Los Angeles Times Earns Awards for Food Writing from the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals
Two members of the Los Angeles Times Food team have earned honors in the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals’ 2021 awards program. Presented in an Oct. 23 ceremony at the IACP Conference in Birmingham, Ala., the awards recognize excellence in cookbooks, digital media, food writing and food photography and styling in the culinary industry.
Times restaurant critic Bill Addison earned an award for food writing in the restaurant criticism/review category and columnist Lucas Kwan Peterson won for food writing in the personal essays/memoir writing category.
Addison won for a range of columns, including pieces on a Mexican restaurant with standout pozole verde, a spot in Row DTLA opened by a lauded San Francisco Chef, a buzzing new Silver Lake restaurant and therapeutic pork belly tacos.
Looking back at the columns written in 2020, Addison said “it’s jolting” to see the perspectives in the reviews that were submitted after the last year and a half, “when restaurants have been through so much.” He noted that two of the reviewed restaurants (All Day Baby and now-closed M. Georgina) were written before dining out ceased in mid-March 2020. “The other two covered restaurants bravely opened mid-2020 and later, when it felt like COVID-19 was casting a shadow over every sentence I typed,” he said.
Peterson’s winning column, How I learned to stop worrying and love my Asian Glow, offered a humorous account of how he’s come to terms with his alcohol flush reaction—a perplexing genetic variation that affects almost exclusively persons of East Asian descent.
“I’d always regarded my inability to drink as a disadvantage,” Peterson mused in his column. “But as I’ve aged, I’ve accepted the Glow. The social capital I missed out on I’ve saved in actual, legal tender by forgoing the 500 or so drinks per year consumed by the average American. I’m a cheap date; a few sips of wine or a bottle of 1-proof kombucha and I’m good to go for the evening.”
View the complete list of winners at iacpculinary.com.
