Photo by Suzanne Goldish

Food writer Amanda Hesser surveys a plate of fried catfish on a bed of coconut rice at Le Zinc, a boisterous bistro in New York. A brown bob, held back by two black-and-white gingham barrettes, frames her small face. Her tiny figure is outfitted in a manner that suggests a young girl playing dress-up: black sweater, black skirt, black tights, plum-and-pink flats, and a string of purple beads.

Biting into a forkful of fish, Hesser, 30, overflows with a sort of Annie Hall-esque, wide-eyed delight. "I never realized catfish is so firm and meaty," she reveals. "I guess I've never had it before."

A food writer for the New York Times -- and she's never eaten catfish? That's right. And with such earnest and candid observations, Hesser has added a new voice to today's food world -- a voice filled with palatable wonder, youthful marvel, and a Midwestern-like authenticity in what can often be a snarky field. Meet the woman who Jeffrey Steingarten, food writer for Vogue and author of The Man Who Ate Everything (Knopf, 1997) calls "one of the best -- if not the best -- young food writers."

These days, Hesser may be best known for her biweekly "Food Diary" in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Just under a year ago, she added the first-person column to her plate of reporting food-trend news for the Dining In/Dining Out section of the paper. The column -- which has been likened to the Candace Bushnell New York Observer columns that formed the basis for the book and subsequent HBO series Sex and the City -- chronicles the intersection of food with Hesser's relationships with family, friends, and fiancé, "Mr. Latte" (a/k/a New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend).

Hesser's timing couldn't be better. Once a niche genre, food writing has been winning increasing space in the lexicon of popular culture, as the Food Network beefs up its programming with wham-bam enthusiasm, and books like Patricia Volk's Stuffed (Knopf, 2001) and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential (Bloomsbury, 2000) fly off the shelves.

Now, thanks to her column's visibility, Hesser's been launched into the spotlight. First teased in the New York Observer last year, she's since been profiled in W magazine, written up in Food & Wine, and taken down in the Hartford Courant. Most significantly, Hesser recently signed a book contract for a compilation of her columns, to be published in the spring of 2003 by W.W. Norton.

With a reach as wide as Emeril's, sex appeal on par with that of TV-chef-cum-temptress Nigella Lawson, and a literary voice likened to M.F.K. Fisher's, Hesser -- and her work -- has stirred up some fierce reactions. Some call "Food Diary" disappointing compared to her meatier newspaper work. Others eagerly await each of Hesser's dispatches on pet peeves, dinner-party imbroglios, and foodie anecdotes. But whatever the reaction, people are reading on. Somewhere in the midst of providing a beginner's point of entry into the food world and giving old-time foodies more substantial informational nuggets, Amanda Hesser is touching a national nerve. Read it all as a sign that the young scribe is food writing's Next Big Thing.

BORN IN Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and raised in a working-class family outside Scranton, Hesser has traveled quite a distance to her perch at the New York Times. But you could say she's always been hungry for culinary information, dating back to a studied childhood interest in what her mother made for dinner. "My mother was a very good practical cook," Hesser explains. "She cooked seasonally. She baked her own bread and made her own cookies. She made her jams and jellies in the summer, and fruit preserves."

Hesser attended Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she double-majored in economics and finance. "I came from a family with a very blue-collar mentality," she explains, between sips of water in the Times cafeteria. "You get a job that's going to have all the sort of security of the American dream."

But when Hesser spent a summer and the first half of her junior year studying at the London School of Economics -- and eating her way around Europe -- thoughts of 401(k) plans and life insurance quickly lost ground to a burgeoning interest in food. Back at Bentley, she started exploring Boston's culinary highs and lows. There were margaritas at the Border Café, scorpion bowls at the Hong Kong, ice-cream cones at Herrell's, pizza at Bertucci's. The young gourmand saved her money for dinners she enjoyed alone at the East Coast Grill, Hamersley's Bistro, the Blue Room, and Biba. "On Friday nights, when I was making plans with my friends, I was more interested in deciding where we would eat before we went to a party than the party itself."

