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David Leite
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
David is the author of The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast, which was published by Clarkson Potter in August 2009. When not agonizing over his next book, a memoir, he writes about everything from champagne to Welsh food to high tea to being a super taster for publications including the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Pastry Art & Design, Food Arts, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, epicurious.com, and Ridgefield Magazine, where he was the food editor for three years. He’s also the resident food geek at The Morning News. David is a frequent guest on the Martha Stewart Living Radio program, Living Today, hosted by Mario Bosquez, and often reads his work on public radio’s food program The Splendid Table hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. He’s a regular guest on WTNH-TV and was profiled on Radical Sabbatical on Fine Living Network.

David won the 2008 James Beard Award for Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes for his article, “In a ‘64 T-Bird, Chasing a Date with a Clam” and was nominated in 2009 for his article “Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret,” both from the New York Times. He’s also a four-time nominee for the Bert Green Award for Food Journalism, which he won in 2006. In addition, he was a 2007 and 2006 winner of an Association of Food Journalists Award. His essays have been included in the Best Food Writing series from 2001 to 2008. Leite’s Culinaria, which David created in 1999, won the 2007 James Beard Award for Web Site Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant, or Nutrition and the 2006 James Beard Award for Best Food Web Site, a 2006 Food Blog Award, the 2005 World Food Media Award for Best Food and/or Drink Web Site, and was named Best Writer’s Web Site for 2002 by Writer’s Digest.

Renee Schettler Rossi
Deputy Editor
Renee has spent the past 15 years as an editor and writer at national newspapers and magazines including The Washington Post food section, Real Simple, and Martha Stewart Living. She conceived, assigned, edited, and pored over every food-related article and recipe that appeared in the printed pages and also collaborated with each publication’s dot-com team to address the distinct needs of the online audience. She has worked with writers, both Pulitzer Prize-winning and previously unpublished. Her work has garnered recognition from NPR, the Association of Food Journalists, and The Best American Recipes cookbook series, and she has served as a judge for the James Beard Awards. Besides holding down the post of deputy editor,  Renee is also one of our food writing teachers. You can read more about her by visiting her at reneeschettler.com.

Gary Allen
Food History Editor
Our food history editor, Gary Allen, cooks, eats, dreams, talks, and writes about food. After penning The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Routledge, 1999), an indispensable book for anyone interested in food, Gary edited a book on professional table service, Remarkable Service (Wiley, 2001), for The Culinary Institute of America. His book The Herbalist in the Kitchen, a reference work on herbs and spices, was published in 2007 by the University of Illinois Press.

Gary has contributed articles to Scribner’s Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (2003) and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2004), as well as serving as its associate editor. Encyclopedias featuring his work include Culinary Biographies (2006), The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (2007), and Greenwood’s Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Superbowl: An Encyclopedia. He co-edited, with historian Ken Albala, yet another encyclopedia, Greenwood’s The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries (2007). Upcoming encyclopedias that will feature his work include Oxford’s International Encyclopedia of Cheese.

He also co-edited, again with Albala, Human Cuisine — an anthology of essays and fiction (with a little poetry and drama) about cannibals. It’s touching, thought-provoking, and, occasionally ridiculous. It even contains a number of — thankfully — untested recipes (BookSurge, 2008).

Occasionally, ‘midst chewing and swallowing, he writes for magazines, e-zines, and symposia, including the Association for the Study of Food and Society, for which he’s been newsletter editor and Web master. You’ll find an index page of his online writings at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner, or visit his own Web site, On the Table. In his spare time, Gary teaches food writing, plus various courses on food history and culture, at Empire State College, part of the State University of New York. If you have any food-history questions, ask them here.

Janet P. Boileau
Editor/Producer of “Talking with Your Mouth Full”
Janet Boileau is a freelance publisher, editor, researcher, and food writer based in Washington, DC. As a world traveler, Janet was involved in book and magazine publishing, corporate communications, and journalism. She lived in Southeast Asia for more than 15 years, where she published articles on travel, culture, heritage, and local foods. She edited the works of prominent international decision makers while at the United Nations University Press at its Tokyo headquarters, and later became the director of the press. She was also a marketing consultant to multinational corporations. Recently, she completed a Master of Arts in Gastronomy under the auspices of Le Cordon Bleu Paris and is currently working on a book about the culinary heritage of the Portuguese in Asia.

Bribed with chouriço, Portuguese cheeses, and “the best açorda you ever tasted” during an expedition to the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, with David, Janet agreed to join Leite’s Culinaria as an editor and researcher, unearthing the kind of facts that imbue the site with erudition and maintain its reputation for wit and worldliness.

Rachel Seow
Associate Editor
With her childhood divided between Asia and North America, with a bit of the UK stirred in for good measure, Rachel grew up on the foods of a dozen different peoples and almost as many continents. And till this day, she couldn’t say which she’d claim as her own or which she loves best. While the foods she had access to changed as she ping-ponged about the globe, her fascination with them remained constant — from the time she was five and snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night because she couldn’t wait to try out a recipe from her Care Bears cookbook to the time she was twenty-five and saw raw Japanese mountain potato going through a grater and liquefying into a snowy mass. And her fascination with food remains with her today.

Julie Dreyfoos
Associate Editor
Julie has spent the past 14 years in the Seattle area raising two boys with her husband, Rob. Living in the Pacific Northwest, Julie enjoys the different cultural influences and availability of all types of food, which allow her to explore many types of recipes. She and her husband enjoy entertaining and pairing Washington wines with the various cuisines that they prepare. Prior to family life, Julie ran a small catering company with a friend in the South Florida area while also working in a gourmet food shop. She grew up in Ohio and as a young girl spent many days with her godmother in the kitchen, baking cookies and pies while developing her love for food and cooking. She’s quite proud that she still has her very first cookbook, which is part of her collection of more than 200 volumes.

Amanda Duffy
Illustrator
LoserGirl is the alter ego of Toronto-based illustrator and jumped-up pantry girl Amanda Duffy. Amanda’s misanthropy and pseudo-intellectual grounding infuse her work with both humor and quiet melancholy. The collectors of her paintings are unsure whether to laugh or burst into tears, which Amanda considers to be a good thing. Over the years, she’s received many lovely gifts from fans, but the one she’s still waiting for is a ballotine of MarieBelle truffles. Some of her many illustration clients include Playboy, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, TV Guide, Ms, Christianity Today, Out (How’s that for a contradiction?), Saveur, and Gourmet. LoserGirl (and Amanda) invites you to view her self-titled comic strip appearing at amandaduffy.com.