Columnists: Dishing It Up in the Times

The slight man with the crinkled, smiling eyes is not the sort of celebrity for whom headwaiters snap to attention. When he walks into a Manhattan restaurant, hardly anyone notices. But he notices everything. Is the decor adequate? Does the headwaiter seem anxious to get on to someone else? Is there any single offering out of the ordinary on the menu? Is the wine overpriced? Is the busboy attentive to such details as discarded swizzle sticks and filled ashtrays? Are the service plates set just right? Then, having eaten and paid for his meal, Craig Claiborne, food and restaurant editor of the New York Times, goes on his way, full of sharp impressions.

Within a few days, the restaurant staff may wish it had made more of an effort. For Claiborne can dish out as good as he gets—or as bad. And when he says good, it is very, very good for the restaurant's business. When he says bad, it can be horrid. "Our children depend on this restaurant for their future," complained one hard-hit owner in a letter to the editor.

At 45, Craig Claiborne is regarded by many as New York's most important cuisine critic. After eight years on the job, he has more to say to more people than any other food columnist in the U.S. He turns out three columns a week, plus occasional Sunday-magazine pieces, is now updating his guide to New York restaurants, has edited the 717-page New York Times Cook Book, and is writing three more books, one of which will be a guide to the American regional kitchen.

To get material, Claiborne has trekked all across the country. Last month he got as far as Alaska, where he gamely tried boiled whale—a dish on which he delicately neglected to pass gustatory judgment.

Begging for Status. Born in Mississippi, where his mother ran a boardinghouse, Claiborne decided early in life that boardinghouse reach was not his preferred style of eating. After a hitch doing public-relations work for Joe Kennedy's Merchandise Mart in Chicago and a tour of duty with the Navy during the Korean War, he enrolled for a year at the Swiss Hotelkeepers' Association school in Lausanne. It is, he insists, the best such school in the world, and he is proud of the fact that he finished eighth in a class of 60 in cooking, sixth in table service ("I'm a bit rusty, but I could still outdo almost every New York waiter").

Shortly after graduation, the trained hotelkeeper decided to turn critic. He heard that Jane Nickerson, the woman who was then the Times food editor, was about to retire. "Don't you think it's time for the paper to hire a man?" he asked bluntly. The paper agreed, and made Claiborne the first man ever to hold the job.*

The only thing that the trim, 155-lb. bachelor enjoys more than his job is his bayside home in East Hampton, L.I. There, decked out in an ankle-length apron, he putters happily around his professionally equipped kitchen. A precise and sparing eater himself, Claiborne hates and rarely uses marzipan, marshmallows or iceberg lettuce, serves rigidly small portions to a constant stream of guests who range from curious neighbors to the giants of the profession.