Tamara Reynolds
Tamara learned to cook because she was lonely living as a young Navy wife in a new city, and got tired of washing the dishes after dinner. She picked up Gourmet magazine and moved to NYC (and, incidentally, got a divorce).
She arrived in the city with a few Calphalon pans and a bunch of opera scores; she had planned to be an opera singer. Thank God that didn't happen — if it had, she might not have needed to pay the rent by working as a server for Union Pacific, Babbo, Atlas, Fressen and Prune, where she met Zora.
Tamara appears on TV, tells stories at The Moth, and spends quality time with her excellent butchers, produce dudes and fishmongers in beautiful Astoria, Queens. She continues to run Sunday Night Dinner and her own small catering company, Van Alst Kitchen.
Zora O'Neill
Zora has been in the kitchen since she was 3, and she has the bacon-fat burns to prove it. But she really taught herself to cook while she was getting a Master's in Arabic literature.
Since 1998, Zora has lived in New York City, always with food on her mind. She has done occasional catering and line-cooking, and she ran the itinerant dinner party called Roving Gastronome. After meeting Tamara at Prune, the more settled party called Sunday Night Dinner came to be.
Zora did eventually use that MA when she wrote All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World, published in 2016. She also works as a guidebook author, primarily for Lonely Planet and Moon. She dabbled in podcasts well ahead of the curve, with Cooking in Real Time.