Simply Ina: An Evening with Ina Garten

About This Event

The Barefoot Contessa herself, touring behind a new cookbook built around the idea that the best cooking is usually the least complicated. Not a demo or a tasting — this is a stage conversation, so come for the stories and the philosophy more than a live recipe.

Garten's path to becoming America's most trusted home cook started nowhere near a kitchen. From 1974 to 1978, she worked as a budget analyst in the White House Office of Management and Budget, writing nuclear energy budget and policy papers for two different presidents. She left that job in 1978 after spotting a classified ad for a specialty food store called Barefoot Contessa in Westhampton Beach, New York — bought it with no professional cooking background at all, and built it, eventually, into the cookbook and TV empire that made her a household name decades later.

Worth knowing: showtime is 7:30 PM, and tickets start at $98 — check auditoriumtheatre.org for seating.