After 12 years of service as the New York Times restaurant critic, Pete Wells has announced he is hanging up his knife and fork for good.
In his time as the primary restaurant critic, Wells has managed to win the trust and admiration of not only news reading, restaurant going New Yorkers but of chefs and restaurateurs all over the world. He did this through thoughtful and often devastatingly witty reviewing that would acknowledge the positive while presenting a restaurant’s flaws in a way that always seemed fair.
Eating your way through tasting menu after tasting menu across New York may be some people’s idea of a dream job, but for Wells it was always work and that work comes with a price. Citing health concerns, the revered critic has decided to make a lifestyle change and step away from reviewing restaurants and concentrate on journalism in the newsroom instead.
Back in 2022, when Wells spoke to Fine Dining Lovers about the future of restaurant criticism, he raised concerns about the long term effects of professional fine dining on his health. Now, after publishing his list of the 100 Best Restaurants in New York and having eaten his way through more than 140 menus, a recent medical checkup confirmed his fears that his body is no longer comfortable with the intake of so much rich and fatty foods.
“But a funny thing happened when I got to the end of all that eating, I realized I wasn’t hungry,” Wells wrote in the announcement. “And I’m still not, at least not the way I used to be. And so, after 12 years as restaurant critic for The New York Times, I’ve decided to bow out as gracefully as my state of technical obesity will allow.”
Wells’ place in the pantheon of great food writers, along with the likes of Jonathan Gold, is assured with some of his most notable reviews, like his quest for the perfect jerk that took him to Queens to review the offering of the Forever Jerk stands, or his uncovering of the Sri Lanken Lakruwana on Staten Island as “New York’s most elaborate realization of the immigrant restaurateur’s dream,” or the infamous blasting of Daniel Humm’s plant-based iteration of Eleven Madison Park.
In a time of Yelp and social media, when the role of the restaurant critic has been questioned, you could say that Wells kept the lights on for his profession, not because his review could break or make a restaurant, but because his talent for writing made every column a joy to read. Now, with the internet on the precipice of an age of AI-generated ‘content,’ the trusted figure of an authority on restaurants may come back into vogue and for that Wells can be seen as a singular talent that reminded us of the art of the review.
The search for The New York Times’ next review now begins in earnest, and one would imagine there will be no shortage of CVs to get through. Wells made the review column his own, he wrote from the heart and with integrity, it’s sad to see him go, but health must come first. It will be exciting to see who will be up next to fill his boots and how they will make the NYT restaurant review their own. Time moves on.
