Phoenix chef gets ‘A Little Bit Extra’ in his new cookbook

In retrospect, Reilly Meehan’s childhood pastimes hinted that he was destined to become a chef. 

He’d make “poison” by combining ingredients from the spice cabinet of his parents’ Santa Cruz home, then insist they cook with it. Meehan harvested cucumbers and cilantro, guided by his nanny Lucy, and they’d tuck that bounty into warm tortillas for an afternoon snack. He’d mess around by making pie crust from scratch. The nascent chef crafted handwritten and drawn cookbooks.

“I was very intuitive with food from an early age,” Meehan, a Phoenix private chef, says. “I played with food a lot, and my parents, thank God, let me. They nurtured that.”

Now, the chef, social media personality and private pop-up host has a hard-bound cookbook of his own. Meehan’s debut book, “A Little Bit Extra: 100 Recipes That Serve Up Something Special,” hits bookstore shelves on March 31.

Meehan has more than 594,000 followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Instagram. He’s gained notoriety for posting short videos that go behind the scenes of his work as a private chef, or show him effortlessly making chicken parmesan, pineapple upside-down cake or a shaken espresso inside an empty peanut butter jar. 

“I have adopted this mantra of ‘Just get as much good food in front of as many people as possible,’” Meehan says. “That’s been the driving force behind a lot of what I’m doing.”

Cooking competitions and blue ribbons

The Californian got some of his first validation as a chef when he snagged a blue ribbon at the Santa Cruz County Fair for a peach pie at the ripe age of 11. He picked peaches from the tree in his backyard, “fudged around” with spices and wove strips of pie crust into a lattice across the top.

“I remember baking it and being so distraught over how imperfect it was,” Meehan recalls. 

The judges disagreed, and so did his parents. 

“That’s a testament to my parents being very supportive of me at a young age,” Meehan says. “What 11-year-old boy wants to enter a peach pie into the county fair?”

He had a prime spot to explore that budding passion for cooking. At his father’s restaurant, Seabright Brewery, Meehan helped with prep. By age 15, he was spending summer breaks and weekends frying calamari and grilling burgers. As high school graduation neared, Meehan swapped academia for the kitchen after securing a culinary school scholarship. 

Later, he spent nearly seven years cooking professionally at Bohemian Club, a private men’s club in San Francisco. The club would go on hiatus in August each year. To fill that time, he connected with a jetset family who split time between the Bay Area and the Hamptons. He joined them on the East Coast for the first time around 2015, falling in love with the beaches and farm-fresh tomatoes. 

When the pandemic hit, the family moved to Phoenix and asked Meehan to relocate with them as their full-time personal chef. Though Meehan wasn’t looking for a change, the idea of slowing down and working for a family he’d gotten to know was appealing. 

“I don’t think I would have a private chef job if it wasn’t for the people I work for, because they are wonderful,” he says.

Meehan has been in the Valley since 2021. The landing was initially rocky, with his husband setting up their house in the heat of summer while Meehan cooked in the Hamptons. Once here and settled, Meehan got the lay of the land by hitting up Valley chefs who’d done stints at Bohemian Club. That’s when he started posting more on social media, too — something his clients have supported.

“I was working in the kitchen where we were cooking for 500, 600 people a night, to just by myself cooking for a family,” Meehan says. “I found myself with a lot more downtime.”

Personal recipes with a ‘twist’

The chef was a “fiend” for cookbooks in culinary school, but he admittedly doesn’t often work from written recipes. He started jotting some down for friends and family who asked for new recipes during the pandemic. He built a document with a roster of dishes, uploaded photos and gathered people on Zoom to cook together as a way to stay connected during the isolating time.

Writing a cookbook “just seemed like a natural progression,” Meehan says. 

After shopping around a proposal for a few months, Meehan got the green light to craft a cookbook at the end of 2022. 

“When I share short-form video, it’s so hard to get any story or any detail into anything,” he says. “That was one of the things that I really liked about writing the book, is I get to tell a story and actually give you a lot of detail about how a recipe goes down.”

The chef drew on his own food memories, adding his own “extra” take. Crispy potato tacos are inspired by cooking with Lucy. A seafood bisque pays homage to his dad’s pub. Meehan shares his husband’s savory go-to breakfast and recreates a braised chicken dinner first shared with friends over Zoom. And he’s zhoushed up the blue-ribbon peach pie.

“It’s funny because if you had asked me before I wrote this, I would not have told you my family had a rich culinary history,” Meehan says. “I have a lot of memories that are tied to these foods. It was really exciting to think about those, revisit those and then put my own little twist on them.”

He’s unabashedly named his favorite dish in the book: Roasted Chicken with “Under the Chicken” Onion Chutney. Rotisserie chicken was served at the Meehan household several nights a week, usually with vegetables and a crusty baguette, the chef recalls. His version is spatchcocked and paired with a lemony onion chutney.

“Roasted chicken is everybody’s go-to. It’s comforting, it’s cozy, it’s relatively easy,” Meehan says, “but I think there’s something fun about taking that and making it a little more cheffy.”

Meehan hopes his book will also stand out to home cooks because it includes breads and desserts. Meehan started sourdough baking during the pandemic. Now, he bakes two to four loaves each week for his clients. 

“I’m 90% certain that’s why my clients keep me around,” he says. “Thank God, they love carbs.”

In addition to sharing these stories, Meehan hopes readers will take away tips to use in anything they cook. The chef says basics — like salt, herbs, citrus juice or zest — can save or elevate just about any dish by giving it a fresh, bright pop.  

‘People are excited about interesting food’

Meehan’s cookbook isn’t his only side project. The chef has also teamed with Tasmia Khan, a Phoenix-based designer and event planner, on an exclusive invite-only pop-up at his Coronado home called Kiko’s. The pair starts with a simple inspiration point, such as a color or ingredient, and from there, runs wild. Then, they spend several days leading up to each dinner prepping and transforming Meehan’s house into an intimate restaurant.

“The Kiko’s pop-ups have been really cool to push ourselves creatively,” Meehan says. “They’ve all had a different theme, a different menu and a different color scheme.”

One event drew on romantic, jewel-toned hues while another took inspiration from Khan’s family farm in India and South Asian flavors. Khan says she’s still thinking about dishes Meehan made, including a risotto served in a crab shell and a braised oxtail wrapped in chard. 

“Watching him lean into that creative side and presentation is such a pleasure,” Khan says. “Watching him interact with everyone who walks into his home is very exciting.”

In May, Meehan and Khan will expand their dinner to about two dozen guests at the Phoenix event space Good Company. 

Khan is also supporting Meehan’s book launch, including at a Phoenix event on April 16 at Biltmore Fashion Park during Desert Design Week. The book signing will feature food from Blanco, Empress Gin cocktails and affogatos. 

As he readies for the release of “A Little Bit Extra,” Meehan isn’t ruling out any future opportunities, be it writing another cookbook or other culinary pursuits. 

“There’s a lot of opportunity in Phoenix to do cool stuff,” Meehan says, “I think people are excited about interesting food right now.”