Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

In spite of both my foodie and former New Yorker / food industry-insider status, the NY Times restaurant reviews always made me feel like an outsider. So the hiring of Frank Bruni by the Times was long-overdue fresh air. He’s a fantastic, entertaining writer, though to me his success is because he writes like someone with a regular person's palate. He loves both high-end and low-end food. His words aren’t high-falutin, they’re real. As a reader, you sense he's one of us, not above us. As such, he's made fine dining suddenly accessible to all. That's why he rocks.