How Eric Wareheim Became a Master of Food

Photographs: Eric Wareheim, Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte

I’ve been sitting at the bar at the Old Homestead Steakhouse for five minutes before the host finally walks over to me. I’m guessing he noticed me eating all the free candy overflowing from a massive plastic martini glass and decided to ask if I was waiting for somebody. I tell him yes, and decide to go with “a tall man” as my descriptor for Eric Wareheim. Wareheim is tall— small-forward-sized. But because I haven’t specified his exact height (6’ 7”), the host, who’s about four inches shorter than me, thinks I’m talking about a man who’s sitting alone in the dining room. He leads me to the table and the man smiles. “Bradley?” he asks, in a way that tells me he’s never met Bradley in person before and this was likely a first date.

Everybody sitting in the restaurant is on a date; it’s Valentine’s Day. People love old steakhouses on February 14th. I guess splitting a prime rib is some people's idea of romance. All I know is that the entire situation feels very Wareheim; somewhere between the comedic absurdity of his work with Tim Heidecker, and the tiny-detail-obsessed, food-centric stuff he’s been increasingly focused on over the last few years.

Sadly, Wareheim and I weren’t going on a romantic Valentine’s date; he picked the spot because one of the big projects he’s been working on is a book documenting steakhouses across America. When I finally find him sitting by himself at a table in the upstairs dining room at Old Homestead, he’s nursing an ice-cold martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives. He’s wearing a grey Stoffa suit with a t-shirt underneath. I clock the white Ferragamo velcro sneakers since he’s a tall guy whose legs don’t fit under the short table.

Wareheim is at an interesting place in his life. He’ll be 48 in April. A lot of people probably still know him best for his work with Heidecker on Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job, which first impacted the Adult Swim universe toward the end of the aughts, long enough ago that it's a key influence on the generation now taking over comedy. (If you need any proof of Tim & Eric’s impact, just wait online for an hour or so until somebody posts the gif of Wareheim’s mind being blown and you’ll understand how even the weirdest comedy teams can sneak into the mainstream.)

But his influence on the first two seasons of Master of None was also undeniable. He played Aziz Ansari’s best friend on the acclaimed series, and directed episodes that featured some of the buzziest New York City bars and restaurants of the last decade, including Carbone, the Four Horsemen, and Westlight; Wareheim was also behind the camera for the season 1 finale, which started with Ansari’s Dev and Wareheim’s Arnold searching for the best tacos in NYC, and ends with Dev getting on a plane to Italy to study pasta-making.

His work on the show as the sweet-natured best friend felt like a nice surprise to those of us who had been following him before, but it was also fair to wonder what he was going to do after. He has a talent for directing, but as the people who sign the checks in the entertainment industry have shown many times, talent doesn’t always fit with the bottom line. Some people don’t totally understand that, and as their careers continue, they often decide if the system can’t work for them, they’ll work for the system. That’s how talent turns stale. Thankfully for Wareheim, he had other plans—lots of them.

“I still love comedy, and generally just making stuff,” Wareheim says as he angles his Sony A7c at a plate of oysters Rockefeller that look like they tanned underneath the heat lamp a little too long. As a follow-up to his bestselling 2021 cookbook Foodheim: A Culinary Adventure, he’s been working on a book documenting American steakhouses that comes out next year. There’s also Las Jaras Wines, the label he co-founded with winemaker Joel Burt. You might hear that and think, Of course he has a cookbook, and what person with any bit of celebrity isn’t trying to slap their name on a bottle of booze? And that’s fair. The Rock and George Clooney have tequila brands, the news of a celebrity investing in a bar or restaurant often overshadows anything the place serves, and indie bands have tried making extra cash with everything from coffee blends to beer. Ed Sheeran has a hot sauce, Kristen Bell makes granola bars, and everybody from Sopranos stars to Eminem has realized there’s money to be made off their cultural connections to (mom’s) spaghetti.

So sure, I was a little surprised when I found myself using and enjoying his cookbook, and then when I found myself on a North Fork beach drinking cans of Las Jaras’s Waves Rosé, I had to make sure I wasn’t drunk when I proclaimed it was the best wine in a can I’d ever had. I’m a little cynical about these things. But as Wareheim instructs me to position my hand on the stem of my martini glass a certain way, he connects what he’s been doing with what he’s currently preoccupied with. “Making someone laugh is very similar to cooking someone a pizza. And how deep that feeling is reminds me of being a kid. It’s a communal thing. Your friends come together. I think that's why I wrote Foodheim—that feeling was so special. I wanted everyone to know how to make a salad or pizza, and to see kids or adults make those recipes. I want people to enjoy these things.”

