If You Like To Read Restaurant Reviews Or Watch Food TV, Here's Some News

The NYT names new restaurant critics, and there is lots coming to your screen

Hello, CulinaryWoman readers! Happy Father’s Day to the dads out there, and hugs to anyone who has lost or is estranged from their dad. A special salute to my brother Frank, who I plan to see later today. This is not the dining out day that Mother’s Day has become. It’s more of a grilling at home holiday. But treat the dads nicely, in any case.

We are flooded with more food-related media than we’ve ever seen. Nobody with access to a search engine lacks for things to read, hear and watch. This week, I’m looking at three places with something new to share.

New Faces At The New York Times Table

For generations, the restaurant critic of the New York Times sat atop the mountain of dining reviews. Praise from the Times meant a full reservations book for weeks, months or even years. Likewise, a takedown from the paper might cause a place to close, or at least, suffer from humiliation.

For the past 26 years, the permanent critics have been white males. Pete Wells was the NYT’s food critic from 2012 through 2024. Sam Sifton held the job from 2009 to 2011. Frank Bruni had the job from 2004 through 2009, and William “Biff” Grimes from 1999 to 2004. (If you’re wondering where Ruth Reichl fits in, she preceded Biff.)

Now, the Times is making what once would be considered a monumental shift.

A change in approach

Last week, it announced that Ligaya Mishan and Tejal Rao will serve as co-chief restaurant critics, the first time that the news organization will formally have more than one.

The NYT also revealed an “ambitious new plan” to change the way it covers restaurants. Ligaya will work from New York, while Tejal will be based in California, and both will travel frequently.

The critics will forego their anonymity. While they’ll do everything they can to dine without calling attention, and are allowed to make reservations under fake names, “We are more or less 86’ing wigs, fake glasses and TV appearances with faces blurred,” the Times said in its announcement.

All these steps are important moves so that the Times can catch up with the times.

The once-elitist world of restaurant criticism has long been democratized - some might say diluted. All of us have become restaurant critics, whether or not we have any formal training, know how to cook or are familiar with any type of international cuisine.

It takes only seconds to post your impressions of a restaurant on Instagram, Tik Tok, Yelp, Resy or somewhere else. You can film your own mini-review right at your seat. Your assessment can go viral and potentially reach more people than a single Times review.

The amount of money at stake in this is immense. The U.S. restaurant industry is expected to reach $1.5 trillion in sales this year. It employs nearly 16 million people, which makes it the nation’s second-largest private employer, behind health care.

Not only that, but restaurants and the food industry have a crucial place in the media world. All that free media is competing with news organizations who are trying to nab a share of attention.

The motivation

By naming two food critics, the Times is aiming for a number of objectives. First, it assures that a single critic doesn’t get too warn out from the job, which is a real grind (Pete recently described what it had done to his health).

Second, it gives it two personalities to promote throughout its platforms, from print to video to podcasts. Third, broadening the scope of their criticism potentially can pull in subscriptions from across the country, not just from the East Coast.

Note that I said “subscriptions” rather than advertisers. The game nowadays isn’t so much companies placing ads. It’s people signing up for Times products, whether print and digital subscriptions, the Dining app, the Athletic sports site and games such as Connections and the crossword puzzle.

If you are a Times subscriber, my bet is that you will be hearing from and about the new restaurant critics fairly often. I’d love to know whether you think the new appointments matter, or if you get your restaurant reviews from somewhere else.

Phil Rosenthal has become an industry

When Somebody Feed Phil first went on the air in 2018, I quickly became a fan. His show was a geeky pleasure, a seemingly ordinary guy traversing the world and teaching people about places to see and things to eat.

Of course, Phil was never an ordinary guy, he was a successful television producer who developed Everybody Loves Raymond, a phenomenally popular show in the 1990s and 2000s.

Back then, Phil was active on Twitter, and if you tweeted at him, he’d tweet back. That led to me becoming part of the “Phil Rosenthal World” family and getting regular email updates on the show and Phil’s activities.

Fast forward to 2025, and Phil is now an industry. There are cookbooks (he has a new one coming out this fall), an international lecture tour, and an upcoming deli in Los Angeles that will pay tribute to his late parents.

Time for Season 8

This week, the eighth season of Somebody Feel Phil drops on Netflix, where it is the longest-running show on that streaming network. That prompted an email to Phil’s fans, asking us to generate excitement so there would be a ninth season. Here’s what they suggested.

Binge all the episodes. “Please watch our eight episodes next week so we have our best numbers yet and can get picked up for another season. We think this is our best season yet. Please post to tell your friends!” I didn’t realize that was how Netflix assessed shows, given that some roll out an episode a week, but okay.

