Dad, What's for Dinner? - Lifesaving Recipes to Avoid Meltdowns, Have Fun in the Kitchen, and Keep Your Kids Well Fed: A Cookbook

A BON APPETIT BEST COOKBOOK OF 2025

The dad’s guide to getting dinner on the table; more than 80 unfussy, uncompromising recipes for weeknights and beyond. With a foreword by Gwyneth Paltrow.

I am a professional chef. I’ve spent twenty-seven of my forty years in some of the best kitchens in the world. . . . And still, when my daughter, Helena, asks, “Dad, what’s for dinner?” it gets me every time.

This is a book for dads (and moms, and grandparents, and caregivers, and anyone else who needs to get dinner on the table without cooking the same old thing again). It’s a book that believes “kids’ food” can, and should, mean more than just buttered noodles or chicken fingers. In its pages, chef David Nayfeld translate his decades of professional expertise into something that all parents can use to become more confident and creative in the kitchen, and better able to care for their toughest customers—their kids.

The result is a collection of more than eighty hearty, good-for-you recipes the whole family will love, from Italian Sausage and Broccolini Lasagna to The Best Fricking Meatloaf in the World; from Tomato and Bread Salad (it still counts as a salad!) to Cuppycakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.

Nayfeld’s goal is to empower home cooks, giving them the tools, strategies (the wonders of batch-cooking!), and recipes to break a reliance on frozen foods and takeout. It’s a book that helps to bring families together at the dinner table and to raise more adventurous eaters. And, most of all, it’s a book that answers the all-important question: Dad, what’s for dinner? (or lunch, or breakfast, or . . .)