Stanley Tucci Is the Man With the Pan

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“So our coffee machine actually doesn’t do espresso, but it makes espresso style,” I clarify to Stanley Tucci, offering a polite opportunity for our guest to back out of this taste test in our office kitchen. “Espresso style?” he asks, now more intrigued, maybe a bit offended.

“You’ll see.”

We get to the machine, and I take him through my espresso-crafting routine. I grab a full-size paper cup, hit “Espresso Style” on the touchscreen control panel, choose the smallest serving option, the highest brew strength. The machine whirs for 30 seconds, the espresso style coffee trickles out. It just looks like the last sip of someone else’s black coffee.

“Oh… that’s not espresso,” he says. “No. It’s not,” I respond, realizing we test enough coffee machines around here that we ought to have set up a real one.

But the liquid strikes a chord. Tucci has drank shitty coffee before, and he politely finished his drink. When he first moved to the Upper West Side in the ‘80s, there were maybe two places on the whole west side of Manhattan that made proper Italian espresso. There were Cuban-Chinese restaurants or Jewish delis that would make coffee, but they were never as good as the food, he says.

We agree Manhattan is even worse off now. Beneath our office there’s a Starbucks. Two blocks up there’s another one. A couple blocks down is a Dunkin. “Espresso Style” is easier to come by than it should be.

But we’re not hanging out to talk about coffee. Over the past few years, Tucci has established himself as a new staple in culinary entertainment. He's got a hit travel show, which is paused and off-limits in solidarity with the SAG-AFTA strike. But, he's now published two cookbooks, one food-focused memoir, and most weeks you'll find him on Instagram posting pasta, fritti, and cocktails. He's a full-blown food-fluencer. His latest venture closes the loop: a full cookware line with GreenPan, which on first glance and after one night of cooking, I'm really, really impressed with.

With our sad drinks out of the way, we sat down to talk about the brand new cookware line, cooking with his family, and his life as a dinner party host.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

ESQUIRE: So, manufacturing in Italy. I assume that was a day-one non-negotiable?

Stanley Tucci: Mhmm.

Was that difficult?

Oh, no. I mean, understandably, they were like, "Well, you know, we can, duh, duh, duh. Obviously it would be cheaper." And I was like…

“This is how I want to do it.”

Exactly. It's not something I need to do, right? It's something I really wanted to do, and I really liked the people at GreenPan. I thought, well, if we can make this work, we can make it work. I mean, anything that we can do to keep manufacturing, in essence at "home." I'm just a big believer in that.

And with no PFAs, was that a you thing? Have you always been a staunch anti-PFA person?

I mean who would be? Who's pro-PFA?

Toxic, sure, but the omelet flies right off the skillet.

[Imitates omelet flying off a skillet] Whoo!

No, I had always been aware of the issues with Teflon coated surfaces. When my late wife was sick—this is a long time ago now—I remember really learning about it and how lethal it can be.

If you go rent a house, or you're in a hotel that has a kitchen, they give you these pans, and you’re just like “Oh God!” They’re not going to work, number one. Second of all, I'm going to be eating that Teflon. So it’s gross.

I remember when GreenPan came out, I was like, oh, that's cool. That's really cool, because I never bought Nonstick, right?

What was the process like from your side?

They reached out to me, but it was something I always wanted to do. Once we sort of came to a deal, they pitched me to do a huge line, and it would be everywhere. I was like, “No, I don't really want to do that.” I would like to do something smaller, you know, more specific. Then the deal almost went away. Well, it did go away. Then, they came back and said alright, alright.

But I completely understood.

Then, I went to the factory in Italy. We talked about designs. They had a wonderful designer, who's Dutch. He said, “I studied you.” He goes, “I studied you for months.”

I was like, “What are you talking about?” And he says, “I looked at your Instagram. I looked at your kitchen, I looked at your furniture. How you were dressed, your aesthetic, your color palette,” all that stuff.

I want[ed] them to be contemporary, but they really have to be functional. Right? We went in, we met, and we went through a whole bunch of stuff and he had all these maquettes made up. And I’d said, “I really love this. I really love those handles.” or “I really love the square shape.”

Then there were discussions about other handles they could do easier. And I was like, yeah, but then this looks like everybody else's cookware. I don’t want it to look like that.

I really love the way these came out. I love the angularity, and I love the negative space of the handle.

What about some other specific design touches?

