This week Dr. Amy Sapola talks with Leslie Brenner. Cooks Without Borders founder and editor in chief, Leslie Brenner, is a former journalist who served as The Dallas Morning News longtime restaurant critic, The Los Angeles Times food editor and a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. The winner of a long list of honors, including two James Beard Awards, Leslie is a self-taught cook with an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and a BA in English from Stanford University. She is the author of five books about food and wine, including American Appetite: The Coming of Age of a Cuisine and The Fourth Star: Dispatches from Inside Daniel Bouluds Celebrated New York Restaurant, along with an acclaimed novel, Greetings from the Golden State.In 2017, she stepped away from journalism to work in the food & beverage industry, helping to open two Dallas restaurants Billy Can Can and Hatchways Caf. She launched her restaurant consulting business, Leslie Brenner Concepts, two years later.Leslie loves to cook, and enjoys foods from all cultures. Born and raised in Southern California, she reveres great produce and grew up culinarily in L.A.s amazing farmers markets and exploring its rich and dizzyingly varied restaurants representing just about every culture on the planet. During her four-year tenure as L.A. Times Food editor from 2004 through 2007, the news organizations influential Food section won an unprecedented number of prestigious First Prize Awards from the Association of Food Journalists.She founded Cooks Without Borders (CWB) in 2015, when she was still at The Dallas Morning News. The site won a Webby Award earlier this year. Within Leslies Dallas, Texas townhome is the CWB test kitchen, where Leslie also shoots nearly all the photos for the website.https://cookswithoutborders.com/
