Suzy Karadsheh: The “Accidental CEO” Behind The Mediterranean Dish

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hello, everyone. My name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, I am joined by someone who has built one of the most beloved Mediterranean cooking brands in the world. I’m so excited. Please welcome the founder, the CEO of The Mediterranean Dish, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, Suzy Karadsheh.
Suzy’s story begins on the shores of the Mediterranean, Port Said, Egypt, where she grew up trailing her father through the local souq, gathering just-caught fish, plump tomatoes, bunches of parsley, and sticks of cinnamon, and learning to cook simply by watching her mother work flavors in a vibrant Egyptian kitchen.
In her family, the food was never really the point. It was about the people gathered around the table. I love that. She carried that love of hospitality with her when she moved to the United States at the age of 17. She earned a business degree, then built a career in marketing, fundraising, and philanthropy for nonprofits. Meaningful work, but yet not her true passion. Everything came full circle after her second daughter was born, when she started a little blog at her kitchen table in 2014 to preserve her family’s recipes and heritage for her Michigan-born girls. She jokes that she became an accidental CEO because that blog was no longer small. It grew into The Mediterranean Dish, now the leading online resource for modern Mediterranean cooking, serving millions of home cooks today.
That kitchen table hobby is a full-scale media and commerce company, a thriving direct-to-consumer pantry line of premium olive oils and spices with a cult following. Two New York Times best-selling cookbooks, a recent 36-piece tabletop collaboration with Anthropologie and a loyal global audience. As an immigrant woman building in the competitive food and digital media space, her rise is nothing short of remarkable. And with that, good morning, Susie. Welcome to The Ultimate Dish. How are you?

Suzy Karadsheh: Hi, I’m gonna cry now. Wasn’t that lovely? That was so much. I’m sitting here and I’m just like — I’m about to fall. This is not.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s good. We like that. We like that. It — food is passion. Family is passion.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yes, absolutely.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s — it’s — I showed my wife this morning and I’m like, see. So when our first son was born, she started a little blog called Nutmeg and Sage, and it was really, really cute. And she completed a grand total of one blog, and she was exhausted. So to see what you’ve done is — is it’s really remarkable. And a lot of times, I say this a lot with incredible guests. People don’t see, appreciate, or realize the work that goes into something. They just see the finished product, right?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, yeah. It’s not as glamorous as it looks, but I love it. I love every bit.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s all that matters. That’s really all that matters. So we’re so happy to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to this chat for a long time, and I’ll be honest. I want to start with something that made — we’re going to start hot, as they say.

The Tabouleh That Started It All

Kirk Bachmann: This made me smile, kind of cry a little bit. So I ran into — I don’t know that I can pull it up, but it’s on your IG. It’s the tabouleh story, and in the post you’re talking about — and you’re making this beautiful, gorgeous tabouleh, and then your husband pops in, and you give him a taste, and he suggests that it’s not as good as his mother’s, and I wanna — I wanna get it straight from you. I’m — I’m suggesting that that might not be accurate.

Suzy Karadsheh: Well, his — his mother is the OG, as they say, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always love your mama’s food, and I try to make it as close as possible to what I learned from her. But yes, the famous tabouleh story because it really was the reason we met and got married, so he — he knows that there was magic in his mom’s tabouleh.

Kirk Bachmann: Basically, was tabouleh served at the wedding?

Suzy Karadsheh: No, it was not. But at the time, it was one January in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I was there for school. That’s how I really ended up in the States to begin with. And my friends and I were just looking for a place to go eat, and we ended up at his family’s restaurant. And he happened to be managing that day, and I scored a free tabouleh. And there — how about that? Yeah, and the rest is history.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s right.

Falafel, Fish, and the Shores of Port Said

Kirk Bachmann: You know, I love starting out with just a heartwarming story like that, and it’s personal, right? And that’s really, really important today. And it kind of helps me where I want to go next because before there was a brand, before there was a kitchen and all the recipes. If there’s one dish that instantly puts you back in Port Said, back in Egypt, what is that dish?

Suzy Karadsheh: I want to say it’s a toss between like a really good falafel. In Egypt, they call it Ta’ameya, but falafel is what most people call it, and — or some sort of a really good fish dish because my mom made a lot of fish. We lived right on the Mediterranean, so that was like almost always on the table. And so they do this fried fish sandwich that I just love and make often.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I love that. I — I can visualize it. This weekend, my parents are — they’re in their 90s and they — and they live just a few hours from Boulder. And so I went to visit them. And when you visit, you have to cook, right? And my father’s a master baker. My parents came over from Germany in the ’60s, and they met in a bakery. And I was telling them that, and he’s been on the on the show. And so they were asking, “Who’s on the show next week?” And I was telling them, “Susie, she does Mediterranean food,” and they’re like, “Why don’t you make us some Mediterranean food?” And I said, “That is a good idea.” So I — I took a bunch of — my mom had tons of fresh cherry tomatoes. I put them into a cast iron skillet for about eight hours, little garlic, olive oil, and then I — was hard to find in Colorado, but I found some fresh halibut, and that’s what they got that night. They’re like, “You should have started cooking like this 20 years ago.”