I was like, how come when you buy a pan and you put the oil in, it moves to the edges of the pan? Why does it go like this [animates the slope of a pan’s surface]. And they were like, “Actually we have been working on that.” So that was that solved. Then, I said we had this squareness on the outside of the pan, you’d think the inside would be a 90-degree angle. But we had to have the proper scoop along the edge of the pan to toss pasta.

I go, “I'm just a consumer.” I'm just a guy who knows how to cook. That's it. I'm not a chef. You know, I make the same 15 fucking things all the time. Okay. But I'm a person who loves cookware. I know what I want it to look like, but I need it to work.

The rivets needed to be flat, so you didn’t get that nasty buildup in there. Then, you're trying to clean it and it's like gross and bacteria grows in there.

All your consumer input seems like a designer’s dream, though.

Or their nightmare, I don’t know. All that stuff, it's just the annoying consumer going, “Okay, so when I cook, and I bang my spoon, ladle, whatever, it chips the pan.” So, can you take the stainless and wrap it around the edge of the pan? They were like, “I think we think we can do that, yeah.” We did it on the stainless version.

You know, it's just really simple stuff. That big pan, what they call the Stanley Pan, I didn’t come up with that, by the way—

You weren’t the one that chose to name it the Stan Pan?

No, certainly not. They said, “We want to call it this.” I was like, yeah, all right; you’re the product people.

But it’s based on a pan that I used all the time. When I travel, I would bring it with me because I can cook for a lot of people in it. You can boil pasta in it, make a sauce in it, and toss pasta for eight fucking people.

So, we made our version of it, which is just slightly smaller, nonstick, and not quite as heavy as the one that I have. And it works so beautifully. I just cooked with the chefs at Williams-Sonoma. I asked them, how is it? They were like, it's amazing. Like, it really, really works. I love that because that was my fear: You do a thing that you've never done before, and it looks good but it doesn't work.

What do you hope to see now that it’s finally for sale, out there in the world?

I want to see everybody cooking with it… I mean, obviously, I want to have my piece of the profit.

This stuff needs to fly off the shelves. You want to get paid.

Of course. But, we did a book signing yesterday—Williams-Sonoma was selling my cookbooks and memoir—there were 400, 500 people. It was wonderful to see. It was that it was all different ages. It was all different races. It was all different genders and people from all over the world. And, they all just love to cook.

To know the things I’ve made inspired all of them, that was, to me, exactly what you hope for. You can't do something to please everybody. But if you do something and it ends up pleasing a lot of people, that’s a beautiful thing.

You’re probably as close as anyone gets to pleasing everyone. I don’t know any Stanley Tucci haters.

Well, I’ll introduce you to some.

I would love to get inside their minds. My mom says you’re very Ina Garten in that respect. How can anyone not like Ina? How can anyone not like Stanely Tucci?

[Laughs] Really?

We’ve been on an Ina-esque kick at our place in Brooklyn, hosting and whatnot. My girlfriend got the bug for it.

Isn’t it so incredible?

We just do it all the time. Recently, we went and I rented a house in the Cotswolds. We rented a house in the Cotswolds, in the spring when the kids had a break from school, and invited friends with kids around the same age. The woman in the couple has been friends with Felicity [Blunt] for a long time, and she had actually gone to study to be a chef. We were just always cooking, you know. We went out to dinner once, I think, and we're sort of disappointed.

So, we cooked together all the time. My wife loves to cook, and we rented that same house just like a month ago. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their kids. My kids had their cousins there, and we invited other people. It’s just so fun. My sister-in-law is a great cook too.

That’s awesome. For kids, those events are important, but I don’t think people see it the same way for adults.

It’s so fun to entertain! It can be, well it is tiring. But you know, people don't really invite us to their houses. Felicity pointed this out a few years ago. She goes, “Do you ever realize no one ever invites us to their house?” And I think maybe they get afraid.

I can see y’all being a bit intimidating to cook for.

Also, a lot of people don't cook.

When you’re not cooking for others, do you have a favorite city to eat in?

I think Milan is really great. Rome is great. I think about Italy as every city has their thing. In Rome, you're going to get pasta, and they’re all variations on a theme. But then you go to Umbria and you're going to have the lentils and sausages, you know. So, that’s the weird thing about Italy.

Everywhere is the best place for eating something.

Right. But I think I could say Milan. Only because it's the most international, and there's that big green belt around it. Milan has lots of great produce.

Why do you think Italians are so good at customer service? It’s a place famous for its slow service, but I think it’s more than made up for by how giving people tend to be.

