Helen Rosner
An okay person.
Hello! My name is Helen Rosner. I'm a writer and editor, and occasionally a photographer.
Mostly, I'm the New Yorker's roving food correspondent. (You can read a complete archive of my work here.) I also write for other publications about non-food things, particularly design, social and political activism, travel, fashion, books, and games. I've been the executive editor of Eater, the executive digital editor of Saveur, the online restaurant editor for New York Magazine, a cookbook editor, a smoothie barista, an LSAT tutor, a Jewish-interest sex columnist, a freelance photographer, a podcast host, a party planner, a Logic 101 TA, and (twice!) the president of the Smith College Debate Society. For several of these endeavors, I have won shiny awards. I am one of the world's foremost authorities on chicken tenders.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, went to college in western Massachusetts, moved to Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then briefly New Jersey, and now I'm back in Brooklyn, where I live with my husband and our dog, Dido, who is named for Virgil's queen of Carthage, not the '90s pop singer, but it's fine either way.
If you want to see my full CV, click here.
If you want to work together, or you want to inundate me with compliments, drop me a line.
If you want to tell me I am wrong about my opinions on feminism, racism, immigration, trans rights, capitalism, or the Nintendo Switch, you can get in touch with me directly by clicking here.
Recent Work ↓
Manually (so, infrequently) updated
When a Cornell study implicated “Joy of Cooking” in the obesity epidemic, the beloved cookbook’s guardians were blindsided. Then they decided to fight back—by conducting their own research.
What Le Cirque Will Be Remembered For // THE NEW YORKER
For a time, a sunlit heyday that lasted decades, Le Cirque was the epitome of a clubby Manhattan fine-dining scene whose snobbishness, far from undermining the enterprise, was the mighty engine of its success.
The Olive Garden is the ur-chain, a place that is everywhere and nowhere, whose attempts to transform itself only serve to deepen its inability to change.
The Eater Upsell // PODCAST
The world's best food-world interview podcast: a 65-episode run of long-format conversations with Anthony Bourdain, Carla Hall, Jay McInerney, Alton Brown, Mario Batali, Preeti Mistry, Ayesha Curry, David Chang, and more.
To me, given the person I am and the emotional state I’m in and the dog to whom I’ve committed my heart, learning that I could give the internet 300 dollars and in exchange receive a custom-printed formal caftan printed with my dog’s face seemed not only like an unobjectionable course of action, but a correct one.
Silicon Valley's newest love-to-hate startup wants to put mom-and-pop shops out of business. It also has a massive logistics problem.
A five-day, six-voice, bracket-style celebration of some of the most groan-inducing restaurant names our fair nation has to offer.