Ali Rosen is in the middle of baking sesame-tahini chocolate chip cookies for a book festival when she answers the phone. Rosen’s dog is barking audibly in the background and she tells her to calm down because there’s nothing to be upset about. She’s not wrong. After all, there’s a batch of freshly baked cookies on the counter. What’s there to complain about?
Welcome to Rosen’s sometimes chaotic, always delicious life in New York City. The cookbook author, television host, novelist and mom of three wears many hats — often at the same time.
“I get to talk to people about food all day, which is the greatest job on Earth,” Rosen tells TODAY.com in an exclusive interview.
Rosen’s show, Potluck, which airs on NYC Life, is entering its 16th season. She has published three cookbooks, including her most recent bestseller “15 Minute Meals: Truly Quick Recipes that Don’t Taste like Shortcuts.”
Rosen recently turned the page to a new chapter and it may just be her sweetest one yet — writing romantic comedy novels. In November 2023, her first novel, “Recipes for Second Chances” was published. Her most recent book, “Alternate Endings," came a mere six months later in May 2024.
Rosen’s romantic comedies are as in love with food as they are with love. From all-you-can-eat sushi buffets to a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village, Rosen takes characters on a tour through her favorite restaurants in New York.
“Food is just such an important part of my life. And I think people come together around food. A lot of the food in my books is people having meals together, people using food as love and to show how they feel or how they care,” Rosen says.
Rosen has been writing since she was a teenager — recipes, that is. After graduating from high school in South Carolina, Rosen pursued a career in journalism (including a stop as an NBC page) before realizing she wasn’t nearly as passionate about foreign affairs as she was about food.
“The more that I did news, the more I was, like, I don’t know if I care about this as much as other people seem to care about this,” Rosen says.
A year in India working on a documentary with Point of View—a Mumbai-based non-profit organization aimed at amplifying women’s voices—affirmed there was another path for her — and so she forged a trail in food media.
Her foray into fiction came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone wanted to escape from the fear and stress of a global health crisis, Rosen included. While trying to wrangle three young children, Rosen turned to romance books for the first time in her life.
She found comfort in the predictable happy endings of romantic comedies. “I couldn’t read a book where I didn’t know how things were gonna end up. Like that felt very terrifying,” Rosen said.
Rosen says she wrote “Recipes for Second Chances” without much planning. “I had an idea and I started writing,” she says. Her debut book offers readers a first-class seat to Umbria, Italy, where they meet protagonist Stella Park and her on-again-off-again love interest, Samuel Gordon. One reader wrote on Goodreads that the recipes in the book inspired a purchase of Umbrian lentils.
“Food is just such an important part of my life. And I think people come together around food. A lot of the food in my books is people having meals together, people using food as love and to show how they feel or how they care,” Rosen says.
The book opened even more doors for Rosen, an already successful cookbook author. “I started writing and now I’m kind of like, ‘Oh, I can just make up funny stories about people kissing and food and traveling and have a career out of that too,’” she says.
Rosen says her goal is to write realistic women that you’d want to be friends with, not “the great prodigy of their generation.”
In “Recipes for Second Chances,” Stella struggles with anxiety and has some selfish tendencies; still, readers will root for her and Samuel’s will-they-won’t-they love story. “Alternate Endings” follows Beatrice, a single mother, trying to juggle her professional and personal life, while splitting time between New York City and Ireland.
While the bi-continental experience is not necessarily one that many women can relate to, trying to fall in love while balancing the realities of everyday life is an entirely familiar premise.
“I will always write women who are layered and interesting and have their own problems and have their own anxieties that are also impressive and interesting. They don’t need to be fake,” she says.
As for how writing about food compares to writing about love? Rosen says she feels readers put their trust in her when they open her books.
“I’ve always felt like people cooking my recipes, it’s like, you’re being led into somebody’s home. They’re trusting you. You’re sort of a part of their family for an evening when they make something for dinner,” Rosen says.
She finds even more pressure to give readers what they’re craving with fiction. With a cookbook, she can accept that someone might not have the same palate she does.
“It doesn’t feel quite as personal,” Rosen says.
Romance books served as a mental and emotional escape for Rosen during 2020. Now, it’s her turn to transport readers.
“They’re having a moment with you and your words and you’re giving them an escape from whatever their reality is. I think it’s a very big trust that someone puts you in to sweep them away for a little bit,” she says.
