Food, culture writer Sam Sifton to lecture March 7

New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton will discuss "Restaurant Criticism, Arts Reporting and the Business of The New York Times" Monday, March 7, at Skidmore College. Free and open to the public, the talk will begin at 7 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

Skidmore's Speakers Bureau is a sponsor of the event, along with the The New York Times in College program.

Sifton, who had been culture editor at the Times, succeeded Frank Bruni as the paper's restaurant critic in the fall of 2009.  In an article announcing the appointment, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller called Sifton "a writer of discernment and wit and erudition. This is a marquee job for The Times."   Since then Sifton has contributed numerous reviews and articles for the paper's "Dining Journal" column, including one titled "My Life in Food" (April 15, 2010), in which he reported some terrifying numbers from "a week of eating and exercising as the restaurant critic of The Times": 24,560 calories consumed; 4,180 calories expended through exercise.

As he noted in another article "Eating like that is spectacularly unhealthful" and complicated for the body and the mind.

When Sifton's appointment was announced The New York Observer wrote, "Mr. Sifton steps into a job that Ruth Reichl, Biff Grimes and Mr. Keller himself told us that, in some ways, doesn't quite have the power it used to. He'll have to negotiate a foodie-obsessed atmosphere, and a new media environment that will end The Times' quaint idea of anonymity for its restaurant critic (it's not so hard to find an image of Mr. Sifton). But, interestingly, The Times has removed Mr. Sifton's image from its Talk to the Newsroom series.

Mr. Sifton, who edited the Dining section in the past and who also wrote a noir-inflected dining column for the New York Press, has written about food recently for The Times. In the Sunday Magazine, he wrote about cooking meatloaf for Nora Ephron at a potluck. ("This is what happens if you hang around New York long enough, writing about food and editing about movies. You end up at ground zero. The invitation was to a potluck. Guests were meant to bring food inspired by Ephron's career or by the woman herself. It was essentially high-stakes food charades. My draw was meatloaf. Ruh-roh.")"

At the time he was named restaurant critic, Sifton had been on the culture desk for five years. He joined the Times in 2002 as deputy dining editor and became dining editor later that year. Previously he was a founding editor of Talk magazine, where he worked until 1998. He earlier worked at the New York Press and at American Heritage, where he was an assistant editor. He is author of A Field Guide to the Yettie (Talk Miramax Books, 2000).

Sifton graduated in 1988 from Harvard College.