Le Journal

Fish Cheeks — the Thai seafood restaurant from co-founders Ohm Suansilphong and Chat Suansilphong, along with Jenn Saesue and Pranwalai Kittirattanawiwat — has launched a new delivery and takeout spot. The restaurant, called Little Cheeks, under chef Dustin Everett, is on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Seamless, and Grubhub; it’s the newest sibling to Fish Cheeks locations in Noho and Williamsburg, as well as Bub’s Bakery. The menu centers on comfort food dishes the team says they grew up eating, such as pad Thai and zabb wings. It’s available around the Noho and Williamsburg Fish Cheeks’ locations. Daniel Humm is a children’s book author now Daniel Humm, the chef behind Eleven Madison Park, has moved into children’s publishing. His new picture book, Daniel’s Dream, out on Tuesday, January 20, is framed as an inspirational story drawn from his childhood, about imagination, confidence, and believing your small ideas might turn into something bigger. The book is co-written with author Roda Ahmed — best known for Mae Among the Stars, a bestselling children’s book about astronaut Mae Jemison — and illustrated by Diana Pedott. It’s being published by HighTree, Ahmed’s independent imprint, which focuses on children’s books centered on representation and global storytelling, and arrives bundled with extras like activity worksheets, reflection prompts, and a behind-the-scenes video. It’s not Humm’s first go-round as an author: he has written five books, one of which costs $500. Marcus Samuelsson has launched a mentorship program Marcus Samuelsson is launching a new fellowship program called the Rise Residency, offering mid-career culinary folks — chefs, food writers, sommeliers, food entrepreneurs, and recipe developers — two weeks at the Catskills artist retreat Denniston Hill, plus a $5,000 stipend. It follows with six months of mentorship with Samuelsson, along with others, such as Dawn Padmore, a vice president of the James Beard Foundation Awards, and Chip Wade, the CEO of Union Square Hospitality.  Backed by the Mellon Foundation, the program centers on providing “creative leaders in the food space the opportunity to engage artistic practice at the turning point of their careers,” according to a press release.

You may think that denial can be harmful when encountering a challenge. But let me tell you about Richard Cohen. When I was struggling with my eyesight, I read a book called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, by Richard Cohen. Cohen, who called the book a “reluctant memoir,” was diagnosed with MS at 25, survived two bouts of colon cancer, was legally blind for much of his life, and yet had an incredible, award-winning career as a war correspondent and journalist. He was married to journalist Meredith Viera for almost 40 years and was the father of three children. Sadly, he passed away in late 2024 after a struggle with pneumonia. I had the chance to speak with Richard 20 years after I first read his book. He was a third-generation MS patient: Both his grandmother and his father had MS. What he learned by their example, especially his father, was not to allow himself to be victimized by the illness — to accept it and live with it rather than in spite of it. Indeed, his father, a physician, practiced medicine for nearly four decades and lived into his nineties. He taught Richard, by example, that he could live a rich and meaningful life with MS. Richard had seen others close to him do it, and he told himself that meant he could, too. Though the diagnosis was devastating, maintaining a flexible mindset helped him see that he could nonetheless continue to pursue his dreams — living with, not despite, his illness. Richard was not in any position to stop or give up. When he learned he had MS, he had just landed a plum position as a producer with ABC News. A neurologist he had only seen once called and blurted out that Richard had MS, and that there was no treatment and no cure. And then hung up. “Diagnosed and adios. Nothing much we can do,” Richard recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow. This sucks. But I don’t have enough information about this to freak out, so I won’t.’ And I didn’t. But I also didn’t talk about it. There was, and remains, way too much stigma put on people who have to go through life with a chronic illness, so I decided that I would just go ahead and live my life.” I asked Richard if he thought of this as stoicism, and he laughed. “I’d actually use the word denial. Look — I wasn’t in denial about having MS. What I mean by denial is I wasn’t about to let this disease dictate the terms of my life, you know? I wasn’t going to let it keep me from getting the jobs I wanted, which eventually included reporting from war zones and having to run my ass off so I wouldn’t get shot.” Cohen certainly piqued my interest in adding the concept of denial to my understanding of resilience. It was completely at odds with the pillars of [Steven] Hayes’s definition, and yet, Cohen arrived at a similar destination: He knew what really mattered to him. “Of course, I told the people I’m close to about my illness. I told Meredith, my wife, on our second date because I wanted her to know what she might be getting herself into. But she decided she was interested in me anyway, and we’ve been together ever since.”  Richard had a strong marriage and a close bond with his children — which are absolutely relationship goals for me. But he wasn’t an open book, either.  “Aside from only those closest to me knowing, my father encouraged me, from early on, not to share my illness with anyone else. He knew the stigma that would get attached to me, and he wanted me to define my life on my own terms and not become my diagnosis.” And so, in a sense, his keeping this private became a kind of denial, too — he only shared his full self with a chosen few, but with the rest of the world, he refused to accept their preconceived notions that would come along with their knowledge of his MS. Cohen didn’t make his diagnosis public until deep into his career, when he was a well-established producer for the Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Only after he’d proven himself on the job did he share with his bosses that he had MS. “I wanted them to…