Serious Eats

About Serious Eats

Serious Eats is a food website and blog for food enthusiasts, founded in 2006 by food critic and author Ed Levine and published at seriouseats.com. What began as a scrappy blog built for about $100 grew into one of the most influential food publications on the internet, renowned for its rigorously tested recipes, its science-driven approach to cooking, and the careers it launched — most notably that of J. Kenji López-Alt, whose "The Food Lab" column became a James Beard Award-winning cookbook. After passing through the ownership of Fexy Media and Dotdash, the site is now part of People Inc. (formerly Dotdash Meredith), where it sits alongside sister food brands including Allrecipes, Food & Wine, and Simply Recipes.

Founding

Serious Eats was founded in 2006 by Ed Levine, then a 54-year-old freelance food writer with an unlikely dream: to control his own fate and create a different kind of food publication. Levine wanted to unearth the world's best bagels, the best burgers, the best hot dogs — the best of everything edible — and to build something for people like him who took everything edible seriously, from the tasting menu at Per Se and omakase feasts at Nobu down to mass-market candy, fast food burgers, and instant ramen. Against conventional advice, he created a blog for $100 and called it Serious Eats.

The site quickly became a home for obsessives who did not take themselves too seriously. Intrepid staffers feasted on every dumpling in Chinatown and sampled every item on In-N-Out's secret menu, and the site's voice — passionate, discerning, and often funny — attracted a devoted following of readers who planned their days around what they might eat.

Ed Levine's background

Before founding Serious Eats, Levine had already established himself as a fixture of American food writing. He had been a contributor to The New York Times and the author of "New York Eats" (1992) and "New York Eats (More)" (1997), guides to the city's iconic dishes, as well as "Pizza: A Slice of Heaven" (2005), a collection of essays, poems, and stories about pizza featuring contributors including Nora Ephron, Garry Trudeau, Mario Batali, and Calvin Trillin. His path to food writing was unconventional: he had studied American music at Grinnell College in Iowa, worked as a music artist manager, and spent years in advertising before committing to food full time.

Levine chronicled the chaotic early years of the site in his 2019 memoir, "Serious Eater: A Food Lover's Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption," which describes handshake deals with investors and would-be acquirers made over lunch that fell apart after dessert, and the toll the venture took on his marriage, career, and relationships. The book's foreword was written by J. Kenji López-Alt, with original recipes from López-Alt and Stella Parks.

The early years

Somewhat surprisingly, for the first few years of its existence, Serious Eats did not publish a single recipe. It was a food-culture blog: restaurant coverage, food news, essays, and guides to eating well. The decision to build a recipe platform came later, and it began, by Levine's own account, with one talented writer and one very special burger recipe. That writer was J. Kenji López-Alt, and the pivot toward tested, repeatable, science-backed recipes would transform the site's identity and its fortunes.

As the site grew, it expanded beyond its New York roots to cover food across the country, celebrating regional specialties from Milwaukee corned beef sandwiches to Houston doughnuts to New Haven clam pizza.

The Food Lab and J. Kenji López-Alt

The single most consequential development in Serious Eats' history was the rise of J. Kenji López-Alt, who joined as Chief Culinary Consultant and wrote the column "The Food Lab." López-Alt applied a rigorous, experimental approach to cooking — testing variables, debunking conventional wisdom, and recreating cultural food icons such as the ShackBurger and the Chick-fil-A sandwich for the home kitchen. His writing was highly regarded among amateur cooks for combining scientific method with genuinely delicious results.

In 2015, the column was adapted into "The Food Lab," a cookbook that won the James Beard Award and became one of the best-selling and most influential cookbooks of its era. López-Alt's success made him one of the most famous food writers in America and cemented Serious Eats' reputation as the home of serious, science-driven home cooking.

Stella Parks, Sohla El-Waylly, and the contributor bench

Beyond López-Alt, Serious Eats cultivated a roster of distinctive culinary talents. Stella Parks, known as BraveTart, became the site's baking authority, famous for meticulously reverse-engineered versions of iconic American desserts — including the glossy fudge brownies that became one of the site's signature recipes. Sohla El-Waylly also contributed to the site before going on to wider fame. Together, these writers attracted cult followings and gave Serious Eats a depth of tested-recipe expertise few competitors could match.

The site's general food features, home-cooking advice, and equipment reviews rounded out the offering, making it a one-stop destination for cooks who wanted to understand not just what to cook but why techniques worked.

Awards and recognition

Serious Eats' quality was recognized early and often. In 2008, Time magazine ranked it number 17 on its list of the 50 Best Websites. In 2010, the site received two James Beard Foundation awards, for Best Food Blog and Best Video Webcast — the food world's highest honors. Levine himself is an inductee of the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America, and the site has won two James Beard Awards overall.

The recognition helped validate the idea that a digital-native food publication could stand alongside legacy food magazines and newspaper food sections — and, in the eyes of many readers, surpass them.

The Serious Eats book

In 2011, Levine and the site's editors published the first Serious Eats book, "Serious Eats: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Eating Delicious Food Wherever You Are." The book was a celebration of America's favorite foods — pizza, barbecue, tacos, sliders, doughnuts, egg sandwiches, and more — crackling, in the publisher's words, with the energy and conviction that had made the website the passionate, discerning authority on all things delicious since its 2006 inception. It codified the site's philosophy: serious about food, unserious about snobbery.

Ownership changes

Serious Eats was acquired by Fexy Media in 2015, a transaction that gave the growing site corporate backing while it continued to expand its recipe and video operations. Then, on September 22, 2020, Dotdash announced that it had acquired Serious Eats and Simply Recipes from Fexy Media, bringing the site into one of the largest digital publishing portfolios in the country.

The corporate story continued: in 2021, Dotdash merged with Meredith Corporation to form Dotdash Meredith, and on July 31, 2025, that company rebranded as People Inc., naming itself after its flagship title, People magazine. Serious Eats is now listed among People Inc.'s Food & Drink brands, alongside Allrecipes, Simply Recipes, The Spruce Eats, EatingWell, Food & Wine, and Liquor.com. Through all these changes, the site has continued to publish from New York with its test-driven editorial identity intact.

Special Sauce podcast

Since 2015, Levine has hosted, written, and co-produced "Special Sauce," the Serious Eats podcast, extending the brand into audio. The show features interviews with chefs, writers, and food personalities, carrying the site's conversational, obsessive spirit into long-form conversation. Levine's role as founder, author, and podcast host has made him one of the most recognizable figures in American food media.

What Serious Eats offers today

Today Serious Eats describes itself as the destination for delicious food, with definitive recipes, trailblazing science, and essential guides to eating and knowing all about the best food. Its content spans rigorously tested recipes, technique explainers grounded in food science, equipment reviews, and guides to restaurants and regional specialties. The site's archive — built over nearly two decades — remains one of the deepest repositories of tested home-cooking knowledge on the internet.

How to visit Serious Eats

Serious Eats publishes at seriouseats.com, where readers can browse thousands of tested recipes, read technique guides, watch videos, and listen to the Special Sauce podcast. The site is free to read and remains, two decades after its founding, one of the most trusted names in online food publishing.