Name: Lindsey Close
Location: Denver, Colorado
Who do you like to cook for? I love to cook for my mom or with my mom.
Kitchen superpower: I know the proper extent of salt to use in both savory and sweet applications.
Bought too many Brussels sprouts and don’t know what to do with them? Or ended up filling your shopping bag with sumac instead of saffron? Chicago-native and culinary school grad Lindsey Close is your phone-a-friend. The Allrecipes Allstar comes from a long line of passionate home cooks, and her ability to triage a kitchen situation is uncanny. “I get texts from friends asking, ‘What would you do with this or that?’ or, ‘I bought pork chops instead of pork roast, what should I do?’ I love finding people to nerd out with.”
After realizing that jobs in accounting and consulting didn’t feed her creative side, Close’s lifelong love of cooking, food, and ingredients led her to attend culinary school in Denver, Colorado. As Close puts it, she always knew she would end up in the food world; she just didn’t know how to get there. Now, with a culinary degree and a knack for gathering friends, old and new, together at the dinner table, she’s created ticketed dinners for a cause and just launched a new cookbook called Sunday Supper.
Lindsey Close
Allrecipes: So, clearly cooking has been important to you for a long time. Who were your early kitchen influences?
Lindsey Close: I am the youngest of three girls. My mom’s mom, who unfortunately I didn’t get to meet, was a massive cook. She hosted every holiday, traveled everywhere, and cooked from her travels. So my mom and all of her siblings are good cooks. My mom always took it really seriously, and she wanted us kids to be involved. The kitchen was always the heart of our home. It was attached to the family room, and even if you weren’t cooking, you were hearing it and smelling it. I don’t remember when my interest was piqued, but my 10th birthday was a homemade pasta-making party, and for my 11th, I asked to go to the Italian village downtown. Also, the town I grew up in does a big senior trip to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. I looked at how much that was going to be and researched a trip to Paris. Instead of going to Mexico, I pitched going to Paris to eat with my mom. It was a PowerPoint presentation. She said yes, and we went. That’s when my brain exploded. That’s when I learned about profiteroles, true hot chocolate, and the simplicity of a baguette with good butter.
Tell me about Sunday Supper, which is both an event and the name of your cookbook!
The first dinner was in January 2024. I was living in New York and wanted to host a dinner party to educate people about food insecurity. We’re surrounded by wealth, and I wanted to take a step back. My middle sister is a public school teacher in Chicago, and I’ve learned a lot from her. I wondered if I could combine these two things. I knew I couldn’t pay on my own to have 10 people over for dinner, but what if I did a ticketed event with an RSVP and all proceeds went to No Kid Hungry? It grew from there. The first one was in my New York apartment with my group of girlfriends who were happy to pay $20. When I moved to Denver, I had more space and a backyard, so I could invite 15 to 20 people. I post a menu on Instagram and take it down when dinner is at capacity. I’ve raised almost $1,500 for No Kid Hungry so far. I have some regulars and, at the last one, I had my first stranger–meaning someone with no mutual friends–come, so that was really fun. My goal is one day to eventually partner with restaurants.
For the book, I self-published it. I knew I couldn’t crack 100 recipes because I wanted to recipe-test everything. I thought, why don’t I call it Sunday Supper and use those menus as inspiration? The recipes are seasonally inspired, and some were pulled from pre-existing Sunday Suppers, some were pulled from recipes I was working on, and some are my grandmother’s and mom’s recipes. There are 35 recipes and seven menus. It came so naturally to me. It really proved to me that I want to be a cookbook author.
Lindsey Close
Your style of cooking and entertaining feels very real and attainable, rather than aspirational.
Honestly, I film what I’m actually cooking and what I want to eat that week. I’m not interested in making a six-hour pork tenderloin on a Tuesday. I have a full-time job, and I imagine the people who follow me do too. I try to cook seasonally. I actually have a problem that I can only shop and cook for two days at a time. Honestly, it’s just real life.
Do you have a favorite memory in the kitchen or around the dinner table?
I have two. One is the tradition that my mom and I always make (and my aunt used to), Christmas cookies. We make 12 different batches and drive them around to family and friends. It’s a three-day deal, with Excel spreadsheets and everything, and it really makes the beginning of the holidays sweet, especially now that I don’t live at home.
My favorite Sunday Supper memory is from September, and it was just the most beautiful day. There were 20 people, and everyone was outside in the best mood, and it was then that I decided to write the cookbook. My friend is into photography, and he took all these photos; just seeing it all come together was special. It was the perfect Colorado early September night, and it was the first dinner that I didn’t get stressed out about, and everything just came together, with the right amount of calm, right amount of everything.
Lindsey Close
There’s a super cute pic of you as a kid eating ice cream cake on Instagram, please tell me about that memory.
The recipe is in the cookbook, and it’s my own ice cream cake. I went to summer camp in Wisconsin from 2003 to 2017, and that photo is from the 2003 banquet at the end of the session. I was the youngest kid there, and everyone was sneaking me the extra pieces of that Grasshopper Pie. It had an Oreo crust with mint-chip ice cream. In the book, the recipe is made with store-bought ice cream with new flavor ideas, like vanilla with peanut butter swirl—really, the options are endless. The dessert makes a big impact, and no one would know it’s store-bought ice cream.
Do you have a tried-and-true kitchen secret or hack?
There’s nothing that can’t be saved with a fresh lemon and flaky salt. If you have those two things, you’ll be fine. Also, a little box of Maldon as a gift goes a long way.
Dining and Cooking