What were your favorite foods growing up in Maryland?
Crab cakes; oysters; fried shrimp and scallops; Marsburgers (a proto-Big Mac in the pre-McDonald's days) from Ponder's Luncheonette in Chevy Chase; liver knishes from the Parkway Deli and pizza from Ledo's, both in Silver Spring. On visits to my mother's side of the family, Tex-Mex at Felix's in Houston and Texas Trash (salty potato sticks covered in melted butterscotch). My mother had a dinner-party dish that I used to filch from the grown-ups' plates: Flounder with clam stuffing.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
When I was in third grade, I wrote a short story with a twist ending. When I read it out loud, the class gasped. I think that might have clinched it.

How did your career in food writing begin?
I began writing a cocktail column for Esquire in the 1980's that led to a book — Straight Up or On the Rocks, a history of the American cocktail. Later, when I started working at the New York Times, I often wrote travel articles that always seemed to end up being about food. When the Times started the Dining section in 1997, its editor asked me to become a feature writer for it.

What influenced you to write Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York?
In 2002, the president of the New York Public Library asked me to organize an exhibition of the library's menu collection, which was called New York Eats Out. That was the starting point.

What surprised you the most in writing Appetite City?
How little I, or anyone else, knew about the history of restaurants and dining in New York. For instance, there were strolling tamale vendors in the 1890's.

What was the most challenging part of being the New York Times restaurant critic?
Maintaining the proper level of enthusiasm night after night. A critic should enter a restaurant in the same state of mind as the typical diner: pleasant anticipation. That's hard to do when you are eating out constantly.

What was the most disastrous moment as a restaurant critic?
On a petty level, I absent-mindedly blurted out my real name to a hostess at one restaurant. At another one, I signed my real name to a check printed with the false name on my credit card. (To remain unrecognizable, critics at the Times carry an assortment of credit cards issued in false names.) There were memorable meal disasters, of course. The relaunched Russian Tea Room stays at the top of the list.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
Probably an epic four-hour meal at Alain Chapel's auberge outside Lyons. I kept the menu. A couple of highlights: asparagus served with sea urchin and cauliflower cream; duck liver terrine on fennel compote in a hydromel (honey) gelée.

French food has always been the marker of fine dining in New York. What do you make of New York dining now with the closing of Chanterelle and La Côte Basque?
French cuisine has yielded much of its power and influence to important but under-recognized cuisines that now claim their rightful place, like Mexico, Spain and Vietnam. At the same time, the French maintain a tremendous system for training chefs. Which is more influential today — France or Japan? All of these factors make for a much more interesting food scene.

What do you think about Gourmet folding and the future of food journalism?
Like everyone else, I was shocked that the magazine folded, largely because I did not think that Conde Nast would let go of all that history. It looks as though food journalism will unfold on cable TV channels and on the Internet, which is not necessarily good. It emphasizes personalities at the expense of knowledge and expertise, so literary standards will probably suffer.

What advice did you have for your successor Frank Bruni? Any advice for the Times' current restaurant critic Sam Sifton?
I passed along the same two words of advice that the paper's then editor, Joe Lelyveld, gave me: "Swing easy." In other words, do not let the weight of the job get to you and cramp your style. Be yourself. Don't sweat it too much.

What advice do you have for an aspiring writer?
Take any assignment that comes along. The English novelist Kingsley Amis once said that a professional writer ought to be able to write the instructions on a book of matches. Start small (free local papers, for example), gather clips, and trade up. Of course, in the new era of electronic journalism, this may be completely outmoded advice. Maybe, nowadays, you just start a blog and hope to get famous.

What do you like to cook at home for yourself and your family?
Daubes with lots of olives, clafoutis, braised brisket in a potent tomato sauce, fruit-nut-cinnamon coffee cake, and a super-simple pear cake whose recipe I got from Marcella Hazan.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Small tomatoes slow-roasted until they shrivel into wrinkly little bombs of flavor. You can add them to all sorts of things to punch up the flavors. The same goes for good Kalamata olives, anchovies and dense Greek yogurt. My neighborhood is Greek, so these are staples. Cilantro chutney is also a secret vice.

What is your beverage of choice?
Jarritos Mexican grapefruit soda. That or Krug champagne.

What is your least favorite food?
Concord grape jelly. I binged on it once when I was a child and have never fully recovered.

What restaurants would you recommend for quintessential New York or a taste of old New York?
This is easy — the Grand Central Oyster Bar. Sit at the low counter, not in the restaurant.

Any plans for another book? What's next?
I am toying with the idea of writing about the Broadway of Damon Runyon, the days when theater and gossip columnists slugged it out in a dozen New York papers. But, we shall see.