By Chef Alexis Hernandez
Updated March 2026
When dinner is not a performance
Some nights, dinner is a steak with a real side dish and a plan.
Other nights, it is crackers and a martini in a quiet kitchen — and that counts too.
I do not say that as a joke.
I say it as somebody who cooks for a living, thinks about food all day, and still knows there are nights when the best thing on the table is the thing that asks the least of you.
The other night, I made my Piedmont Club Buttered Crackers. The ones that taste a little Southern, a little indulgent, and just polished enough to make you feel like you are getting away with something. I tossed them in clarified butter, baked them until they were deep gold and fragrant, and ate them with a cold martini and no interest in turning the evening into more than it needed to be.
That meal would not impress everybody.
I am fine with that.
What simple food is really doing
There is a certain kind of food writing that acts like dinner only counts if it looks complete on paper. A protein. A vegetable. A starch. A plan. Maybe a sauce if somebody is feeling ambitious.
That is not how people always eat.
And if we are being honest, it is not how people always want to eat either.
Sometimes dinner is about appetite.
Sometimes it is about mood.
Sometimes it is about what sounds good after a long day when the idea of chopping one more thing feels insulting.
That does not make the meal lazy. It makes it honest.
Why these crackers made the book
I think people are often too hard on simple food, especially when it is the food that gets them through a strange day, a tired night, or the kind of evening when standing in the kitchen with a drink in your hand feels more realistic than setting the table.
That is part of why those crackers made it into my cookbook.
Not because they are grand.
Because they are real.
I do not only care about the food I am proud to serve to other people. I care about the food people actually eat. The things that pull a night together. The little rituals that feel smaller than dinner and somehow still manage to do the job.
A good cracker can do that.
Especially one with enough butter and salt to remind you that pleasure does not have to arrive in courses to count.
What dinner is sometimes for
That is the part people forget. Not every meal has to prove something. Not every plate has to be balanced, photogenic, or worth explaining. Some nights, the win is simply feeding yourself something that tastes good and letting that be enough.
And maybe that is why I still have a soft spot for the foods that sound a little ridiculous when you say them out loud.
Crackers for dinner.
Toast at the counter.
A bowl of something simple eaten without ceremony.
Those meals are not failures. They are part of a real eating life.
Because sometimes dinner is not about performance.
It is about relief.
And if buttered crackers and a martini can get you there, I would say dinner did exactly what it was supposed to do.
