angeles she worked at Sona, the ambitious fine-dining restaurant that taught a generation of young California cooks discipline and precision. From there she moved north to Quince in San Francisco, one of the city’s most refined kitchens, before heading east to New York, where she cooked at Christina Tosi’s playful Milk Bar and at the beloved Brooklyn comfort-food institution Pies ‘n’ Thighs.

Pastry, in particular, shaped her. The pastry station rewards exactness, but Roman’s genius was to carry that exactness into food that looks and feels relaxed. Years on the line gave her recipes their trademark reliability: they work, every single time, even when the instructions sound as casual as a text message from a friend.

The magazine years: Bon Appetit and BuzzFeed

In 2011 Roman joined Bon Appetit as a freelance recipe tester, and the magazine quickly realized what it had. She rose to senior food editor, developing recipes that readers actually cooked and appearing in the magazine’s articles, videos and social channels with a voice that was impossible to mistake for anyone else’s — dry, funny and completely allergic to pretension.

In 2015 she left for a senior role at BuzzFeed Food, a move that put her in front of the internet-native audience that would soon carry her recipes around the world. That same year she published Lemons, a small single-subject cookbook for Short Stack Editions that remains a cult favorite among citrus obsessives. Two years later came the real calling card: Dining In, published by Clarkson Potter in 2017, a book built on the radical idea that cooking at home for yourself could be as satisfying as any night out.

The recipes that broke the internet

#TheCookies

Buried in Dining In was a recipe for salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread. In early 2018 Instagram found it, fell hard, and rechristened it #TheCookies. Suddenly the log-shaped slice-and-bake cookie with its demerara-crusted edge was everywhere, and food editors were writing think pieces about why. The answer was simple: the recipe delivered a professional pastry-kitchen result with a rolling pin and a bowl.

#TheStew

In 2018 Roman joined New York Times Cooking as a columnist, and the following year she published the spiced chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric that became, simply, #TheStew. Golden, deeply savory and endlessly adaptable, it launched a thousand yellow-tinted Instagram posts and cemented her as the rare recipe developer whose dishes get first names. Her second cookbook, Nothing Fancy — a love letter to the unpretentious dinner party — landed the same year and became a New York Times bestseller.

#ThePasta

Then came 2020, when the whole world suddenly needed to cook from the pantry. Roman’s caramelized shallot pasta — six ingredients deep, built on a jammy shallot-anchovy-tomato base — was exactly the recipe the moment demanded. New York Times Cooking named it the most popular recipe of 2020, and to this day #ThePasta remains one of the most cooked dishes of the social media era.

Building her own table: A Newsletter, Home Movies and First Bloom

At the end of 2020 Roman struck out on her own, and the independent chapter of her career has been her most creative yet. A Newsletter, her recipe-and-recommendation dispatch, became one of the most read food newsletters anywhere, written in the same voice that made her famous: opinionated, warm and reliably hungry. In 2021 she launched Home Movies on YouTube, a lo-fi cooking series shot in her own kitchen that feels less like television and more like cooking alongside your funniest friend. She also hosts Solicited Advice, a podcast where she does what she loves most: give advice.

In 2023 she planted a flag in the Western Catskills, opening First Bloom, a small grocery store in Bloomville, New York, stocked with local produce, carefully chosen pantry staples and, by her own account, the best granola you have ever had. The shop marked a new kind of ambition — less about scale, more about community — and in 2025 it spawned a product line beginning with A Very Good Tomato Sauce, her first jarred sauce.

Something from Nothing: a love letter to the pantry

Her fourth major cookbook, Something from Nothing, arrived in November 2025 from Clarkson Potter and went straight onto the New York Times bestseller list. Its premise distills everything Roman has stood for since Dining In: more than one hundred deceptively simple, casually stylish recipes conjured from the staples you already own. She spent the season as chef in residence on Good Morning America cooking cozy fall food from the book, and ran a First Bloom pop-up with the downtown New York cafe Casetta.

Two decades after walking out of a creative writing program to stage in a fine-dining kitchen, Roman has ended up exactly where both roads led: one of the best-selling, most-read, most imitated food writers of her generation, with a shop of her own and a devoted audience that will follow her from a chickpea stew to a jar of tomato sauce and wherever she goes next.

Restaurants

Watch Alison Roman

See Alison in action in this video.

Signature dishes

Roman’s signature dishes are so famous they go by nicknames. #TheCookies are her salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread from Dining In, sliced from a sugar-crusted log. #TheStew is the spiced chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric she created for New York Times Cooking. #ThePasta is her caramelized shallot pasta, whose anchovy-laced shallot jam earned it the title of NYT Cooking’s most popular recipe of 2020. Add her famous Passover brisket and a repertoire of big salads and one-pot dinners, and you have one of the most cooked-from canons in modern home cooking.

Cookbooks

Alison is the author of books including Lemons (2015), Dining In (2017), A Very Serious Cookbook: Contra Wildair (2018, with Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske), Nothing Fancy (2019), Sweet Enough (2023), Something from Nothing (2025).

Personal life

Roman has lived in Brooklyn, New York, since the late 2010s, and describes herself as half-Jewish, hosting joyful Passover seders that have inspired some of her best-loved recipes. She married producer and director Max Cantor on September 9, 2023, at Keens Steakhouse in Manhattan — an intimate celebration capped with a double-decker bus ride. On January 23, 2025, the couple welcomed their first child, son Charlie Davis Roman Cantor. The family splits time between Brooklyn and the Catskills, where First Bloom keeps Roman close to the growers and neighbors who inspire her cooking.

Alison in context

Alison Roman is one of many chefs and food personalities profiled on Pickup Table 4, alongside Anne Burrell and Paula Deen.

Follow Alison Roman

Alison Roman — official · Instagram

Alison Roman FAQ

What is Alison Roman famous for?
Alison Roman is famous for viral recipes including #TheCookies (salted chocolate chunk shortbread), #TheStew (spiced chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric) and #ThePasta (caramelized shallot pasta), as well as bestselling cookbooks such as Dining In, Nothing Fancy and Something from Nothing.

Is Alison Roman a trained chef?
Yes. She left university at 19 to cook professionally and worked in acclaimed restaurant kitchens including Sona in Los Angeles, Quince in San Francisco, and Milk Bar and Pies ‘n’ Thighs in New York before moving into food media.

What cookbooks has Alison Roman written?
Her books include Lemons (2015), Dining In (2017), Nothing Fancy (2019), Sweet Enough (2023) and Something from Nothing (2025), plus the collaborative A Very Serious Cookbook: Contra Wildair (2018). Nothing Fancy and Something from Nothing were New York Times bestsellers.

What is First Bloom?
First Bloom is Alison Roman’s small grocery store in Bloomville, New York, in the Western Catskills, opened in 2023. It stocks local produce and pantry staples, and inspired her 2025 product launch, A Very Good Tomato Sauce.

Where can I watch Alison Roman cook?
Roman hosts Home Movies, her own cooking series on YouTube, launched in 2021 and filmed in her home kitchen. She also shares recipes through her popular publication, A Newsletter.

Is Alison Roman married and does she have children?
Yes. She married producer Max Cantor in September 2023, and their son Charlie was born in January 2025.

Sources and further reading

This profile draws on reputable references including Wikipedia, alisoneroman.com — About, Penguin Random House, People, Eater NY.