About
The Five Star Kitchen is a food show shot and produced in Brooklyn New York by Justin Dickinson and Michelle Nicholson. It exists to teach people to cook, not just follow recipes. To contact the show, email fans@thefivestarkitchen.com. First time here? Chek out our debut post describing what we’re trying to do here.
Justin Bio
My name is Justin and I love food. I’ve never been to culinary school but have worked in many restaurants of varying quality in which I learned the ins and outs of cooking, specifically grilling steaks and seafood. I traded in the grease burns and weekend shifts for a desk job as an interactive developer in New York City.
I missed the fast-paced, chaotic kitchen environment. Badly. So I faked it at home and started throwing dinner parties. The more I cooked at home, the more I wanted to cook. If I made a recipe straight out of a book or off the Internet, I always felt like I couldn’t really take credit for the outcome unless I changed elements of it greatly. The more I tailored the recipes, the more I wanted to do things on my own. I bought some food books (not recipe books) and started studying. With encyclopedia in hand and all of McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen in my brain, I started coming up with my own ideas and building up a personal cooking style.
I get my inspiration from restaurants I visit; the professional cooks I know; and shows like Good Eats, Iron Chef, Top Chef and The Naked Chef that are not recipe-based.
Guests at my dinner parties would often ask what the secret to great cooking was and how they could do it at home, how they could get away from pasta and red sauce or chicken breast every night. I always said the same thing. Just start cooking. Don’t stress over the details of a recipe, don’t feel limited by the tools (or lack thereof) in your kitchen, and don’t freak out if you can’t pronounce the name of a dish. Basically, just have fun.
My dream is to have a cooking show and internet food community that has a love of food first, information second, and the actual recipe coming in somewhere after that. Once you see trends in recipes and can start crossing over between them, you start creating food you not only love, but can call your own. That’s freedom.
Michelle Bio
My name is Michelle and I have absolutely no cooking experience outside of my own kitchen. When I went to college I could not even make scrambled eggs. I tried to make pudding one time…it was a failure. Another time I was supposed to make a box cake (might have been Funfetti) for my friend’s birthday. I sent her a text while she was in class saying there was no cake.
Throughout college I kept trying to cook, when all of sudden I could finally make food and people would actually eat it. Now, I can cook amazing food and absolutely love doing it. I’m even starting to take classes (part-time) this fall at The Art Institute of Washington.
I have a pretty active and healthy lifestyle so I try to make delicious food that doesn’t take too long to make and is still good for you. Don’t worry, I do splurge every now and then and make lots of desserts. I’ve been known to make a pretty mean baklava and snickers cheesecake. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to see us make them on one of our episodes.
