Pete Wells, once known as America’s most feared food critic, has decided to indulge himself: After 12 years of eating some of the most calorie-dense dishes in and outside of New York, he has decided to step down as restaurant critic for The New York Times, citing health concerns after a medical checkup.
“My scores were bad across the board. My cholesterol, blood sugar and high blood pressure were worse than I’d have expected even at my worst. Words like pre-diabetes, fatty liver and metabolic syndrome were being thrown around. Technically, I was obese,” Wells wrote in his farewell column on Tuesday.
“Well, it wasn’t just about technology,” he added. “I knew I needed to make a change in my life.”
Wells said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday that she had effectively left her job in May to undergo surgery for an umbilical hernia, took two weeks of medical leave after the procedure, and made the life-changing decision after a conversation with her boss when she returned.
“I had told her, let’s stop, we need to get this over with,” Wells said. “It wasn’t fully planned. It could have been planned more carefully, I mean, from my side. Instead of saying, ‘Let’s talk about what happens next,’ I just said, ‘Stop it.'” Wells, who was food editor for six years before becoming food critic, will remain at The Times in a writing role that has yet to be filled.
Wells’ announcement sparked the usual flurry of praise and criticism among readers and restaurant industry experts, which isn’t surprising for someone whose opinions are said to make or break businesses. Here are a few quick quips from the Times’ Instagram post about his departure: “Congratulations,” wrote former New York Magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt, who leaves the role in 2022. “Yay! Now the New York Times can get someone who actually cares about food to write about it?” wrote another commenter.
The announcement sparked immediate speculation about who would replace Wells in what is widely considered the country’s most influential food critic. In a memo posted on the Times’ website on Tuesday, Sam Sifton (founding editor of NYT Cooking) and Emily Weinstein (editors-in-chief of Cooking and Food, respectively) said the search for a new critic would begin “immediately.”
“In the meantime, Melissa Clark and Priya Krishna will serve as ad hoc critics in New York, alternating between writing both restaurant reviews and critical notes,” the editorial team wrote. “Priya and Melissa are well-known for their videos and public appearances, which will make it difficult for them to maintain the longstanding tradition of visiting restaurants anonymously. However, they will attempt to uphold this tradition when dining at restaurants and will adhere to all of The Times’ ethical standards for criticism, including their policy of not accepting free meals.”
The editors added that Tejal Rao will continue to write about restaurants as a food critic throughout California.
Wells’ abrupt retirement from being a restaurant critic may not have come as a complete shock to those who followed his career. In a 2019 interview with Dan Pashman on the “Sporkful” podcast, Wells spoke about how the job affected his appetite. Here’s a short but enlightening excerpt:
Pashman: Pete typically goes out five nights a week and follows his own very mindful eating routine. He’s always checking out places he could review. I was curious how being on the go so often might affect your relationship with food.
Wells: Well, if you eat, like me, regularly consuming 6,000 to 7,000 calories in one sitting, you’ll notice that your appetite is somewhat suppressed the next day. You know? … I often don’t feel hungry at all until I sit down, and even after I sit down, I’m not very hungry.
PASHMAN: That’s kind of sad, Pete.
Wells: It’s okay.
Wells: It could be worse. I still enjoy it.
After 12 years of commenting on the restaurant industry, Wells wasn’t sure what kind of mark he’d left on it. He wasn’t even sure if a restaurant critic should aim to leave a mark. “When you work for any large organization like The Times, you have to be aware that the organization will go on without you,” Wells said. “The organization will go on after you’re gone, and then you’ll quickly be in the rearview mirror, and a new chapter will be written in the blink of an eye.”
But others have stepped into the void and assessed Wells’s influence. “Pete is a master stylistician on a prose level,” Hannah Raskin, founder of Food Section, a James Beard Award-winning site dedicated to the cuisine and culture of the American South, texted me. “But what makes him a great critic is his rigorous reporting. As his most famous reviews demonstrate, when the fine dining elite, or more than a century of New York’s collective culinary memory, or the entire Midwest say they love a place, he instinctively checks it off.”
Raskin alludes to some of Wells’ more memorable critiques, some of which disparaged famous chefs and restaurants. The critic gave the historic Peter Luger Steakhouse only a “satisfactory” rating. (“Customers who walk through the door ready to hand over literal mountains of money are not welcomed, they are processed,” Wells wrote. He demoted chef Thomas Keller’s tasting-menu haunt in Columbus Circle, Par Se, to two stars. (“I don’t know what it was that saved the limp, dispiriting yam dumplings, but I’m sure the tepid matsutake broth was as murky and unappealing as bong water,” Wells wrote.) And then there’s the review most people remember Wells for: a scathing, question-by-question attack on Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square.
“Why is one of the few items on your menu that I can eat without fear or regret — a soy-flavored chopped pork sandwich with coleslaw and cucumber — called a ‘roast pork banh mi’? Surely you resemble this item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?” Wells wondered.
The review caused such a stir that Guy Fieri felt the need to respond to it. He appeared on the Today show and told Savannah Guthrie that the review was “ridiculous.” “There’s good and bad in the restaurant business, but to me, this just seemed like it went too far and really had a different agenda.”
While it may have been the negative reviews that caught readers’ attention, Wells has defended many underdogs over the years, including a Puerto Rican lechonera in the South Bronx and a New Jersey pizza place that might have the best pie in New York. On the day Wells announced his departure, The Times published a list of his “most memorable” reviews.
Wells says his health has already improved since he stopped eating at restaurants multiple times a week: his blood pressure is “normal to lower” and his cholesterol levels are “better than ever.”
“I’m better in a lot of other ways. I’ve lost a lot of weight. My knee pain has decreased. I’m sleeping better at night,” he said.
But the fellow former restaurant critic worried that Wells’s blood pressure would rise after learning that the thing he’s most remembered for was the crushing of a Times Square restaurant by a celebrity chef that catered to tourists.
“I mean, what can I do?” Wells said. “If that’s all anyone ever reads about me, then so be it.”
Are there any other reviews you’d like us to read instead?
“No,” he said. “Everybody’s busy.”
