Gail Simmons on Jewish Food, Family Rituals and Her New Book “Guesting”

For Gail Simmons, hospitality starts well before anyone reaches the table. The longtime Bravo “Top Chef” host has spent two decades around ambitious cooking and high-pressure gatherings. Her new book, “Guesting,” turns that experience toward the other side of the invitation: how to show up thoughtfully when someone else is hosting.

Simmons argues that guests often face a tangle of unwritten rules, from what to bring to how to read the room. “I’ve noticed what I can only describe as a gaping hole in our collective confidence about how to behave when invited anywhere,” she writes in the book’s introduction. The illustrated guide works through those uncertainties as social situations to think about, rather than a checklist of purchases or rigid etiquette.

Jewish rituals offer some of its touchstones. Passover seders, Yom Kippur and bar and bat mitzvahs all carry their own expectations, and Simmons draws on them as she considers what it means to be a good guest. For her, those occasions are also part of a much more personal map of family, food and memory.

Small details, lasting memories

A tiny seder plate drawn by Nancy Pappas is one of Simmons’ favorite illustrations in “Guesting.” It appears alongside a matrix comparing celebrations and observances across religions, including whether they’re considered solemn or festive. Look closely and the plate includes an orange at its center, a newer addition Simmons includes at home as a symbol of inclusion and equality.

Food memories run through her family’s holidays. Each fall, her father made applesauce in large batches, combining bushels of apples with a few dark plums. The plums gave it a vivid fuchsia color, and the family froze jars to enjoy throughout the year, often with fresh cream. On Hanukkah, it went alongside her mother’s crispy latkes. Simmons now makes the applesauce with her daughter; for her, homemade latkes still call for it.

A piece of jewelry links another generation to the same kind of milestone. Simmons rediscovered the “GS” ring her Aunt Sue and Uncle Lou gave her for her bat mitzvah in 1989, when such initial rings were a familiar gift for Jewish kids in Toronto. Her daughter now wears her father’s chai necklace, a keepsake from his bar mitzvah.

Family flavors, shared rituals

One newer pantry favorite brings Jewish and Japanese flavors together. Holy Tshili Furikake combines spicy Japanese furikake with toasted everything bagel seasoning. Simmons’ family sprinkles it on eggs, peanut butter toast, salads, bagels with cream cheese and lox, and popcorn. She plans to give it to friends for the holidays.

Her eight-year-old son has his own strong opinions about the family’s food: he loves pickles, onions and pickled onions. A summer visit to The Pickle Guys to refill the fridge prompted him to ask whether he could hold his birthday party there.

At Shabbat, the family uses a challah cover made by her husband’s aunt, Dorothea Bersani, for the birth of their daughter Dahlia 13 years ago. Bersani, an Italian-American New Yorker raised on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, stitched the Hebrew words “Shabbat Shalom” into the cover. Simmons sees it becoming an heirloom. Dahlia, now a teenager, recently surprised her mother by bedazzling a copy of “Guesting.”

Art and latkes at the table

Simmons also has her eye on “Thick Bleach & Euphemisms,” an upcoming art book by Jewish artist Zoe Buckman. She admires the detail in Buckman’s work and plans to make the book a gift to herself.

For a more edible treat, she points to Little Latke crisps, which sit somewhere between a potato chip and a latke. They’re light and crisp, good for dips and snack boards, and their smell takes Simmons back to her mother frying potatoes in the kitchen. That sensory link captures the thread running through her choices: family traditions can live in a recipe, a handmade textile or even the first bite of a snack.