Buy tour tickets. An Evening with Phil Rosenthal will stop in 26 cities starting on Friday, August 8 in Monterrey, CA with stops across the U.S. and Canada - Kansas City, Detroit, Indianapolis, Honolulu, Calgary, Montreal, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas and more. You can use the code FEEDPHIL to access the pre-sale. (I saw Phil in New Orleans, where he was interviewed by chef Alon Shaya. He’s been to Ann Arbor, too.)

Order his new cookbook. Phil’s Favorites: Recipes from Friends and Family To Make At Home comes out on Nov. 4. It includes contributions from his wife, actress Monica Horan, his daughter Lily and son Ben, and his brother Richard, as well as friends like Judy Gold and Anna Romano. You can find the cookbook at Bookshop.org.

If all that seems like a lot, remember that it took Phil a long time to get to this point. In an interview when the series debuted, he was asked why he hadn’t returned to TV after Everybody Loves Raymond went off the air in 2005.

Phil replied that he had repeatedly tried to sell pilots and other show ideas. It took him nine years to sell a show called I’ll Have What Phil’s Having to PBS, only to see it canceled after one season. Then Netflix picked up the show, renamed it, and presented it to an international audience. Now, here he is.

Great News For The Great Canadian Baking Show

Regular readers of CulinaryWoman know how much I love the Great Canadian Baking Show. I consider it to be more sophisticated, and friendlier, than The Great British Bake Off. For the past few seasons, I’ve been writing reviews of its episodes for paid subscribers in Red Beans And Advice.

Last week, CBC Baking received an unexpected celebrity endorsement. In an interview on Vogue.com, actress Dakota Johnson asked actor Pedro Pascal, aka Internet Daddy, if he’d like to appear on a reality program, such as GBBO.

No, Pedro responded: “I would like the Canadian Bake Off. Sorry, England.”

The hosts and judges of CBC Baking, and many of the past contestants let out a collective “SQUEE” across their social media. It was the second bit of good news recently for the show and its viewers.

Roku, the streaming service, recently announced that seasons one through eight and the holiday specials are now available in its library. No more hunting for YouTube bootlegs and getting links from friends in Canada. If you’re looking for something to binge besides Phil, head straight there.

A Chinese Chicken Salad Pioneer Closes In Hollywood

If you’ve had lunch with your mother in the past 40 years, it’s likely that one of you ate a Chinese Chicken Salad. It’s a combination of chopped Chinese cabbage, carrots, crispy noodles, mandarin oranges and poached chicken, topped with sesame-soy dressing.

My mother and Maxine liked it so much that I was often dispatched to our local Applebee’s to pick one up (the full sized salad was enough for the two of them to share).

The salad is not from China, but the invention of Chinese-born chefs in California. Now, Chin-Chin, the West Hollywood restaurant that helped popularize it, is closing its flagship location. Apparently, the restaurant and its landlord could not agree to new lease terms.

There are other locations of Chin-Chin around Los Angeles, which is good because its fellow West Hollywood restaurants are taking it on the chin (no pun intended). The Den on Sunset, Rock & Reilly’s and Le Petit Four all shuttered in 2025.

Five Historic Civil Rights Era Restaurants

In honor of Juneteeth, which takes place on Thursday, the BBC looked at five restaurants that played a key role during the Civil Rights Era.

Atop the list: Dooky Chase’s in New Orleans, which is now under the guidance of a new generation of Chase family members after the passing of founder Leah Chase in 2019. I am grateful that I got to meet her and eat there while she was still in charge.

Said the BBC, “Dooky Chase’s was a hotspot for civil rights organisers, lawyers and freedom fighters in the 1950s and still offers classic New Orleans dishes like seafood gumbo to politicians and celebrities today.”

Other restaurants include Brenda’s Bar-B-Q Pit in Montgomery, Alabama, whose back room was used as a safe haven during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954. The Four-Way Grill in Memphis is near the Stax Museum of American Soul, and I highly recommend visiting both.

Pascal’s Motor Hotel and Restaurant in Atlanta and the Big Apple Inn in Jackson, Mississippi round out the list.

Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman

I enjoyed talking with Marie Osborne on WJR-AM about Too Good To Go, which you read about in last Sunday’s newsletter. You can find the June 9 interview here.

This is James Beard weekend in Chicago and the restaurant awards will be presented Monday night. You can watch a livestream on Eater. Good luck to all the nominees!

Tomorrow, I’ll return for our paid subscribers with a look at a new night market in Ann Arbor that drew quite a crowd. Red Beans & Advice comes out every Monday and includes my tips, recipes and observations.

Have a good last few days of spring. See you next week!