About the Creator/Editor (a.k.a. Charlotte)

But Who Is This Charlotte?

I am a journalist, author, food writer and ideasmith, whose work has appeared in more publications than I can keep track of 20-plus years in, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Magazine, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Martha Stewart Living and ELLE.

My (paid) editorial roots take me back to DailyCandy, Town & Country and Food & Wine. Those are the publications where I cut my teeth before I began freelancing. (Prior to that were the formative/clueless years of unpaid internships. My first: New York Magazine, 1993, the summer of senior year of high school, totally because of nepotism.)

Since I began freelancing in 2005, I’ve had multiple columns, and done everything from thinkpieces, book reviews (for the NYT Book Review) and profiles to an IACP award-winning newsletter on cookbooks for the Washington Post, recipe-driven features (like the one on Ravneet Gill, a talented young pastry star in the U.K. and her “perfect” chocolate-chip cookie, which was the 8th most read feature in the Food section of the NYT in 2020 — and contained the second most popular recipe of 2020), and Q&As with chefs, authors and film directors. (It hasn’t all been about food.)

It might be a story about cookbooks—cover design, and why those in the U.K. are different from (and better than) their altered counterparts in the U.S., which is really a story about the publishing industry and the logic (and so-called “data”) behind its marketing strategy. Or a look at the cold hard truths of luxury ice cream and why it costs so much (and if it SHOULD), an article in Eater that ran in 2019 and appeared in the volume Best American Food Writing 2020.

I am the author of Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat & Staying in the Kitchen (Chronicle Books), which was published in 2012, ahead of its time—written in 2011, it was one of few to address the gender gap in the food industry and to challenge that status quo from a feminist perspective in the earlier aughts.

My unconventional, from-scratch anthology Women on Food (Abrams) debuted in the fall of 2019 and garnered a significant amount of buzz, and praise in the States and the U.K. It was nominated for two James Beard Foundation Awards, one for me in the “Writing” category. The other, selected for the “Profile” group, was Tejal Rao’s portrait of the best jam maker in the country June Taylor, which I edited (along with everything else in the book).

I do cookbooks too. In 2014, I was approached by Clarkson Potter to write a cookbook and figured why the hell not? Two titles followed: Stir, Sizzle, Bake was released in 2016 and its follow-up, Kitchen Remix arrived in the propitious month of April, 2020. I previously co-authored chef Anita Lo’s cookbook, Cooking Without Borders.

In related news, I was the proud creator and co-founder of Food52’s beloved, cult-followed Tournament of Cookbooks (a.k.a. The Piglet).

Basic Facts: I live in New York City, where I was born and raised. I love to bake—but prefer to keep it as a hobby.

Bonus Fun Fact: I am a lapsed Ph.D. student in Art History, having studied Modern Art & Theory (and Japanese art history as a minor). I escaped, in part, because I missed the real world and my beloved glossies; it’s hard to be a pop culture vulture in academia.

And what am I doing NOW? Another fun fact is that I LOVE SOAP OPERAS WITH ALL MY HEART, and have since well before I learned to read, or fell for magazines. That’s why I couldn’t be more excited to be teaming up with my friend, the brilliant writer and die-hard soap fan, Mayukh Sen on a project about none other than this subject we are both so passionate about and committed to. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, AND EVENING is our joint book of essays celebrating the many quirks, intricacies and hallmarks of the rich, colorful, and culturally undervalued art form of the American soap opera—both daytime and primetime. It will be published by Norton, and our editor is the wonderful Melanie Torotoli.

Here are a few examples of my work:

“Do-Overs,” A Collection of Original Essays from Award-Winning Writers, produced/edited for Food and Wine, Dec. 2022/Jan 2023

“Why Do Rich Guys Love Diners?” Town & Country, 03.27.2023

“New York’s Most Impossible Tables,” New York Magazine, 04.25.23

“‘Black Power Kitchen’ and the legacy of cookbook on a mission.” Washington Post, 10.20.2022

“Txikito Is Coming Back — Finally,” New York Magazine, 08.02.2022

“Romy Gill Makes Her Own Luck.” New York Magazine (Grub Street), 07.20.2022

“Writing, and Cooking, Across Borders,” New York Times Book Review, 12.10.2019

“‘Hotbox’ is the ‘Kitchen Confidential’ of the Big-Ticket Catering World,” New York Times Book Review, 05.31.2019

“Why There Are No Great Women Chefs,” Gastronomica, 10:1 (02.05.2010)

“The Cover Story,” Epicurious, 02.05.2020

“Some of the newest cookbooks look like comics. But does that work for readers?” Washington Post, 07.11.2017