Changes to the Taste team mean expanded food coverage

Dear readers,

By now you've noticed some changes on our Taste team. Our longtime editor, restaurant critic and baking columnist have retired or moved on to other passions. And that means we're welcoming exciting new voices to our coverage.

Jon Cheng has already started his smart criticism of restaurants, with his first review of Cardamom earlier this month and his second appearing today. By age 9, Jon, who grew up in Singapore, was the person his family relied on to order at restaurants, because he unerringly found the best dishes on the menu. While other children played games, Jon wrote reviews on TripAdvisor. Fast forward through stints of living in London, where he wrote for British GQ; in New York, where he wrote for the Village Voice, and in Berkeley, Calif., where he earned an MBA and ate widely in that glorious food town. We started talking with Jon shortly after he landed in Minneapolis this summer, and are delighted to bring him aboard.

Joy Summers grew up in Minnesota with the kind of background that Taste section devotees will recognize. In her family, they started asking "What's for dinner?" at breakfast. They talked incessantly about food — how to grow it, best ways to prepare it, new restaurants for sampling it. No surprise that Joy pursued a career in food writing, with her work appearing locally in City Pages, Lavender and Minnesota Monthly. Her last job was as editor for Eater Twin Cities. We welcome her vast knowledge of the Twin Cities scene and her impressive source list.

Some things will, I'm happy to say, stay the same. Sharyn Jackson, who joined the Taste team in 2018 after four years as a general assignment features writer, will carry on with reporting on restaurant news and trends, writing profiles and finding angles on the cocktail scene. Rick Nelson, while switching to a beat on architecture and homes, will remain our Cookie Contest maestro. Longtime contributors Meredith Deeds, Beth Dooley, Bill Ward and Michael Agnew will also continue writing for these pages.

Conducting the team is Taste editor Nicole Hvidsten. An avid baker and experienced home cook with an abiding love of cookbooks, she worked as a designer and assistant editor on Taste for a decade. That experience gave her an insider's view of the Star Tribune audience and understanding of what they craved. Promoting her to lead this talented group was an easy choice.

Sue Campbell, AME/Features