Suzy Karadsheh: That sounds so good.

More Than a Diet — It’s a Whole Vibe

Kirk Bachmann: It — and it’s so — it’s so simple. I think the idea of Mediterranean — Mediterranean food and the Mediterranean diet, which you are the expert in, it’s not only exciting; it’s important, right? For our little geography lesson for our students and our listeners, middle of the Earth, as the Italians call it, the Mediterranean, you know, it’s surrounded by land that has connected civilizations, as you know, for thousands and thousands of years. And I don’t know if there’s another place that connects three continents: Europe, Africa, Asia, beautiful climate, olives, vineyards, citrus, all of that, and then of course a diet rich in fish, olive oil, veggies, grains. Why, Suzy, is this approach in your mind to eating so very important? Let’s talk about the wellness part, the health part. They’re just feeling good, like I said. My parents felt so good after having such a simple, simple, you know, meal.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah. So eating the Mediterranean way, like you said, is very simple. And we, at least the way I grew up, it’s really just about what’s available on a given day, so — like like you mentioned earlier, I went to the souk to the market with my dad very often. There was no — there was no like bulk shopping, you know, once a month or twice a month, and — and storing in freezers for like so long. It was just whatever was available on a given day, and so I just learned — I — to me that was how you ate. You go to the market, you buy today’s food, you make it. You know, in a couple more days, you go again and you buy. So it’s very fresh, and we rely very much on what’s in season. We rely very much on what’s available locally, and so it just seems to me like an intuitive, an intuitive way to eat.
And a big part of it is — I think that part of the world, and I know you’re probably familiar. Everyone is now talking about nonna maxing [00:09:12], which is this new trend of simply living like a Mediterranean grandmother, which means to eat with the seasons, to not waste so much, you know, food, to kind of work with what you have, and to really slow down and enjoy, you know, the fruit of your labor. And I think a lot of people miss that the Mediterranean diet is not just about the ingredients; it’s a whole vibe. It’s just like a whole approach to life, that is a lot more holistic than your average diet now, where you know you’re eating on the go a lot and you’re probably not thinking so hard about where do these ingredients come from and — and that sort of thing. So it’s exciting to see people are kind of now calling the Mediterranean diet something trendy when it’s been around for centuries.

Kirk Bachmann: But that’s such a — such a beautiful, great statement, and — and it’s so aligned with what we at Escoffier too try to share with our students. Right? It’s not a cliché. It’s not just something you put on the menu. Your — the first words out of your mouth was — you shopped for what was available. That’s absolutely brilliant, right? What’s in season? We have a farm-to-table component of our programs for both online and on ground, where we do exactly that. Just try to get people to understand like where did that carrot actually come from, and how much work went into that, and why does it taste a little bit different from that side of the farm versus that side of the farm? I was actually going to — you went right into it beautifully, and this wasn’t even rehearsed. This was so good. I was — I wanted to linger for a moment and talk about you as a little girl holding your dad’s hand at the market, and then you bring this beautiful food back to your mother’s kitchen. How did that experience, that part of your life, sort of shape not just the cook you became, right, but also the person you are today? I’m almost fascinated by that connection, right?

A Pastor, a Souk, and a Little Girl

Suzy Karadsheh: To be honest, I did not think so hard about these — these days at the souk at the market with my dad until I started writing my first cookbook, and it just all came to me as to why I am the way I am, and not just the way I cook. And it’s truly so. So my father was a well-known pastor in Port Said, and on those market days, he actually like — we never really had a shopping list. You know, as you — you go to the grocery store and you see people checking off the list a lot, and we never had that. My dad just kind of — it was sort of a hobby, and partly also to kind of see how people are doing, and so people just knew him by name, and a lot of people would come up to him and say hello and ask for advice just randomly.
And I was maybe five or six. I had no idea really why these people would keep coming up to my dad and talk about their life story, and he would, you know, he would like make connections and help somebody find, you know, I don’t know — whatever they needed for their business, and so he was just doing this often to have that connection with people in the community, and so he will hold my hand, and it’s really busy. You know, it’s just people everywhere, and he would hold my hand tightly, talk to people, but also try to show me how to pick the best tomatoes and you know the fresh herbs, and — and there would often be moments of like where he would pause for a minute, and he’ll find — you know — someone with a small cart trying to sell the last bit of their herbs, and he would just walk over and buy the whole thing, and be like, because it’s really about — they take care of us, these farmers take care of us, and we have to take care of them.
And so there were these stories and these just tidbits of wisdom and — and love that he would share with me just on these really random Tuesday afternoon at the market — really stayed with me now. So there was just a lot of small things about those days that kind of come to me at random times, things about generosity, caring for people in our community, you know, dealing with people you don’t know. Sometimes people didn’t know him — he didn’t know them, but they knew him and would come up to ask questions, and so he was just really a generous man, and I think a lot of that just translated in my head of like, how do you talk to people? How do you serve others when they serve you? It’s not just about you when you’re at the market. So forget about your list sometimes, and kind of — you know — talk to people and learn something new. And so that was just really — it made me very curious as well, because he often had questions about like when did this fish come in, and how do you cook it? And he would just talk to, you know, the people and get information from them. And so I just became very curious about where my food came from, how do people cook it. So yeah, it really did shape me a lot.

