FEBRUARY 2020 101
This probably isn’t going to
be the answer that you want,
but when I went to the LosAngeles Times, they basically brought
me in to push out the woman who
had been the restaurant critic for
17 years—an older woman. And I
thought, ‘Someday, you are going
to be that older woman, and some-
body’s going to be pushing you out.
This is really bad.’ I felt really ter-
rible about it. And I never really got
over that, the ageism in America and
being part of it.
It took her a long time to leave. And
she was gracious about it, but we
were never really friends. And part of
it was that what I did was very differ-
ent. She was a very traditional restau-
rant critic, and I wasn’t. So there was
a lot of tension there.
Later on, when I went to Gourmet,
I was, for the first time in my life, in
a position of hiring people. I said, ‘I
will look at everyone. I will not
think, oh, this person is 70 years
old, so I couldn’t possibly hire her.’ I
really thought about the hiring deci-
sions and really trying to change the
makeup of the magazine. Actually,
when I went to Gourmet, there were
only two men on staff. So my first
goal was to get some more men on
staff.
I think that one of the ways to walk
through the world more happily is
to go with a yes attitude instead of a
no attitude. And it’s so easy to say, ‘I
don’t hire this; I don’t run this; we
have rules,’ and I have always wanted
to throw the rules out.”