THE FIFTH COURSE x CAMPERS EP. 9
Tom & Marybeth Allan: Two tables, one life.
The thing about Tom and Marybeth is that they walk into a room and you immediately understand they are a team.
What I didn’t expect was how natural it would feel having both of them there. I thought the conversation might split, or that I would have to pull between two different perspectives. Instead it did the opposite. It opened the room up. One of them would start a thought and the other would gently add to it, not correcting, just layering in another angle. You could feel years of shared decisions, shared risks, shared life sitting right there at the table with us.
There’s something different about having two people in the space. The conversation has somewhere else to go.
At one point Tom was explaining something about the kitchen, about the discipline and pressure of fine dining, and Marybeth jumped in with a story that softened it, adding a completely different lens. Not contradicting him, just widening the frame. He looked at her, smiled, and let her finish the thought. It was a small moment but it said everything. Respect, trust, rhythm.
I’ve interviewed a lot of people about food. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation quite like this one.
By the time we sat down to eat, I felt like I’d been let into something. Not just a meal. A life they’ve been building together around food, work, and family. And the table was just where it all met.
ABOUT OUR GUESTS
Tom Allan, Executive Chef, The Modern
Tom Allan leads one of New York’s most quietly extraordinary dining rooms. The Modern sits inside MoMA, surrounded by art, and holds two Michelin stars. The room is calm, precise, and deeply intentional, much like his cooking.
His path ran through some of the most demanding kitchens in the world. Per Se. Eleven Madison Park. Then Paris, at Le Meurice. Each place sharpened a different instinct before he arrived at The Modern, where he has been Executive Chef since 2020.
His food is often described as restrained but emotional. Nothing about it feels loud or performative. It is thoughtful, balanced, and grounded in feeling. Tom believes fine dining should move people, not just impress them. You understand that the moment you sit down.
Marybeth Allan, Director of Creative Studio, Shake Shack
Marybeth Allan has spent nearly eight years helping shape how Shake Shack looks, feels, and tells its story. She started in production and grew into the person guiding the brand’s creative studio, the one responsible for translating an idea into something people recognize and trust across hundreds of locations.
Before Shake Shack, she worked across hospitality and media in New York as a freelance producer and account manager. Those years taught her how to build systems that actually work, while still protecting the feeling behind them.
Her work lives in that balance. The structure that allows a brand to grow, and the care that keeps it human. She is part of the reason Shake Shack still feels like Shake Shack.
Together
Tom runs a two Michelin starred dining room. Marybeth helps shape one of the most recognizable fast casual brands in the world.
They are also married. They are parents. And they are the first couple to sit down at Campers. Their careers live on very different ends of the dining spectrum, but the foundation is the same. Both of them care deeply about how people experience food. Not just how it looks, but how it lands.
WHAT’S ON THE PASS
They asked me to cook two things: a crab boil and chicken wings. Both rooted in childhood. Not exactly two dishes I would normally make, especially not together, but somehow it worked.
The smell in the room was questionable, yet indulgent. Still, they walked in smiling.
Both dishes were actually pretty simple to make. Minimal ingredients and an easy process. The boil was exactly that, boiled with fragrant seasoning, with each ingredient going in for its own amount of time. The chicken wings were a bit more of a process, a multi step bake to make sure they came out extra crispy.
I don’t make wings very often. I’m not much of a football girl, but I do love eating them at a bar with all the blue cheese and celery. I can’t even remember the last time I had them, but they definitely bring back great food memories.
Going through this process, though, I could see this becoming something I make again. An easy, indulgent snack for the fall or winter months.
THE CONVERSATION
The long way around
Tom didn’t map out a career. He moved to New York at 19, started at Blue Smoke, and just kept saying yes. Per Se. Eleven Madison Park. Then a detour to Paris, to Le Meurice, where he experienced a different kind of rigor.
The more I got to know him, though, the more I realized how much of his life he actually manifested.
Marybeth built something different, but with a similar spirit. After years in hospitality and then media, then she spent eight years growing one thing. Over time she moved deeper and deeper into the same brand until she was shaping its entire creative culture.
Two different paths, but the same thread running through both. Showing up, doing the work, and not skipping steps.
They bet on each other, took chances together, and built a life and career around food as a family.
Craft at both ends of the table
Fine dining and fast casual are supposed to be opposites. But spend an hour with Tom and Marybeth and that idea starts to feel a little thin.
Tom talks about precision and emotion in the same breath. Marybeth talks about scale, soul, and creative energy like they can live in the same place. At the core, they are both trying to do the same thing. Make people feel something through food. They just do it in different rooms, under the same umbrella.