The Food Was Never the Point

Kirk Bachmann: Really great memories. I love the word generosity. There’s a line of yours, Suzy, that — that I’ve seen a few times now. It really sticks with me. That the food itself was never really the point. It was about the people, as you’re mentioning, around the table. Such a beautiful way to sort of grow up and form your life. How does that belief still show up every day when you cook for your family? I just love thinking friends and family first.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: And how does that play into what you create today?

Suzy Karadsheh: I’ll be honest. I’m a very lazy cook personally. I like easy things. I like one skillets, big sheet pans, easy things. But that doesn’t mean — that doesn’t mean they — they don’t have a lot of flavor and a lot of love. And I think that line just comes from the fact that I’ve really witnessed over the years doing this job and living here in the States, how we put so much pressure on ourselves to make the perfect meal. Like if you were inviting friends over, you maybe are overthinking your menu and you’re toiling so hard, and you kind of lose the joy of — of putting the meal together, and you’re focused on the technical pieces of it.
And I think, for me, growing up in Egypt, witnessing just my parents having an open door, which a lot of people in the Mediterranean have the same philosophy. Like if somebody showed up uninvited, that’s fine. You just pull a chair and you see what’s in the fridge, and it’s all fine. Like you’ll make it, you’ll make it happen. It’s not so much about a perfect table that is like super manicured, so to speak, but it’s more about like, do you have room for more people at your table?

Suzy Karadsheh: It’s genuine. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. They can — they can share the bowl of hummus with you, or they can share the beautiful roast leg of lamb. Whatever you have on hand is fine. Just focus on the people and the time that you spend with them. And it — I don’t know that people ever walked away from my home thinking that, wow, look at this gorgeous spread. I think for me, I just hope that they walk away feeling like that was such a great time, and I can’t wait to be back. So it — it takes the pressure off, like it does.

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah, that’s a really good way to think of it. It — you know — kind of lessens the level of anxiety.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

People Give to People, Not Organizations

Kirk Bachmann: Kind of eye on the bigger goal. You know, your life took a turn. You moved to the United States at 17, you earned a business degree, and then you built an entire career in marketing, fundraising, philanthropy before food was actually really in the picture. So I’d love to know how did you end up in the philanthropy space, and did you always dream of that career in that industry, and then as you look back, Suzy, what did that chapter help you with that perhaps you still lean on a little bit today?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, I know I did not make any plans to be in philanthropy or fundraising, and I’ve always thought fundraising is the hardest thing to do, to go and ask people for money. But when I got into it, I actually got into it because I was working for the university where I graduated. So I was a product of other people’s generosity, and so it was easy enough for me to go like, “Look, you’re looking at it. This is what your money does.” And so it — that was probably — it was so fun to make connections with people to talk about things I was passionate about, which I was passionate about the university because I went there.
Sure, but I did learn a lot of big lessons doing that because it’s not easy — you have to be super humble going around and asking people to support a cause, you know. So it’s not about you, but it’s about the cause. But you’re the person asking for it. So it’s like — so that’s one thing. And also, really focus on the person, on the people themselves. Like, what makes — what drives them, what makes them passionate about something because I can come to you and ask you for money for a given cause, but you have no connection to that cause, and it just would — I have to find out what drives you and what makes you excited about something to see if we could make a connection. So it’s really all about human connection. People give to people, not organizations.
And so all of these lessons kind of stayed with me because what I do now also focuses on people. So whenever I am developing a recipe or I’m filming something or I’m working on a book, I’m thinking, what problem do you have that I can help you solve? And so I feel like most of the — like the cookbook success, really stemmed from answering that question of like, what can I do for you? How can this make your life just a little bit more? Maybe a little more easier, not from an arrogant place, but from like a true, genuine place of like I want to make a connection with you. And food connects people more than anything else. And so I think — I think it’s just a matter of like these lessons of like focus on the people, see what they need. I think really resonates with me.

Kirk Bachmann: And your generosity and humility comes through in your food as well. Just really, really well put. I think it’s also very, very important to emphasize here for our students and our listeners that a detour in someone’s career, whether planned or not, often becomes the exact foundation, perhaps, that you end up building on, right? You just don’t know it at that time.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: So it’s — it’s — it’s a really good lesson and perfect segue into the accidental CEO. I love this. That’s a whole book. That’s your third book right there, right? Thank you.

