Ned Baldwin: Cooking, Fishing, and the Art of Making

Chef, fisherman, and lifelong maker Ned Baldwin has followed a winding course from Seattle sailboats and sculpture studios to some of New York’s most distinctive kitchens. Photographed by Joseph Beeching, he joins us to talk about Houseman, his new Brooklyn restaurant Zoli, and the waters that continue to draw him back.

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Joseph Beeching: Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?

Ned Baldwin: I grew up in Seattle before the internet.  Graduated high school in 1989 and yeah, listened to a lot of Nirvana and Soundgarden, also Mudhoney and beat happening.  That Seattle.  As a kid I sailed a lot, hiked, skied (downhill, cross country and sometimes downhill on cross country) and became very interested in ceramics. That interest led me around the country to Aspen, North Carolina, Massachusetts and eventually to Bennington college where I completed my undergrad.  Practical utilitarian objects in clay gradually turned into abstract things out of all manner of materials and I eventually landed in NYC with an MFA in sculpture which, much to the chagrin of my family I squandered. 

I became interested in cooking and trained in some of New York’s most exciting professional kitchens including Craft Restaurant. I found a home at Prune under Gabrielle Hamilton where I became the chef de cuisine. In 2015 I opened Houseman Restaurant which quickly received a two star review from Pete Wells at the New York Times. It’s open and thriving 11 years later.

 In late 2015 I met Peter Kaminsky who came into Houseman on the heels of Wells Review.  I was a fan of his writing both about fishing and food.  He proposed doing a book together which was always a dream of mine and in early 2020 we published a cookbook called “How to Dress an Egg”.  We're both avid fishermen and had a sense that if we made a cookbook together we could spend a good amount of time talking about angling. That turned out to be true and he and I have since spent lots of good time on the water. 

 In the Spring of 2026, after four years of planning and building I opened Zoli in East Williamsburg.  It’s an architecturally ambitious, art-adjacent project with a wood oven and roof bar located on an industrial street.  We’ve been open for about 8 weeks and are doing our best to figure out who we are and what we do.

JB: What's your personal history with fishing and being on the water, how did you get into it?

NB: My dad strapped a bassinet into the cockpit of his Cal 29 (a 29 foot sailboat) and with my mom sailed from Seattle to Victoria BC when I was 3 months old. I’ve rowed, sailed, swam, windsurfed and fished (not all at the same time) throughout my life.  Seattle, where I grew up, is a watery place. If I could live out at sea I think I’d be very happy there. School, girls and work distracted me for a decade or so until my father in law wound up in Port Antonio Jamaica where we fished offshore for marlin, mahi, tuna and wahoo. In 2004 I bought a house in Orient, Long Island. The area reminded me of the northwest with the sound on one side and Gardiners Bay on the other. There’s water everywhere and a very boaty population. I fished from the beach for a few years and then transitioned to boat-fishing. My obsession grew and grew and now I find myself fishing in and around New York City and off Montauk and around Orient. Following the fish wherever they go. 

JB: I know you spent time as a sculptor. You have an MA in sculpture from Yale. How does that art background connect to what you do in the kitchen?

NB: I’m a maker. I like to make stuff with my hands. I mentioned clay. I also spent about a decade as a carpenter, and then all the artmaking. Food is just more making stuff with the hands. As I worked my way through the restaurant kitchen I didn’t think cooking and artmaking had much to do with each other and probably at the line cook, sous chef and even to a certain extent chef de cuisine eras of my career it really didn’t.  Creative brain and get it done well, fast and in an organized way don’t go so well together. But increasingly I’m finding that my arc in the visual arts world has a big impact on how I do what I do. Zoli is a restaurant adjacent to a museum. Making a restaurant that works in that dynamic is a particular sort of riddle. Also in my role I collaborate with a lot of creative people and having been one for however many decades gives me some good insight in how to make effective and fruitful creative collaborations.

JB: You started Houseman back in 2015 in Hudson Square. What was the idea behind that restaurant?

NB: In Seattle there were a lot of great neighborhood restaurants that felt kinda warm and fuzzy and of the place. I struggled to find that in NYC, although I spent four years at Prune where Gabrielle Hamilton made a very perfect and individualistic neighborhood joint. I guess I wanted to make a restaurant a little like Prune but in my voice. 

JB: The name Houseman comes from the Norwegian word husmanskost, meaning "everyday food." Was that always the goal just simple, honest cooking?

NB: Husmanskost for me has been a useful lens. I like going somewhere and eating “the food of the place.” In Norway food traditions don’t change much but in New York City the culinary environment is ever-changing. So it’s interesting to think of what is seasonal and local at Houseman at any given moment. 

JB: Your new spot Zoli just opened in Brooklyn at the Amant art campus. What's the concept there? How is it different from Houseman?

NB: I described Houseman as being warm and fuzzy. Zoli is architecturally ambitious.  We’re still goofing around with the NYC husmankost idea but things are a bit sharper and more conceptual at Zoli. Also and maybe most importantly Zoli is a seafood restaurant. We serve some hoofs and wings but the main thrust of our inquiry is what’s swimming within a couple hundred miles of the restaurant.

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JB: You've said, "Cooking for artists isn't making artistic plates." What does that mean for how you approach food at Zoli?

NB: I mean, I like making beautiful plates. And we’re young at Zoli so we’re still kind of finding our voice. The room is quite spectacular and we’ve found that it makes sense to make food that “fits” in the space.  It’s a little outside of my normal voice but honestly that can be fun too. Some of the plates are minimal, just a chicken and some jus, and some plates are a little wilder.  We just did a thing with shrimp crackers, leek ash crème fraiche and trout roe that kinda blows my mind. 

JB: You described Zoli as a "non-dogmatic seafood restaurant." What does that mean in practice?

NB: I was just goofin’ around. It made sense to me that a restaurant named after an imaginary dog should also be non-dogmatic about something, or maybe about everything. More practically as I said above we serve lots of seafood, pretty much all local stuff and then we serve a bit of hoofs and wings as well. I like making sausage.  We’re serving a carribean/curry-ish goat sausage at the moment. 

JB: Where are some of your personal favorite places to eat in New York?

NB: Long list. I go out a lot with my kids. They love Emilio’s Ballato on Houston, Hoek in Brooklyn, Golden Unicorn on East Broadway and Frenchette in Tribeca. I recently moved to Brooklyn and have a few new faves over here: Salty Lunchlady, Dayglo coffee, baby blues luncheonette.