... out as a restaurant critic?

Very intentionally.

There is no one path into restaurant criticism.

I would say that was particularly true at the, the height of the profession of restaurant critic, which, which I would say was in the, the '90s to the aughts.

Some people worked in newsrooms, and an editor who liked them offered them the gig, and they ended up staying in it for 20 years.

I had gone to school for singing and acting, and I had, you know, modest aims for myself, like being a pop star who broke into film, and that didn't happen.

A- and part of the reason, honestly, it didn't happen is because through my 20s, I was really distracted by f- food.

Have there been examples in your past where you've had wildly different experiences each of the times?

Right, right, right

... for as, as ever-changing and, and East Atlanta for the amazingness of the, the Mexi- the very rooted Mexican community over there, and even, like, slowly how that changes and what comes in.

But part of the beauty of Los Angeles is that you're never, you're never sure what's gonna pop up when and where, and it's just fun to be like, "Okay." And I, I think, like, I think for a restaurant critic, like, what's so, so fantastic here and so singular is that sometimes I'll literally just be like, "What do I want to eat?" Like, "What have I not eaten in a little while? How about Georgian food?" [drum roll] You know?

What's your hope for the hospitality industry?

My hope for the hospitality industry is that everyone figures out how to make a, a better than living wage, a, a wage, um, that helps people feel like they're thriving in their lives.

I hope that people keep pushing to express what we've been talking about, whether it either it's, like, an incredibly personal place from which you cook and you devise a menu, or it's a place that really digs in and celebrates the microregions-

But, you know, what role has the media played in all this?

To just expand, I think, on what Kenji says, you are absolutely right.

Like, it's so much easier for... people in media of any level, whether you're talking about the disappearing profession of the professional restaurant critic to influencers who are given free meals to come in and describe their experiences on whatever channel on Instagram or TikTok they're broadcasting their opinions to influencers only see the surface of exactly what is presented to them, right? I think what makes this so extra complicated is that that's one side of media, right? The service journalism aspect where you're just literally conveying like for X amount of money, In tasting menu realms that we're talking about here in Noma, a $150 meal, a $300 meal, a $500 meal, the $1,500 that Noma LA is charging is, of course, exorbitant even by modern inflated standards.

And on the other side, journalism in America is... dying.

And there are too few professionals who have the time and the expertise and the financial backing to conduct the kind of investigation that Julia did.

And we need to remember that Julia who I admire deeply and don't know well.

So I'm making an assumption here, a leap.

What can and should happen,

Which is not to say I have no interest in fine dining, but I feel like I'm working to correct the balance and we'll be doing that for as long as I have this job.

When I was at the Dallas Morning News in 2008, it was that era of bloggers, right? Serious food bloggers in the community.

They created amongst themselves and they liked to nickname me like the DMN's burger critic.

And they were doing it like, oh, you burger critic because you write about burgers all the time.

And I...

I think about that so often because I'm like, how hilarious.

Like, all we can do now is talk about burgers.

Like, you really do cover the waterfront, you know? And so you may have a unique vantage point in a certain way.

So why don't we start with you, Bill?

I went to school for singing and acting.

I really wanted to be a pop star who broke into film.

Very modest ambitions for myself.

And the short story is that that didn't happen and I was approaching 30 and I always had kind of an artistic soul and I... had cooked in restaurants a lot through my 20s and had drifted into business writing, but I needed to do something else that felt really meaningful to me and that spoke to what I really cared about.

And as I was approaching 30 and I thought about these things, I thought about how I'd been fascinated for years by restaurant criticism.

I had, keep in mind that this was 2001, 2002, I had a binder full of restaurant reviews that I had printed out at temp jobs, being a Gen Xer, and a lot of them were Ruth Reichel at the New York Times through the 90s, but It was other greats around the country like Alison Cook in Houston and Jonathan Gold in LA and Tom Sietsema in Washington, DC.

What do you all see your role as and has it evolved?

I mean, it's something.

Well, that moves me.

Thank you.

Because I would say we all could use hope right now.

And Jen and I invested a lot thinking about hope.

hope because it's what I started to say earlier.

It's it's so painful to be a journalist in this sense, to be an observer, a recorder, and to to not like I don't want my favorite taco truck in Echo Park to have disappeared and gone into catering mode because they're afraid for their lives.

yeah

How is your thinking about what California cuisine is now that you've done this project and, and that you've lived there for several years?

Yeah, so interesting because I, I did that project for Eater, and I ended up wandering through California for about two months in 2018.

And it was published in June, and I ended up moving to California that same year, to Los Angeles, in November of that year.

And I remember even then just marveling at the expansiveness of California, right? When we talked about what might have been California cuisine for years, I think people who had this definition working in the '80s and '90s might have said it was about, you know, connecting with the farmers, using sustainably or mindfully or interestingly grown...

(laughs)

... uh, produce and, and, you know, all the thing- all those touchstones, right? All those things that, that if we know about food, if we care about food in America, are almost cliches.

And I think at this point, we have let go, a lot of us, of that outdated definition of California cuisine because California cuisine is, is everything.

It is the enormous Vietnamese populations in Orange County and in San Jose.