My Love Affair with Blood, Bones & Butter
It started on a flight to New York with my honey — one of those crisp fall weekends when the city feels like a living movie. I was reading Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton on the plane over. By the time we landed, I was already plotting a detour to Prune, her tiny East Village restaurant, to see if that fierce, independent voice on the page showed up on the plate too. By the time the plane touched down, I knew I had to find Prune — to taste what she wrote.”
Finding Prune
We didn’t have a reservation, but luck — or fate — handed us two seats at the bar. The place was small, warm, and unapologetically itself. The lighting was kind, the plates were simple, and everything felt effortless in a way that only happens when someone really knows what they’re doing. I still remember the radish dish — tiny match stick slices with butter and salt — the kind of appetizer that says more about a chef’s sensibility than a 20-ingredient entrée ever could. I personally love butter and salt. Adding the radish just sent it over the top for me.
From Page to Plate
If Blood, Bones & Butter is Hamilton’s origin story — the messy, beautiful road that made her who she is — her cookbook Prune reads like the manual for how she ran her kitchen. It’s part recipe collection, part behind-the-scenes journal. You’ll find handwritten notes, plating instructions, and those “don’t do this unless you can do it right” kinds of asides that make it feel like she’s talking straight to you from the line.
A Legacy That Lingers
Prune may have closed its doors during the pandemic after two remarkable decades, but its spirit lives on in Hamilton’s books — one part memoir, one part how-to, all heart. They’re not just cookbooks; they’re snapshots of grit, grace, and appetite. I found her upbringing to be almost insatiably romantic, despite the trials and tribulations.
