Creative Thinking Lives in the Kitchen.
In 2026, let's recognize and celebrate the creativity of chefs everywhere.
Creative thinking is one of my things. I struggled through a late-in-life masters program to learn about it. I teach a course in Creative Thinking at a university. Lately I have been musing on how chefs intuitively incorporate the principles of creative thinking in their cooking, often to great success.
My 2026 intention is to explore how creative thinking shows up at restaurants and in recipes and what happens as a result (generally a lot of deliciousness) and what creative thinking lessons the rest of us can learn from them.
What is creative thinking?
For me, creative thinking is the process of coming up with something new and worthwhile.
Creative thinking shows up when someone says, “this is how I see the world—this is how it looks and tastes and smells.”
It’s the opposite of the “trying to please all people all the time” mindset, a mindset that inevitably leads to sameness and blandness. I’m talking to you:
Big hotel conference food—all tasteless chicken breast, wilted green beans, absence of taste.
Iceberg lettuce—all crunch, no nutrients, no soul.
The Cheesecake Factory—200+ menu items, multiple cuisines, no personality.
When home cooks and professional chefs have a unique point of view, it comes through — in the food, in the venue, in the service. In essence they use foods and recipes, flavors and table settings, to tell their story.
There’s a current restaurant trend that I’m loving right now: chefs from different backgrounds - maybe Jewish or Palestinian, Black or Indian - are telling the story of their own people and their own history. For example, Comfort Kitchen in Boston tells the food story of African Americans as they moved around the globe during the Slave Trade; Yellow, a cafe in Washington DC, marries Palestian flavors like za’tar and tahini, with French cooking techniques in exciting new ways. The examples are endless. Look for this type of restaurant and you’ll be rewarded with both good food and flavorful insight into history and where we all come from.
Constraints are a secret ingredient.
Constraints – like time, money, cultural norms, physical limitations, even boredom – are ever present, a virtual fact of life. Part of bringing something new and meaningful into the world is recognizing the constraints and then breaking through them. Creative thinking thrives with constraints.
In the world of food, it means figuring out what to do when fresh vegetables are out of season, or turning out meals from ridiculously tiny spaces, or overcoming the boredom of producing the same thing night after night. Even we home cooks frequently use creativity to figure out how to make substitutions in recipes, or what to do with leftovers.
Constraints focus the mind; they demand choice and experimentation and commitment. I love how chefs deal with these constraints.
The plate is a prototype.
Innovation involves prototyping—creating a fast version of a new product or service, in order to test it out and refine it. In kitchens, a plate is always a prototype—create a recipe, make it, put it on a plate, and see how people respond. Tweak the recipe based on people’s response. The essence of prototyping.
Chefs prototype daily—during prep, during family meal, during service itself. A dish that doesn’t taste great gets pulled; a dish that surprises stays.
Creative thinking isn’t about polish. It’s about responsiveness.
I want to leave you with this clip of the ever creative sous chef Sydney from the The Bear, one of my fave TV shows. Ever.
Sydney is the up-and-coming sous chef on The Bear. In a famous episode, she cooks for one of her co-workers who’s tired and stressed and starved. We watch Sydney prepare this omelette—with generosity (another dimension of creativity) and determination and skill and, of course, a brilliant pop of something new.
When I rewatched this episode, I really wanted to make the omelette with Sydney’s special point of view – the way she scrambles the eggs, the care with which she cooks the eggs, and most of all – the magic of a unique and surprising ingredient at the end. It’s amazing to me recipe developers haven’t published the recipe anywhere – and no restauranteur has put it on the menu. Take a look and enjoy:
A recent NYT Cooking recipe for Broccoli with Whipped Tofu (and Panko crumbles on top) was one of the most creative, delicious recipes I've made in a while. A real show-stopper at a dinner party. Don't be put off by the tofu if you think you don't like it. The recipe calls for silken tofu, which has zero taste. It is used to make a smooth texture, whipped with cashews and a tiny bit of oil in a food processor. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1026270-roasted-broccoli-and-whipped-tofu-with-chile-crisp-crunch?algo=cooking_search_relevance_metric_ios_and_web&fellback=false&imp_id=4531247886037971&req_id=651697478644603&surface=cooking-search&variant=0_relevance_reranking
Fabulous piece of writing as always…