I mean, obviously there are those who aren't. There are certain places in Italy that are more giving than others. Usually the poorer they are, the more they'll do for you.

Which is kind of true anywhere, I guess.

I saw it with my grandparents. Their generosity was incredible, because everybody was poor where they came from. Everybody except the guy who owned the land and the church.

There’s that story—the stone soup. Do you know the story?

No, I don’t think so.

Well it starts with a soldier wandering around. There's always a soldier wandering around in these kinds of stories. You don’t see soldiers wandering around anymore.

So, the soldier wanders into this town. He doesn't have any food. He knocks on the door, an old lady answers, and he says, I've been wandering around, could you spare some food. She goes, no, I don't, and everyone here is very poor so I wouldn't even bother asking him. She closes the door.

He thinks. So he finds a pot, builds a fire in the town square, puts water in it, and he drops a stone in. The pot is boiling and he just stands there watching.

The old lady looks out and asks what he’s doing. “I'm making stone soup.” Stone soup? Eventually she comes out to watch. Then, other people come out. What’s going on? Making stone soup. Stone soup? Never heard of it. Oh, it's delicious, the soldier says.

You sort of see where it's going, right? He eventually tastes it and says, “This would be great with an onion.” Someone says “I have an onion.” Then carrot, parsnip, celery, garlic, and a chicken. Right. By the end it tastes delicious, and then they all eat the stone soup. They’re all happy and together and full.

Another incredible story, which makes me think of the end of your memoir. You say recipes are essentially a way of extending someone's lifespan, kind of like the stump in The Giving Tree. Are there any that you're trying to make your kids have recipes for before you go?

Absolutely. Well, we have the cookbooks. My wife and I made a cookbook, and then I have my parents’ cookbook. I'm working on a book that’s about what I feed the kids and their reactions, and so on and so forth. I think it’s really important for kids to look back on. Like, oh my God, is that what I did? Was that why I still hate this?

They're very picky eaters, the little ones, which is really annoying. It’s so annoying. But they're getting better. They're getting better. And part of that—a huge part of that—is our fault because you’re just like please eat. I don't want to have to go through the experimentation phase. I'm tired. We have to go to bed.

And you’re fucking exhausted by the end of the day, but. But, Felicity's very good about baking with them, and they become very aware. Like my son is very aware of taste and flavor. Right now he loves pasta with tomato and tuna, which is great.

Mentioning being aware of taste and flavor, I’ve heard that after having oral cancer your sense of taste became heightened?

I can tell in one whiff, if I just bring a glass of wine to my nose, I can know if it’s good. It's weird. When I was in Venice and we were filming, a guy made a duck ragu, and I tasted it. I was like, “What's in that?” He lists everything, and I’m saying to him are you sure there's nothing else? He says no. Then I ask if there’s any nutmeg, and he says Oh, yeah, I put like the smallest dash of nutmeg.

That’s wild.

I thank god that it’s not the opposite, and I can’t taste anything.

But how scary was the whole experience of cancer?

Terrifying.

And the recovery?

It was fucking horrible.

Treatment went on for 35 days, and then the effects of that went on, and are still going on. I finished in May and somehow went back to work in December, because I needed a job. I needed money.

I was still so weak. I was probably 15 pounds lighter than I am now. I had a feeding tube for six months. I would make my own food puree. I put a lot of chicken broth in it and liquidized it as much as I could, stick it into my syringe and just put it into my stomach. I remember doing that with egg fried rice once.

Why go through all that trouble for egg fried rice you couldn’t taste?

I don't know. I just had to. I was like, there was no way that I could do it. But I just had to eat it.

I feel like that experience primes you for the “Last meal on Earth” question better than most people. What did you decide it was?

Lasagna Bolognese.

Made by anyone in particular?

My mother. I used to answer that question like, Oh, I would have this or I would want to make that. Now, I know that’s what I would want. I just realized over the years it was one of my favorite things.

We talked about making sure your kids know certain dishes before you die. Are there any recipes you still want to master while your parents are here to help?

Lasagna Bolognese.

I’m very bad at making the pasta, luckily my wife is very good at it. And, I’ll make the sauce. We made one a while ago and it was good. It was really, really good.

I’m actually going to see my parents tomorrow. While we’re here, we’re going to go down and see them, and I’m really excited. It’ll be fun. We’ll cook together. Now they have the pans—they have the cookware. My father is very excited. It just says “Tucci” everywhere.

That’s his cookware line, too. “Look, they put my name on all the pans!”

[Laughs] Exactly.

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