Amanda Hesser Speaker & Booking Information

Amanda Hesser was born 1972 and is an American food writer, editor and cookbook author. She was the food editor of The New York Times Magazine and the editor of T Living, a quarterly publication of The New York Times. Hesser was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. After graduating with a degree in economics and finance from Bentley College in 1993, she studied cooking in Europe. With a grant from Les Dames d'Escoffier, she worked in bakeries and restaurants in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. She spent two years in France, where she worked for Anne Willan, the founder of Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne. It was during this time that Hesser's writings started appearing in newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post. After finishing her first book, in 1997, Hesser was hired as a food reporter for The New York Times. Hesser has since written about the influence of Costco on the wine industry. She has uncovered the politics behind the New York City Greenmarket, and was among the first to publish a long-form article in a major American newspaper about Ferran Adria of El Bulli. Early in her career at the paper, she wrote a controversial story in which she examined the failings of the popular chef Emeril Lagasse. Hesser was involved in at least two conflict-of-interest cases while she was at the Times. In 2004, she accorded three stars to chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market restaurant after Vongerichten gave her book Cooking for Mr. Latte a positive blurb; the Times spotlighted the incident with an Editor's Note. In 2007, the Times printed another Editor's Note after Hesser published a review of Vegetable Garden by Patricia Wells without disclosing that in 1999, Wells had contributed a jacket blurb for Hesser's book The Cook and the Garden. Hesser applied for a buyout from the Times in late March 2008 and is no longer with the newspaper. She wrote her "Recipe Redux" feature for the Times magazine until February 27, 2011. There is a chapter about her in Julie Powell's book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen and appears as herself in the film adaptation. Hesser lives in Brooklyn Heights with her husband, Tad Friend, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and their three children.