New York City Culinary Conversation of James Beard, Jane Nickerson, and Cecily Brownstone
My article “Dining Out: New York City Culinary Conversation of James Beard, Jane Nickerson, and Cecily Brownstone,” has been accepted for publication in NYFoodStory which is produced by the Culinary Historians of New York.
In the late 1940s and for much of the 1950s, Jane Nickerson was the food editor of the New York Times . Although she has been largely overshadowed by Craig Claiborne, she was a formidable force in the New York food community. She reviewed many of the city’s restaurants, up to 21,000 in 1949. Often, her dinner companions were food writers James Beard and Cecily Brownstone. In fact, Nickerson introduced the culinary pair who would speak on the phone daily. According to one of Beard’s biographers, the three “probed New York’s ethnic neighborhoods titillating their palates and venting their curiosities about origins of recipes.” The story of these food writers provides for a better understanding of the New York City food and restaurants in the post-World War II years. The material is drawn from Nickerson’s articles, several books and Brownstone’s oral history located at NYU.
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