The Accidental CEO

Kirk Bachmann: So let’s talk about building The Mediterranean Dish. It’s — it’s — gosh, it’s absolutely fascinating. The turning point, 2014, your second daughter has just been born, and you sit down at your kitchen, quite literally, and start a blog — not to build a company, but to simply preserve — here’s the beautiful — your family’s recipes for your girls. So right off the bat, we know it’s genuine, it’s honest, right? It’s real, and yet here you are running a full-scale business. I ordered the starter kit, by the way. I just want you to know, I cannot wait, and I’m going to post it all over social media. It’s presented so beautifully. So we’ll talk about that later. But you’ve called yourself an accidental CEO, and I want to unpack that. I promised my wife I wouldn’t say the word unpack, but Noel likes that word, so we’re going to unpack that journey because — because it’s a good one, right? So so take us to that moment. We have an entrepreneurship program at Escoffier, and this is just such a good lesson. What made you finally leap from that stable — I should say — corporate nonprofit world into food, and was there a specific point, Suzy, where you looked up and you thought, “Wait, this is much, much more than a hobby.”

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, yeah. So I’m gonna give credit to my husband because it was his idea for me to start The Mediterranean Dish, and I thought, why? Why would I do that? Who’s gonna read it? And this was because I was in transition. We had moved from Michigan, where we were living, and I had that long PR, marketing, fundraising career that I absolutely loved. And then we moved to Iowa for his career, and I thought I don’t know what to do with myself because I had wrapped myself up into my career so much, and wasn’t really thinking that I needed to have a second act or anything else. But so I — to be honest, was very depressed for a while, for over a year, and just trying to like, do I get back into fundraising? What should I do next?
And so he came home one day and he mentioned, “Hey, you should be writing something online. You enjoy writing.” I’m like, “What am I gonna write about? Like, it’s like who wants to read anything by me?” And he’s like, “Well, people are.” This was the start. This was maybe a kind of like three, four years into seeing people now kind of share their passions, whatever they are, online in this blogging world, and I’m like, what would I do with that? And so finally, he convinced me. He’s like, look, you love to cook. You’re always cooking for other people, and you know maybe it’s a good — it’s a good thing to do just for the time being. So I really just kind of got into it. I’m like, you know what? If nothing else, I will just document the recipes and flavors I grew up with for my daughters, and it would be more of a virtual recipe box for these two girls to — once — once they’re older, maybe they will cook the food I grew up with.
And then a couple years later, we moved again to the south now. And I thought, okay, I’m probably not going to go back into fundraising full time anymore. I’ve been removed from that for a bit, and I got an email from someone who’s been writing — who’s been reading, you know, the recipes and actually cooking them, and then another email, and people started finding me. I was late to social media, so I wasn’t really even on social for a while, and people would just find info at themediterraneandish.com and write me emails. And so one particular email came from an older person whose wife had just passed away. They used to cook Mediterranean food together, and he decided he would continue cooking Mediterranean food to just kind of access his emotions and pay tribute to his wife because that was her favorite.
And he was in Australia of all places, like not even anywhere close to me. And I was reading that at home in my bed at night before I went to bed, and I’m just sobbing at this point. Like this made my day. Other people are partaking of the recipes, and I thought, you know what? This could be something. This helps some other people, and that was the moment I decided I should really give it more of my energy because I was kind of doing it on the side when I felt like it, and when I started seeing people responding to the content and saying I actually make these recipes, which I initially thought they were just for us, for our family, that became a motivation for me to really study the Mediterranean diet, to really like be involved, and to continue to produce these recipes more regularly. And that’s it. That’s how we went.

You Can’t Expect Figs the Minute You Plant the Tree

Kirk Bachmann: It’s — you know, it’s a really beautiful story, and it kind of leads me into another question to help students. We — we had — we had Nisha Vora on the on the show not too long ago from Rainbow Plant Life, and similar story where she left her job as an attorney behind to pursue her passion. I guess that’s the word I was looking for. Her passion. You were motivated by just a beautiful story from someone who was moved by you, right? I absolutely just love that.
You’ve been really candid too, Suzy, about that the first couple of years you didn’t treat it like a business at all. You — you had to teach yourself about food photography and SEOs and social media, like you mentioned, and all of that, for a student or anyone for that matter, who is perhaps dreaming or motivated by your story of building something of their own, we always get to see the finished product. We get to see, you know, the beauty. If someone’s thinking about doing this on their own, there — there must be a learning curve. There must be some steep learning curves. And any advice for someone who’s like wanting to be where you are now?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, I — and can I be honest. I still struggle with this. I learn something new every day because our world is so fast, right? So like, especially online businesses, things are always changing every single day. So there’s — there’s a lot of frustration that happens behind the scenes that people don’t necessarily —

Kirk Bachmann: I imagine.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah. And so I feel like my biggest advice is to like be patient with yourself and don’t compare your journey to a finished product because you don’t know all the steps someone else took to get there. Because again, for me, I still feel like I’m behind every single day, and it’s just really hard mentally to kind of watch the world on social media and think to yourself, “Why am I not there yet?” Because someone said this to me not too long ago. You can’t expect figs the minute you plant the fig tree. It’s gonna take time.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s true. It’s true. You know, it’s interesting. A lot of really phenomenal human beings that have been on the show use that — similar advice around patience and giving yourself grace.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yes, right.

What Only You Can Do

Kirk Bachmann: Something else that you said resonated with me. One — one of the hardest lessons that you had was admitting that you couldn’t do it all by yourself.

