Mimi Sheraton

This week’s guest on Radio Cherry Bombe is Mimi Sheraton, a pioneering food writer and a former restaurant critic for The Village Voice, Time, Condé Nast Traveler, and The New York Times. Her writing on food and travel has appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, Vogue, Town & Country, New York, and Food & Wine. She has written sixteen books, including The German Cookbook, first published in 1965 and never since then out of print, and a memoir, Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life. Her book The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup won both the IACP and James Beard awards, and she won a James Beard journalism award for her Vanity Fair article on the Four Seasons’ fortieth anniversary. Her latest book is 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die. She was born in Brooklyn and is a longtime resident of Greenwich Village. This program was brought to you by The International Culinary Center.

“Though I never thought of having a career in food, I drifted naturally once I started working on magazines.” [04:00]

“[As a critic], you try to help people pick a restaurant and know what to expect when they get there.” [08:00]

“One of the things that makes it difficult for women [in food], especially if they’re married, is that a husband who isn’t in the business is much more unhappy about being left alone every night for dinner than a wife. That level of tolerance is very different for women.” [14:00]

“When you have a core audience that’s really interested in the subject, you can be very specific and detailed but when your’e working for a publication that wants to expand that audience you have to get people that are less interested and entertain them – then you anger your core audience. [19:00]

“I write what I want to read. [20:00]

–Mimi Sheraton on Radio Cherry Bombe