So Long and Thanks for All the Fish Cakes: An Editor Says Farewell

After two years as a contributor and three and a half years as an editor, it's time for me to say goodbye to Serious Eats. Today is my last day which, yes, means it's time for a farewell post. Prepare for some navel-gazing.

I'm leaving for the most mundane of reasons: Personal and professional needs change, and it's simply time for me to do something new in food writing. Over the past couple weeks, though, I've become remarkably adept at hiding my deskcrying from my coworkers, because leaving this site, and this company, is one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to make.

Blame it on those colleagues, past and present, who are some of the most brilliant, weird, insightful, and kind voices in the food world today. Thanks to them, coming to work has always felt less like a job and more like a fat kids' writer's colony where smart, obsessive people meet to eat pizza together. If I ever sounded at all like I knew what I was talking about, it's because of everything I've learned from them. The same goes for the small army of freelance contributors who've made Serious Eats the juggernaut it is today; I can't imagine a smarter and more hardworking crew to collaborate with, and there's no counting the lessons I've learned from editing their writing.

Also blame it on Ed, who, against all common sense, hired someone wholly unqualified to edit a website and write about food, then gave me the freedom to build things almost entirely out of my own designs. And blame it on yourselves, dear readers, for indulging me through all my screw ups, sharing your insight about restaurants and food know-how, and for always being honest about how I could do my job better.

I keep drafting and deleting rambling thoughts about food media and what an exciting and terrifying time it is to work on the web, but all I really have to say is how grateful I am to have had a space to talk about food the way I see it. Serious Eats is that special place where stupid candy gimmicks co-exist with 10,000 word articles about the state of Chinese restaurant culture, where bagel scatter plots are a form of economics journalism, and where you can dive way deeper than you ever expected into topics like ice cream or tea or dumplings—and people listen. A lot has changed over five years at Serious Eats. The whole internet has changed. But this place has always been, and always will be, a safe haven for the purest forms of food nerdery. The people who work here care too much for it to be anything less.

With that, let's call it quits. You can keep up with my next steps over on Twitter, and I doubt this'll be the last time my byline hits these pages. But now it's time to grab a beer and lose my voice while belting out some Gin Blossoms at one more office karaoke session. See you all around.