Suzy Karadsheh: I could —

Kirk Bachmann: And that’s tough for anyone, right? How did you learn to let go, and how did you stack rank what you could let go for someone else to handle?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, so I’m not very good at it. So again, my husband was the one who pushed me to start letting go because we have a —

Kirk Bachmann: We have a theme here. We have a theme here. A very loving husband. I love it.

Suzy Karadsheh: He — he can see things that I don’t see, which is — he was so — he was the first — no — the first person I hired was my best friend and neighbor, and I had to convince her to just like work with me a few hours a day, work with me just a few hours a day, and we both agreed that if it were to interfere with our friendship, we would just go our separate ways. Thankfully, she’s still with me.

Kirk Bachmann: She still is. Wow.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah. So I — I think it — every day I actually have to mentally like say to myself: This question always helps. What is on my plate that someone else can do, and what is on my plate that no one else can —

Kirk Bachmann: Oh yeah!

Suzy Karadsheh: And so I’m learning this. I’m being coached on it, where I have to ask myself that every single day because I can get into the weeds and go, “Well, I’ll just do this. I’ll just do this on social media.” But I have a very capable social media manager. She can do it, and so I think it helps to have someone else look from the outside to go, “You’re crazy person, and you need to let someone else do this job.” And then you have to train your brain every single day to go. Someone else can do this job — probably better — but no one else can show up in my kitchen and make this recipe, and no one else can show up to write my book. So those are the things that I now protect my time for, so I can continue to do the things I love to do. I love to write the books, and no one will do them for me. So that’s what I do, and everything else kind of goes to other people.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that advice. I’m going to use it. What is on my plate that someone else can do? What is on my plate that no one else can do? Yeah, probably going to use it too much. Do you — I think I know the answer to this. Oftentimes, people need a mentor. They need a role model, somebody to listen, somebody to give guidance. Is that your husband for you?

Finding Your Next Level

Suzy Karadsheh: My husband does a lot of it, but I will admit that where we are in our business right now, and now that he works with me, he ended up quitting his career to help with the business. We now have — we’re in the process of finding a coach to work with both of us, because at some point, because now he’s just as close to the work as I am, and we’ve been doing it together for several years. And in fact, our oldest daughter is joining the business.

Kirk Bachmann: Wow!

Suzy Karadsheh: So it’s kind of gotten a little bit too complicated with people and family, and now we — feelings and emotions. Yeah. So now we — we really did have to invest in finding another person to come in from the outside and be like, okay, let’s help you to your next level. So I think stages of your career and stages of your business will kind of call to different people to help you with different things, but I also have some great family friends and people from — you know — our small group at church that have really poured into us a lot of love, prayers, and — and care. But yeah, from a business perspective, it’s now up to our executive coach.

From Recipe to Cupboard

Kirk Bachmann: That’s fascinating, and — and as the business keeps growing, you know, well beyond recipes today, you’ve got that sort of thriving pantry line, right? The olive oils, the spices that people are just a little obsessed about, right? And so, walk us through that leap. How do you decide, Suzy, to go from publishing a recipe to actually putting a product in someone’s cupboard? How are these business ideas conceptualized, and — and how do these opportunities present themselves?

Suzy Karadsheh: Okay, again —

Kirk Bachmann: That’s a lot. There — that’s a lot.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, it’s a lot. So the — the olive oils started — but 2017, ’18, when people started asking me like, “Hey, what olive oil do you use? I’m not finding the right thing. What about this spice that you mentioned? It sounds a little unique. It’s not available,” and so the more and more these questions came to us, then my husband and I are like, well, people need to find the ingredients that we use in order to make these recipes.
And so — randomly, I saw somebody tag me on Facebook, and she was talking about her family’s extra virgin olive oil from Greece that she and her husband bring all the way from Greece. And she’s like, “Oh, I’m so glad I made this recipe.” And then she reached out to me because I said, “Oh, that — what a kind comment.” And then she said, “Would you be interested in my family’s Greek extra virgin olive oil?” I thought, yeah, I’m interested in olive oil, of course. So she sent me some just as a gift, and I loved it so much. And then I said to my husband, “I think this is crazy, but what if we asked Diane how we can get a hold of her family in Greece, and how can we bring this olive oil to the people who do — who make our recipes?” And that’s really how it started.
So I’ll tell you, I’m not a great business person. What I learned to be good at is listen to people’s requests and kind of find the opportunities based on what people who follow me need, or our customer, or our audience, or our readers are interested in, and so I took that leap and had a call with her, and she said, “I don’t know, I don’t know how we can do it, but let me call them over in Greece,” and that was the start of it. So we’ve been doing — now we have Greek olive oils, Italian, Spanish, all sorts, and then we did the same with the spices. And we found some suppliers who could provide the unique sumac and Urfa biber and the unique spices that I love to use. And we started very small. We just did a very small like, “Hey guys, we have this if you’re interested,” and then it was a beta situation for a while, and we kept running out of products, and so we decided — okay, I think it’s going to be a permanent deal, and so here we are.

