Renowned globally for his discerning palate, Pete Wells has resigned from his role as a restaurant critic at The New York Times due to, well, overeating. In a poignant column, Wells detailed the moment and reasons behind his decision to bid adieu.
In the column published on Tuesday, Wells recounts how, while preparing the 2024 edition of "The 100 Best Restaurants in New York," he received alarming blood test results. "My scores were bad across the board; my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I’d expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around. I was technically obese. OK, not just technically. I knew I needed to change my life. I promised I’d start just as soon as I’d eaten in the other 70 restaurants on my spreadsheet."
Wells' farewell column provides readers with a glimpse into the less glamorous sides of a profession that, at first glance, seems like a dream job. He believes that being a restaurant critic is the least healthy job in America, noting that many of his male colleagues "die suddenly at an alarming rate," and describes how those who retire from the role rapidly shed pounds.
"One thing we almost never bring up, though, is our health. We avoid mentioning weight the way actors avoid saying “Macbeth.” Partly, we do this out of politeness. Mostly, though, we all know that we’re standing on the rim of an endlessly deep hole and that if we look down we might fall in."
According to Wells, almost all of the approximately 500 restaurant reviews he wrote were the result of eating three meals at the establishment. "Usually, I would bring three people with me and ask each one to order an appetizer, main course, and dessert. That's 36 dishes I would try before I even wrote a word. That's the simple math of restaurant reviewing, but there's higher math. Reviewers eat at many restaurants that are neither good enough nor bad enough to be reviewed," Wells explains, meaning the number of dishes tasted is much higher.
And it doesn't end there. According to the former critic, he dined at many restaurants also to compare them to others and determine where the best burger in town is truly served, for example. "How many 'smash burgers' (a burger that is smashed when placed on the griddle to create more crispiness – D.A.) did I have to taste, and taste again, in the months I ate my way toward the list of the 100 best restaurants."
He quotes the words of the late Jewish-American critic Mimi Sheraton, who admitted that "I probably started this career as an excuse for overeating." Wells asks and answers himself – "Does this apply to me? Not at first. But over time, I saw stuffing my face without pause as one way to be really good at the job. By grazing my way around the city like a goat, I could try to level a playing field deeply tilted in favor of moneyed restaurants. Manhattan's sea urchin spaghetti joints can always buy attention with money. So I would go out, because if I didn't, a truly important restaurant might get overlooked."
In these wanderings, over the years, Wells praised quite a bit of Israeli food in the city. Just recently, he wrote a laudatory column about Lior Lev's shawarma joint "Spice Brothers," and in April this year, he placed the Israeli couple's "Falafel Tanami" at number 65 in his list of the 100 best restaurants in the city, calling it a "titan."
According to Wells, his breaking point came last May, "This seemed normal right up until May, when I took two weeks away from my restaurant rounds while I recovered from a hernia repair. The night after the operation I wasn’t hungry. The next night I ate soup. The next day, salad. Without menus and dinner guests and a notebook to fill, I ate just what I wanted and nothing more. I slept through the night. I stayed awake through the day. I took long walks, not all of which ended at bakeries. And at some point in those two weeks, it occurred to me that I am not my job."
He adds, "When I first came to The Times in 2006, a reporter warned me not to identify myself too heavily with my work. 'Any job at The Times is a rented tux,' she said. I nodded, but didn’t get the point until this year. It’s time to return the tux. I’ve had the trousers let out a few inches, but a tailor can take them in again. As for the stain on the jacket, that’s just pork fat. I think it adds character."