All I Think About is Food, with Mamrie Hart

On the podcast, I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Mamrie Hart—comedian, actress, host, and New York Times bestselling author. You might know Mamrie from her hilarious YouTube channel, You Deserve a Drink, her appearances on the Food Network’s Tiny Food Fight, or her podcast This Might Get Weird.

You might not know that Mamrie has been a longtime vegetarian—and now she’s sharing her love of plant-based food in her debut cookbook, All I Think About Is Food. Packed with party-ready themes and playfully named dishes, this book brings her signature humor and creativity to the kitchen. It’s a fresh, fun take on vegetarian cooking designed to inspire your next gathering.

In this episode, we chat about Mamrie’s laid-back approach to meatless meals, her tips for hosting unforgettable dinner parties, and the stories behind her most outrageous recipe names.

Listen to the full episode or keep reading for some of the highlights from our conversation.

What Got You Started in Cocktail and Food Recipe Development?

I’ve always loved food—it’s genuinely my favorite hobby. I became a vegetarian when I was eight years old. There wasn’t one reason—I just thought it seemed cool, so I tried it, and it stuck. Growing up in rural North Carolina, no one really knew what vegetarian meant. I’d say I was a vegetarian, but I would get served chicken nuggets or fish sticks. For years, I lived off frozen veggie patties and snack foods.

Things shifted when I got to college and later moved to New York. Suddenly, there were so many new ingredients and ways to cook vegetables. I discovered tempeh, vegetables I’d never tried, and a whole new approach to plant-based food. That’s when I started learning how to cook for myself.

Cocktail and food content were always what I gravitated toward, even early on. I was a fan of Iron Chef Japan back when it was dubbed. Bartending in New York helped pay the bills while I pursued entertainment, but it also pulled me deeper into the world of food and cocktails.

“I consume menus like other people consume novels.” And eventually, my friends pointed out what I already knew—all I think about is food. So, I wrote a cookbook.

Tell us more about your new book, All I Think About Is Food

All I Think About Is Food is a vegetarian cookbook built around the idea of playful, themed dinner parties.

Each chapter in the book is a complete vegetarian dinner party, with starters, mains, sides, and salads—all paired with cocktails. I’m a certified sommelier and love wine, but I think pairing cocktails with food is an underused concept. I wanted to bring that same level of intention to every menu.

Many of the recipes in the book were inspired by things I couldn’t eat growing up, like Spaghetti-Os or Oysters Rockefeller. I’ve reimagined those dishes in vegetarian form—Vodka-O’s is my adult take on the canned classic (made with vodka sauce), and Artichokes Rockefeller features fried baby artichokes over creamed spinach. The whole book was born from that sense of food FOMO.

It was also important to me that the recipes were accessible to everyone. While writing the book, I kept the Food Lion website open with my hometown zip code to make sure every ingredient could be found at a standard, rural grocery store. No specialty shops, no online orders—just fun, accessible, veggie-packed recipes that still feel a little fancy.

Learn more

Listen to the full podcast episode with Mamrie here. Her newly released book, All I Think About Is Food, is available online and everywhere books are sold. You can also listen to her weekly podcast, This Might Get Weird, and find her on social media at @mametown.

All I Think About is Food: A Vegetarian Cookbook that’ll Keep the Party Going
by Mamrie Hart
(Countryman Press, 2025).

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