Daniel Meyer

Background

About Daniel Meyer

It started, as all great love stories do, with overcooked spaghetti. I was an 18-year-old college freshman eager to show off my newfound “adulthood,” so disregarding the fact that my mastery in the kitchen extended scarcely beyond instant ramen, I decided to throw a dinner party. As it turned out, the whirlwind week I spent tearing through cookbooks and food magazines was little match for my ineptitude; the pasta was mushy, the salad soggy, and the garlic bread burnt, but nevertheless, I was hooked. So began my life-long love affair with food; with cooking it, sharing it, writing about it, improving the systems surrounding it, and using it as a tool for social good. And like any romance worth its salt, it has led me to places I never would have imagined. It led me to the New York Times, where I collaborated on influential food policy op-eds and award-winning books with Mark Bittman (who is now my partner in both media and nonprofit ventures). It led me to New York’s most thrilling dining rooms, where I wrote reviews as chief restaurant critic for Time Out New York. It led me to create Dination, a philanthropic supper club meant to leverage “foodies” in supporting the creation of a better food system. It led me to back to business school to bolster my analytical thinking, and become a more effective change-agent in the food movement. It even led me—in the form of one incredibly seductive sandwich—to my wife. What’s more, food continues to be a conduit for the values that I hold most dear: Empathy, creativity, community, and pride. It is the lens through which I view the world around me and consider how to make it fairer, livelier, and more resilient. I am eager use my creative, communications, analytical, and entrepreneurial skills to strengthen our food system, and harness the power of food as a vehicle for social change. And I simply can’t wait to see how this love story ends. Specialties: Writing, food policy, entrepreneurship, social enterprise, editing, cooking, recipe-writing/testing.