Craig Claiborne

Craig Claiborne (19202000) was an American restaurant critic, food journalist, and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for The New York Times, he was also the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography. He made many contributions to gastronomy and food writing in the United States.

Early life Craig Claiborne was born in Sunflower, Mississippi, on September 4, 1920. He was raised on the region's distinctive cuisine in the kitchen of his mother's boarding house in Indianola, Mississippi.

He essayed in premedical studies at the Mississippi State College from 1937 to 1939. Finding it to be unsuitable, he transferred to the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism and got his Bachelor of Arts.

Claiborne served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean War. After deciding that his true passion lay in cooking, he used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend the École hôtelière de Lausanne (Lausanne Hotel School) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Career

Returning to the U.S., he worked his way up in the food-publishing business in New York City, as a contributor to Gourmet magazine and a food-product publicist, finally becoming the food editor of The New York Times in 1957 following the newspaper's first food editor, Jane Nickerson.

Claiborne was the first man to supervise the food page at a major American newspaper and is credited with broadening The New York Times'''s coverage of new restaurants and innovative chefs. A typical food section of a newspaper in the 1950s was largely targeted to a female readership and limited to columns on entertaining and cooking for the upscale homemaker. Claiborne brought his knowledge of cuisine and own passion for food to the pages, transforming it into an important cultural and social bellwether for New York City and the nation at large.

Claiborne's columns, reviews and cookbooks introduced a generation of Americans to a variety of ethnic cuisines particularly Asian and Mexican cuisines at a time when average Americans had conservative tastes in food, and what little gourmet cooking was available in cities like New York was exclusively French (and, Claiborne observed, not terribly high quality). Looking to hold restaurants accountable for what they served and help the public make informed choices about where to spend their dining dollars, he created the four-star system of rating restaurants still used by The New York Times and which has been widely imitated. Claiborne's reviews were exacting and uncompromising, but he also approached his task as a critic with an open mind and eye for cooking that was different, creative and likely to appeal to his readers.

Inspired by food writers including M. F. K. Fisher, Claiborne also enjoyed documenting his own eating experiences and the discovery of new talent and new culinary trends across the country and across the world. Among the many then-unknown chefs he brought to the public's attention was the New Orleans, Louisiana, chef and restaurateur Paul Prudhomme. At the time, few people outside America's Deep South had any awareness of Louisiana's Cajun culture or its unique culinary traditions.

Along with chef, author and television personality Julia Child, Claiborne has been credited with making the often intimidating world of French and other ethnic cuisine accessible to an American audience and American tastes. Claiborne authored or edited over twenty cookbooks on a wide range of foods and culinary styles, including some of the first best-selling cookbooks dedicated to healthy, low-sodium and low-cholesterol diets. He had a long-time professional relationship and collaborated on many books and projects with the French-born New York City chef, author and television personality Pierre Franey. Claiborne was an advocate of a fad diet known as the Gourmet Diet. With Franey, he worked out two hundred low-sodium, low-cholesterol recipes for this diet.

In September 1966 thirteen mafia leaders were arrested at La Stella Restaurant while holding a meeting. The New York Times responded by sending out Claiborne to the restaurant, who gave it a two star rating.

$4,000 meal In 1975, he placed a $300 winning bid at a charity auction for a no-price-limit dinner for two at any restaurant of the winner's choice, sponsored by American Express. He selected Franey as his dining companion, and the two settled on Chez Denis, a noted restaurant located in Paris, France, where they racked up a $4,000 tab on a five-hour, thirty-one-course meal of foie gras, truffles, lobster, caviar and rare wines. When Claiborne later wrote about the experience in his New York Times column, the newspaper received a deluge of reader mail expressing outrage at such an extravagance at a time when so many in the world went without. Even the Vatican and Pope Paul VI criticized it, calling it "scandalous." In his will, he bequeathed his estate to The Culinary Institute of America, located in Hyde Park, New York.

BibliographyThe New York Times Cookbook (1961) Harper & RowThe New York Times Menu Cook Book (1966) Harper & Row The New York Times International Cookbook (1971) Harper & Row Craig Claiborne's Favorites from The New York Times Vol. 1 (1975) Times Books Craig Claiborne's Favorites from the New York Times Vol. 2 (1976) Times Books Craig Claiborne's Favorites from the New York Times Vol. 3 (1977) Times Books Craig Claiborne's Favorites from the New York Times Vol. 4 (1978) Random House Trade Cooking with Herbs and Spices (1977) Bantam Books Veal Cookery (1978) (with Pierre Franey) Harper-Collins Classic French Cooking (1978) Time-Life Foods of the World Craig Claiborne's The New New York Times Cookbook (1980) with Pierre Franey, New York Times Books, A Feast Made for Laughter (1982) autobiography, Doubleday The Master Cooking Course (1982) (with Pierre Franey), Putnam Pub. Group Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey (1985) Ballantine Books Craig Claiborne's Memorable Meals Menus, Memories and Recipes from over Twenty Years of Entertaining (1985) E P Dutton Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia (1985) Crown Books Craig Claiborne's Gourmet Diet (1985) (with Pierre Franey), Ballantine Books Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking (1987) New York Times Books The New York Times Cook Book Revised Edition (1990) Harper & Row Elements of Etiquette: A Guide to Table Manners in an Imperfect World (1992) William Morrow & Co The Chinese Cookbook (1992) (with Virginia Lee) HarperCollins Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer (1993) Random House The Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks (1999) Times Books

(story on $4000 meal is anthologized in) American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, ed. Molly O'Neill (Library of America, 2007)