If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what everyday stuff famous people add to their carts — like hair spray or an electric toothbrush. We asked Van Leeuwen co-founder Ben Van Leeuwen about the dried beans, backpack, and potato peeler he can’t live without.
I like that these look like regular Vans but you can also work out and walk ten miles in them, which you can’t do with regular Vans because there’s not enough support. They’re like the cross between Vans and a big, bulky shoe, which I know are cool, but I don’t like going out in something like that — it feels funny. I love walking so much. I’ve been experimenting with taking the one little subway line in L.A. and walking from downtown back to Silver Lake where Laura O’Neill, our co-founder, lives. The shoes really come in handy for that.
This is one of my favorite places in all of New York. I’ve been going since I moved to the city 17 or 18 years ago. We have a little group who love going, and we just sit in the saunas. They have pretty good food upstairs, too. It’s everything I imagine that New Yorkers love about New York. It’s not fancy. It’s really diverse. It’s not hipsters, it’s not old people, it’s just all different sorts of people.
Once in a while I’ll have them hit me with the branches. Sasha is one of the guys, and he brings you into the Russian room, and you’re lying down and he’s hitting you with these branches with soapy suds, and you get so hot. The only thing that cools you down is when he pours a bucket of cold water on you. It’s sort of like a trust fall. You are completely in his hands. It’s kind of an uncomfortable experience, but I still think it’s a good human thing to do to be like, “I’m going to die of overheating if this man doesn’t pour this water on me.” But he does, and he does it at exactly the right time. Right when you think, “Oh my God, I can’t take another breath,” you get a bucket of water.
I mostly eat vegetarian at home. I try to make a pot of beans at least once a week. I always only use dried beans because they’re so much tastier than canned beans. I just go on their website and I order 12 different ones, because I read that it’s healthier to eat all different types of beans. They’re just so good for your stomach, and it’s really nice and efficient having that big pot of beans. I usually do the classic onions, celery, carrots, freshly grated ginger root, garlic, throw the beans in, wild Greek oregano, other herbs. And then I use vegetarian Better Than Bouillon, because it’s just so freaking good. I serve it over Anson Mills Carolina Gold Rice. You have to keep it refrigerated because it’s so fresh. I love both these companies because they’re keeping a little industry and demand going for smaller production heirloom products. I do the beans in the Le Creuset then put them on the rice with Bulgarian feta cheese, Calabrian chile paste, or crispy fried spicy shallots, if I have those in the house. Sometimes I’ll add a little olive oil on top.
I like caffeine and the kick of it, but I can’t have coffee. The caffeine in chocolate is called theobromine. When you drink coffee, the caffeine metabolizes into theobromine, but when you have chocolate, it’s immediately theobromine. The biggest difference is it takes three hours to peak in your system, whereas coffee is like a 40-minute peak. It’s a much slower build, but it’s also not as intense, so I really like it for that.
Askinosie chocolate is amazing. It’s made in Missouri of all places. I get what are called mini-grams — they’re basically like Nestle chocolate-chip versions of these really fancy chocolates. This is sort of embarrassing, but I get a 50-pound box and I go through it every few months. I have a Swell bottle, and I put the chocolate in there then fill it halfway with boiling water and shake it. Then I open it up and put in cold water to bring it to the temperature that I can drink. I’ll sometimes grind up whole vanilla beans and Ceylon cinnamon and cardamom, and I put that in as well. Sometimes I’ll pour it over ice if it’s hot out.
This is so insanely spicy. One of my favorite things to make is French-cut onions fried in olive oil in a pan, almost caramelized a teeny bit. Break an egg in after you crisp sesame seeds and coriander seeds a little. Then you have this incredible, thin omelet. I fold that up and I put English cheddar cheese on Polish sourdough bread that I get from the Northside Bakery in Greenpoint, mayonnaise, and then the Don Emilio sauce, and it’s crazy good.
