I’m a New York–based journalist whose narrative features and long-form profiles span art, culture, design, food, travel, and, occasionally, crime. My work has taken me from restaurant kitchens and artist studios to some of the world’s most remote and complicated places—from the foothills of the Himalayas and the Australian Outback to Tahitian atolls and the Peruvian Amazon.

I am a contributing editor at the Financial Times’ HTSI Magazine and previously held the same role at WSJ Magazine. I also write frequently for Smithsonian Magazine, and my reporting has appeared in Town & Country, Air Mail, Food & Wine, W, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, among other publications.

For seven years, I covered New York’s dining scene as a restaurant critic for Time Out and Gourmet. In an earlier chapter, I trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of America, and I hold a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

In 2017 I appeared on Season 3 of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, in the episode on Vladimir Mukhin, offering context on the revival of Russian cuisine. I’ve judged notable food-industry competitions and been recognized by the James Beard Foundation. And my greatest unpublished story, The Puppet Master, ultimately helped inform Netflix’s true-crime series The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman.

I contributed a chapter to design studio AvroKO’s early monograph, Best Ugly, and ghost wrote a book, My Absolut Life, with my friend Sheri de Borchgrave, the autobiography of Absolut vodka founder Michel Roux.

Contact: jaychesh@gmail.com