Q&A: Jonah Reider of Pith Supper Club and Alto Essentials 

Nowadays, snagging tickets to a dinner at Pith Supper Club—hosted by Jonah Reider—is still as great of a feat as it was in 2015 when it all started out of his dorm room at Columbia University. Instagram followers and mailing list subscribers have to keep their eyes peeled for new postings and e-mails from Reider in order to get a seat at the table.

Reider, now 25, is still living in New York City and has evidently grown out of his title of being a “dorm-room chef” as dubbed by The New York Times in 2017. His creative and artistic growth over the past 4 years since starting Pith has been exponential and rewarding. While Pith is no longer at the forefront of his career aspirations, I had a chance to sit down with Reider to talk about this current, new iteration of Pith as well as other projects he has been focusing on such as his new column in Food & Wine Magazine and his cannabis company Alto Essentials.

For people who don’t know who you are, how would you describe yourself and what you do?

I’m eclectically interested in home cooking and the joy and empowerment it can insight in people. I have been working on different projects—hosting a supper club out of my apartment sporadically to have strangers come over for a dinner party, writing this food column all about tools, tips, and tricks to become a confident, improvisational host, making television videos, and consulting with people for private events or hospitality projects. In all of this type of work, I’m just generally excited about how hospitality can be very do-it-yourself. It can be really connecting and empowering for anybody.

Recently, your mantra of “do-it-yourself” hospitality and hosting has been at the forefront of your brand. What do you think is the magic behind the “do-it-yourself” movement?

For the past few years, most of my work has centered around serving food to people which I definitely enjoy, but it wasn’t what I wanted to build my career around. It didn’t excite me to think about supporting myself by doing private events, cooking, serving, and cleaning all the time.

I knew I didn’t want to open a restaurant or that I didn’t want to be a chef. It was difficult for me to navigate where my lane was in the food or hospitality industry when I didn’t want to be a chef and I didn’t want to run a restaurant.

I reflected on what I was doing and I realized what makes “do-it-yourself” hospitality so appealing is that it's in a home. It's not a restaurant. You don't have the same expectations and you don't have the same experience. Dining at home is powerful. It’s really exciting, educational, and social. I wanted to zero on that, and it has given me a better framework to imagine all of my different projects.

Pith has undergone an evolution from what it was initially when it started at Columbia, and the Supper Club has evolved multiple times. In your most recent newsletter, you mentioned a number of changes Pith has undergone. Why did you change the supper club format? 

For a long time, I thought I needed to show everyone that I was an amazing cook by using expensive ingredients and delicious wines. I never really went out to fancy restaurants until my own supper club was poppin’. I got caught up in this world of fine dining where it feels like chefs at every fancy restaurant were always talking about “oh, I really want my restaurant to feel like a home” or “I’m really inspired by my family’s cooking” and it seemed so goofy because actually, if you go to these restaurants, it's not like a house at all. It’s completely unlike a house. The hospitality industry has really misunderstood what hospitality is, and they're really force feeding a version of hospitality that people do not naturally desire. I don't find it relaxing or luxurious to feel stiff in a dining space only to feel like there's a lot of codes of action, etiquettes, hierarchies, and expenses to follow. All of that inhibits a relaxing social experience.

Instead, I hope my work can show people that anybody can be an amazing host. You don't need to be a good cook to be a good host. Hosting is creating your own hospitality in your own space. It can be the most rewarding process for yourself and everybody in your life. It's so satisfying to start setting up a space that you want to invite people into and use food, but also music (or whatever floats your boat) to express yourself through hosting and hospitality in a much more honest way. My house, that I shared with my partner, in this constant state of tweaking and refining the way it’s set up because we love hosting. 

How does the new space that Pith is in now feel different from the last one?

It's smaller. I don't feel like I'm beholden to a landlord who has expectations for what I'm doing. It's not a giant space. It feels much more like an actual apartment. I no longer hire a sous chef. Everything is done by me: serving, cleaning, preparing, lighting the candles in the bathroom. The whole nine yards. 

Instead of $145, I charge $40 per person which is about the cost of ingredients for me to cook a ­sweet meal without ordering from a Michelin restaurant distributor little tins of caviar or wild foraged mushrooms. I'm enjoying going to Whole Foods and being like, "I'm gonna cook you all a super nice dinner that you could make if you went to the grocery store.”

Do you see a change in the kind of people coming to these dinners now that the price point has changed?

I’m so happy I’m no longer running the 10-person dinner with a fancy tasting menu because it was just not what I wanted to do. No longer doing it has made me realize that I don’t miss it at all. 

The new price point feels a lot more accessible. The people who are coming are diverse in age and location. It has more to do with social media versus my mailing list. When I release tickets on social media, I get a much younger audience, but in general the new price point is way more accessible. 

For me, I'm comfortable because I'm charging less. It's more relaxing for me to cook. I'm not anxious about proving myself as the world’s greatest chef. I'm trying to offer what I think is a good hosting experience. We're going to hang out, have good tasting food, drink wine, listen to music, and peace out. That’s all I’m doing. It feels more authentic to me. 

What else have you been up to? Can you tell us about Alto Essentials?

Alto Essentials, to me, is addressing the cannabis facet of that or the intersection of do-it-yourself hospitality and cannabinoids which can be a useful and interesting tool to elevate all types of daily experiences. As the landscape gets legalized, I feel strongly it’ll become equal or likely larger than the alcohol industry in terms of integrating it into our daily routines for leisure, pleasure, and inspiration.

I’ve had all types of people hitting me up about cannabis infused dining so I wanted to create a product and  make my career out of giving people the tools to live their life better through their own creative choices rather than consuming shit that other people have curated for them. 

Edibles are very compelling. They're discrete. They're really efficient. They travel really easily. They're very easily dosed it and tested. I wanted to make an edible or ingestible, but I didn’t like how every cannabis edible on the market is in some way something that you consume. I wanted to make something that was elemental, an ingredient, almost like a condiment people already use and understand how to use in a variety of different ways. I wanted to curate at the nicest version of it and fuse it gently so I created Alto which is a cannabis brand that sells daily essentials, infused gently with cannabinoids and packaged in unique single serving packets. These products are easy to present and consume in a social event at everyone’s individual choice. 

Lastly, what is your column at Food & Wine Magazine about?

My recent column at Food & Wine is called “Supper Club.” It appears twice a month, and I offer broad tips, techniques, tools, or tricks that I’ve found to be helpful in everyday hosting so it’s not recipe focused in terms of measured recipes, but with every column, I try to give at least 5 examples of what people can do based on the content I’m writing about. 

It’s so much chiller than working at a restaurant, and it fits my skill set really well so I would like to do more of that. I want to do more food writing.