Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner is a British journalist, broadcaster, author, and restaurant critic known for treating meals as entrances into culture, economics, memory, and performance. After studying politics at the University of Leeds and editing its student newspaper, he worked across news and features before becoming The Observer's restaurant critic in 1999. He moved to the Financial Times in 2025 in the same role. Chewing the Fat gathers forty of his columns, carrying his food writing beyond individual reviews into subjects such as appetite, family, supply chains, and the rituals of dining. Rayner has also published novels, the restaurant-review collections My Dining Hell and Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights, and My Last Supper, which became a touring stage show. His criticism has received British Press Awards, while his parallel life as a jazz pianist led to the Jay Rayner Quartet and later Sextet. Whether he is describing a disastrous plate or a beloved institution, Rayner's defining method joins comic precision to reporting about the people and systems behind a meal.