Carla Lalli Music


Carla Lalli Music is an American chef, cookbook author, and YouTube personality. She is a food editor at large of Bon Appétit and is known for her appearances in videos produced for the magazine's YouTube channel, most notably as the host of Back-to-Back Chef.

Biography

Music was born to an Italian-American family, where her mother worked as a food critic at New West and as a cookbook editor at Simon & Schuster. Music studied at Brown University, where she graduated with a degree in Modern Culture and Media in 1994, and later attended the French Culinary Institute. She worked in food service for over a decade, notably as a line chef and later kitchen manager for Rocco DiSpirito, as the first general manager of Shake Shack, and as an instructor in culinary management at the Institute for Culinary Education. She transitioned to food writing in 2009, and served as an editor for Everyday Food until 2011. Music was hired as a features editor for Bon Appétit that same year, and was later promoted to be the magazine's food director. In January of 2020, she moved her role to food editor at large to focus on her 2nd cookbook.
Music first appeared in videos on the Bon Appétit YouTube channel in 2015, and would make regular appearances in recipe preparation videos in the subsequent years. In 2018, Music became the host of Back-to-Back Chef, a web series in which she instructs a celebrity in preparing a dish while facing away from each other and using only verbal instructions. Notable guests on the series have included Natalie Portman, Michael Shannon, and Elizabeth Olsen. The series has been praised for its comedic timing and Music's hosting, with Vulture calling the Back-to-Back Chef "simple, elegant, and absolutely genius." Music is also featured in the series Test Kitchen Talks, From the Test Kitchen, and Making Perfect.
A cookbook by Music, Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook, was published by Penguin Random House on March 19, 2019. In May 2020, the cookbook earned the 2020 James Beard Foundation Book Award in the category "General". Music is working on a second cookbook.

Personal life

Music resides in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with her husband and two children.