Using the term “foodie” is embarrassing at this point. You may as well call somebody a hipster or say you’re happy “jazz cigarettes” are legal now. But there once was a time—ten years ago—when it would have been easy to dismiss Wareheim as one of those people, the type who look at food as more of a sport, a competition to see who can find a better burger than the one some website describes as the best in the city.

Wareheim admits he did get into food in that era of abundance, about fifteen years ago, after a trip to Alinea, Grant Achatz’s multiple-Michelin star-getting Chicago temple of modern gastronomy. Watching the chefs garnish small bits of pork belly or a purée frozen solid with the aid of liquid nitrogen was a small revelation for Wareheim, but it also got his mind working. It made him think about his mother, an immigrant born in Germany, and the garden she had behind the house when Wareheim was growing up outside Philadelphia. “She came to America and she was like, oh fuck, this is America—your supermarket, I can't eat anything there. So I grew up with her complaining about that. But she made it work, and I was spoiled because my mom grew everything from the garden.”

A server in a red vest with a clean white shirt and paisley tie comes over to check on us. Our table is all appetizers: a little bowl of calamari that Wareheim doesn’t seem too excited about, his oysters Rockefeller, and a half-dozen raw that come on a plate with a garnish of lettuce and celery that we think is supposed to look like a dragon—neither of us are quite sure. Wareheim is obsessed with it and asks the server what it is, but the man ignores the question and asks us if we want to order mains because the rush is coming in and they need the table. We tell him just two more martinis and the check. Wareheim seems used to this treatment. He’s been raising his cholesterol all over the country checking out steakhouses people recommend to him. Old Homestead is one he was curious about, since it claims to be the oldest in New York City. He started getting obsessed with steakhouses during the early days of the pandemic when they were the only restaurants he could find that were open.

“I was like, Why do we feel so nice inside here?” he says. “You dress up a little bit and it's nostalgic and we know what's on the menu. I want to highlight that, that feeling. And there's not really an official book about that. It's so different than just something about me. It's really about the people and the places and it's a different gear to work in.” At some point, he found himself in North Carolina with Heidecker—who Wareheim says also loves food, but would “just chill” after shows while Wareheim went in search of far-flung burrito or burger spots on the edge of town—and they went to a Charlotte steakhouse called Beef 'n Bottle. “It had that Southern hospitality, like you were eating with a family,” he says. “It was also sort of like a David Lynch film.”

Right now, Wareheim isn’t quite sure where all this is headed just yet, but that’s sort of the point. He admits “I’ve been neglecting my film career,” but that he’s been writing stuff with Heidecker, as well as another show “for a big network that involves wine.” But he likes the idea of making actual, physical things. He loves writing books and making wine “because it’s something you can put in your hand.” He’s thought about doing a food show, but he’s glad the earlier ideas he pitched didn’t work: “I wasn't ready to say what I wanted to say about food. It's usually just like, I just want to be Anthony Bourdain.” There’s also talk of a wine bar, modeled after a successful pop-up Wareheim did in L.A. with another Philadelphia food veteran, Joe Beddia. True to their City of Brotherly Love roots, they served wine with hoagies. The name of the night, and the possible bar? P.S. Hoagie. It’s a very This ain’t your parents’ favorite spot to sip Chardonnay sort of idea.

We pay our check and make our way past the rush of lovers gearing up to share porterhouses and creamed spinach. It’s about 7:30 and it's been a long evening. Factor in the cold, and I could easily call it a night just two martinis and a couple of oysters in. As we walk outside, I bring up something I’d been thinking about since I attended a dinner Wareheim threw to show off his new wines a few months earlier. It was held at a favorite spot of mine, Frankies 457 Spuntino in Brooklyn, and wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in terms of a multi-course Italian meal—lots of food, big portions. But at the end, after we’d been served the house ricotta cheesecake, Wareheim said there was a surprise—dessert pizza. Which is simply pizza that you eat as a last course. One plain pie, one pepperoni, and a clam pie that knocked my socks off.

The savory dessert is something Wareheim has been doing at dinner parties in L.A. for a few years now. “We made this whole dinner,” he says, “and we did it ourselves. And I was thinking I wanted to also do a chicken parm because it didn’t make sense with the meal, but I know my friends and I know they love chicken parm and they’d find it funny.” Since then, he’s served dessert orange chicken. He’s also reheated leftovers and served those as a final course. “We love not ending the night when something is magical,” he says. “That’s why I want to keep things going. I don’t want dessert to mean we’re done.”

Keeping with that thought, as we wait for our respective Ubers and I dream of getting home and hiding under blankets, I ask Wareheim if he’s got any plans for the night after our cocktails and appetizers.

Sure, he tells me: “I’m going to dinner.”

Originally Appeared on GQ