About Dara
For longtime readers: What’s the difference between deardara.com and my work at Minnesota Monthly? Simple: My work at work is all about Minnesota: Food, wine, people, the works. If you want to know about Minnesota or Wisconsin restaurants, tastemakers, or wine-shops, hit the button to be redirected to Minnesotamonthly.com . This blog is about wine, my book, my life, and food and wine internationally, and presents all the things that aren’t part of my mission at work.
For new readers: Who the heck am I? I’m Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, born Moskowitz, then added the… Ah, you get the idea. I’m a full-time restaurant and wine critic and magazine editor, and have been since 1997. I grew up in New York City, born in Manhattan, raised mostly in Queens, I attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and then came out to the midwest to go to Carleton College where I’ve been ever since. I got my start in food at 13 when I got a summer job as a dishwasher in a Cape Cod restaurant, I fell in love with restaurants and restaurant culture and never left. Every summer thereafter I worked as a prep cook, cold chef, and so on, eventually becoming a sous-chef at a Provincetown restaurant and part-time pastry chef for a B&B. I almost skipped college to go to cooking school, but my chef told me she’d gut me like a swordfish if I did, because one could go to cooking school anytime and only have the full college experience once. So, I went to college, fell in love with the Midwest, and have been here ever since. I started writing for City Pages, the Village Voice alt-weekly, right out of college and became their full time restaurant critic in 1997. In 2008 I left City Pages to become the restaurant critic and senior editor of Minnesota Monthly and the editor of the recipe and cooking magazine Real Food; both of these are for-profit magazines put out by the Greenspring Media Group run for the benefit of American Public Media, the public radio company.
In addition to working, I enjoy winning awards: So far I’ve been nominated for seven James Beard Awards (the Oscars of the food world) and have won four, they’re sitting in a pile at the back of the desk and I intend to use them to defend against prowlers should that become necessary. More awards? For my fiction: A nice fellowship from Loft-McKnight, a couple of Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and a Sewanee scholarship I couldn’t afford to take, which breaks my heart still. I’ve also had my work selected for five editions of the Best Food Writing in America anthology, and have written for: Gourmet (where I was a regular gourmet.com blogger, as well as a print writer), Saveur, Metropolitan Home, Condé Nast Traveler, Wine & Spirits, Experience Life!, USAToday, and many more magazines. My first book is “Drink This: Wine Made Simple”, a Random House book which fulfills my mission of trying to make the world a better place in whatever little way I can.
