'Dorm chef' still cooking up culinary buzz

Jonah Reider became an object of media fascination when he opened a sophisticated supper club in his Columbia University dorm that briefly became one of New York City's most coveted reservations.

Three years after graduation, the "dorm chef " is still cooking up culinary buzz.

His club, Pith, has a new incarnation. After a short life in a Brooklyn townhouse, he's now cooking for small groups at his high-rise apartment near Wall Street.

In this May 20, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider sniffs rhubarb as he shops in New York's Union Square Greenmarket for ingredients for his next dinner party. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

Reider flew overseas this spring to make a television pilot in Japan that features the lanky American presenting Japanese food traditions many younger people there have abandoned. And he's planning to open a grilled cheese sandwich shop in Tokyo.

He's also launched a U.S. company called Alto that sells honey, olive oil and salt infused with CBD, the legal cannabis derivative, and THC in Oregon.

That's not bad for a 25-year-old with no professional training as a chef — and lots of disdain for the "dorm chef" moniker that made him famous.

In this May 17, 2019, photo Jonah Reider prepares a Pith dinner at his New York apartment. “Don’t call me a chef,” he says with a grin, explaining, “I think of myself as a good home cook. The food is upscale, but very simple.” (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

"That's history; I've done so much more since then and I don't want to be identified that way," he said.

Don't call him a chef either, he added with a grin.

"I think of myself as a good home cook. The food is upscale, but very simple," he said, explaining that he's trying to inspire people to host friends and family at home rather than overspending at fancy restaurants.

In this May 17, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider trims flowering cilantro to use in a beef tartare toast appetizer during a Pith dinner in New York. He’s managed to earn a living as an innovative cook with no formal training, hired by corporations and individuals to take his unique pop-up creations around the world, from Italy and Japan to Australia and the United States. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

"I think the best meals are happening in people's homes," he said on a recent morning as he surveyed Manhattan's Union Square greenmarket for a Pith dinner the next night. "I want to show people how joyful cooking can be."

Reider's informal kitchen training started during childhood in Newton, Massachusetts, in a family that loved cooking.

He landed on New York's foodie scene as a Columbia University senior in 2015, when a review of his dorm meals in the campus newspaper led to wider media coverage and a 4,000-person waiting list.

In this May 17, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider prepares a beef tartare toast appetizer during a Pith dinner in New York. Reider’s informal kitchen training started during childhood in Newton, Massachusetts, in a family that cooked far-from-ordinary meals. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

The icing on the cake came when Reider appeared on Stephen Colbert's "Late Show," serving the TV host a phyllo dough dessert filled with black truffle-infused honey and a side of pear nectar sorbet.

The university was not thrilled with the young entrepreneur's venture — costing each guest about $15 for groceries — and booted the economics major from the dorm, but not before Reider won kudos from renowned culinary expert Ruth Reichl, who said his food was "impossible to stop eating."

Since graduation, he's managed to earn a living as an innovative cook, hired by corporations and individuals to take his unique pop-up creations around the world, from Italy and Japan to Australia and New Zealand. He's prepared food linked to events sponsored by the likes of Google, Penguin Random House, KitchenAid, Jaguar Land Rover and even the government of Malaysia.

In this In this May 17, 2019 photo, a beef tartare toast is an appetizer at a Pith home-cooked dinner prepared by Jonah Reider in his New York apartment. Reider’s informal kitchen training started during childhood in Newton, Massachusetts, in a family that cooked far-from-ordinary meals. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

After Columbia, the graduate rented a room in a Brooklyn hedge fund manager's townhouse where he staged a series of Pith dinners, with tickets going for $95 plus a $45 wine pairing. He says he wanted to prove he was capable of producing high-end professional meals. He also gave free cooking lessons to public schoolkids.

At that table last year, he met "the love of my life" — a Belgian-born college student whose brother gave her the dinner as a birthday gift.

Romance blossomed and the pair now split the rent for a tiny Manhattan apartment they have stylishly redecorated in the Art Deco high-rise with a spectacular New York Harbor view.

In this May 17, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider sets the table before dinner guests arrive in New York. His apartment has a view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

The Pith table seats a half dozen guests about two evenings a week. Tickets go for $40.

"Crispy salmon with nice flaky salt" and "little potatoes roasted with herbs from my bedroom window sill" are Reider's descriptions of some of the nine dishes at a recent Pith evening, plus appetizers.

In addition, the dinner featured chilled cucumber soup with sheep's yogurt; beef tartare toast; a salad of baby lettuces and radishes; morels and wild spring onions crisped in miso butter; farro cooked in morel broth with spring peas — all topped by a rhubarb tart with toasted almond gelato.

