The Big Win
I hate to lose. I mean, I really, really hate to lose. Yet one of the best weeks of my life began with a disappointing loss. We didn’t win our third James Beard Journalism Award for Serious Eats, this time for Best Group Food Blog, last Tuesday evening. It hurt bad, just the way it did the other 10 times either Serious Eats or I have lost over the years. There’s that horribly anxious, anticipatory moment at awards ceremonies when they announce the nominees in your category. Your hopes soar, and then crash in a millisecond, when they announce the winner and it’s not you.
So how did one of the best weeks of my life begin with such a painful experience? Well, truth be told, the evening actually started with a win. Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science won a Beard Award about two hours before our loss. So our letdown was tempered by his triumph. The Food Lab is a runaway best seller, with good reason. It’s a great, truly original book and a remarkable achievement.
It makes me incredibly proud that the book’s roots were in a column Kenji wrote for Serious Eats, and that people strongly associate Kenji with our site. Kenji’s writing is clearly one of the building blocks we have used to make Serious Eats relevant, meaningful, and a source of pleasure to millions of home cooks and serious eaters everywhere. To watch people like Kenji take flight is the greatest, most unexpected pleasure I have gotten out of founding Serious Eats. It’s not just Kenji. So many contributors and staffers past and present have gone on to write books and assume important editorial jobs at other respected food publications, online and off-. It’s obviously their talent that has propelled them to such heights, but I do take enormous pride in their roots at Serious Eats. Dream-seekers come to Serious Eats trying to fulfill those dreams, and an impressive number of them have succeeded in doing just that. I know that’s true, because I am the dreamer in chief.
I accepted congratulations on behalf of Kenji and Serious Eats many times during the ceremony and after. I also accepted congratulations for my induction into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America, which had already been announced and would officially take place at the James Beard Awards Gala in Chicago on Monday, May 2.
Even our loss to Lucky Peach in the Food Blog category didn’t sting as much as I thought it would. Chris Ying and Peter Meehan, two of its three main editors, told me afterward, when I congratulated them, that Serious Eats showed them that creating high-quality food-centered content with a strong point of view was a viable path for a food publisher. I’m paraphrasing here, but their message was unmistakably clear, though it must be said that they told me that at three in the morning after a night of serious celebrating.
The Serious Eats crew also gathered to celebrate after the Journalism and Book Awards—appropriately enough, at Toro, a branch of the Boston tapas bar that Kenji had once cooked at. Again, it was a great joy to behold the array of talent, past, present, and future, at Serious Eats. I knew, looking at all of them, that the future is bright at Serious Eats, as long as we don’t screw it up.
When Susan Ungaro, the head of the JBF, called in March to give me the news of my induction into the Who’s Who, I was surprised, even shocked. For a moment, I thought I was being punked by a friend. I have always thought of myself as an outsider, an outlier in the constellation of chefs, journalists, and food professionals that I have been part of for almost 30 years. I’m not a chef, I’m not a restaurant critic, and I’m not a winemaker. I guess this designation was my own Sally Fields “you really like me” moment at the Oscars in 1984.
The JBF made a short video about me for the induction ceremony, held at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, and I have to say that watching the video from backstage, projected on this huge screen at this beautiful auditorium, was an almost surreal moment, as humbling as it was satisfying. Humbling because almost 25 years ago, I set out to chronicle the lives and stories of the purveyors and growers and artisans who exert an enormous influence on the food culture in America, and all over the world for that matter. In fact, these people were at the forefront of the food revolution. I must admit that I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t even know if anyone would read the book that resulted (New York Eats). I just knew that their stories needed to be told and celebrated. The video also reflected my nontraditional role in the food media world, featuring many amusing shots of me eating pizza, hot dogs, and tacos, with nary a lobe of foie gras or a speck of caviar to be seen.
Before, during, and after the awards in Chicago, people I had known for years, some famous, some not, came up not only to congratulate me but also to tell me personal stories of how my work had influenced theirs. Some of them were drunk, some were sober, but no matter what condition they were in, they conveyed the love and respect they had for my work. To feel respected and loved and recognized by your peers, in many cases by people you have looked up to your entire life, is a wonderful and unbelievably satisfying thing. Even more remarkable is the fact that Serious Eats, something I created out of whole cloth with the help of all those aforementioned incredibly talented people, has become such a vital, life-affirming part of the food culture, providing utility, pleasure, and meaning to millions of people. That to me is the biggest win of all.
— Ed Levine
