Top of Mind: Lydia Shire, Extended Version

JLJ: Yeah, what’s the story there?

LS: Well, I’ve just learned in the last three years how to use a computer. And I have told people that now I’m ready to. But when Jasper White—who’s my best cook friend in the world—when Jasper wrote his first book he had to take a year off work. I don’t know how I can take a year off work.

JLJ: Can you imagine what Julia Child would be doing now, if she were in the prime of her career here in 2009?

LS: …She obviously loved to write, but I thought one of her best qualities was she loved to get people together. She would open her house up, you know, she would ask chefs and all these young students to come. It was never about her—it wasn’t her ego. Maybe she would have had a school. I see her as encouraging food and the advancement.

…I just think she’d be doing more of what she has done, which, when you think of it—she is the most beloved woman in America because of what she did. She woke up America.

JLJ: Keeping up with three fine-dining restaurants—do you ever have those days when you might be tempted to just to run a clam shack, or a neighborhood bar?

LS: No, because people who know me know I like things sort of classy. It’s that mother-and-father-artist in me. I’ve always picked out everything myself and I like it that way, because I like my taste. …That chandelier over there? I drove that back from New York and I hand-washed and hand-installed it myself, 250 pounds of crystals and I wouldn’t let anyone else do it….

I need to surround myself with beauty—there is no question. I’m probably not the best person to do a clam shack.

JLJ: Have you ever thought about other jobs besides being a chef—what you’d be good at, or what you’d never want to do in a million years?

LS: Well, I feel I’m the best butcher I’ve ever seen. Butchering is one of my major strengths, and I’ve taught all the butchers I know how to butcher. I love to clean, so I could be a dishwasher with no problem.

Oh, I know something I don’t like. Managing. It’s the hardest part of my job, managing people. I do it in the sense that I’ve been in this business for over 30 years, so you get used to it, but it’s not something that I like. There are times you have to say something to somebody that you really don’t want to. I mean, I do it, but I do it a little more reluctantly. So that’s what I love about being a butcher. I’m just there with my big old dead animal on the board.