Saying goodbye to Eater after 11 years on the job

It’s been an absolute pleasure. [View on web]( [Canisters of Pringles chips featuring the brand's new marketing terms like ''harvest blends'' and ''blended with multigrains'' ]( Among many other accomplishments, Hillary Dixler Canavan changed what it took to be on Eater's Best New Restaurants list. | Andrew Thomas Lee When I started at Eater back in 2013, both the publication and the restaurant world it covered looked pretty different. We were bloggers. That meant I was writing and publishing stories at a 15-to-45-minute cadence. It was funny, fast, and thrilling as hell. I was making the internet. And I really wanted to make good internet. We all did. Now, 11 years later as I prepare to step away from Eater — I’m leaving my post as restaurant editor — I’m realizing how far we’ve grown past that goal. My first year, one of the biggest stories was Time magazine’s “Gods of Food” issue debacle which, surprise, featured no women chefs either among the gods or in the giant family tree of Important Chefs. [I interviewed the editor]( about it before he realized what a colossal problem that was, and the shitstorm ensued. In the following years, Eater — and eventually, more traditional media outlets and industry insiders — focused attention on how women were treated in the restaurant world, culminating with #MeToo in 2017 and the public revelations about severe misconduct in the restaurant world. That work, of course, continues, as does the work of paying attention to how major organizations within the food world perpetuate implicit and explicit bias when it comes to race, sex, gender, and non-Eurocentric dining modes. We’ve made significant progress, but take a look at the World’s 50 Best list or current list of Michelin-starred restaurants in American cities to see how far we have to go. See also: the struggle to keep restaurant workers happy, healthy, and employed. By the time I took the lead on our annual [Best New Restaurants]( list and our young talent awards program in 2019, it was no longer enough for me — or for Eater’s readers — that a restaurant served fantastic food; to be consistently innovative and exciting was also a given. Instead, what felt important was what it would mean for a given restaurant or chef to be singled out in this way. I looked for restaurants that allowed me and my colleagues to tell the stories that defined the year in dining, that we believed would shape the conversation in the year(s) to come, and, most of all, that represented the work of the people we wanted to see get the accolades, attention, and platform that comes from landing on a national list of this scope. I developed a values statement that all our Young Guns (later called [New Guard]() winners signed, asking them to explicitly affirm their commitments to creating a more equitable industry. I’m incredibly proud that our Best New Restaurant lists have included carry-out pop-ups, bakeries, food trucks, tasting menus, and everything in between, and that winners from our Best New Restaurants lists and Young Guns program have gone on to positively affect the industry. The pandemic has put an even brighter spotlight on the [best and worst parts]( of the restaurant world. As the industry muddled through forced closures, pivots, and other major cultural changes in how both operators and diners approached dining, both operators and diners have emerged somewhere new. Some of my observations: Diners care less about big-name chefs than they used to, even as they care more than ever about great food, buzzy dining rooms, and scoring a hot table. Chain is no longer a dirty word; cool-kid restaurants have successfully managed to go multi-unit without losing (too much) cred, like [Husk](, [Petit Trois](, [Jon & Vinny’s](, [Carbone](, and plenty more. And cooking at home has never been more fun. Launching Eater at Home in 2020 and then writing [Eater’s debut cookbook]( has proved to me that loving restaurants today means finding ways to keep that energy going in our own kitchens. I can’t imagine a better time to have been on the restaurant beat, a better team to work with than my colleagues here at Eater, or a more loyal, enthusiastic audience. It’s been an absolute pleasure. [Find me online](, and don’t be a stranger! Some favorites from my archives: - Further reading on moments mentioned above: on [the legacy of the Spotted Pig](, on [Michelin coming to Los Angeles](, on the need for [pandemic restaurant relief](. - I love writing trend pieces, especially when I can take them in an offbeat direction. See: [dead birds](. - If you can’t laugh at the more ridiculous parts of the restaurant world, why bother obsessively covering it at all? See: Emceeing the [Name of Groans](, Eater’s quest to determine the worst restaurant name in America. - Getting more industry voices onto Eater was a priority for me, and there are so many first-person pieces I loved editing, including this one by [Justin Burke]( on homophobia in the kitchen. If you like this email, please forward it to a friend. If you aren't signed up for this newsletter, you can [do so right here](. — Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurant reporter  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=today). View our [Privacy Notice]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 11, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.