When Zakaria, 55, isn’t shooting a live segment for CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS — which airs Sundays and has recently covered everything from the Venezuelan protests to Brexit —
He spends time in his cherished study, writing at his messy desk, or cooking, or roaming the city with his daughter, Sofia, 10. Growing up in “a little town outside Bombay,” Zakaria watched “I Love Lucy” every Sunday, he said.
These days, the Upper West Side resident prefers documentaries or vintage culinary videos on YouTube. “Most cooking shows today are more like game shows, he said. They “don’t actually teach you to cook.”
THE TEA RITUAL: I wake up at 7 a.m. I exercise almost everyday, so I like to get that out of the way. But not before I’ve had a cup of tea. With real milk. Because I grew up in India, I am very finicky about tea. Basically a very strong, rich Assam that would be called ‘workman’s tea’ in Britain. And I always drink it from a ceramic mug my son made when he was 6 at the pottery studio Supermud. All our three kids have been there over the years.
THINK SWEAT...: When it’s really cold, I get on the treadmill and watch courses on YouTube — I’m a total nerd. Lately I’ve been running to a great Yale course by historian John Merriman. He does modern French history in 45-minute lectures, which is perfect for a run.
...OR RIVER RUN: I live half a block from Riverside Park, so I go into the park at 103rd Street. Depending on the weather, there’s a lovely shaded run (for when it’s sunny) from 112th Street to 120th Street and then you can go up the staircase and then back. I’ll do that basically twice so that’s 4 miles. Or I’ll go right on the river and I’ll run up to 145th street and back; or I run down to 57th street and back. Central Park gets all the attention, but it’s so overrun with tourists you feel like you’re in Disneyland.
FATHER/DAUGHTER DATE: I always make Sofia breakfast. This is very important: she likes buckwheat pancakes with monkey or elephant faces seared on them. Then, to connect her to her life in New York, we’ll do play dates with friends from her old school. Then sometimes we’ll go to Saravana Bhavan on 80th and Amsterdam, which serves extraordinary dosas — a South Indian sort of crepe made from fermented rice batter. And thenwe almost always do some excursion together. Sofia loves going to the Frick Collection again and again; we went to the Flatiron district’s National Museum of Mathematics too, recently. I get claustrophobic in museums, so we choose one exhibit and spend 90 minutes there, max.
HEART AND SOUL: After I put Sofia on a train back to her mother in Rhinebeck, I do something very boring: work on my book. For me, the heart and soul of this brownstone where I’ve lived for 14 years is the study. When “The Post-American World” did well abroad, I got an infusion of cash I hadn’t expected. So I got a great Brooklyn woodworker guy to make the study of my dreams out of English Pine. Now it looks supremely civilized because all the mess is contained behind this huge desk’s mirrored doors.
DINNER WITH FRIENDS: I cook a lot. I would say three out of four Sundays. My closest friends are from college and grad school, and I often have a few of them over. We drink, eat, talk. The other day I made faro spaghetti Bolognese and we opened two very very nice Italian wines — a Barolo and a Brunello.
FRENCH INFLUENCE: I don’t have the shallots and garlic neatly chopped in little bowls or anything. I kind of wing it because it’s too boring otherwise, and I find thefear of failure keeps you more engaged and in the moment than if you’re always looking down at a recipe. I taught myself to cook by watching Jacques Pépin on Boston Public Television during grad school in the ‘80s. There’s this Jacques Pépin-making-an-omelet video on YouTube that’s the classic. He’s basically the world’s best cook, and without question the chef I watch the most.
BEDTIME HABITS: My iPhone sleeps right next to me. Arianna Huffington would have a heart attack, but yeah, the last thing I do before bed is check emails and the next day’s newspaper stories on Le Monde and the Financial Times. I mostly wear British Airways pajamas. Sometimes they give them to youon planes, so I’ve amassed a collection over the years. But I don’t wear like Winston Churchill-tailored pajamas or anything.