when you want, where you want.
Chef Jackie Carnesi Can’t Resist Kellogg’s Enchiladas
Illustration: Margalit Cutler
When chef Jackie Carnesi was tasked with reopening the iconic Williamsburg restaurant Kellogg’s Diner, she knew it was going to be “a hell of an undertaking.” A year later, she’s still navigating the very particular and seemingly never-ending challenges of running a 24-hour diner. “But I mean, all challenges are good challenges in my mind,” she says. Her work has defined most of her 14 years in New York — before Kellogg’s, Carnesi worked in another canonical kitchen of Brooklyn, Roberta’s, then as executive chef at Greenpoint hotspot Nura; now, she’s tackling another elusive project in the West Village. “I’ve been planning my escape as long as I’ve been here,” she says, “but I just can’t imagine myself anywhere else at this point.” In the past week, Carnesi snuck away to the Rockaways for Rippers’ cheese fries and up to Greenpoint for a several-course spread at Bernie’s — not that she necessarily needs to outsource her meals these days. “If I don’t feel full, I just end up grabbing whatever’s closest,” she says. “And for me, that’s always tortilla chips and queso.”
Monday, August 18
Nearly every Monday in the summer, my boyfriend, Blake, my son, Hunter, and I ritualistically head to the Rockaways, and today is no different, despite its being 65 degrees, overcast, and gloomy.
I don’t usually pack lunch — my go-to Rockaways meal is the salmon tiradito or the ceviche classico, or both, from La Cevicheria — but last night we were sent home from a barbecue with leftover macaroni salad and grilled chicken. I consider myself to be somewhat of a chicken-salad master, and my specialty is utilizing whatever is living in the fridge. Today that includes super-sweet yellow corn my son decided he was not willing to try a couple days ago; minced jalapeño; celery; some ramps I have conservatively been using since pickling them this past spring; diced red onions I let sit in a little vinegar, sugar, and salt while I was cutting everything else up; light kewpie; tons of herbs (dill, mint, cilantro); lemon juice; white balsamic vinegar; and olive oil. I pack the dueling salads, and we head off.
Hunter is hungry and craving cheese fries, so we walk down to Rippers. I say I’m not hungry, and I’m not, but there will of course be a fry tax as soon as those hot, super-seasoned bad boys hit the table. I treat myself to a Michelada because why the hell not? We cut the day short on account of the less than stellar weather and finish off the afternoon with a nap.
Blake and I are celebrating our first anniversary tonight, and he’s made a reservation at Crevette, so we get all dolled up and head into the city. We love Ed Szymanski’s food, so we ordered a lot: chilled mussels, red-shrimp carpaccio, octopus skewers, crab agnolotti, Dover sole, and four more dishes. Everything was delicate but flavorful. I order the salted lemon martini and Blake orders the combinación, though we end up switching because I like his drink better and he loves me. We finish off the meal with the rhum cake, and Ed kindly sends us the Basque chocolate cheesecake. The rhum cake is easily the best thing I’ve put in my mouth all year, satisfyingly warm and gooey, with bursts of grilled pineapple and a delightfully unctuous butterscotch sauce.
We decide to mosey around Soho and find a spot to get a drink before calling it a night. Blue Ribbon Brasserie’s bar is full, and Corner Store is unsurprisingly “fully committed for the evening,” so we walk over to Balthazar, have our respective vodka-slightly-dirty and gin-twist martinis and head home.
Tuesday, August 19
Tuesday is the start of my workweek at Kellogg’s. It’s been a year since we reopened, and every day brings a new set of feelings. A 24-hour diner is just a completely different animal, but it’s helped me grow and exercise a different set of chef muscles that I’ve never worked before.
Pretty shortly after I show up, my dear friend Jim Shack comes in for lunch. He has brought with him some beautiful ceramic bowls I commissioned him to make, all delicately packed into a massive macaroni-yellow Louis Vuitton shopping bag because, as he put it, he “can’t have me walking around carrying a Costco bag.”
Mere minutes later, one of my good friends, LuEmma, comes in for lunch. This is a big deal because Luemma, along with her wife, Pia, moved back to Australia eight months ago, and I’m elated to see her. As we’re catching up, who taps me on the shoulder but Pia herself! Pia! Who is supposed to be in Australia and not on this trip! I sob and laugh and cry some more.
