Mark Bittman brings his New York Times food column — The Minimalist — to an end after 13 years.
I am grateful to him for introducing me and thousands of other readers to Jim Lahey’s revolutionary bread recipe and to the pleasure of bypassing Williams-Sonoma in favor of the local restaurant supply store.
If you were put off by the in-your-face, competitive reality cooking shows, there was Bittman, who kept it pleasurable, interesting and mostly unpretentious. If I had the choice between dining out at New York’s hottest restaurant or shooting the shit with Bittman over a sizzling sauté pan in a cramped apartment kitchen, I’d take Bittman.
His next gig is taking on the agro-industrial complex from the Times’ Opinion section. That should be fun, too.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.