Besha Rodell has announced that she’s leaving her position as restaurant critic for LA Weekly. Rodell, who is from Australia but has worked as a restaurant critic and food writer in the U.S. for more than a decade, has moved back to Melbourne.
The move has been in the works for some time, according to Rodell, who announced that she’s stepping down in an LA Weekly story that went live this morning. In the piece, she explains why she’s given up “the best job in the world,” a position she’s held since , for Australia:
What would it take for you to give up the best job in the world? Lots of things — things that are personal, professional and, yes, even a little political. But mainly they are family things: a father I've not spent significant time with since I was a teenager, siblings I miss terribly.
Rodell’s final review for LA Weekly was last week’s take on Vespertine, Jordan Kahn’s ambitious, moody tasting menu restaurant. She writes in today’s farewell, “I can't think of a more complex, fascinating and weird way to bow out.”
With Rodell gone, Jonathan Gold is now LA’s only restaurant critic. Rodell stood out as the city’s sole anonymous critic, Eater LA notes, and
In a somewhat surprising move, Besha Rodell at the Weekly drops in a review today for Hollywood underdog Baroo. The fermentation-heavy restaurant in a rather unappealing strip mall off Santa Monica Boulevard was first discovered on Eater a little while back, and has since become something of a food writer favorite over the past few weeks.
Still, a full-on review is a touch unorthodox for such a young, offbeat eatery. But that’s exactly what makes it so worthwhile, says Rodell, who drops three whole stars on the place, saying:
Part of what's so irresistible and endearing about the place is the sincerity with which its owners run their business. They say the word "baroo" refers to the bowl from which monks eat — one of the only objects a monk is allowed to possess — and there is indeed something ascetic about the setup and the intentions of the two men who run the restaurant.
The critic mostly loves the presentation and layered flavors of the place, particularly in the way they work with grains and Asian ingredients. But in the end she settles on Baroo as some level of experimental dinner theater, dropping terms like ‘beguiling’, ‘weird, and ‘slightly confusing’
Besha Rodell: unmasking a food critic
I’ll never forget the first time it happened. The manager of a restaurant showed up at our table, looked around at my party of four and smiled. And then he turned to me and said, “Are you Besha Rodell?”
“Besha Rodell?” I asked. “Who’s that?”
It was less than a year into my tenure as a restaurant critic, in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’d already been made. That time I got away with it. The manager explained that Besha Rodell was the new critic for the weekly newspaper, and there was a rumour going around that she had an Australian accent.
“South African,” I lied. He bought it. I think.
Years later, during my first week at a job in Los Angeles, I got a text message from a friend. “Are you sitting down?” He paused, and then: “Eater just published a photo of you.” I clicked on the link and there it was: blurry, from a distance and mortifyingly unflattering, but undeniably me. The photo was taken down within the hour, at the request of the photographer.
A few weeks later, the same website published another photo, this one much clearer, with the headline,
L.A. Weekly Food Critic Besha Rodell Leaving Her Post After Five Years
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Los Angeles is losing one of its most influential voices on food, restaurants, and the at times complicated culture around dining in this city: Besha Rodell, the food critic at LA Weekly, announced Tuesday that she was leaving her post after five years.
Rodell announced her departure in a goodbye essay in which she called it “the best job in the world.” The James Beard Foundation Media award-winner stealthily moved back to her hometown of Melbourne, Australia last weekend, she revealed in the essay, motivated in part by a desire to spend more time with her family. (Full disclosure: Besha is a former colleague from my time at LA Weekly).
“I owe Los Angeles a great debt. I owe the chefs of the city a great debt for giving me such incredible fodder over the years,” Rodell wrote. “I tried, in my reviews, to repay that debt, to pour as much honesty and thought and serious consideration as possible
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