Once I compose myself, I sit down with Jim, Pia, and Lu while they eat lunch and I watch adoringly. I periodically pick at their flat nachos, Cubano, and wings, you know, to check for quality.
Wednesday, August 20
It’s another “three hard-boiled eggs with chile crisp” morning. Pia, Lu, and I have made plans to have dinner at Bernie’s tonight with their gaggle of Australian friends. I want to keep my meals light today because I know we’re going to order heavy, as one is wont to do at Bernie’s.
The weather is a little chilly and gray for my liking, and it’s feeling like soup weather. At work, I head to the kitchen after answering a few emails, and heat up some chicken soup, sub rice for noodles. I dress it up with our house salsa macha, lime, some shredded Jack cheese, cilantro, and a little avocado on the side, because hot avocado is gross. The soup hits every spot and gets me geared up to work on some new dishes I’ve been thinking about adding to the menu.
Most of the food at this iteration of Kellogg’s is Tex-Mex inspired. I was born and raised in South Texas, right on the coast. My house is maybe a five-minute drive from Mexico. My friends and I would often venture across the border for happy hour in our Catholic-school uniforms. The food is just incredible down there. There’s very little diversity — it’s primarily Mexican food, and mostly mom-and-pop Mexican food. For me, that’s still the taste of home.
I cruise over to Bernie’s with some goodies for the staff because they are always so gracious. Dinner is a celebration of the return of our prodigal friends, and we order accordingly: mozzarella sticks, baked clams, wedge salad, baby back ribs, chicken parm, vinegar chicken, a burger, and a sundae, and they throw in a lemon meringue on the house. There’s also a handful of martinis ordered among the seven of us, but who’s counting?
Thursday, August 21
Around 9 a.m., Hunter, Blake, and I head out to the Rockaways to watch the waves made by Hurricane Erin. I grab an oat-milk cortado — hot, because it’s a frigid 65 degrees this morning — from La Cantine for the drive out.
Texas beaches get a bad rap, but I miss the beach in South Padre Island, around where I grew up, pretty terribly. The first couple of years I was in New York, I didn’t realize there were easily accessible beaches; once I did, I became kind of addicted. I bought a car during the pandemic with the intent of using it pretty much exclusively to get to the beach. (It’s a 1983 Mercedes, and it’s diesel, so it does not fare well in the winter.)
Once we arrive at the Rockaways 45 minutes later, I’m feeling like a second cortado wouldn’t hurt, so we swing by Phase Coffee on 96th. Normally, I’m a one-coffee-a-day-max kind of girl, but something about the limits I pushed my body to last night, culinarily speaking, call for a little more caffeine. We watch the waves for a while and then I have to head in to work.
By the time I get to the diner, I’m starving and have what reads like the story of the very hungry caterpillar: Eight tortilla chips, four fries, three bites of Hunter’s burger (cheese, pickles, special sauce), six more fries, and as much of his ice-cold Dr Pepper as is possible before he starts to protest.
An hour later, I have a photo shoot with Carissa, our in-house photographer, of the aforementioned new dishes I’m putting on the menu: roast chicken and branzino sets, classic Buffalo wings, a broccoli-rabe melt, a big green salad, a fat slice of yellow cake with chocolate icing, and an upgraded mac ’n’ cheese. We decide some of the shots require a little action, so I end up eating a few bites of the rabe melt, mac ’n’ cheese, and a single bite of the cake (how demure).
I make ginger-cilantro chicken-bone broth in an attempt to balance out the last 24 hours, but when one of our regulars turned friend, Logan, comes in and insists (i.e., just asks once) that we go grab a bite to eat at JR & Son after my shift, I crumble.
We share the shrimp cocktail, the grilled octopus, branzino, and a symphony of perfectly cooked cannellini beans, crispy potatoes, and more octopus. The entire menu is great, but apparently we’re in the mood for seafood. The kitchen also sends out a killer plate of long beans, and we manage to graciously (maybe stupidly) decline a complimentary baked Alaska. I throw back 6-to-8 soda-and-bitters throughout the course of our dinner — responsible! — and the bone broth goes into my fridge at home, untouched.
