It takes a village to publish a magazine—and website and app and Youtube channel and more. Phew! Today we’re introducing you to Bon Appétit’s research director Ryan Harrington.
For the non-journalists out there: What does research and fact-checking actually mean?
At Bon Appétit, every story or recipe goes through multiple edits. After that, it’s eligible for research review. At that stage, there are a few major things me and my team looks out for:
Information accuracy: This includes checking the spelling of names and brands, making sure descriptions of restaurant menus and dishes are up to date, reviewing the credibility of the sources we point to, verifying portrayals of quoted individuals, and anything else to make sure that when you read a Bon Appétit story, you know it’s true.
Cultural sensitivity: For a long time, food media has been dominated by a certain privileged perspective. This perpetuated a system that sort of relived the Age of Explorers, with people “discovering” new foods and pigeonholing or exotifying other cultures. A big part of research is honoring different experiences—giving people a platform without making it a spectacle.
Legal concerns: The research department is a bridge between our actual legal team and the editorial team. We keep an eye out for things like libel issues, copyright infringement, food safety risks, protecting sources, or anything else that might need to be discussed with lawyers.
And for the aspiring journalists: How do you become a fact checker? What did you do before joining the Bon Appétit team?
I finished undergrad with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and then spent six years managing operations of a thoracic surgery laboratory, studying forms of lung cancer. I reached a point in that career where I was asked to go back to school for a master’s or PhD. I realized if I were to invest all of my time in further education, I wanted to study something I felt really strongly about. And that was food media.
I entered the NYU Food Studies master’s program with the goal of studying the cultural impacts of food media. Early on, I got an opportunity to intern at Food & Wine. During my time there, I was asked to help with other projects beyond my internship, and that’s when I started thinking about food media not as just an academic subject but as a viable career. I eventually started working for other publications like Travel & Leisure and Lucky Peach (r.i.p.).
I also tried working at a brewery, though I had started there in February 2020. Dealing with the development of COVID was maybe not the best time to dip my toe in the industry, but I did get a better understanding of the pandemic’s impact.
When I saw the research director position at BA, I knew my previous experiences and education gave me a strong toolset to lead research efforts, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I’ve now been here five years.
You also teach food studies at NYU. How does that inform your work at Bon Appetit?
Whether I am building a lesson plan or reviewing a story for BA, I always try to understand things from the perspective of the recipient: the students or readers. Are we conveying the story clearly? What are they taking away from it? Guiding people to those lightbulb moments, from the classroom to the newsroom is why I love doing what I do.
It’s so cool that you started a research fellowship program here, so students can get real-world experience in media. Tell us more about that.
As mentioned, I got my start in the industry thanks to an internship. I never had formal journalism or media training, but it was thanks to that program that I could build relevant experience and make connections that opened up a chain of other opportunities. When I started at BA, it was my top priority in being able to pay it forward and help mentor a new generation of passionate food lovers.
I teach them the skills to be a great research editor and also try to give each fellow the freedom to pursue their own interests and network while here. Some fellows have spent time in our Test Kitchen, seeing how we develop and edit recipes. Some have pitched and written great stories and published them on our site. Some have helped our photo team and learned what it means to style a recipe for a shoot. Every fellow has different ambitions and I want them to get the most out of their time working with us and further their own goals.
What are your favorite types of stories to work on here at Bon Appétit? What are the most challenging?
I grew up watching Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Forever a scientist at heart, this influence had a life-long impact, nurturing a desire to understand not just the “how” but the “why” behind cooking, while simultaneously emphasizing creativity, ingenuity, and understanding. So when we take a deep, explanatory dive in processes, like our video on how Dr. Arielle Johnson makes a chocolate bar, that’s where I really feel like I am in my element. (Fun fact: Arielle and I were chemistry lab partners during our freshman year of college at NYU.)
The biggest challenge for me is when we cover wine. It has a lot of specific terminology, strict regulations across international borders to keep straight, and foreign spellings with diacritics that I have to be mindful of. Thankfully, I have built a contact list of passionate and educated people on the subject that I can consult when I inevitably have questions.
What’s the funniest rabbit hole you fell down on a BA research assignment?
We ran a story featuring Moe Girton and her bar Gossip Grill back in 2021. During her interview, she discussed the lesbian bar scene in San Diego when she first moved there in the late ’90s. There was a note from the author of the story to me: “note to fact-checkers to verify the names [of these bars].”
