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Early Life

Mimi Sheraton was born on February 10, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in a household where food mattered deeply. The rhythms of shopping, cooking, tasting, and comparing dishes were early sources of pleasure and curiosity, and they formed the foundation for a lifelong preoccupation with how people eat and why. From an early age she learned to look closely at ingredients and techniques, and to connect flavor with memory, culture, and place. Those instincts later became the signature threads of her criticism and reportage.

Entry into Journalism

Sheraton began her career as a writer and reporter with a keen eye for detail and a willingness to immerse herself in subjects others overlooked. Before she became a household name in food, she honed craft skills in research, interviewing, and descriptive prose that would serve her when she turned her focus decisively to restaurants and culinary culture. New York's media world in mid-century was a small village; editors expected authority and independence, and Sheraton developed both, learning to balance curiosity with skepticism and to put readers' interests ahead of industry pressures.

Career at The New York Times

In 1976 she became the restaurant critic for The New York Times, the first woman to hold the post, at a moment when American dining was changing rapidly. She succeeded a tradition shaped by figures such as Craig Claiborne and worked within a newsroom culture that demanded rigor and independence. Sheraton set standards that many critics still follow: multiple visits to a restaurant, insistence on anonymity, and paying her own way. She made use of disguises and varied companions to minimize recognition, believing that restaurants should be judged as ordinary diners experienced them.

Her reviews were notable for precision and context. She assessed not only cooking and service but also value, ambiance, and the coherence of a restaurant's vision. At a time when New York was embracing grand French rooms, the stirrings of Italian regional cooking, and later the energy of Asian and American nouvelle cuisines, she offered readers a map to a city in culinary motion. She sometimes clashed with publicists and restaurateurs; the job required the spine to deliver praise and censure alike. Yet even in negative reviews, her language aimed for clarity over spectacle, informed by careful tasting and repeat visits.

Books and Wider Writing

Sheraton's byline reached far beyond the Times. She wrote for national magazines and specialized publications, building a body of work that ranged from practical guides to cultural histories. Her books reflected breadth and depth: The German Cookbook introduced generations of American readers to regional traditions with exacting recipes; From My Mother's Kitchen illuminated how domestic kitchens carry memory; The Bialy Eaters traced the story of a humble bread across continents and communities; and 1, 000 Foods To Eat Before You Die synthesized decades of travel and tasting into a compendium of the world's edible riches. In each, she combined reporting with an archivist's care, preserving techniques, names, and places that might otherwise slip from view.

Method, Voice, and Influence

Sheraton's method balanced curiosity with discipline. She took notes meticulously, compared multiple tastings of the same dish, and paid attention to small details: the warmth of plates, the cadence of service, the accuracy of seasoning, and the consistency between lunch and dinner. Her voice was direct and unsentimental, able to find eloquence in a perfect roast chicken as readily as in a complicated terrine. She believed that criticism should serve readers first, but she also understood its power to shape a culinary scene. Chefs and restaurateurs read her closely.

She moved in a world of influential peers and mentors. The groundwork laid by Craig Claiborne at the Times defined the seriousness of the beat; James Beard's championing of American foodways resonated with her encyclopedic interests; and contemporaries like Gael Greene provided a lively counterpoint in the city's competitive dining conversation. Later, Ruth Reichl's tenure at the Times would reflect an evolving tradition of critical anonymity that Sheraton helped solidify. Beyond critics, the chefs and restaurateurs who transformed American dining, Alice Waters in California, Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles, and New York power figures such as Sirio Maccioni, were frequent subjects of her attention. She chronicled their successes and missteps while situating them within larger shifts in taste, immigration, and media.

Personal Life

Sheraton's personal life remained largely private even as her byline became synonymous with authority in matters of taste. She married, kept a home in New York, and raised a son, organizing a demanding professional life around family commitments and the nightly demands of anonymous dining. Friends and colleagues described a person of sharp wit, exacting standards, and generous mentorship, someone willing to read drafts, argue about a sauce, or share the address of a hidden bakery discovered in the course of research. The discipline of her work life, meticulous scheduling, careful budgeting for repeat visits, and an insistence on independence from industry favors, rested on a durable support system of family, editors, and trusted dining companions.

Later Years and Continuing Work

Leaving the Times in the early 1980s did not slow her output. Sheraton continued to write books and articles, to travel widely, and to lecture on the craft of criticism and the anthropology of eating. She revisited cuisines she had chronicled decades earlier, asking how immigration patterns, economic changes, and home cooking traditions reshaped restaurants and markets. Digital media changed the landscape around her, but she stood by the core principles of fairness, transparency, and repetition as antidotes to hype. Younger writers often sought her counsel, and she remained a lively presence in professional circles, debating the responsibilities of critics in an age of influencers and crowd-sourced ratings.

Death

Mimi Sheraton died on April 6, 2023, in New York, at the age of 97. News of her death prompted tributes from chefs, editors, fellow critics, and readers who had planned meals and built memories from her advice. The condolences that arrived from kitchens and dining rooms around the world reflected how thoroughly her work had entered the lives of people who cared about food.

Legacy

Sheraton's legacy is twofold. First, she helped fix the standards for restaurant criticism in the United States: anonymity, multiple visits, contextual knowledge, and independence from the industry being covered. Second, she broadened the map of what counted as important. By taking a bialy as seriously as a grand tasting menu, by writing exactingly about German home cooking as well as about the newest haute cuisine, she validated the full spectrum of eating. Her curiosity brought far-flung traditions into American kitchens and dining rooms, and her exactness preserved them with fidelity. In the company of figures like Craig Claiborne, James Beard, Gael Greene, and Ruth Reichl, Mimi Sheraton stands as a central architect of modern food journalism, a critic whose judgments were earned through legwork and whose enthusiasms were grounded in knowledge.