Not all of our Unknown Gastronomes are chefs. Our second interview features a prominent Boston-based food columnist whose work appears in both local and national publications. We will enter you in a drawing for a free ticket to our next Mystery Meet if you can:
- Correctly identify this person
- Name his/her local newspaper column and the publication in which it appears
- Name his/her local magazine column and the publication in which it appears
How did you get started in the culinary industry?
Got my start as a professional food writer after being discovered on the Boston board of Chowhound. Local editors, impressed by my amateur writing and knowledge of the Boston restaurant scene, invited me to contribute reviews and food/drinks features to Boston’s Weekly Dig and _____ _________. Other work followed.
Tell us about the different jobs you’ve had over the years.
I worked as a dishwasher, busboy, server, bartender and maitre’d at a number of restaurants (including a New England seafood restaurant, a local family restaurant that did French-influenced American cuisine by a CIA-alum chef, and a fancy steakhouse) before embarking on a career unrelated to the restaurant industry that still constitutes my day job. That non-industry career required considerable business travel to every corner of the world that greatly expanded the scope of my culinary explorations.
Describe a typical day in your life.
Most of my day is devoted to non-culinary pursuits. I take a few minutes out of each day to read up on the local and national food scene. I will Tweet and post on Facebook (between the two, I have about 3000 friends/followers) on stories that interest me, usually with some focus on the Boston food/drinks scene. Evenings and weekends are when I do my food research, writing and blogging. I write one review a week, which typically involves 2-3 restaurant visits, and blog about once a month.
What are you known for?
I’m probably best known for my __ ___ _____ column reviewing budget restaurants for the ______ _______. Next, my ____ ____ column on Boston fine-dining restaurants for _____ _________; I also write or co-author their annual Dining Awards. I’ve also written reviews and features for Boston’s Weekly Dig, Boston Magazine, Maxim Magazine, Gayot.com, AskMen.com and CitySearch.com. I have the world’s ugliest food blog, which gets anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand hits a day, and have contributed blog pieces to DrinkBoston.com, Denveater.com and JacquelineChurch.com.
What projects have you been working on lately?
My two regular restaurant-review columns keep me pretty busy. Later this month, I’m also going to start contributing reviews of Boston bars to SeriousEats.com, which I’ve very excited about. My 2010 year-end roundups of the Boston scene in the ______ _______, _____ _________, and my blog were a lot of fun, and I recently wrote about Rocca’s closing, examining why a restaurant with all the apparent tools for success still managed to fail.
Share your proudest career highlight with us.
Highlights? Career? Ha! I was pretty pleased when SeriousEats.com picked up my blog piece in which I gently satirized Boston restaurants with bad names. That got more attention than any other blog bit I’ve ever written, and inspired imitators in several other US cities. Ironic, since it was kind of a silly throwaway, one of the least serious essays I’ve ever taken the trouble to write.
Tell us about the best meal you’ve ever had.
Wow, tough question. The meals I remember the most fondly are hardly the most elaborate or expensive; they were mainly about context and/or romance. A meal at an ancient restaurant in Tuscany that had been frequented by Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner when they were filming The Barefoot Contessa: the wine service was nonpareil, and I had the most beautiful steak Florentine. I think that’s where I figured out I wanted to make my then-girlfriend Mrs. _______. A big-number birthday meal with twenty of my closest friends and family at a bygone fine-French institution in Manhattan. A green curry with chicken served in a coconut at a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Bali. A ten-cent banh mi from a roadside cart in the middle of Hanoi. A braai (backyard grilled-meat-fest with lots of icy lagers) at the home of a friend in Durban, South Africa. Those are clearly as much about the settings and the people I shared them with as the food.
What are some of your favorite Boston restaurants?
Another very difficult question. I guess I’ll focus on places that aren’t special-occasion, where I wouldn’t feel guilty going any night of the week. Angela’s Cafe in Eastie, for its traditional cocina Poblana by Angela Atenco Lopez, a grandmother from Puebla who’s been cooking professionally for over 40 years. Trattoria Toscana, a true trattoria whose chef (Zamir Kociaj), an Albanian native who trained in Tuscany, does the closest thing to traditional Tuscan food I’ve seen in the States, and cooks every single dish served in his dining room every night. Peach Farm, a Chinatown Hong Kong seafood place; its live-tank approach means your fish or shellfish could literally not be fresher. There’s a reason you’ll often see big-name chefs dining there. Coppa Enoteca, a place in my neighborhood with real soul in its cooking from a chef (Jamie Bissonnette) who just kills it with charcuterie, salumi and organ meats; even his little wood-fired pizzas are amazing. I hate to leave out some other favorites, but that’s a decent short list.