Kirk Bachmann: I love the concept of staging, but also listening to your customers and what they ask for, in my opinion, makes you a great business leader. Honestly, thank you. It’s so important, rather than trying to force something upon someone, right?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: And underneath all of that success, that business success, you know, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re — you’re a great cook first and foremost, right? There’s a craft here. There’s a craft that you’ve studied, and so I’d love to spend a little bit of time on the food itself, and perhaps not that you would give any secrets away, but take us inside your process when you sit down to develop a new recipe.

The Pantry Tells Me What to Make

Kirk Bachmann: Let’s say it’s for the book. Where do you begin? Do you go all the way back to being a little girl in Egypt? And who are you picturing? It’s a perfect segue. Who are you picturing on the other end? Obviously, probably a customer, but that probably varies as well. So, again, another challenging question. But these are such great feedback for our students who are thinking about this. So — yeah, give us all your secrets.

Suzy Karadsheh: For me, recipe development — I don’t think very hard about it. I honestly just try to work with what I have. So the pantry always tells me what I need to make. Like if I have extra of anything, that’s where I go, or maybe I’m out in the market and I find something like zucchinis everywhere right now, and I’m — you know — I’m like okay I have zucchini I gotta do something with it, and I don’t think so hard and I never write the recipe until I make it. So I’ll just start cooking.
And I know — others on our team — we have a team of contributors and cooks, and editors who now contribute to The Mediterranean Dish. And others will write the recipe first. So the first time one of my editors was here, and I started developing a recipe. She’s like, “Where is the recipe?” I’m like, “I don’t know yet. I have no idea. But I’m working on that.” So I just like — okay. I — so the ingredient is the first inspiration for me. I just take it. I want to make something with it, and I’ll just do it, and then I’ll write the recipe down. And I’m always — always picturing a lazy cook. I don’t know why, but that’s probably because I am lazy. So I’m either picturing somebody really busy but really cares about what they put in their body, or somebody who just is like excited about new flavors and they’re like, “Give me all the olive oil, give me all the sumac. I — I want to play with it.” So it’s more creative to me than it is science at all. I just throw it together and hope to God it works.

Kirk Bachmann: When you — when you — along those lines, and I think you’re very very humble. My favorite part was you work with what you have, what’s in the pantry, which is — you know — just a really — it sounds simple, but it’s a really straightforward way to approach it. When you were — after you wrote your first cookbook, I should say, was there anything that you completely changed as you approached the second, or did that first recipe work and you went — I’m going to do another one exactly the way I did the first one?

Suzy Karadsheh: No, I — I actually started writing the second book one month after the first one was — right away, just almost like part two. Okay. Yeah, and it was because I couldn’t wait to get back to it because it was so much fun. But also, as I worked on the first book, I kept thinking of like, what do people need next? And so Simply Dinner was born out of again people’s biggest question and people’s biggest concern that I always heard was, “What’s for dinner? Like, what am I gonna make for dinner?” And there’s so much pressure and stress around putting something on the table. And so Simply Dinner came to me as the idea was, I want to write about how to keep the love and ditch the labor. So then we cook. We cooked easy recipes that came together very quickly on a given weeknight, and Simply Dinner was it. Again, not a whole lot of processing; just went with it, and it worked.

True to the Skeleton

Kirk Bachmann: Here’s what I really admire about your work. And what I’ve researched myself, it’s — you know — it’s about making — I feel that you’ve made Mediterranean cooking somewhat approachable, maybe even unfussy. But you haven’t sacrificed anything. You haven’t dumbed it down, right? This is how you do it, right? And that’s probably kind of a hard balance, right? Yeah. How — how do you — this is a tough question. I — I’d have to ask myself too. How do you stay true to authentic traditional flavors while still keeping a recipe, let’s say, simple enough that a nervous novice or beginner is not afraid to try it, but you don’t compromise the integrity of what you know to be the true recipe?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, yeah, it’s — hard. It’s hard. It’s — it’s — it’s very hard. But I will tell you what I think — what has really — and my — I’m working on a third book right now, and that question is in my head often because the Mediterranean spans like 22 countries, and we — the way I — the way I cook sort of blurs the borders. Like I don’t really pause to say this particular dish can only be made in Spain. I don’t think about it that way. I do know, you know, like paella is obviously Spanish, and I’ll do my best to create it with what I have.
So I have been able to learn what’s authentic to me is different than what is traditional, and the — the good thing about people of the Mediterranean in general who have given me so much grace over the years is this: as long as you’re trying to be close to it, it’s not going to be 100% exactly how their yaya or nonna made it, because every kitchen is different, even within the Mediterranean, even within Egypt, where I was born and raised, my mom made her stuffed grape leaves different than our neighbors, and so I just keep that in mind. Like, what does — what is the — the skeleton of the recipe need to look like? What is super true about it that cannot be changed? And then, what is something I can do to help make this recipe accessible to someone who lives in the United States? They’re not necessarily cooking with the same exact ingredients. So, what is close to something and offer that? But while also mentioning — traditionally you would do this, but you could also do this, and people have been very gracious about it for the most part.