A meal at the now-defunct Michela's prompted Hesser to write a letter to the restaurant's chef, Jody Adams. "I said, basically, `I'm interested in cooking; I'm interested in restaurant life; I know nothing about it. Can I come in and just observe or help out? I'll do anything that you need done.' "

Adams, a Providence native, now chef and co-owner of Rialto and Blu and author of In the Hands of a Chef (HarperCollins, 2002), distinctly remembers getting the "lovely" note. She immediately put Hesser to work plating desserts, peeling vegetables, running to the fridge for butter, and pulling pin bones from salmon. "You can tell a lot about a person by the way they respond to situations," notes Adams. "Amanda was fearless."

She was also eager. Interested in the growing artisanal-baking trend, Hesser penned a similar note to the owners of the Cambridge bakery Panini and soon began working there. On a whim, she signed up for a continuing-education course in French culinary history at Radcliffe, taking the last spot in what turned out to be a class filled with a star-studded cast of food writers, historians, and academics. "I showed up on the first night, and the professor, Barbara Wheaton, was sort of laying out the plans for the semester," Hesser remembers, "and she named all of these books that I had never heard of -- `You've got to get this and that' -- and by the end of the night, I was like kind of freaking out, like, what did I get myself into?" But Hesser quickly made friends with her classmates, among them Sheryl Julian, food editor for the Boston Globe, and Corby Kummer, senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly and food columnist for Boston magazine. "She was sort of like our little mascot," recalls Julian.

It was the first time Hesser had entertained the idea of becoming a food writer. "Writing had an appeal to me because I liked to read it, but I didn't imagine myself as a food writer because I didn't know how to get there," she says. "By meeting Sheryl and Corby, it kind of opened that door -- ahh, this is what they do, this is what their jobs are like."

After graduating from Bentley, Hesser applied for and received a coveted scholarship from philanthropic food organization Les Dames d'Escoffier. The few thousand dollars enabled her to travel, apprenticing for short stints in kitchens and bakeries across Europe. No job was too big, too heavy, or too daunting. One day, at a bakery on the Campo de' Fiore in Rome, nationally recognized food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins stumbled upon Hesser. "I was astonished to see this little bit of an American smacking huge sacks of flour around," Jenkins recalls bemusedly.

Meanwhile, Hesser had also applied to the École de Cuisine La Varenne in Burgundy. She was accepted and went on to study at the school's Château du Feÿ, where she assisted cookbook author and culinary historian Anne Willan. After receiving her degree, Hesser stayed on to work for Willan for another year, keeping a journal and putting together notes for what would become her first book, A Cook and a Gardener (W.W. Norton, 1999). The cookbook, which won the award for Best Book in France by a Non-French Writer at the Versailles Cookbook Fair, intersperses recipes with the story of a grumpy, Old World, and ultimately endearing gardener at the Château du Feÿ.

In 1996, Hesser moved back to her family's home and started a freelance career, contributing to the Washington Post, the Scranton Times, Seventeen, and Country Home. But the remote location of her family's house -- 40 minutes from the closest movie theater -- wasn't conducive to digging up food-trend stories. So Hesser decided to test her survival skills in Los Angeles, where her then-boyfriend lived.

Four days before leaving, she got a message from an editor at the New York Times, who'd heard about her from Jenkins. Four months, two cross-country trips, and numerous interviews later, the 25-year-old Hesser started work as a junior reporter at the Times. It was her first full-time writing job. "I think they were trying to infuse some youth and new voices into their section," Hesser says. "I had a lot of cooking experience, and although I didn't have a ton of newspaper experience, they liked my writing."

Still, she was decidedly green around the edges. On her first day on the job, her ringing phone left her paralyzed. "I thought, what do I say?" she remembers. "Do I say `New York Times'? Do I say `Amanda'?" She turned to a co-worker for advice as the phone continued to ring. "How about `hello'?" her co-worker suggested.

After Hesser turned in her first piece, editor Rick Flaste told her she needed to work on her nut graph -- the short summary of the story at the top of the piece. "I said, `What's a nut graph?' " she recounts. Flaste rolled his eyes and said, "Get outta here." "I was like, oh God, what have I done?" Hesser recalls. "But you know, they were really very nice to me. And they sort of taught me how to do my job."

Apparently, they were good teachers. Hesser quickly found her voice, becoming a must-read writer in the paper's Wednesday food section. "The only reason to read it is to see what Amanda's come up with," says Jenkins. "She's really producing the most interesting stuff."

