Meet Food & Wine's New Restaurant Editor

Dear Pros,

I'm back home from New York City where earlier this week I had the pleasure of squaring off against Shukette and Shuka chef and partner Ayesha Nurdjaja in a sandwich-making smackdown at my company's events showcase for advertisers. My chicken salad sandwich spiked with Bitchin' Sauce lost to Ayesha's Tunisian egg salad on pita, but I had a blast because Ayesha's energy on stage is contagious.

I hit up one of my regular spots, Hamburger America, for George Motz's fried onion burger (hands down my favorite burger in Manhattan), and caught up with my former boss, chef Jonathan Waxman, at Barbuto. I also checked out Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr's new spot, Wild Cherry, tucked inside the lobby of the newly renovated Cherry Lane Theater.

Hearth chef and Brodo creator Marco Canora was at the bar, but I don't think he ordered the scungilli, a marinated conch and parsley salad. You should, if for no other reason than a conch shell can play double duty as a porrón. Into the shell goes salted gin, then you tip the narrow, tapered end to slide the briny booze down the hatch. It's a fun beach bar party trick that made me forget for a minute about the ice floes riding the current on the Hudson River and the sidewalks full of crunchy black snow.

Wild Cherry's cheeseburger is a simple tavern-style number that is so tender and juicy you can squeeze it between thumb and forefinger like one of those squishy stress cubes that my kids keep bringing home from school. I'm sure the burger will be the focus of their upcoming review in the New York Times because Lee and Riad rewrote the city's burger rules with their Black Label Burger at Minetta Tavern back in the day.

I want to bring our new restaurant editor, Erika Adams, back there and get her take on the cooking (smart without overthinking it ), the service (warm), and the space (a former studio theater and one of the more beautiful rooms in the West Village). We're lucky to have Erika, whose reporting first caught my eye at Skift Table, and then at Eater. She's tasked with building a new digital restaurant desk to expand our chef and restaurant coverage by staffers and freelancers. Like Malachy Duffy, Kate Krader, Jordana Rothman, Khushbu Shah, and Raphael Brion before her, Erika will also serve as the steward and lead scout of our Best New Chefs franchise. She'll soon take the reins of this newsletter, too, as we think about ways to better serve you.

I asked Erika a few questions to help you get to know her a little bit better.

What was the last meal you ate that gave you goosebumps?

Mawn, in Philadelphia, was the restaurant moment for me in 2025. It's next to impossible to get a table full of food editors to collectively stop talking and acknowledge — right in the middle of dinner — that something incredible is happening on the table, but it happened that night. The ginger and melon salad! The khao soi! The miso-caramel funnel cake at the end! 2025 F&W Best New Chef Phila Lorn nailed it.

Who is a restaurant operator you admire?

2023 Best New Chef Ed Szymanski and Patricia Howard, who own and operate Lord's, Crevette, and Dame. I'll never forget when I showed up to interview them for the opening of Dame in mid-2021 and we ended up in an hour-long conversation about restaurant investors, lease agreements, and how to build a sustainable restaurant in the middle of the pandemic. There's so much still to fix with how restaurants are run and who has access to money and developers, but the first step is being able to simply talk openly about it. They really lead by example on that.

At what restaurant would you love to be a regular?

If I didn't work in food media and had the luxury of being able to show up at the same restaurant once a week, it would be Tonino in my home neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, in Boston. It's one of those restaurants where you walk in and, for a few hours, the feeling of existential doom about the world recedes and the warmth of the dining room and collective joy in the food takes over. The chef and co-owner, Luke Fetbroth, doesn't mess around too much with the menu, which allows the team to really get serious about that elusive gold star: consistency.

What's the most underappreciated restaurant role?

All restaurant roles should be more appreciated! But, especially from the perspective of pay inequity between the dining room and kitchen, I think kitchen roles are incredibly underappreciated. I look forward to getting to know more folks who are committed to figuring out how to run sustainable restaurants that don't rely on deeply entrenched labor models that we all know are terrible, but can't pull away from. (Side note: I was psyched to see Food & Wine launch Hospitality Heroes last year, to start to highlight a fraction of those underappreciated roles.

What does hospitality feel like to you when executed well?

It feels like everyone wants to be right in the moment with you. It's warm and kind and — not to be too dramatic about it — reminds me of the goodness of humanity.

What are you most excited to champion in your first year at Food & Wine?

I'm excited to do all I can to keep building on and supercharging the immense talent involved in the Best New Chefs program. These folks represent the future of dining in the country, and — most importantly — care deeply about the state of the industry and how to make it better. I’m excited to keep creating spaces to hear from them and champion them.

Drop me a line and say hi anytime! You can find me at erika.adams@foodandwine.com.

OK, signing off. Happy Valentine's Day to all who celebrate. If you work in restaurants, godspeed and good luck with service tonight.

Warmly,
Hunter