Kirk Bachmann: It — it brings — it triggers a memory in my mind from years and years ago, and historically we think about Spain when we think about paella, but I was in Stockholm, Sweden, and that — that particular area where I was, there was a neighborhood that had a tradition of making paella together. They had a big sort of open space. It was the largest paella pan I’d ever seen in my life. But everyone sort of brought their own thing. There were a few sort of in-charge elders who were really passionate about the sofrito [00:43:20] and they handled the rice, but the families brought their own. They may have had chicken and sausage over around this corner, or area, and someone may have had mussels and clams and something over here. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: It was sophisticated yet —

Suzy Karadsheh: But very community driven. Like all about like you all brought something to the dish and that made it so much more layered with joy.

A Table Loud with Laughter

Kirk Bachmann: It was — yeah — yeah — layered with joy. And speaking of community, I’ll say first my wife’s name is Gretchen. Her favorite store in the world is Anthropologie. That’s a plug. There’s a plug. Anthropologie. There you go. You’ve extended sort of your philosophy, not just around food, but the table, to this 36-piece tabletop collection. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about that. That’s really about gathering, right? And does designing the way people set their table connect you all the way back to your meals at home after you left the market and brought the food home to your mom?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah, yeah. So when Anthropologie reached out to do — they wanted to do a tabletop that was inspired by the Mediterranean, and so — and they were so lovely to work with. I was actually — I didn’t know what to expect. It’s a big company, and first of all, I thought, why me? There are more qualified people, but I was very humbled by it. And they flew me out to visit with the team in Philadelphia, and the first conversation we had was not the color palette, not what it needed to look like. But they said, just tell us about how do people eat? How do you envision a Mediterranean table? What’s different about it?
And they really just listened to the way I described the abundance, the joy. Again, it’s not so much about a fancy, super manicured table, but more about — I am looking at a table that brings people together and that makes everyone feel very comfortable. That is just like a table loud with laughter and people reaching across and eating family style and not so much as a strict four-course meal or anything like that, and so then we started talking about well, what would the dishes need to look like in order to bring that vibe of community and relaxed, breezy Mediterranean inviting table? And we went from there. And I was very fortunate to be able to like talk about things like — well, you know, the bowls that we would use would be a little bit more shallow because we don’t want to use too many different dishes at once. We can use the same bowl for pasta or a salad, and that was really eye opening to some of the people designing the pieces. And I’m — not fussy.

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. I’m looking at it online over on my other screen, and it just — gorgeous. I mean, just beautiful. Even the — I’m gonna call it goldware because it’s not silverware; it’s goldware.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: It just — it’s festive. It’s — yeah — it’s lively. I just — congratulations. I think that’s just beautiful.

Suzy Karadsheh: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no, it was a great experience, and then I think the biggest piece of it — they really listened to what the vibe of the Mediterranean was, which was anything but fussy and extra manicured. That was more down to earth, very inviting, very comfortable.

Take Us Somewhere in the Mediterranean

Kirk Bachmann: Very comfortable — that’s the word that comes to mind. Tell us a little bit about — I don’t really know anything about the culinary trips that you’re planning. Tuscany, I believe, is one of the areas. Tell me about that.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah. So four years ago, we started taking culinary tours to the Mediterranean. So we did Puglia, Italy.

Kirk Bachmann: Sign me up.

Suzy Karadsheh: You can come on the next one. Yeah, we did Greece, we did Spain, and we just got back from Tuscany and Umbria. We’re looking at Sicily, Egypt, and a few other places in the future. And again, those were born out of people’s curiosity. People who follow The Mediterranean Dish, who are like, “Would you ever teach a class like in person? Would you ever take us somewhere in the Mediterranean?” I’m like, “I’ll take you. Let’s go.” And so I was fortunate to be a guinea pig for Penguin Random House, and they were starting a program with Taste, and I went on those and hosted these trips, and now we do them just for The Mediterranean Dish community. I just — everyone is welcome. Yeah, it’s great. It’s a good time.

The Same Act, Start to Finish

Kirk Bachmann: You know, at Escoffier, we — we talk about hospitality not just as service, but very in a very similar way that you mentioned. It’s hospitality is about how you make people feel, right?

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Kirk Bachmann: And in — in listening to you for the last hour and reading prior, it strikes me that’s been a kind of a single throughline, if you will, of your entire career — from the — from the souk to the cookbook to the dinner table. It’s kind of feels all the same. It’s very consistent. You haven’t sort of ventured out, and then I’m looking at these photos. I’m like, if I envisioned what your dinner plates would look like if you created them, that’s what they would look like. Exactly right. It’s so genuine.
I really have to ask this one. This is not on the script. Just listening to — I’m fascinated when people hear Mediterranean cuisine. They often — I imagine, as as I do — I think about Italy. I think about Greece, and of course, your culinary roots are distinctly Egyptian.

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah.