The tension between luxury and accessibility came up more than once, but neither of them seemed interested in defending one side or the other. The more interesting question for both of them was simpler. What does the person on the other end actually feel?
Marybeth told a story from her time working at Eleven Madison Park. She was pulling doubles, long days that ran from morning into midnight. Inside, everything was polished and precise, the kind of energy that only exists in a world class dining room. On her break she would step outside, sit in Madison Square Park, and eat a Shake Shack burger.
It gave her a moment of calm. And every bite, as simple as it was, still carried so much care and craft. In a small way, it felt like both worlds meeting in the middle.
Danny Meyer
Both Tom and Marybeth have worked closely with Danny Meyer, and the way they talk about that relationship says a lot. It never comes off as name dropping. It feels more like quiet acknowledgment. Here is someone who shaped how I think about hospitality, and I am still carrying those lessons with me.
Danny’s influence runs deep through New York’s restaurant world. Not just through the restaurants themselves, but through the people who passed through them and the way they learned to think about care, service, and the experience around food.
Tom and Marybeth both sit inside that lineage. Tom came up through the kitchen side, inside some of the most exacting dining rooms in the city. Marybeth came through the brand and storytelling side, learning how hospitality translates at scale.
Different doors, same house. And you can feel that shared foundation in the way they talk about food, people, and the work.
Paris
The Paris conversation with Tom and Marybeth warmed my heart. I have a real soft spot for Paris. Maybe it is a soft spot, maybe it is an addiction. Honestly it is probably the same thing.
For Tom, the chef has always been Alain Ducasse. The end all, be all. When Tom first started working in kitchens he saved his money to buy Ducasse’s book. At the time it felt like studying a master from a distance. A few years later he found himself in Paris, working for him.
That part of the story says a lot about Tom. He believed in something deeply enough to chase it all the way across the ocean.
They dropped everything and moved to Paris so Tom could take that position. No long debate, no perfect timing. Just a shared yes. They lived there for about two years and loved every second of it.
That kind of move is rare. Most people talk about doing something like that. Very few actually pack up their lives and go. But Tom and Marybeth did. And that one decision quietly changed the shape of both of their careers.
Parenthood changes the math
They are both parents. And like me, they are figuring out what it means to care deeply about the work while also caring deeply about a kid. The guilt is real. The choices never stop. There is always a quiet math happening in the background. Time here, time there. Something has to give and the answer is never perfectly clear.
What I appreciated most was that neither of them tried to wrap it up in a clean answer. They just spoke honestly about it. About the things they have had to let go of. The things they protect. And how their daughter has slowly shifted the way they think about the work in the first place. The work still matters, maybe even more, but the reason behind it has changed.
Where you really see it is in how they function as a team. They run a tight ship at home. Their schedule is dialed in down to the minute. They showed me their shared calendar and it was honestly a thing of beauty. Every hour accounted for. Color coded. Work, school, play, activities, life. The level of organization was impressive. I would be thrilled to achieve even a fraction of that kind of structure.
Their daughter is a very lucky girl. From day one she has been backstage at The Modern, wandering through one of the best dining rooms in the city like it is normal life. She already has the inside scoop on burgers and fries, which feels like a pretty great way to grow up.
A small note that really stuck with me. Their daughter Margaux became fascinated with one of The Modern’s most famous dishes, Eggs on Eggs. It is a beautiful, delicate dish, and apparently a favorite of hers.
One day she surprised Tom with an incredibly good drawing of it. That drawing now hangs in the prime spot of the kitchen at The Modern. Front row, first class seating.
OTHER RECS THIS WEEK
EAT: Go to The Modern. It sounds obvious, but it still needs to be said. Then go get a burger and fries at Shake Shack after. Call it dessert. Yes, the caviar hot dog is incredible, at The Modern, but what really won me over was the steak tartare with the potatoes that come with it. Just get it.
OUTFIT: a two-piece set from Sézane. Pants + Shirt
REC: I just started reading I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally, and I am honestly confused how it took me this long to pick it up. If you have already read it, you are ahead of me. If you have not, go buy it and start.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Tom and Marybeth reminded me that two people can build completely different things and still be building toward the same life. That a tasting menu and a burger are more similar than they are different. That the most creative partnerships don’t always look like collaboration from the outside — sometimes they just look like two people who take each other’s work seriously.
It was such a pleasure chatting and getting to know both Tom and Marybeth. They are such hard workers that love what they do and it shows. Thank you to both of them for coming on Campers and being my first Duo!
The full episode is live now. Watch here.
SOUND BITES
March playlist is coming next week. It is my birthday month, so this one will be a little more sentimental and probably twice as long. ❤️
Thanks for pulling up a seat.
xx,
Gina