Selected Critique

I wrote these for the Chicago Reader.

How to disappear

What Belongs to You portrayed my motherland just as I’d always known her, but seeing her through the eyes of a foreigner had a sobering effect.

Searching for his shield of Achilles against bullshit

Anytime you can say bullshit in a headline is a day you’re winning. Bulgaria’s most adored author, Georgi Gospodinov, was coming to Chicago (the second city for Bulgarians, literally), and I was psyched to write about his superb “The Physics of Sorrow”.

Vogueing

Watching Freddie throw literal shade in dance battles & vogue balls was thrilling. Writing about it made me feel cool.

You may imagine the life of a food critic as one of leisure — a life of sitting at unreasonably oversized wooden tables, gripping a knife and fork as various people rush forward with pleading eyes and plates disappearing under schnitzel. In reality, it’s the absolute anonymity factor coupled with an obsessive love for food and the ability to actually write about it that predicates any sort of success, if such even exists. Writing about Bulgarian cuisine, was important for me. Writing about a whole lot of other restaurants for the Chicago Reader was pretty cool also.