Of the three bars she mentioned, two were relatively easy to track down and confirm. But that third one did not have much of a digital footprint. I was looking through local newspaper archives, old community forums and message boards, and anywhere else that people might have left mention of this bar. Though I found some clues, sometimes pieces contradicted each other, and eventually I reached back out to Moe to see if she could give me any more info.
While she couldn’t remember too many specifics, I was able to get the cross streets of where she thought it was located. So I called businesses in that area, one by one, to see if: 1) They were around in the late ’90s and 2) They remembered a neighborhood lesbian bar nearby. A long shot, but as luck would have it, I eventually spoke with the owner of George’s Camera, a photography store that has been in business since 1965. Right next door to him used to be Patti’s Bar, a business he described as a “lesbian and biker friendly bar.” And the best part? He happened to have a photo of their storefront from back then, signs and all.
What’s the Bon Appétit recipe you make most often?
I absolutely love Shilpa Uskokovic’s French Onion Tart. It always impresses guests because it seems fancy and labor-intensive, but in reality, it’s so hands-off that I can be doing any number of other tasks (or taking it easy!) while it comes together. The deliciousness-to-effort ROI is through the roof. And two sheets of [puff pastry](https://weigt-finish.today/recipes/slideshow/puff-pastry-recipe-ideas) in the box means one for the party, one for breakfast the next morning all to myself.
What’s your favorite obscure food trivia?
I am a product of my time and have spent more than my fair share in debates on “What is a sandwich?” But did you know, in New York, “sandwiches are generally subject to sales tax.” And so, the NY Department of Taxation and Finance has a whole page dedicated to what they consider a sandwich. Spoiler alert: They take a pretty broad stance. Hot dog? Sandwich. Burrito? Sandwich. A freaking buttered bagel? Sandwich.
Other parts of the country hold to a tighter definition. In 2006, the Worcester Superior Court of Massachusetts ruled that a burrito is not a sandwich. When a Qdoba opened in White City Shopping Center, an already present Panera Bread tried to enforce a clause in their lease with the mall that barred any competing sandwich shops from opening. After expert testimony arguing the sides of this case, Judge Jeffrey Locke concluded that a burrito is not a sandwich, allowing Qdoba to operate near Panera without violating the lease.
Maybe there isn’t a perfect answer to this question. Maybe the sandwich was really the friends we made along the way.
Can we convince you to apply to Jeopardy?
The great thing about this job is that I don’t need to know the answer to everything. I just need to know how to find who could answer it. And I don’t think Ken Jennings will let me use Google during filming.
How does AI intersect with or influence your current work?
AI is a powerful tool that can synthesize large volumes of data. But in the world of factual accuracy, there are all sorts of caveats and concerns with the content it generates. It’s still too early to safely adopt blanket applications of AI, but there are ways that it can be useful. Early in my career, when I was the bottom rung of the editorial team, I was often asked to transcribe other reporters’ interview recordings. An hour-long interview could easily take two or three times as long to transcribe by hand with my amateur skills. AI transcription services are far from perfect—and I still need to listen to the recording while reading to verify and fix portions—but it is a huge time saver.
What kitchen tool (or gadget or appliance) are you obsessed with right now?
I love my immersion blender! It can deal with so many tasks in my lovely but small NYC kitchen without needing any valuable countertop real estate. Pasta sauce, soups, salsa, smoothies, it pureés it all and doesn’t even risk any spillage when trying to move things from pot to pitcher and back to pot again.
Special shout out to chef Frank Proto’s tip to use a pair of tongs to juice citrus fruits too. Used this one recently while on vacation in the rental home’s bare-bones kitchen. From marinades to margaritas, we needed a lot of fresh squeezed juice and this trick really made things easier.
The movie or TV show you’d rewatch until the end of time?
One of my favorite shows is Happy Endings, a modestly successful sit-com that ran on ABC from 2011–2013. It’s a Seinfeld template of a group of friends navigating urban young adulthood. And like Seinfeld, it has characters that are acutely aware of the social games that they must struggle through to be a part of a functioning society.
I actually wrote an academic paper discussing how Happy Endings explores food and gender through its use (and sometimes subversion) of the big eater trope. It is performed across two characters of different genders and sexuality and represents a convergent idea of exactly that—performance. Society has expectations that can seem limiting or at least arbitrary. But when we see these characters act in ways that challenge these social conventions, it is encouragement for us to be able to do so as well.
It’s also really fricking funny.
Make Ryan’s favorite recipe
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