Todd Price, AB ’96, uses a colorful word to describe the difference between being a restaurant writer and a restaurant critic: “skulking.”
Price spent several years reviewing restaurants for Gambit Weekly, New Orleans’ alternative newspaper, and other local media outlets. He did his share of what he calls “skulking around” — making reservations and carrying credit cards with false names, and trying not to look nervous or otherwise draw attention to himself when dining out.
Fortunately, his skulking days are over. As the dining writer for The Times-Picayune and its website, NOLA.com, he has become a well-known, and easily recognized, figure in the Big Easy’s bustling restaurant community.
“I’m the public face of our dining coverage,” Price says. “I often have the odd experience where people I don’t know are sure they know me. It’s probably because we have our photographs next to our stories.”
“Some restaurant owners and chefs are a little surprised to find we’re not here just to write nice things. I occasionally get hit in the comment section or on Twitter.”
Todd Price
It is a great time to have his job, because the post-Katrina recovery brought an influx of new homeowners and a restaurant renaissance to New Orleans. “I cover all the new restaurants,” Price says, “and we have 25 opening in the next three to four months. But we’re still a newspaper, and we uphold old-school standards. Some restaurant owners and chefs are a little surprised to find we’re not here just to write nice things. I occasionally get hit in the comment section or on Twitter. It’s part of the job, and it’s a job that requires an extra thick skin.”
It’s also not a job Price ever set his sights on. He grew up in Tulsa — his parents, he says, “were not much in the way of eaters” — but picked up his interest in food in St. Louis. Planning to pursue an academic teaching career, he looked for institutions with strong literature departments and chose Washington University. Once he arrived, “I found all kinds of food I hadn’t eaten before,” he says.
Price graduated with a degree in comparative literature and, after a year teaching English in France, entered a doctoral program in Spanish literature at the University of Virginia, where he also taught Spanish grammar and literature classes.
In 2004, Price and his wife moved to New Orleans. He became a full-time lecturer in Spanish literature at Tulane University, and the couple settled in to their new home.
But it seems New Orleans had other plans for Price. He began freelancing for Gambit Weekly, and after six months they made him the official restaurant critic. He joined the Times-Picayune part time in 2008 and left academia for his present full-time writing job in summer 2013.
Price eats out four or five times a week, so at home, where he does all the cooking for his wife and two children, he tries to keep it simple. A typical dinner, he says, is fish — whatever is fresh at the market — sautéed with vegetables and rice.
When they do go out, though, the family has a favorite restaurant. “On birthdays or special occasions, we always end up at Upperline,” Price says. “It’s not just the food. The walls are a gallery of regional art, the owner is a real character, and the restaurant is welcoming and comfortable.”
But when asked where he would eat his last meal, Price changes restaurants. “It would be at Casamento’s on Magazine Street,” he says. “It would have to include oysters — raw and fried. Also fresh-cut french fries.”
Price, still slim at 40, says he tries to eat light, even in restaurants, but you can’t do his job without really liking food.
“I’ll try anything, and I haven’t found much that I don’t like,” he says. “If you’re picky, though, you shouldn’t be writing about food. I’ve never been picky.”
Robert S. Benchley is a freelance writer based in Miami.