Friday, August 22
I start the day off with a huge glass of water, my vitamin and probiotic regimen (if you can call “once in a while” a regimen), and a glass of Super Greens powder, protein powder, and some Bloom collagen powder I was gifted and have never used before. I feel good.
I even go to the gym, and when I get home, I crush half a carton of Good Culture cottage cheese straight from the container. I have now ingested one-tenth of the quantity of cottage cheese I currently have in my refrigerator. I have to stockpile because I can find it so infrequently. I suspect it’s because everyone loves it as deeply as I do. It’s creamy, rich, and high-protein. I’m as surprised as you are at how passionate I am about cottage cheese. Old age will really sneak up on you.
I hop on a Citi Bike and bike over to the McCarren Park Pool for a quick dip before work. Summer is waning, and I intend on squeezing every drop of aquatic time out of it before the big S-A-D hits. The water is chilly after the last few days of cooler weather, so I spend roughly 15 seconds in the water before I get out and take a nap on the warm concrete, not unlike a lizard.
I clean up and walk into Williamsburg to run a couple of errands on my way into work. I point myself in the direction of Ten Ichi and grab one hijiki and one spicy tuna onigiri and a jasmine green tea, which I munch as I walk down Metropolitan. The rice is a little less seasoned than usual but still good.
Right before I walk into the diner, I realize I haven’t had a single fresh fruit or vegetable today, so I stop in the organic market across the street and pick up a nectarine. Stone fruit has been impeccable this summer. Watermelon, take some notes; you really let me down this season. I sneak onto the roof of the diner before I take my first bite, so I can enjoy it while basking in the sun, as the good Lord intended. As expected, it’s perfect — juicy, tart, sweet, both firm and soft.
In the kitchen, I order a plate of Tex-Mex enchiladas, this time to actually check for quality. They come out looking like they were fished out of a cheesy swamp, blanketed in chile sauce and melted Monterey Jack and cheddar. In other words, perfect. I take a single exquisite bite and offer it to the line cooks, who devour it with haste.
Saturday, August 23
I switch it up today and eat only two hard-boiled eggs, sans chile crisp — just something so I’m not starving mid-workout — and make another Super Greens, protein, and collagen concoction before heading out the door.
I have lunch plans with Pia at Okonomi. I’m shocked that neither of us have been here before. Pia orders the standard set, and I opt for the larger one on account of the vegetables my body continues to yearn for. To call it “girl dinner” would be offensive and trite, as it is so much more than that, but I do love any form of eating that includes small amounts of many things. My plate includes sake salmon, very lightly pickled watermelon radish, steamed egg, yellow squash, broccoli rabe in some sort of wasabi sauce, and a little quenelle of potato salad. Both sets come with miso soup and hot tea. It is exactly what I wanted: healthy, tasty, filling.
As tranquil as my morning was, my afternoon is the opposite of that. We have a 35-person wedding in our back room, which is taking place simultaneously with brunch service, hands down one of our busiest services, and a shift change. While all this is happening, the walk-in fridge in which we store all our prep is reading at a steamy 55 degrees. As soon as we get all the wedding entrées out, it’s all hands on deck to move every bit of prep downstairs into one of two of our other walk-ins, which are full of produce and dairy and meat. A really shitty game of Jenga.
I’m then told that not one but both of our ice machines are completely out of ice and have stopped working, so I send someone out to buy ice — a lot of it. Then the porters let me know the temperature is dropping on our hot water. I go downstairs and see that both heaters are working as they should; we’re just so busy that we’re quickly running through all of our hot water, but that will self-correct in the impending lull before dinner service. Restaurant work is really just a game of “Is this the right temperature?”
Just then, I look down at my wrist and see that the gold bracelet Blake got me for our anniversary has slipped off my wrist. If I had a dog, I feel like this would be the moment I’d get a phone call notifying me that it got hit by a car.
At about 9 p.m., I order a honey-butter chicken biscuit for a quality check. I’m thinking about taking it off the menu. One bite in, I realize that was a really stupid thought. Slather anything in warm honey butter and it’ll be good, but this. This is really, really good.
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