My Ode to New York Times Food Writer Kim Severson
Before I ever met food writer Kim Severson, I wanted to hate her.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not normally a hater. Not at all.
But imagine two athletes playing the same position, yet on opposing teams. There’s just a natural rivalry that develops.
That’s what I felt initially for Kim, now a New York Times food journalist, who years ago, was a food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, when I was the same for the competition, the San Jose Mercury News.
She started her career as a hard news reporter, before switching to food writing. I had done the same. I’d turn up to events, only to find her there, too. I’d finish writing a story, only to find she’d just done a similar one — often far better, too. I’d be nominated for a writing award, only to find out she was up for two of them in the same competition.
That’s why I wanted to hate Kim Severson.
That is, until I actually met her, of course.
Because I ended up liking her immensely from the get-go.
When you compete head-to-head with someone on a pressure-packed field, there’s a tendency to build them up in your mind into something that they’re not. It’s a great motivator that propels you onward to try to beat or surpass them. But then reality sets in, and you realize that what you truly feel for this person is not envy or hatred, but the utmost admiration.
And that’s really what I felt for Kim from the moment I first laid eyes on her byline. The woman can flat-out write. She can turn a phrase like no one else, bringing you to tears one moment, and sending you into convulsions of laughter the next. That’s no more evident than in her new autobiographical book, “Spoon Fed” (Riverhead Books), a brave, revealing look at one of the nation’s most gifted food writers and the iconic female cooks who taught her valuable lessons along the way.
As I turned the pages, it was stunning to realize that Kim, whose talents strike fear in so many other food writers like myself, was herself so full of self-doubt and anxieties about her own abilities. Worse yet, she wrestled with all that while battling alcoholism when living in one of the premier wine capitals of the world — Northern California.
Even if you’ve never been fortunate enough to meet Kim in person, you come away from her book with so much respect for a woman who is ballsy, smart, resilient and generous of spirit.
