Gael Greene

Gael Greene (December 22, 1933 – November 1, 2022) was an American restaurant critic, author, and novelist. She became New York magazine's restaurant critic in fall 1968, at a time when most New Yorkers were unsophisticated about food and there were few chefs anyone knew by name, and for four decades both documented and inspired the city's and America's growing obsession with food. She was a pioneering "foodie." and graduated from Central High School in 1951, then from the University of Michigan. She said that her passion for food was awakened by a year abroad in Paris while she was an undergraduate. She worked as an investigative reporter for UPI then the New York Post, for example pretending to be single and pregnant for an investigation of baby trafficking, and was made a food writer after her editor liked an article she wrote about chef Henri Soulé. Her articles had provocative titles like "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ice Cream But Were Too Fat To Ask", "The Mafia Guide to Dining Out", and "Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen". She was a passionate early "foodie" and is sometimes credited with being the first to use the word, in the early 1980s.

Greene famously went to great lengths to conceal her identity from restaurateurs, reserving and using credit cards under other names and wearing hats that covered her eyes. She both received love letters from readers and praise from chefs and was known as a "merciless" critic, "the Dorothy Parker of restaurant critics". She began her own website, InsatiableCritic.com, but continued as a columnist until her dismissal in 2008. She once wrote that "the two greatest discoveries of the 20th century were the Cuisinart and the clitoris". The second, Doctor Love, is written from the perspective of a Don Juan. Doctor Love received some negative reviews, including Jonathan Yardley's verdict of "terminal tackiness" in The Washington Post. Her other books include Delicious Sex, Bite: A New York Restaurant Strategy for Hedonists, Masochists, Selective Penny Pinchers and the Upwardly Mobile She was also a major contributor to The Cosmo Girl's Guide to the New Etiquette in 1972.

In 1981 she co-founded Citymeals-on-Wheels, along with the teacher and food writer James Beard, to help fund weekend and holiday meals for homebound elderly people in New York City. She remained an active chair of the company's board, hosting an annual Power Lunch for Women. Greene received numerous awards for her work with Citymeals and in 1992 was honored as Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation. She was the winner of the International Association of Cooking Professionals' magazine writing award (2000)

Personal life and death Greene married Donald H. Forst, whom she met at The New York Post, in 1961. They divorced 13 years later. Greene died from cancer in Manhattan on November 1, 2022, at the age of 88.