Radio Cherry Bombe · The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network

Cookbook Author Ella Quittner Is “Obsessed With The Best”

February 23, 2026·55 min·4 clips

Ella Quittner reads her cookbook dedication aloud — written for anyone told they asked too many questions and interrupts their own interrogations with side interrogations.

New York is snowed in. Keri opens in the middle of the 2026 blizzard, warm, a little breathless, and clearly happy to have Ella there. The book lands tomorrow. Obsessed with the Best has 100-plus recipes built from 20-plus head-to-head tests, but Keri seems just as taken with how easy it is to read and how carefully it is put together. This is not casual curiosity. Ella's dedication to the weird, intense, fast-talking deep divers gives the chat its first little click. Keri recognizes the type, because she is one too. The dinner-table rhythm helps. The book starts as a recipe testing project, then turns into a study of someone who cannot leave a question alone. Ella says food was always there, though she understood the obsession more once she cooked for herself and stocked her own kitchen. Fairway gets the good kind of reverence. She remembers vanishing into the basement level in Murray Hill for two hours and treating grocery shopping like a private class. Family keeps the story grounded. Her parents were newspaper journalists, so weeknight food was quick and practical, but still had small luxuries. Ricotta under tomato sauce counted. Weekends had bigger projects, including her father's grandmother's stuffed cabbage and that smell moving through the house. Keri hears the obsession as craft, memory, appetite, and temperament, not a cute gimmick. By the end, she calls the cookbook a labor of love and trusts that Radio Cherry Bombe listeners will know why it matters. The episode feels more like a table-side handoff between obsessives than a formal author interview.

As heard by us

A warm, specific conversation for cookbook obsessives who care how recipes and food memories get made.

Ella Quittner arrives on Radio Cherry Bombe with the right kind of intensity for a cookbook called Obsessed with the Best. Keri Diamond clearly loves the book, framing it as one for people who want recipes, design, food styling, and the why behind a winning version of a dish.

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Why you'd press play

A cookbook lover's deep dive into what makes one recipe beat another.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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