“I think of myself as a good home cook. The food is upscale, but very simple,” he said, explaining that he’s trying to inspire people to host friends and family at home rather than overspending at fancy restaurants.
“I think the best meals are happening in people’s homes,” he said on a recent morning as he surveyed Manhattan’s Union Square greenmarket for a Pith dinner the next night. “I want to show people how joyful cooking can be.”
Reider’s informal kitchen training started during childhood in Newton, Massachusetts, in a family that loved to cook.
He landed on New York’s foodie scene as a Columbia University senior in 2015, when a review of his dorm meals in the campus newspaper led to wider media coverage and a 4,000-person waiting list.
The icing on the cake came when Reider appeared on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” serving the TV host a phyllo dough dessert filled with black truffle-infused honey and a side of pear nectar sorbet.
The university was not thrilled with the young entrepreneur’s venture — costing each guest about $15 for groceries — and booted the economics major from the dorm, but not before Reider won kudos from renowned culinary expert Ruth Reichl, who said his food was “impossible to stop eating.”
Since graduation, he’s managed to earn a living as an innovative cook, hired by corporations and individuals to take his unique pop-up creations around the world, from Italy and Japan to Australia and New Zealand. He’s prepared food linked to events sponsored by the likes of Google, Penguin Random House, KitchenAid, Jaguar Land Rover and even the government of Malaysia.
After Columbia, the graduate rented a room in a Brooklyn hedge fund manager’s townhouse where he staged a series of Pith dinners, with tickets going for $95 plus a $45 wine pairing. He says he wanted to prove he was capable of producing high-end professional meals. He also gave free cooking lessons to public schoolkids.
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