I’ve been working in restaurants since I was eighteen. I got into the hospitality business to pay for a playwriting habit. Initially, cooking was a job. Then shucking oysters and pouring beer. Then opening wine. Then making cocktails. It went on. As my obsession with food and restaurants grew, I started to see it as another way to tell stories, to take people to different places, to communicate something intangible about myself. I had thought that writing was the only way to do that – I realized I could cook my way there too. At the time, I thought the solution was to have more cooking in my plays. The results were mixed.

Hayward Food was borne of a desire to bring a little joy to the locked-down world of the pandemic. Once it was no longer possible to work at restaurants, I used the skills I had acquired in them to throw needlessly elaborate dinner parties for the people in my bubble. I’d imitate restaurants that I loved, or else try to replicate a meal from some far off place I wished we could go together, or else do something to celebrate someone I love. It was always to tell a kind of story about myself, about the person who the meal was for, something it felt like the guests might all do together. After a while, it felt like I was putting a little bit of my plays into these dinners.