Could I eat another bite? I turned this over in my head as I scanned the passenger seat of my car, piled high with takeaway containers of chicken wings. Being overfull was a familiar feeling in my work as a food critic. That crisp October day, the question was also existential – I had simply reached the end of the road.
I’d been thrilled to land my job nearly six years earlier at a newspaper covering the 3 million people and 10,000+ restaurants of New York City’s eastern suburbs. I’d grown up on Long Island reading Newsday, an award-winning powerhouse in the 80s and 90s, and years later had returned home for a job I initially loved. Driving hundreds of miles a week, I sometimes ate out four or five times a day as I pursued stories. Ribeye, oysters, cumin lamb, birria tacos – much of it went on my corporate credit card. The hustle was constant but the reward was unearthing under-the-radar places, dishes and people. I also wrote about wine, beer, coffee, and cocktails, which meant rubbing elbows with talented brewers and bartenders.
Whenever someone asked what I did for a living, their eyes lit up at the response. “I’m a food writer,” I’d say, deliberately avoiding the word “critic”, which sounded pompous and was actually my least favourite part of writing about food. “Stop. You get paid to eat? What a hard life! You have my dream job,” they would invariably say.
From the outside, it was a dream, and complaining seemed ungracious. So, I rarely told anyone that the work was not for the faint of heart. Literally. I lurched from plate to plate, deadline to deadline, postponing medical appointments and taking work on “vacation” so often that it became a running joke among friends. On the odd occasion I made it to the doctor, my blood levels told an ominous story. “I’d like to see that number a little lower,” said my doctor as she studied my soaring cholesterol. “I know, but I can’t control what I eat,” I told her.
During the pandemic, eaters pivoted hard toward lasagna, fried-chicken sandwiches, mac and cheese, and cocktails to go. In turn, our team pivoted from reviews to review-esque listicles. Reporting these entailed calorific culinary surveys. Some food writers I knew had honed the art of taking one bite of everything; if I really loved a dish, I’d eat more, and maybe even finish it off. I watched my weight tick upward, and workouts and daily walks had minimal effect.The occasional bout of food poisoning was a job hazard, yet it was long-term overconsumption that took the real toll.
“Did we try Lipitor?” My doctor squinted at the screen. “Oh, yeah, we did. What was the problem again?” “Made my legs hurt,” I replied. “What about Livalo?” she asked. “My insurance won’t cover it,” I told her. “Well, take it easy,” she warned. “Because it looks like you’re also pre-diabetic.”
I processed this news while tucking into fish tacos down the street. I couldn’t just not eat the tacos, or pappardelle, or Korean fried chicken, could I?
That may have marked the beginning of the end. Or maybe there were a few endings in succession – from the pseudo-vacations and listicle fatigue to a heart arrhythmia that required an ablation. Two days after the procedure, as I recuperated at home covered in welts, an editor texted me about a story revision.
I hung on for another year but began to daydream about cooking at home more than one or two nights a week, about burrowing out from under infinite leftovers. It was six orders of wings in a single afternoon that finally did me in. From the front seat of my car – which doubled as an office, table, and photo studio – I wet-wiped sweet-chilli sauce from my fingers and requested a Zoom call with my boss.
“My time at the paper has come to an end,” I told her. She leaned forward. “Are you sure?”
I was. Afterwards, I felt wobbly but buoyant, as if I had instantly dropped an enormous weight. I also wondered if I’d done something phenomenally stupid. Media colleagues were losing their jobs at a steady clip, and I recalled the sting of being laid off from prior positions. My journalist’s savings account was less than robust.
I didn’t have much time to ruminate, as my story was due soon. Inside the next place, I took a seat at the bar, as I often did when eating alone, and ordered the wings scarpariello-style. Lacquered in a zingy vinegar sauce, they were excellent. I sampled a few while watching football on the bar TV along with the cooks, who were awaiting the dinner rush. The pandemic-era plexiglass separators were gone, and the place had reclaimed a long-absent airiness. It was the kind of detail that wouldn’t make it into an SEO-optimised listicle.
It would take a few months to retrain the colossal appetite my body had become accustomed to, but I hoped that, down the road, those months would earn me a few extra years. I miss my colleagues and a regular paycheck — entrepreneurial life can be a roller coaster — but 15 months on, I’ve reversed the weight gain, lowered my cholesterol without meds, and I’m no longer pre-diabetic. The most unexpected shift, though, is the reverse-aging power of stress reduction. “You look so different,” more than one friend has said. “You just look….relaxed.”
Corin Hirsch is a writer who covers food, drink, and travel
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