In a landscape of foodie writers, epicurean leaders, and discerning gourmets, there strode a man of titanic taste and energetic glee for food—the kind you eat. His name was Josh Ozersky (1967–2015), and he would rightly have bitch-slapped me for introducing his obituary like that. Josh, as his ode to the grilled cheese sandwich shows, was a man untamed by the forces of food writing fussiness that has gripped us in mag and blog land for decades now. In Esquire he wrote about food like no other food writer; like a lovely wide-eyed lunatic who claps his hands and pumps his fists in the air when dinner is placed before him. He made me laugh out loud. Check out The Violent Secret of Meat and see if there’s a guffaw in there for you… and even an internal wry smile if you see a bit of yourself (I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.) Sadly Josh died the day before yesterday. The good times I spent chortling with him in the pages of Esquire are coming to an end after the Summer issue. Belatedly, I’ll buy his books. Sorry Josh, I should have done it earlier.
—Stephanie Skinner
Feature Photo Credit: “Josh Ozersky” by Steelite International | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Stephanie Skinner
Former publisher Stephanie Skinner founded culture along with her sister Lassa and cheese expert Kate Arding in 2008. Stephanie was intrigued when Lassa, then a cheesemonger, mentioned that there were no magazines filling the artisan cheese niche.
