Jeffrey Steingarten

Jeffrey Steingarten is one of the leading food writers in the United States. He has been the food critic at Vogue magazine since 1989. His monthly columns in Vogue have earned him a National Magazine Award, and nearly a dozen James Beard awards and nominations. William Rice of the Chicago Tribune named Steingarten “our most original and investigative food writer,” and has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “one of gastronomy’s first citizens.” His 1997 book of humorous food essays, The Man Who Ate Everything, was awarded the 1988 Julia Child Book Award for literary food writing and named food book of the year by the British Guild of Food Writers. The Man Who Ate Everything has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, German, Brazilian, British and Czech. The New York Times Book Review said of his book: “A wonderful book…brilliant…a triumph. Part cookbook, part travelogue, part medical and scientific treatise. Steingarten writes with marvelous ease, clarity, and humor.” Hendrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker observes that his writing is “so well prepared, so expertly seasoned, and so full of flavorsome surprises is it that if it were a meal even Mr. Steingarten himself would have difficulty finding fault in it.”

In 2002, Steingarten published a second collection of essays entitled It Must've Been Something I Ate. Both books are published by Knopf and Vintage. Steingarten’s pieces have also appeared in the New York Times, Men’s Vogue, and Slate Magazine. Working with Ed Levine, he was co-host of the show, "New York Eats" which aired from 1998-2000 on a local Metro channel. Steingarten frequently serves as a judge on the Food Network program Iron Chef America.

His father was attorney Henry Steingarten, who represented, among his many clients, the rock and roll pioneer Jimi Hendrix. Jeffrey Steingarten graduated from Harvard University in 1965, and Harvard Law School in 1968. He worked as assistant to Boston mayor Kevin White with future congressman Barney Frank. Steingarten departed from his legal career in 1989, joining Vogue magazine as a food critic.[1]

On Bastille Day, 1994, in recognition of his writings on French gastronomy, Steingarten was made a Chevalier in the Order of Merit by the Republic of France.

Bibliography

• Collected in: American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, ed. Molly O'Neill (Library of America, 2007) ISBN 1598530054
• Collected in: Penguin Book of Food and Drink, ed. Paul Levy (Viking, 1996) ISBN 067085266X
• The Man Who Ate Everything, (Vintage, 1996) ISBN 0375702024
• It Must've Been Something I Ate, (Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0375412808