Southern Sass: This 22-Year-Old Chef Started a Restaurant in His Dorm Room

9.09.2016

This 22-Year-Old Chef Started a Restaurant in His Dorm Room

Jonah Reider is a trained jazz pianist whose all-time favorite snack is the rice cake. When he talks, he casually drops the words "dope" and "dank" into sentences, but only as modifiers to d

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National

September 09, 2016

This 22-Year-Old Chef Started a Restaurant in His Dorm Room
And Next Week, Jonah Reider Takes Over One of Chicago's Most Innovative Restaurants

Jonah Reider is a trained jazz pianist whose all-time favorite snack is the rice cake.

When he talks, he casually drops the words "dope" and "dank" into sentences, but only as modifiers to describe complex things like his autumnal celery root soup, and popcorn blanketed in egg yolks he cured in salt and sugar.

One time, not long ago, he crafted a cannabis-champagne gelée, for an event that was covered by High Times magazine. And, for over six months last year, Reider ran a four-seat tasting-menu restaurant called Pith out of his dorm room at Columbia University in New York. So if you already know his name, that probably explains why.

But now, having graduated from college in May, Reider, at the ripe old age of 22, is stepping out of the dorm room and into the kitchen as the guest chef at Intro—a Chicago restaurant that changes its entire concept, menu and chef every few months.

Despite some well-deserved acclaim, this is Reider's first experience in a professional kitchen. On the brink of his debut next Thursday, we called him up to chat about his old dorm room, the problem with BuzzFeed Tasty videos and the downside of cooking while stoned...