In this May 17, 2019 photo, guests have drinks and appetizers while Jonah Reider, right, checks on the entrees in his oven at his New York apartment. “I think the best meals are happening in people's homes, not at restaurants," he said. “I want to show people how joyful cooking can be.” (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

He posted invitations on Instagram just two hours before the 7 p.m. feast — up for grabs to anyone who was interested, first come, first served. The meal sold out in 10 seconds to strangers who arrived at the door and quickly settled into lively conversations around the candlelit table as the sun set over the Statue of Liberty.

Dinners also are announced on the Pith website.

Reider's entrepreneurship was the subject of a TEDx talk he gave at Georgetown University in Washington, titled "Economic and Creative Enfranchisement Through Food." At Stanford University, he's spoken about "Values and Aesthetics in Home Cooking."

In this May 17, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider shows his guests wild spring onions that were an ingredient in one of the dishes during a Pith dinner in New York. He named his little enterprise Pith - the soft white lining of citrus fruits. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

His endeavors in Japan began when he got attention for a Pith pop-up in that country. Later, an executive from a Japanese video production company, was in New York and contacted Reider.

"I've always wanted to make a TV show celebrating home cooking and the joy of do-it-yourself hospitality, so I had him come over and made him a few scallops," Reider said.

The executive invited him to film the pilot for a Japanese show focusing not on top restaurants in big cities, but "the culinary traditions of farmers, brewers, grandmas etc. all around less traveled areas," Reider said.

In this May 17, 2019 photo, Jonah Reider, center, talks to his guests about the dinner he is serving them in his New York apartment. His new mission: to inspire people to do relaxed home cooking for friends and family rather than overspending at fancy restaurants. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

"My goal anywhere I go is to highlight home hospitality and culinary traditions," he said. "I want to show how home cooking connects all of us around the globe. It's a travel and culture show, happening in homes everywhere."

The cheese sandwich shop also is being financed by private investors, who with Reider are looking to lease a Tokyo location this summer.

Meanwhile, he's taking Japanese lessons

In this May 17, 2019 photo, a rhubarb tart is displayed with a caricature of Jonah Reider and his cookbooks in his New York apartment. In the competitive food world, Reider is a millennial whose cooking is opening doors to adventures far beyond food. (AP PhotoMary Altaffer)

BAGHDAD (AP) — The powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement on Tuesday that it will release American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was kidnapped from a Baghdad streetcorner last week.

The group said its decision came “in appreciation of the patriotic stances of the outgoing prime minister," Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, without giving more details. It added that “this initiative will not be repeated in the future.”

Kataib Hezbollah had not previously acknowledged that it was the one responsible for Kittleson’s abduction, although both U.S. and Iraqi officials had pointed fingers at the group.

Kittleson, 49, a freelance journalists, had lived abroad for years before the kidnapping, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Like many freelancers, she often worked on a shoestring budget and without the protections afforded by large news organizations to staff.

She had entered Iraq again shortly before her abduction. U.S. officials have said that they warned her multiple times of threats against her, but that she did not want to leave.

Iraqi officials have said that two cars were involved in the kidnapping, one of which crashed while being pursued near the town of al-Haswa in Babil province, southwest of Baghdad. The journalist was then transferred to a second car that fled the scene.

Three Iraqi officials said earlier Tuesday that attempts to negotiate her release had run into obstacles.

The two Iraqi security officials and one official from the pro-Iran Coordination Framework political bloc spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the sensitive case publicly.

One of the security officials said that an official with the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iran-backed militias that is nominally under the control of the Iraqi military, had been tasked with communicating with the abductors to secure Kittleson’s release but had run into difficulties in communicating with the Kataib Hezbollah leadership.

“The primary challenge is that the leaders of the Kataib militia — specifically, the commanders of the battalions — are nowhere to be found. No one knows their whereabouts, and the process of establishing contact with them is extremely complex,” they said. “These leaders have gone underground, maintaining no active lines of communication, out of fear of being targeted.”

The political official said a message had been sent to the Kataib leadership to determine their demands in exchange for releasing the kidnapped journalist. Iraqi authorities are willing to release six Kataib Hezbollah members who are currently detained, most of them in connection with attacks on a U.S. base in Syria, they said, but the militia has not yet communicated its demands clearly.

The second security official said that to further complicate matters, the Iraqi official in charge of the case has not yet received the go-ahead from U.S. officials to proceed with negotiations.

U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The State Department previously said that it is working with the FBI to secure Kittleson's release.

Journalist advocacy groups have urged the U.S. government to formally designate Kittleson a hostage, or “wrongful detainee,” a designation that triggers an elevated level of response.

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

The street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo)