Ina Garten's roast chicken flopped on a platter — one swap sold it out in 10 minutes
Ina Garten says one of the biggest lessons behind her cookbooks started with a roast chicken nobody wanted. On a recent episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, the Barefoot Contessa founder looked back at the early store experiment that reshaped how she cooks and writes recipes.
Garten bought the tiny Westhampton specialty food store at 30 with zero experience running one, fresh from a career in nuclear energy policy in Washington, D.C. She doesn't see the pivot as random. "If you're cooking, you're testing things," she told Robbins. "But instead of ending up with, like, gibberellic acid, you end up with roast chicken. So which would you rather have?"
The learning curve hit immediately. Garten says she didn't know how to cash out a register, slice smoked salmon, or scale the 12 brownies she made for friends into 1,000 for customers. Her first day as owner left just $87 in the register, and husband Jeffrey did the math: "I don't think you're gonna make it here." By the end of the next day — a busy Friday before Memorial Day weekend — the store was completely cleaned out, and she and the previous owner stayed up all night making chocolate cake and chicken salad.
Simple food, not fancy food
The real lesson came from what was not selling. Garten assumed a Hamptons specialty shop called for fancy dishes, so she made veal with morels and displayed her roast chickens on a huge white platter surrounded by fresh herbs. Nobody wanted them. She moved those same chickens into little red-and-white checkered baskets — and they sold in 10 minutes.
Her takeaway? "People have elegant taste, but they don't want fancy food at home." Garten said the realization "totally informed all of my cookbooks," which she built around dependable recipes, beautiful photography, and ingredients you could actually find at the grocery store.
When Robbins asked for her favorite recipe, Garten skipped anything elaborate and picked a French apple tart with a thin buttery crust, sliced apples, butter, and sugar. "It's a very simple recipe," she said. "I just think it's just gorgeous."