The New York Times has appointed Ligaya Mishan and Tejal Rao as co-chief restaurant critics, the first time that the news organization will have more than one, the company announced on Wednesday.
The change is part of an effort to expand starred restaurant reviews across the country, instead of focusing them almost exclusively in New York, The Times said. Ms. Mishan and Ms. Rao, who have written about food for The Times for years, take over a role that Pete Wells held for over a decade before stepping down last year.
Emily Weinstein, the editor in chief of Food and Cooking, and Sam Sifton, an assistant managing editor, said in a statement that they had an “ambitious new plan” to cover the nation’s restaurants in a more visual, personal and transparent way. Ms. Rao will work from California, while Ms. Mishan will be based in New York, and both will travel frequently.
The editors said they were not “backing away from covering New York” and would add brief starred reviews from other writers to recommend more restaurants to readers.
“We’ve tasked both Tejal and Ligaya with capturing this moment in American dining — the restaurants that are most interesting, exciting and emblematic of our times,” the statement said. It added, “Both will award stars wherever they go, breaking our tradition of awarding star ratings almost entirely in New York.”
That won’t be the only change: The chief critics are forgoing anonymity, and will not try to hide their faces publicly. The editors said that while Ms. Rao and Ms. Mishan would do everything they could to eat at restaurants undetected, including making reservations under aliases, “we are more or less 86’ing wigs, fake glasses and TV appearances with faces blurred.”
“Maintaining that level of anonymity — a policy that goes back decades — is just not possible anymore,” the editors said.
Ms. Mishan has been a contributor to The Times for 21 years. She wrote the Hungry City column from 2012 to 2020, as well as a variety of columns and articles for the Food section and T Magazine. Ms. Rao, currently a critic at large, joined The Times in 2016. She was previously a restaurant cook and a critic for The Village Voice and Bloomberg.
