CulinaryMedia
Hunter Lewis
Editor in Chief | Food & Wine
Experience
2017 - Present
Editor in Chief
Food & WineBirmingham, AL
2014 - 2017
Editor in Chief
Cooking LightBirmingham, AL
2012 - 2014
Executive Editor
Southern Living MagazineNew York, NY
2011 - 2012
Food Editor
Bon AppétitNew York, NY
2008 - 2010
Test Kitchen Director
SAVEURNew York, NY
Education
1996 - 2000
Bachelor of Arts, Journalism and Mass Communications
The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel Hill, NC
Advice from Hunter Lewis
Quotes about career path, skills, and teamwork from an industry leader.
Look outside of the industry for inspiration.
Make sure you're not staying in an echo chamber when it comes to principles and standards of leadership. There's so many good examples from other industries to emulate and to follow. It's important to look for that inspiration from folks outside of your own industry.
Relax.
Everything that you're doing right now is building the foundation for what you're gonna be doing down the road.
If you're struggling, know that you're creating that foundation, that stepping stone for what's to come.
If it was easy, everybody would do it.
I find inspiration outside of hospitality and outside of media.
We're just so saturated and on our screens all the time, so I find inspiration in nature, hiking, exercising, and just doing something good for my body.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from my grandmother, who said, “Your job when you're at a dinner party, when you're in a room, when you're at an event is to find the person who's the least comfortable in that room and go start a conversation with them.
Make them feel good.” To me, that's the ultimate hospitality.
I don't want to reduce it down to the simplest atom, but what makes Best New Chefs such strong leaders is this common thread of kindness, of empathy, of looking out for other people.
There's also a hunger and a desire to be different, to step out onto the edge.
I moved back to New York.
I got my foot in the door at SAVEUR running the test kitchen, and I'm really glad I gave that a shot. Being able to climb the ladder through the test kitchen and going to several other brands gave me the great opportunity to move up quickly and to learn on the fly in a way I don't think I would have in restaurant kitchens. I'll be honest, I was a pretty good line cook, but I don't think I would be winning any Best New Chef awards.
The negative side of things is a great teaching tool.
You learn what you don't want to do and maybe what path you're not gonna take next, but you also learn how to manage better and how to show up better when you have bad bosses. Rightly or wrongly, I really have learned a lot by trying not to model some of the folks that I've come across in my path.
I realized on the first day of working at Barbuto that I didn't want to be a restaurant critic.
I didn't want to have any negative impact on the livelihoods of all the people I was working with, all of the porters, dishwashers, prep cooks, barbacks, servers and hosts. And all the people that supported the restaurant: the farmers, the producers, the wine folks. It's a whole ecosystem.
When it comes to getting started, understand that every job you take and every boss you have is going to be a learning experience.
That's going to be your step ladder up to the next thing and the next thing.
There's no linear path in either hospitality or media, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
You forge that path. First you've got to open the door, get a foot in the door. You've got to work for somebody who you respect, work for an organization where there's an actual tangible culture that you can learn from. But you've got to get that foot in the door.
My first restaurant job was at Jersey Mike's when I was 18.
And I really got bit by the bug. I loved the camaraderie and the adrenaline and just working with food. That really was my gateway.
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