Devra First

Restaurant criticism in Boston has been shaped, for more than two decades, by the steady reporting and editing range of Devra First at *The Boston Globe*. Since 2000, her byline has sat at the center of the paper’s restaurant coverage, with the added discipline of newsroom editing and an earlier grounding as assistant arts editor. That mix of criticism, reporting, and editorial structure has made her a close reader of how Boston eats, spends, and changes.

Since 2000, the restaurant critic and food writer role at *The Boston Globe* has also included writer and editor work, and Devra First has held that combined place in the paper’s food coverage throughout that span. The length of that tenure matters in criticism: it gives a critic a view of what stays, what gets priced out, and what shifts under pressure. On change in dining culture, she has said, "I’m not worried we’re not going to have seafood shacks in New England any more, so I think change ultimately is good, I just hate that it costs a lot of money to get into the game in most major cities."

The line gets at the core tension in modern dining: evolution is not the problem, access is. She has also said, "I don’t think it’s good for dining culture." Read together, the remarks show a critic working with plain language and a clear view of the barriers that shape the trade.

Recognition in criticism has followed Devra First’s long run at *The Boston Globe*, where the value of the work lies in consistency, context, and a refusal to flatten restaurant culture into hype. That kind of standing is earned over time: by reading a dining city closely, and by writing about it with enough discipline to register both its pleasures and its pressures.