Be My Guest Shows What It’s Like To Be Ina’s Guest

Some inside intel on visiting the Barefoot Contessa

Ina Garten’s show, Be My Guest, just completed its fourth season on the Food Network. I was delighted with her lineup. Her guests included Danny Meyer, who wrote a blurb for Satisfaction Guaranteed, Frank Bruni, my colleague at the New York Times and a former writer for the Detroit Free Press, David Remnick, the legendary editor of the New Yorker, and Jennifer Garner, everyone’s favorite action star.

There was even a glimpse of Ina’s husband Jeffrey, the distinguished Yale professor and Washington insider.

I knew Jeffrey first, because he was a source for my business stories at the New York Times, and that was how I got to be Ina’s guest - not for her show, but to interview her for the Sunday Business section.

I wrote the story after taking Patricia Wells’ cooking class in Paris. Patricia and Ina are friends, and Patricia had been on Ina’s original TV show, the Barefoot Contessa, named after her store in East Hampton.

Patricia vouched for me and in 2007, the stars aligned. On a winter afternoon, I found myself at Ina’s for a conversation and lunch.