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Mimi Sheraton
James Beard Award winner
- Discipline
- Other
i. Biography
Coming Up
Born in Brooklyn, Mimi Sheraton brought skepticism and precision to food writing, two tools that shaped her work as a restaurant critic. In a field that can lean on flourish, Sheraton wrote with plain force, treating judgment as a craft built on observation, comparison, and discipline. She was an American restaurant critic whose authority came from knowing the city she covered and the consequences of writing about how people eat in it. Her own view of the work was blunt: "I hate writing so much that my gums ache whenever I am doing it." The defining platform for that voice was The New York Times, where Mimi Sheraton served as restaurant critic from 1976 to 1983. That seven-year stretch fixed her public profile: a Brooklyn-born critic writing on a national stage with a style that resisted ornament. She later described that reputation with the same restraint that marked her criticism, saying, "I think that’s probably true." The line fits a writer who relied on evidence, not pose.
Where They Are Now
Mimi Sheraton is still identified most closely with her years as restaurant critic at The New York Times, from 1976 to 1983. That period remains the clearest measure of her influence, when her reporting and reviewing helped shape how readers understood restaurants, chefs, and the language used to evaluate both. Her place in food criticism endures through that byline and through the method it represented: firm, unsparing, and grounded in conviction rather than sentiment.
Honors
Mimi Sheraton's honors include James Beard Award for Magazine Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs, James Beard Foundation Award, International Association of Culinary Professionals Award, and Penney-Missouri Award. Those recognitions point to the reach of her work across food writing and journalism. They also confirm what her career made clear: criticism can be exacting, memorable, and hard to dismiss.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Mimi
What recognition has Mimi Sheraton received?
James Beard Award for Magazine Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs (2014).