Four years later, when beloved food columnist Molly O'Neill left the Times -- and with it, her spot in the back of the Magazine -- editors solicited advice from Hesser about who could be a good replacement. Hesser suggested some other writers. The editors suggested her. On the fly, she suggested a diary. By the end of the meeting, she had the gig.

FROM COOKING to baking bread, from writing cookbooks to shadowing a gardener, Hesser's extensive and varied food education -- combined with her youthful, breezy flair -- truly pervades her style. Whether it's her book, her newspaper work, or her magazine columns, she brings a snappy, salient enthusiasm to her topics -- from oysters to vanilla, leeks to overpriced beverages. She's able to bring to the page the delight she genuinely feels -- as if she's experiencing taste for the first time.

"You see somebody who goes into the subject an admitted novice but obviously has her eyes open, asks good questions, assimilates the information she gathers, synthesizes it, and turns out a very informative piece," says Colman Andrews, editor-in-chief of food magazine Saveur. "She's taking delight in what she's doing, she chooses her words carefully, and she does her homework," adds Barbara Wheaton, Hesser's French-culinary-history instructor at Radcliffe.

With her "Food Diary" columns, Hesser reaches beyond an audience of people obsessed with things like cheese-pasteurization legislation and the latest spice craze, by weaving food talk into anecdotes about her own life: her fiancé, Mr. Latte, washing dishes the wrong way; an exciting and slightly embarrassing dinner with "indomitable" Vogue scribe Jeffrey Steingarten; travels to Italy with her family. She also recounts more revealing moments: asking obvious questions of Julia Child; flubbing dishes at her first dinner party for Mr. Latte's friends; even tripping in excitement on her way to a much-anticipated meal. "[Her work] is very accessible," notes Andrews. "A large measure of her success is people saying, `Gee, it's just like me.' "

This style gives Hesser's accounts of top tables, insider conversations, and far-too-expensive-for-you meals an engrossing quality. "She tells a story, and she puts food into a story that gives it a life," observes Jody Adams. "She tells you quite intimate details about eating and being in New York and what it feels like to have your derrière on a chair," notes Sheryl Julian. "They're kind of cozy columns," says Dina Cheney, an aspiring food writer in New York. "She provides very quotidian details about what it feels like to be a food writer in Manhattan."

As a result, the fanciful, self-revealing, and crisply written pieces appeal not only to chefs, foodies, and fashionistas, but also to people interested in reading about romance, family life, and friendships. In Hesser's columns, food is merely a vehicle for self-revelation, something that happens during peoples' conversations, interactions, and life experiences. "Since she's young," says Steingarten, "she should appeal to younger people, even though she might not be using jargon or pop-music metaphors." And as the New York Times reportedly seeks a more populist readership -- as evidenced by recent articles on Botox and Mariah Carey on the paper's front page -- it's no surprise that Hesser has received such a prominent platform for her work.

AMANDA HESSER sits on a stage, her legs swinging in front of her, with two other food writers and three "celebrity chefs" downstairs at Tribeca restaurant Obeca Li. She's appearing as a panelist in a forum on "Dishing with the Food Media," led by Mediabistro.com, an on- and offline community of media professionals.

As a coordinator introduces Hesser, her list of accomplishments trails on to an almost awkward length. A woman in the audience perks up: "Omigod. I looove her." She claps her hands to her chest and looks up, her eyes rolling back in mock ecstasy. Over the course of the next hour, a moderator asks the chefs and journalists such questions as what they expect from each other, and in which direction they see the field moving. Unable to stifle her inner reporter, Hesser has some questions of her own. "I'm wondering how much is your maximum [workload]," she asks the chefs, whose businesses are ever expanding. As they respond, she nods, looking back and forth, back and forth, following the volley.

After the event winds down, a swarm of young women surround Hesser, soliciting advice. She listens quietly, nodding, smiling encouragingly, offering gentle suggestions. In response to the observation that she has a lot of friends in the room, Hesser replies swiftly, with a grin and a giggle, "I'm glad you didn't run into any of my enemies." Enemies? But what's not to like about Amanda Hesser?

