By: Kirstin Kennedy & Beth Slagle

If you are a Pittsburgher who frequents the fine dining scene throughout the city, you have, undoubtedly, heard of China Millman, the resident restaurant citric for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Readers of her weekly restaurant review are provided with a total immersion into the food scene – from flavors and smells to service, ambiance and lighting.

We were excited to do this interview, wondering what the sometimes tart-tongued, anonymous critic would look like. The overtly sophisticated writing style suggested that her age was on the downhill side of 50, but meeting China Millman, an energetic, beautiful woman in her late 20’s was entertaining and inspiring.  She greeted us with a flood of kindness and excitement for our interview.  Her passion for food, writing, and life was apparent, and, in many ways, contagious. We spent the afternoon learning about Ms. Millman, the California-native who subtly directs the Pittsburgh community towards fine food and dining.

Ms. Millman attended the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, which is most recently known as Le Cordon Bleu, Pittsburgh, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English.  “[The Pennsylvania Culinary Institute is] closing, which I think is a real shame,” she said.  “So many Pittsburgh chefs went to that institute [and] so many of the instructors have been instrumental in influencing their careers.  But it was a corporate decision, so there’s nothing that they can do.”

Although she has always been devoted to the preparation of food, it certainly was not her first career choice.  “I was not planning on becoming a chef.  Ever.” Ms. Millman said.  She moved from California to Pittsburgh with her then boyfriend, now husband.  “I was trying to figure out what to do here [in Pittsburgh].  I had originally thought about teaching after college, but there is little need for teachers. In fact, they have too many. And so I thought it would be good to spend a year in Pittsburgh learning about the city and what opportunities were there.” she said.

Ms. Millman’s food career started in childhood.  “I always thought a lot about food,” she said, almost confessing to us a hidden secret. “Even as a child,” she said, “when my mom was cutting up a cucumber for me to have a snack, I would have very strong opinions about how it should be cut.”  She was raised as vegetarian in the Bay area of California.  For this, she feels very fortunate.  “I was surrounded with fresh produce. From a very young age, I took it as a given that food should be good,” Ms. Millman said.

“I never thought of becoming a food writer because it just seemed like one of those jobs that were impossible to get.”   Although she wanted to write, she felt that working as a freelance writer wouldn’t be her thing.  “I began to think about food writing as I went through culinary school, but I knew that, at the very least, I would come out a better cook. And that is a life skill.”

Ms. Millman reflected on her time at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute with great fondness, calling it an “educational, enriching experience.”  By requirement of the curriculum, students at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute must attend an externship, which requires a ten-month study working as an apprentice to a chef.  Ms. Millman did her externship in California.  “Before I left for the externship, I heard that the restaurant critic for the Post Gazette was stepping down.”  With the encouragement of her husband to apply, she figured that she might be able to snag an entry level position and nothing more.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette liked her clips and requested an interview.  “They didn’t think I wanted the job because I wasn’t begging for it,” Millman said. “And I figured they didn’t want me for the job because I had no experience.”

But one weekend in September of 2007, Millman returned to Pittsburgh from California to do a sample review of a local restaurant.  That restaurant was Legume, formerly of Regent Square that has since relocated to North Oakland.  “I sometimes think that if it hadn’t been Legume, I might not have wanted the job,” she said.  “If it had been a terrible restaurant, maybe I would have thought that it would be too much trouble.  But I loved it and I loved writing the review.  [The Post-Gazette] got [a lot of] responses from my review, and they liked that.”

Once she got the job, she entered into a whole new world of expensive food, criticism, and total anonymity.  “There are very few images of me on the internet,” Ms. Millman said.  “When I first started my job, for about one week, there was a picture of me online because I was writing for an online food publication and my boss was in Italy and was not checking her e-mail.  I e-mailed her to take it down but she didn’t get [the e-mail] until a few days after my name had been published.  So, a handful of chefs had that photo and have found it useful, but fortunately they have not reposted it.”  But her need to remain anonymous seems to be a source of some anxiety for Ms. Millman.

“I am very paranoid [because of my anonymity].  It’s terrible because every nice gesture that a restaurant makes to me, I think ‘Oh, are they doing this because they know who I am?’”  Although she does not use a pseudonym, she does write under her maiden name, making her less easy to trace.  Ms. Millman has found that Pittsburghers like to chat, which can become an issue for an anonymous restaurant critic; she has a secret to keep.

