Pete ‘The Punisher’ Wells Named to NYT Dining Critic Position; Susan Edgerley Named New NYT Dining Editor →
Mr. Wells has been the Times Dining editor since 2006, when he joined the paper from Details magazine, where he was an articles editor, prior to which, he was a columnist and editor at Food & Wine for two years. In the weeks between Frank Bruni’s retirement from the post in 2009 and Sam Sifton’s appointment to it, Mr. Wells filled in as dining critic for the paper, and was infamously critically violent to the few restaurants he reviewed in that time. A sampling:
From a goose egg “FAIR” review of celebrated Greek chef Michael Psilakis Gus & Gabriel Gastropub: “A selection of offal and other oddities, it raises hopes that those dishes are exempt from the pub theme because they’re so delicious. Those hopes wither at the first bite of a sour chicken-liver mousse paired with a mushy terrine, and they die with a taste of tongue that seems to have passed through the flavor subtractor. (The tongue came with a dish of what the waiter said was the poaching liquid. It didn’t taste like anything, either. The only thing on that plate that did was the bread.)”