This is a little HIIT studio. I go every single day. My girlfriend got me onto it. I like it because the whole place has windows, so you’re in the natural light when you’re working out. Every day you’re doing something different, so I find it goes really fast when you don’t know what’s coming next, but it’s super-intense. It’s a full-body workout. I’m really scared of dying, so I try to stay healthy, and it makes me feel good in the moment, too.
Do you remember the potato-peeler man who used to be in Union Square? There was an article in the New York Times and he became very rich, and he just sat in Union Square peeling potatoes, selling Swiss peelers like these. I think when I bought my first one 20 years ago, it was $6 or something. With so many kitchen gadgets, the ones that look really fancy and have four different materials, it’s not that ergonomic and they’re not that useful. This one’s simple. It’s one material. It’s great. It looks really nice, too.
Live Live & Organic is across the street from the Russian baths in the East Village. They have honey and royal jelly and all these bumblebee products. This is the greatest moisturizer. One of the reasons I was like, Wow, this must work well is that I know they embalmed the mummies in honey, and that’s how the mummies are preserved so well. People love it. I was buying some more the other day, and there was a photo of a magazine with celebrities talking about it, so I was like, “It must really be good.”
This cookbook has over 1,000 recipes, and every one I’ve ever made is amazing. The way of cooking is quite different from Mediterranean or classic French cooking, so I’ve loved learning about that and being able to apply those techniques to other cooking. I used to cook a lot of Thai food at home, and it’s kind of similar in that you’re making pastes of ginger, garlic, and turmeric. The difference between roasting and freshly grinding your own curry powder versus buying it from the store will blow you away. So you make fresh curry powder, ginger paste, and garlic paste, and then you can start creating your own different curries. But it’s hard. The truth is, I’ve only made 20 recipes because it’s so much work, so I go out for Indian food a lot.
I’m embarrassed, but I learned about Rhone through the the GQ Best Stuff Box. It was during the pandemic, and I was targeted with it. I signed up and they sent me the shorts, and I was like, These are the best shorts, and then I started buying stuff at Rhone. These pants are just so comfortable, like an athletic pant, but they’re slim enough that they look all right. They’re great for airplanes, trains, biking. It’s sort of in line with the shoes. You can almost wear these anywhere.
I like the size. It’s just small enough where it’s almost too small for a one- or two-day trip, but it just makes the cut. I can fit a pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, a pair of underwear, a T-shirt, workout shorts, a toiletry case, and my computer for a day or two in Boston or D.C. to see the stores.
When I was 19 years old, I saved up money to go backpacking around the world. I went alone for nine months, but I had no plan. The one thing that I wanted was to travel super-light, so I didn’t get one of those big backpacks. I literally just brought my book bag from school, and it was so awesome because it meant I could wander for the whole day and I wouldn’t feel bogged down by the bag. It feels so awesome to not have a lot of stuff.
The Sicilian pistachio is at the core of who we are as a brand. The ice cream is made from cream, milk, eggs, sea salt, and cane sugar, and it’s cooked into this beautiful custard. Then we fold in this pure Sicilian pistachio paste from Bronte. We were so obsessive with sourcing and tasting, and we still, to this day, every year, do a blind taste test on the pistachio because it’s so expensive. We’re always like, “Should we actually be using Sicilian? Can we go to Turkish? Can we go to Mainland Italian?” Every single time, and it’s unanimous, the Sicilian wins.
One of the reasons those pistachios are so good is that they prune the trees every other year, so the trees only fruit every other year. So then the fruit is even more delicious and resinous and more concentrated in flavor. There aren’t big farms. For the best pistachios in Sicily, which grow on the volcano, it’ll be a family that has 50 trees or a family that has five trees, and then they harvest them, bring them to the processor. The processor looks through them for rocks, they roast them, and then they grind them up into a paste, and then they go to the port of Naples and sail to New York to Van Leeuwen.
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