Talking Food with Glen Coben
An interview with the Founder of Glen & Co, New York

Photo by Lisette Wong/Spiegler

In my refrigerator > Quinoa, lots of veggies, leftovers from Sunday dinner, and cans of Sixpoint Righteous Ale. What a great name for a beer.

Favorite dishes > Spaghetti and meatballs, Chicken Scarpiello, and Pad Thai

Food I’ll never eat > I’ll eat anything, even if it’s moving-just not too fast

A night in means I’m cooking > Seafood bolognese (for his recipe, log on to hospitalitydesign.com)

Midnight snack of choice > Pizza

Restaurants I love (but didn’t design) > Roberta’s in Brooklyn and Dovetail in Manhattan

Favorite part of my kitchen in Westchester, New York > The house is modern, from 1953. We put the kitchen in the original screened-in porch, so the light that comes in throughout the day is amazing.

Latest creative design detail for a project > At Carbone, it’s one of the more subtle ones: the banquette in the back dining room is meant to look like a vintage police officer jacket-the button tufts are authentic police jacket buttons.

Newest creations in New York > The Marrow is based on chef Harold Dieterle’s menu: half is German-after his father’s side-and the other half is Italian, after his mom’s. So we wove together a feminine and masculine design-a duality. It’s also perfect since Harold’s business partner Alicia Nosenzo runs the front of house.

The Marrow

Photography by Daniel Krieger

For Carbone we channeled 1950s New York red-sauce Italian restaurants. We toured the boroughs, tasting, looking, and talking about what dining out meant to second generation Italian-Americans. References were movies such as the Godfather and TV shows like Boardwalk Empire, as well as photographs by Weegee of New York crime scenes.

Carbone
Photography by Daniel Krieger