Craig Claiborne (September 4, 1920 – January 22, 2000) was a restaurant critic, food writer and former food editor of the New York Times. He was the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography. Over the course of his career, he made many important contributions to gastronomy and food writing in the United States.

Born in Sunflower, Mississippi, and raised on the region's storied cuisine in the kitchen of his mother's boarding house, Claiborne served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean conflict and after deciding that his true passion lay in cooking, attended the prestigious Г‰cole HГґteliГЁre in Lausanne, Switzerland. He subsequently worked his way up in the food publishing business to become editor at Gourmet Magazine and finally food editor of the New York Times in 1957. Claiborne was the first man to hold the position and is credited with broadening the paper's coverage of new restaurants and innovative chefs.

Claiborne's columns, reviews and cookbooks introduced a generation of Americans to a variety of ethnic cuisines -- particularly Asian and Mexican -- at a time when average Americans were considered to have fairly staid, conservative tastes in food and what little gourmet cooking was available in cities like New York was exclusively French (and, Claiborne observed, not terribly high quality). Looking to hold restaurants accountable for what they served and help the public make informed choices about where to spend their dining dollars, he created the now-famous four-star system of rating restaurants still used by the Times and which has been widely imitated. Claiborne's reviews were exacting and uncompromising, but he also approached his task as a critic with an open mind and eye for cooking that was different, creative and likely to appeal to his readers.

Inspired by writers like M.F.K. Fisher, Claiborne also enjoyed documenting his own eating experiences and the discovery of new talent and new culinary trends across the country and across the world. Among the many then-unknown chefs he brought to the public's attention was the New Orleans restauranteur Paul Prudhomme. Few people outside the Deep South at the time had any awareness of Louisiana's Cajun culture or its unique culinary traditions. Along with Julia Child, Claiborne has been credited with making the often intimitading world of French and other ethnic cuisine accessible to an American audience and American tastes. Claiborne authored or edited over 20 cookbooks on a wide range of foods and culinary styles, including some of the first best-selling cookbooks dedicated to healthy, low-sodium and low-cholesterol diets. He had a long-time professional relationship and collaborated on many books and projects with the French-born New York chef Pierre Franey.

Claiborne was a fixture of the New York social scene for decades and viewed as an icon of urbanity and style, but always with a uniquely American and disarming Southern flair. His lavish, celebrity-studded birthday parties at his East Hampton estate were a regular event on the Manhattan social calendar. Claiborne was gay and was one of the few public figures of his generation to candidly acknowledge his sexual orientation.

One of the most famous episodes in Claiborne's career occurred in 1975 when he placed a $300 winning bid at a charity auction for a no price-limit dinner for two at any restaurant of the winner's choice, sponsored by the American Express company. Selecting his friend Pierre Franey as his dining companion, the two settled on the prestigious Parisian restaurant Chez Denis where they racked up a $4,000 tab on a five-hour, 31-course meal of foie gras, truffles, lobster, cavair and rare wines. When Claiborne later wrote about the experience in his Times column, the paper received a deluge of reader mail expressing outrage at such an extravagance at a time when so many in the world went without.

Claiborne, who suffered from a variety of health problems in his later years, died at age 79 on January 22, 2000. In his will, he bequeathed his estate to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.

Books

• The New York Times Cookbook
• A Feast Made for Laughter (autobiography)
• Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer

Quote

"Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love." -- Craig Claiborne [1]

External links

• http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~stafflag/craigclaiborne.html Obituary
• 1987 Audio Interview of Craig Claiborne with Don Swaim, RealAudio