She also had to learn to deal with giving a poor review of a restaurant.  “I’ve had a lot of support from my bosses.  All of my editors, from when they hired me, they said that they wanted me to take a tougher look at restaurants, and I wouldn’t have been satisfied to do anything else,” Ms. Millman said.  She writes her precise professional opinion of a restaurant in every review, even if that requires her to take a critical stance.

“I have thought very long and hard about negative reviews; about whether they are useful and whether they are interesting to write or interesting to read,” Ms. Millman said.  “And all I can really conclude is that if I’m not fair about a place when they are not good, then why should anyone listen to me about a place when it is good?  And I would like to reserve my power to inform the customers about the places that I am really passionate about.”  Her position as a critic is to figure out her opinion and communicate it to her audience.  “There is no room to soften a review or to be more enthusiastic.  I am fortunate to have the time to think about ethics and when you do think about them, it’s always pretty easy to know what you should do,” she said.

Sometimes, readers disapprove of critical reviews if they perceive Ms. Millman has been tough on a favorite restaurant.  “People just feel very personally about restaurants.  If they like a place, it is upsetting to them if [a critic doesn’t] like it.  And I totally understand that.”  Ms. Millman went on to explain that she doesn’t come from the school of “if you don’t have anything nice do say, don’t say anything at all.” In fact, she believes that it is simply not nice to lie.  Of course, sometimes she will receive criticisms and negative reactions for her reviews.  “I do not read what is written about me on the internet. Good, bad, neutral; I don’t really want to know.”  Though her husband does sort through the information that is posted online, making sure that nothing “crazy” is posted.

She has sometimes been criticized for being a young critic. “I started paying attention [to food] a lot younger than most people,” Ms. Millman said, in defense of the argument.  She is hardly naïve about good food.  In fact, she describes her lifestyle as living, breathing, and eating — all the time.

A huge part of Ms. Millman’s job comes from selecting which restaurants to review.  The choice is entirely hers, and she emphasized that she never reviews a restaurant based on advertisements. She also has to look at the menu with a keen and critical eye.  That means not always ordering what she is hungry for, but rather what is most challenging to the chef.  When she selects a restaurant, she travels there with a group of 2 to 4 other people, friends, really.  And those friends have to be willing to share bites of their meal with Ms. Millman.

For the most part, visiting the restaurants and experiencing their ambiance is a positive experience for her.  “The good things [about my job] are getting paid to eat and to write about it.  And, to have this excuse to think about food all the time. But the bad part is that some of the meals are bad. Sometimes they are worse than what I would be eating at home, but that’s only because what I would be eating at home would be healthier and faster and what I actually wanted to eat that day.  Another downside is that it does kind of take over my social life,” she said.

So, how does she stay thin, not to mention hungry, to eat in restaurants as often as she does? Jogging. She enjoys walking her and her husband’s dog and often builds up hunger, and burns calories, by staying very physically active.  She also has the most refreshing advice about nutritional health: “The only diet that I could say that I ever followed in my life is: Do not eat food if it is not good.” She also only has to take a few solid bites of everything that she orders when visiting a new restaurant to know whether it’s good, bad or ugly.

In the future, Ms. Millman hopes to work more with home cooking.  She sees a trend of more and more people experimenting with fresh foods in their own kitchens and hopes to some day be influential to the notion.

“There are days when I think it’s the best job in the world and that I could never do anything else.  And there are days where I want to quit.  But most of the time, I really like it and [I] appreciate the opportunity I’ve been given.  And I appreciate the responsibility of having this influence.  I think it is a big one. I do think that sometimes, other people think that my influence is greater than it actually is, but any role that I can play in developing the Pittsburgh restaurant scene and encouraging talented chefs to stay here [is a role that] I am so happy to have.”

China Millman, restaurant critic, food connoisseur, and one who is energetic, fun and inspiring. Despite the obvious need for anonymity, it’s really too bad – she’s a really cool person who could teach and inspire many.

Beth Slagle, Esquire – Attorney – Meyer, Unkovic & Scott and BizChicks Founder/CEO bas@muslaw.com or beth.slagle@bizchicks.org or 412.456.2890

Kirstin Kennedy, an undergraduate English major at the University of Pittsburgh, is an A&E staff writer for the Pitt News and the business coordinator for the Pitt Writers Club.