Jay Cheshes is a feature writer covering art, culture, food, travel, and crime among other topics. He has been a regular contributor to Smithsonian Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and WSJ Magazine (with a particular focus on long profiles). For five years he reviewed restaurants weekly for Time Out New York. Trained as a chef—at the Culinary Institute of America—he was also the New York dining critic for Gourmet magazine (for which he received a James Beard nomination). His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Town & Country, Fortune, W, Saveur, Travel & Leisure and the New York Times among other publications. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and has ghost-written a book on the life of Absolut vodka founder Michel Roux. The son of a US diplomat, he was raised in six countries on three continents. He is based in New York but travels frequently.