Herald News Staff Reporter


Like any foodie worth his salt, David Leite is cooking on all four burners. So much so that a plan to lie low in Swansea for a few weeks and firm up a book proposal hasn't been as fruitful as expected.

Food editors have tracked him down to make assignments; public television has requested his assistance with a project in these parts; his Web site's food editor, Linda Avery, has phoned with suggestions; and then there are six-mile walks each day with his dad.

"It has been an absolutely wild and wonderful year,"agrees Leite. "Honestly, there's so much that's happened I can't keep track. I had to lay it all out!"

He is parked in a booth at Al Mac's Diner, savoring a chouriço and egg sandwich, something not readily available in Manhattan, his home base. Leite grew up around the corner on Brownell Street, and the diner was his breakfast spot of choice when godmother Betty Costa was treating.

Leite hands over a packet of information he designed that speaks to his degree in communication design from Rochester Institute of Technology. He also used those lessons to formulate the Web site Leite's Culinaria (www.leitesculinaria.com), a venue originally intended as an online portfolio for food editors but has since synthesized all his interests and taken on a life of its own.

"I've been told I'm five years ahead of the curve," sighs Leite. "And it's true, just look at the cookbook list."

Seems Leite and the six volunteer editors who man the Web site came out early with a list of favorite cookbooks for 2003, based on their preferences as well as those of the Web site's fans. The timing got them mentioned first in the annual race to produce a list and soon it was featured in newspapers, food Web sites and blogs.

"When we started compiling our list, we had no idea we'd end up in such esteemed company,"Leite says.

Leite's Culinaria also earned best Web-site honors from SauteWednesday.com and was ranked 49,476th among all the Web site by Alexa.com, a service that ranks Web sites by the traffic they receive. (It has since risen to 47,930.)

"That's out of hundreds of millions of Web sites," says Leite of the latter honor. "I flipped. We're doing something right...more than five million hits to the site in one year. I'm not sure what it is, I'm just following my gut."

Leite was actually pushed into the food business when the advertising business—in which he was making money by the boatload—suffered a downturn.

By then he'd parlayed a 1998 shot at food writing into a nice sideline that progressively led to more and more stories in major publications. So in 2001 when his last paid job in advertising ended, he was ready to write full-time, although not prepared for the rather puny remittance it brought.

What's Cooking Now at Leite's Culinaria David Leite and his staff of volunteers maintain the popular Web site Leitesculinaria.com. They update it every two weeks with new recipes, contests, book reviews and more. It has an active following; many of the recipes include ratings and feedback from cooks who tried out the featured recipes. Also, since the Web site has been around since 1999, it has a meaty recipe archive. Featured this week on the Web site as the Recipe of the Week is Truffled Lentil Spoons, from the cookbook Amuse-Bouche, French for "mouth amusement."

Still, he had access to people and managed to get himself to a food writers conference in West Virginia where he met guest speaker Barbara Fairchild, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit.

"She delineated the entire food magazine industry in one 20-minute speech," says Leite, who confesses to the unpardonable sin of stepping right up and asking Fairchild how to get his work on Bon Appétit's pages.

"It's an unspoken rule that you don't ask for work,"says Leite. "But when you're not making any money, you'll ask for work."

Fairchild gave him the standard boilerplate answer about sending along clips, but at the same time lauded his gumption. One thing led to another and eventually he ended up writing a piece, a hilarious tale of his lusting after a Viking range, for the magazine's "People & Places" column in February 2003.

"Then the dam burst," deadpans Leite, explaining writing assignments flowed in. The year was capped with another equally humorous piece about his experience trying to cook a Christmas goose, which appeared in Bon Appétit this past December.

Many of his pieces also extol the virtues of having grown up in a Portuguese household with a mother and grandmother who used handfuls of this and pinches of that to turn out fabulous dishes.

Leite, a genuinely funny man, agrees his use of humor — something not usually found in food writing — is helping set him apart. All of the pieces by and about him, of course, end up on the Web site along with all manner of other things.

"Big time people now want to be on it," says Leite, explaining while this is all just dandy, it is also forcing him and his volunteers to come up with new issues of Leite's Culinaria every two weeks. "Before it was whenever I had time, now it's a real site. I spend two hours a day just on e-mail."

Leite isn't complaining, at least not when he gets paid: "Probably no food writer out there is making what I made in advertising. But the satisfaction is great for the most part. Some days I so ask I 'why?' Then five checks come in and I don't feel as bad. Besides, the numbers are changing and there's something marvelous about being your own boss."

In some ways his success mining a whole new field surprises him, in some ways it doesn't. "Whenever I've set my mind to something, I've done it."

Now, he admits, in the few days he has left at home with his parents, he has to concentrate on the book proposal, a narrative that will take him to various parts of the country.

"It's definitely not a cookbook. I've learned the hard way I'm not a cookbook writer,"he says, refusing to fess up to why that's so.

Meanwhile, at least 15 writing assignments await — including a travel piece for Bon Appétit — and the Web site will begin offering in-depth interviews with heavyweights in the business.

Paula Kerr may be reached at pkerr@heraldnews.com.