What Danny Meyer Can’t Live Without

I stopped drinking drip coffee about three and a half years ago. I still love a good espresso, cappuccino, or macchiato, especially if I’m in Italy. But one morning, I just said to myself, I do not need to drink two tall cups of coffee every day. But I still wanted some caffeine, so I got completely hooked on this tea. It’s like a gourmet version of Lipton tea, and if someone said, “You have to drink Lipton,” that would have been okay too. But Harney & Sons is even better. We make honey from our bees up in Connecticut. I start my day with sometimes two cups of the black tea and a good scoop of that honey, and I’m very happy.

My wife, Audrey, was using Calm for several years, and I always thought it was so weird. I would walk in and she’d be listening to it without headphones. It just felt odd, like I was interrupting something. At some point, she said, “You can laugh, but you might want to try it sometime.” I tried it, and it really works — though I don’t do it the right way. You’re supposed to sit upright in a chair with your head in a straight line to the ceiling. The thing I do wrong is I lie down, and I get a ten-to-15-minute nap every single time. As soon as I start going through the breathing led by Tamara Levitt, I go right to sleep, and that’s all I need. I’m sure it would be even better if I were officially meditating, but a nap isn’t so bad.

When I first got into the restaurant business, we mostly used Morton iodized salt. We used it because restaurant saltshakers had tiny holes, and that was the only salt that came out. Then, probably in the ’90s, we graduated to kosher salt. I don’t know exactly when I started using Maldon sea salt — probably about 15 years ago — but I had a friend visiting from London. We had a beautiful pork chop, and he said, “That would have been so much better with sea salt.” I thought he was being picky and wondered what was wrong with our kosher salt, but he said, “I’m going to show you.” So I got some Maldon sea salt, and it was so much better. He was right. At many — if not most — of our restaurants, we have a little dish of it. You can season something the way you want, and it adds not only great flavor but texture as well. It has that crunch.

Here they are, right on my face. I was a holdout for reading glasses for a lot of years. I don’t think I needed them until I was about 55, and I was really proud of that. But squinting is not the most attractive thing in the world. I like Warby Parker a lot. It’s the best $95 you can spend. I can have ten pairs and not worry about where I left the last one. There are about three of them on my desk, and I probably have six pairs of these glasses at home. Sometimes, I’ll come to the office with four pairs stuffed in my pocket. I have a lot that are clear and some that are bicolor blue.

I’ve learned a lot from different people. I’ll never forget going to a restaurant I loved in South Norwalk, Connecticut — it’s sadly closed now, but it was called Pasta Nostra, and it was one of the best Italian restaurants. We had a steak or veal chop, and the guy I was with said, “This would taste so much better if they had a good steak knife.” I had never heard anything like that in my life. I’d heard wine tastes better when the glass is thinner, but I’d never heard anything about steak knives. It turned out to be absolutely true: The way it cuts has a lot to do with how it tastes. Once you’ve seasoned the meat properly with your sea salt, you want it to cut the right way. These are not the only good steak knives out there, but they’re really good.

In my career, across all the restaurants, I’ve probably opened 100,000 bottles of wine easily. I used to just use the little knife blade on the end of the corkscrew, but about five years ago, I started struggling with it. The foil would cut my fingers if I didn’t get it quite right. I don’t know if wineries are using tighter foil now, but someone introduced me to this $10 gadget, and it works perfectly every single time. It’s a little round thing with blades on the inside. A 360-degree twist, you pull the top off, and it’s done. If you’re hosting a party, you don’t want to be struggling with foil capsules. You can prep all your bottles in advance, and if you don’t open them all, they’re still fine because you haven’t touched the cork.

I’m not the only person in town who has one of these. I don’t necessarily learn things I didn’t already know, but it keeps me honest. The metric I pay attention to most is the quality of my sleep. If I eat or drink too much and too late, I’m not going to sleep well, and I get the proof every morning. It doesn’t stop me from drinking or eating too much, but I know what the consequences are. The fact that it tracks everything on a monthly basis — from exercise to consumption to sleep — keeps me accountable. I cannot sleep with something on my wrist, so I take my watch off every single night. But I don’t even notice the ring. A wearable is only good if you actually wear it.

Another later-in-life discovery and great lesson from my wife. I thought it was really weird at first. I used to think, Why do you need this? You have eyelids. But your eyelids are not blackout shades. Once I started using it, I thought, Why would I go back? It is comfortable, helps me fall asleep, and helps me stay asleep. Darkness is a good thing if you want to sleep well.

Il Silene is a one-star Michelin restaurant in Tuscany near Montalcino. The chef, Roberto Rossi, makes this olive oil from his grove of olive trees. He also serves it at a place I invested in called Borgo Finocchieto. It’s an estate with only 22 rooms, like a private hotel for groups, families, or celebrations. He sells his olive oil online, and it is so good. He approaches it like a scientist and knows every varietal. It tastes like the best green olive you’ve ever had: fruity with cracked black pepper on top but not so aggressive it burns your throat. A lot of Tuscan olive oils can be very aggressive, but this is flowery and fruity with a hint of pepper.

[Editor’s note: Il Silene lists all prices in euros, so the price shown is an approximate conversion in U.S. dollars.]

Back in 2001 or 2002, when I was researching regional barbecue before opening Blue Smoke, my partner RC and I were visiting ten to 12 barbecue spots a day in North Carolina. At one spot in Wilson, North Carolina, next to the cash register, there were jars of peanuts from the Mount Olive Methodist Church Men’s Club. We bought two jars, brought them home, and cracked them open. They were so amazing RC went back down and met with the Men’s Club — they’re all gentlemen ages 75 and older — and convinced them to jar the peanuts for Blue Smoke with our own label. We sold them as a menu item for years, including at our jazz club, Jazz Standard. People would crack open a jar and eat them while listening to music. They don’t make them under the Blue Smoke label anymore, but you can still buy them online. Some people boil their peanuts, but these guys fry them. They also use really good salt, and they’re generous with it.