Jeffrey Steingarten
Jeffrey Steingarten is an American lawyer and culinary critic/columnist. He is a regular columnist for Vogue magazine. He has also written for Slate. His 1997 book of food-related essays, The Man Who Ate Everything, is a Julia Child Book Award winner and was also a James Beard Book Award finalist. In 2002, Steingarten published a second collection of essays entitled It Must've Been Something I Ate. Working with Ed Levine, he was host of the show, "New York Eats" which was broadcast from 1998-2000 on local area Metro TV (a local station that only broadcasts in the New York City area.) The show consisted of taste tests, restaurant reviews, and the cooking and eating of famous chefs' recipes. Steingarten frequently serves as a judge on the Food Network show Iron Chef America, and is known for his sharp confrontations with the other judges.
“Whenever I travel to the South, the first thing I do is visit the best barbecue place between the airport and my hotel. An hour or two later I visit the best barbecue place between my hotel and dinner.”
“As a leftover sixties liberal, I believe that the long arm and beady eyes of the government have no place in our bedrooms, our kitchens, or the backseats of our parked cars. But I also feel that the immediate appointment of a Special Pastry Prosecutor would do much more good than harm. We know the free market has totally failed when 89 percent of all the tart pastry, chocolate-chip cookies, and tuiles in America are far less delicious than they would be if bakers simply followed a few readily available recipes. What we need is a system of graduated fines and perhaps short jail sentences to discourage the production of totally depressing baked goods. Maybe a period of unpleasant and tedious community service could be substituted for jail time.”
“But the goal of the arts, culinary or otherwise, is not to increase our comfort. That is the goal of an easy chair.”