Frank Bruni Will Step Down as Times Restaurant Critic

Big news in the dining world today; the Times announced that the city's most influential restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, will move to the Sunday magazine section after five years on the beat. In an email to the staff, Executive Editor Bill Keller revealed that Bruni "will have license to follow his appetites — his journalistic appetites — wherever they lead him [at the magazine]... In his spare time, between aerobic eating and the requisite gym time to burn it all off, he has managed to produce a memoir of his lifelong, complicated relationship with food. Recognizing that the book is certain to seriously compromise his ability to be a spy in the land of food, Frank picked this as a natural time to move on. He will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials when his memoir, Born Round: the Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, is published in late August." Besides his generally impeccable taste and incisiveness, Bruni brought a fun, casual, and creative tone to the Times's dining coverage. Dining editor Pete Wells is currently searching for a successor to fill those big Italian shoes, and you can bet the mother of 12-year-old foodie David Fishman is already on the horn.