Melina Davies - Olive & Thyme: Everyday Meals Made Extraordinary

Everyday Meals Made Extraordinary

Melina Davies

Photography by Ann Elliott Cutting with Ashley Barrett

This book is dedicated to the loves of my life:

My husband, Christian, and my beautiful children, Jagger and River.
Without your patience and love I would have never been able to follow my passion.

Mom and Dad, you taught me the meaning of hard work and sacrifice. The traditions you imbedded in me will be passed down for generations.

I will forever be humbled to cook a meal and sit around a table with you.

Nancy Silverton

Melina (center), not long before she started cooking dinner for her family.

Nancy Silverton

After a long day, a working spouse returns home and wafting aromas hit them as soon as they open the front door. The children of this family come home soon afterward, and those lingering, tantalizing fragrances greet them, too. This is a scene played out nightly across America, indeed across the world, as it did on television screens showing the folksy shows of my youth.

The gigantic difference between Father Knows Best or The Dick Van Dyke Show and the scene above was that at the home of Melina Davies in Los Angeles, the one cooking that dinner was her, and she was eight years old.

While her schoolmates were watching Scooby-Doo, Melina was soaking in the cooking shows of Julia Child and Jacques Ppin. She took to Julia and Jacques with an enthusiasm that would carry her through life. At that tender age, dinner became more than food; it became a family gathering where everyone talked about their day. Melina loved that. She got hooked on fine food and hospitality, and that comes through in her terrific new cookbook, Olive & Thyme, named after not only her own restaurant, but for two ingredients whose vitality sums up Melina and her food.

I think the beauty of Olive & Thyme is stated so simply in its subtitle: Everyday Meals Made Extraordinary. This is a book you will actually cook from. Its not like the Noma cookbook. Or even some of mine, which arehopefullyfun to thumb through but daunting to cook from.

Olive & Thyme has familiar dishes, but ones that are given, with often just a simple extra addition, a jolt that enlivens them. Check out the lemon turkey sandwich, a recipe that defines this cookbook. The key to it is simply the addition of preserved lemons. It takes a routine dish and elevates it to a different level.

And that is what I like so much about the book: familiarity, jazzed up. But not with an entire horn section or an orchestra of strings. Sometimes all it takes is a few silky notes from a sax or the soulful tinkle of the ivories. Or some chopped thyme and a few good olives.

Heres to Melina Davies and her soulful take on dishes your family will cherish.

Nancy Silverton is the chef and owner of the Mozza restaurants and Chi Spacca, as well as the author of Chi Spacca, The Mozza Cookbook, and other books. She is a four-time winner of the James Beard Award.

For me, the foundation of cooking always started with family.

When I was a young child, my family was forced to emigrate at the start of the Iranian Revolution. We were among the luckier ones. My father was a partner at a large construction company that built projects for the Iranian government, and hed heard rumblings that the revolution was near. Without hesitation, he sent my two older brothers to boarding school in Switzerland and then sent my mother and me to London. We had to leave everything behind: our family, our friends, our home, and all of the possessions that my parents had worked so hard to provide for us. Along with so many others, our lives changed dramatically. It was a couple of years before my father was able to leave Iran to be with my mother and me. My brothers rejoined us when we found ourselves safely in Los Angeles, a place where we had neither family nor connections and barely spoke the language. My father was hired as an engineer at Parsons International Engineering in Pasadena, and my mother, who never had worked, desperately tried to find any job she could get to help my father in rebuilding our lives. Eventually they were able to save up enough to buy a small dry-cleaning business in Beverly Hills, one that my mother still runs to this day.

My parents worked endless hours to create a new life for us. As a result, I rarely saw them. In Iran, we had every meal together and spent countless hours around the table filled with family, friends, and conversation. In Los Angeles, we were a family I barely recognized. I was a latchkey kid, often alone while my parents were at work and my brothers, nine and ten years older than me, were busy with their own lives. Instead of watching Scooby-Doo like my school friends, I became deeply absorbed in cooking shows, specifically those of Julia Child and Jacques Ppin. When I watched Julia and Jacques cook, I got a tiny taste of that familial warmth that I so missed from my early childhood.

Julia and Jacques werent my real family, of course, but they gave me an idea. And so at the age of eight, I started cooking for my family, in the hope that sharing that feeling of warmth might spread and maybe even get us around the table together again. I crossed my fingersand it worked. Even if my parents worked until late in the evening and arrived home too tired to even talk, they were happy to see dinner waiting, proudly prepared by little me. They would join me at the table, and after a warm meal and a couple of words, shake off some of the stress from the day. Seeing their reactions as they took a moment to rest and enjoy these meals brought me so much joy and comfort. We were back together, connecting in the way Id missed so much.

Ever since this discovery, cooking has been my passion. I never thought, however, that it would lead to my career. After college, I found success in the movie business, but I was always drawn back to my love of food. I threw myself into cooking at home and hosting friends while becoming a loyal customer of some of LAs best restaurants. Finally, in 2011, with the support of my husband, Christian, my father, and some of our closest friends, I put all of our savings into opening our first Olive & Thyme. We gave that little mom-and-pop our all and watched it grow from the blood, sweat, and tears we put into it. Nine years, two children, and two restaurants later, we have created restaurants that connect the community with our passion for real relationships and great foodand the incredible and rewarding experience of blending the two together.