Egyptian, Through and Through

Kirk Bachmann: If you could prepare one authentic meal from your childhood from Egypt for someone who’s never experienced your culture before — or your table before — what would that be, or what story would you tell?

Suzy Karadsheh: So Egyptian cuisine, or where I grew up, is like really eclectic because Port Said is right on the Mediterranean. It’s the entry to the Suez Canal. We were more connected to other parts of the Mediterranean than really other Egyptian parts. So a lot of my mom’s cooking had Italian flavors, Turkish flavors, Greek flavors, without really necessarily sitting down and going, “Now, Susie, this is Greek or this is Italian.” And it just is what she cooked. It was kind of a melting pot of flavors.
But if I were to think about like what is truly Egyptian, it would probably be stuffed vegetables, which we call mashi. You core the veggies like bell peppers or zucchini or other veggies. You core them all, and you kind of stuff them with this rice and herb mixture and meat, a little bit of red sauce, and it goes in the oven. My mom makes a beautiful meat pie using phyllo. It’s sort of like a derivative of spanakopita [00:50:34] because again, you know, we’re all — we’re all connected. But in Egypt, they make — they — it’s a beautiful flaky phyllo meat pie. It’s just stuffed with meat and onions, and just beautiful warm flavors of allspice and nutmeg. I’d probably make that. I’d make my dad’s salata, the salad, which he was really in charge of that because that’s all he could make. Just tomato, cucumber, typical Mediterranean salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, and all of that juice kind of becomes the salad whiskey that we like to drink by the shop. We’re kind of weird.

Kirk Bachmann: Really, really. Wow, wow.

Make It Your Job

Suzy Karadsheh: Yeah. So it’s again simple stuff, but it’s — just —

Kirk Bachmann: Just beautiful. I mean, Suzy, you’ve built this remarkable business legacy, raised your family, written best-selling cookbooks, inspired millions of people to gather around the table. When people talk about you 20 or 30 years from now — what do you hope they say mattered most about — not necessarily your recipes or your food, but about your life’s work. I’m fascinated by it because we’re talking about thousands and thousands of years of developing this beautiful Mediterranean cuisine, and you’ve taken it to another level. You’ve sort of met your customers where they are. You’ve introduced them to things that maybe they’ve thought about. I’m thinking about it differently now, and I’ve been a chef for 30 years, and it’s just fascinating. What do you want people to remember?

Suzy Karadsheh: Okay, this may be a roundabout way to answer it, but one of the things that my dad always said to me, and it just will never leave my head. He would just often pause and go, “Make it your job to put a smile on somebody’s face every single day.” He would say that in some way or another, and so he has passed away now seven years ago, and that just will not leave my brain.
And so, whenever I’m working on something, and even in writing my first cookbook, that was the very first thing that came to my mind when I first sat down to write the very first recipe for that cookbook. Make it your job to put a smile on someone’s face, and The Mediterranean Dish’s — and our mission is to help you eat well and live joyfully, so I really hope that some day down the road that I would just be remembered for joy and nothing else.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s a beautiful response. That wasn’t roundabout. That was perfect. That was perfect. And I love your father’s quote too. So thoughtful. In a similar way, my — my father’s quote, I would say, was always just try to be a great cook for life. He’d always — he — he could see my anxiety, he could see my frustration if somebody didn’t like something, and he would always just encourage me to be a great cook for life.

Suzy’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann: Boy, we’ve talked about so many wonderful things: the table, the food, the approach, the family. The name of our show, Suzy, is The Ultimate Dish. So I cannot let you go until you tell us, in your mind, what is the ultimate dish.

Suzy Karadsheh: Oh man — is — so — a specific dish or just — or memory? Or memory —

Kirk Bachmann: — or table setting, or what would you want someone to serve you right now.

Suzy Karadsheh: What? Wow, that’s —

Kirk Bachmann: Let’s say you were walking through the market — walking through the market with your dad again and just holding your hand, what would you want to put together in the kitchen with your mom?

Suzy Karadsheh: I think it would just be probably one of her super hearty casseroles, very humble, very not a big deal. She makes a great chicken and potato dish with onions and sliced tomatoes, and it just fills the house with aroma, like that — that vibe of like you smell it and you’re like — grandma’s here. So I think it would be something like that — just something that reeks of Mediterranean flavor — and that’s the —

Kirk Bachmann: Perfect answer. See, everyone will be able to tell that this wasn’t scripted. That was a very passionate, almost emotional response. Thank you for that. And Suzy, thank you so much for spending time with us. This was absolutely lovely and continued success. I can’t wait until my starter kit gets here. I’m going to send you a picture, and I’m going to — maybe I’ll make the halibut again with the tomatoes and send you a picture for sure.

Suzy Karadsheh: Oh, thank you! I’m just so grateful you had me over. This was so much fun. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Kirk Bachmann: Everything you say, “I had you over.” It’s like I’m coming over to your house for dinner. I just love it. You’re the consummate host, hostess. Thank you so much. I love it. Thank you again, Suzy. All right. Appreciate it. Bye.

Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Dish podcast brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links, and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify and subscribe to support our show. This helps us reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.