The Food Section delivers the food news and insights you deserve.

Our mission at The Food Section is to serve eaters across the American South by providing them with the information and analysis they need to enhance their food and drink experiences. You can count on The Food Section for original, inclusive, and independent reporting about restaurants, bars, farmers, fishermen, food artisans—and everything else that influences how and what we eat and drink in the region today.

Here’s what you won’t find in The Food Section:

Breathless new restaurant coverage orchestrated by swanky PR firms

Mindless parroting of popular opinions or reflexive veneration of popular people
Unsubstantiated rumors, unearned praise, unfair treatment, or unquestioning acceptance of authority

Instead of propping up the status quo, The Food Section offers intelligent food journalism that helps make sense of the South’s extraordinary and complex culinary scene.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

On Mondays at 8 a.m., paid subscribers receive the week’s showpiece article, which could be an investigative expose; reported feature; topical essay or restaurant review.

On occasional Fridays at 8 a.m., paid subscribers receive a rotating selection of diverting columns highlighting overlooked stories from Southern food history, restaurants opening far from the beaten path, country cooking institutions, and some of Southern food’s most interesting thinkers.

On every Friday at 8 a.m., non-paying readers receive a reminder to subscribe.

The Food Section was founded in 2021 to bring quality food journalism to the South’s underserved states, cities, and towns. The best way to support its work is to subscribe today.

The Food Section offers two subscription levels:

A basic subscription costs $5 a month or $49 a year. In addition to receiving the weekly newsletters described above, members of The Food Section can participate in the newsletter’s comments section and join its subscribers-only Facebook group. Members also receive invitations to occasional virtual and in-person events.

A Food Journalism Champion subscription costs $199 a year. In addition to receiving the basic membership benefits described above, Champions receive The Food Section’s print quarterly as soon as it’s published. They also get major investigative reports and restaurant reviews in their inboxes before the general paying public.

The Food Section offers free subscriptions to out-of-work journalists and others for whom the standard price represents a hardship. E-mail readthefoodsection@gmail.com to join the list.

Background info

Hanna Raskin, who received a Substack Local grant to start The Food Section, was formerly the food editor and chief critic for The Post and Courier. Here’s a sampling of her work at the paper.

During Raskin’s eight-year tenure, she was nominated for four James Beard Foundation awards, winning the organization’s first-ever prize for local impact journalism. Her work has also been recognized by the Society of Features Journalism, National Center on Disability and Journalism and the South Carolina Press Association, which in 2018 named her the state’s top beat reporter.

Raskin served as president of Association of Food Journalists and headed its ethics committee. She lives in Charleston, S.C. but is frequently on the road (or the rails) in the South.

The Food Section’s logo was designed by Gil Shuler. Steve Fennessey serves as its consulting editor.