Maybe this is a strange thing to say, but I take solace when other food writers also halt posting pretty pictures on Instagram after another monstrous incident. We’ll all go back to it — it’s part of our jobs — but for a day or so it reminds me of friends sitting together not needing to speak because there’s nothing left to say .
I find so much value still in doing my job — in the service journalism aspect, in the craft of stringing together words, in documenting the complex, broken-open era we live in through the lens of dining. A lot of readers left comments and reached out for recommendations in Sicily; it’s a popular destination, and I singled out some personal highlights on my. I feel cognitive dissonance between mourning senselessly lost lives and dispensing restaurant advice.
So I am back in Los Angeles, settling again into the work of being a restaurant critic, grieving for the world and helping people figure out where to eat. It’s all of a piece.