Apparently, some people have found plenty. She's been criticized for copying Sex and the City -- mostly because of the similarity in names between her "Mr. Latte" and SATC's Mr. Big, but also because her column has a similar premise: a young woman penning an account of a budding love affair in New York. (She says she hadn't heard of Mr. Big when she bestowed the nickname Mr. Latte on Friend.)

At first, Hesser says her column generated a "glut" of mail -- equal parts good and bad. "Some people didn't like the writing," she explains. "Some people were like, `Why should I care about your life?' " Wrote one Times reader last August: "What is it with Amanda Hesser's food diary (July 15)? I understand that Sex and the City is the cultural paradigm right now, and that the thing to be is a youngish woman discussing her love life. It's charming enough, I guess, on a TV show. In a Times food column, it's irritating."

A column Hesser wrote about her frustration with her grandmother, who refused to eat in courses (by filling up on hotel breakfast and ruining her appetite for the three-course lunches) during a visit to Italy, struck many as mean-spirited. Even in her family, she notes, some were put off: "An aunt sent an e- mail to one of my sisters, saying, `I don't know what to make of that.' "

A New York media insider, who asks not to be identified, gripes about Hesser, voicing qualms ranging from matters of style ("Her columns are light, precious") to merit ("She's been given more of a platform because she's young; people just think she's cute"), finally settling on the frivolous ("Those freaking barrettes. What's up with the barrettes?!?!").

Hesser has even started to elicit responses beyond the island of Manhattan. Under the headline A TAD FEW REASONS WHY MARRYING AMANDA ISN'T A GOOD IDEA, a recent column in the Hartford Courant snippily offered her fiancé, Tad Friend, 10 reasons to decline the engagement. One example: "You're tall, she's short, but the only navel she gazes at is her own."

Hesser is remarkably unfazed by her critics, and she doesn't bite back -- ever. "This may sound sort of lame, but I actually mean it: I kind of feel like if people react, that's a good sign," she says. "As tough as those letters are to read, as a writer it's enormously helpful to go through them." As for the swirl among the media's inner circle, she's more curious about who's talking trash than she is bothered by what they're saying. "I'm less concerned about the local critics," she says primly.

And surely, the fast-flying negative quips need to be taken with a grain of salt -- and as testament to Hesser's ever-widening reach. A writer admits that jealousy is leading some to search for something, anything, to publicly criticize. "Amanda Hesser is successful, but she's also good," the writer says. "That sort of makes it worse. She deserves it. She's even nice. Twist the knife more! There's nothing bad about her. Maybe people are waiting to see some horrible thing about her."

In person, it's easy to see why Hesser elicits such powerful responses, both positive and negative. She doesn't fit neatly into any prescribed roles. She gripes about foodie elitism, then gives her fiancé a moniker based on a foodie faux pas, bestowed after he offended her refined sensibilities by ordering the milky coffee beverage rather than the correct post-dinner coffee or espresso. She's at once subtle and strong, doling out solid opinions with a low voice and soft smiles. "You have to tell the truth, or it's not interesting," she says plainly.

Summing up her impressions of Hesser, the Globe's Sheryl Julian recalls a day in the seminar on French culinary history when Hesser came bearing biscotti she'd made in her dorm-room toaster oven -- three at a time -- by following a Corby Kummer recipe from the Atlantic Monthly. "There were 20 people in the class, and she brought enough for everyone," says Julian. "And that, to me, is Amanda Hesser. She really wanted to do something for us."

HESSER DIPS her spoon into a warm apple crisp at Le Zinc. Mindful and precise, she tastes, talks, and listens. "Both for the magazine and for me, [the column has] been a big experiment," she says frankly. As for her growing notoriety and being in the newfound position of answering rather than asking the questions, well, it's all still a little awkward. "I didn't do the magazine thing to become a personality," Hesser says, her voice rising for emphasis. "I agreed to do this because if people read it, and it increases the readership of the Times -- and elevates the power of voice in the food world . . . " she trails off.

Ultimately, Hesser's authentic modesty, Old World grace, and earnest enthusiasm allow her to speak about food in a compelling, inclusive way. And that, rather than old-school elitism or pop-culture sass, is all she's wanted to share with her readers from the beginning. "I'm interested in reaching real people who can relate to these issues or who can cook," she offers. "I'd like to reach some people who don't normally read about food."

Nina Willdorf can be reached at nwilldorf[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: April 26 - May 2, 2002