Jay Rayner

Jason Matthew Rayner[3] (born 14 September 1966) is an English journalist and food critic.

Jay Rayner
Born
Jason Matthew Rayner

(1966-09-14) 14 September 1966[1]
Brent, London, England
EducationHaberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
Alma materUniversity of Leeds
OccupationBroadcaster, writer, journalist, food critic
Years active1988–present
EmployerBBC, Channel 4 and The Observer
Spouse(s)Pat Gordon-Smith[2]
Children2
Parent(s)Desmond Rayner (deceased)
Claire Rayner (deceased)

Early life

Jason Matthew Rayner was born on 14 September 1966.[4] He is the younger son of Desmond Rayner and journalist Claire Rayner. His family is Jewish.[5] He was brought up in the Sudbury Hill area of Harrow and attended the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School.[6] He went on to study political studies at the University of Leeds, where he was editor of the Leeds Student newspaper, graduating in 1988.[4]

Career

Rayner worked as a freelance journalist after graduating, writing for newspapers including The Observer and the Independent on Sunday. In 1992 he was named Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. He worked as a feature writer for The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer before becoming restaurant critic at that newspaper in 1999.[4] In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many restaurants were forced to close, Rayner announced he would no longer publish negative reviews: "That doesn't mean giving good reviews to bad places, or not including criticisms. It just means that if I can't be generally positive, I won't review and will move on."[7]

He has also written for a wide range of British newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and Granta.

His first novel The Marble Kiss, published in 1994, was shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and his second, Day of Atonement (1998) was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize for Fiction.[8] His first non-fiction book, Stardust Falling, was published in 2002; this was followed by his third novel The Apologist, published in the US as Eating Crow, in 2004.

In 1997 he won a Sony Radio Award for Papertalk, BBC Radio Five Live's magazine programme about the newspaper business, which he presented. He chairs a BBC Radio 4 programme called The Kitchen Cabinet.[9]

He was one of the panel of critics who made up the eponymous "enemy" on the daytime cookery show Eating with the Enemy, and performs a similar role on the UK version of MasterChef. He is the food reporter on the BBC magazine programme The One Show, and was on the panel of judges on the American programme Top Chef Masters. He appeared as a guest judge on the "UK" episode of The Final Table, season 1.

Rayner hosts the Out to Lunch podcast in which he interviews a celebrity guest in each episode.[10]

Personal life

He was awarded the title Beard of the Year for 2011 by the Beard Liberation Front.[11] He plays piano with his jazz ensemble the Jay Rayner Quartet.[12]

Books

Fiction
  • The Marble Kiss (1994), ISBN 0-333-62134-4
  • Day of Atonement (1998), ISBN 0-552-99783-8
  • The Apologist (2004), ISBN 1-55278-416-9
  • The Oyster House Siege (2007), ISBN 1-84354-566-7

Non-fiction
  • Star Dust Falling (2002), ISBN 0-552-99908-3
  • The Man Who Ate the World (2008), ISBN 0-8050-8669-2[13]
  • My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways to Have a Lousy Night Out (2012), ISBN 9780241963203
  • A Greedy Man in a Hungry World (2014), ISBN 9780007237609
  • The Ten (Food) Commandments (2016), ISBN 9780241976692
  • Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights (2018), a collection of some of Rayner's negative reviews[14] ISBN 9781783351763
  • My Last Supper (2019), ISBN 9781783351466

Awards

References
  1. "Researcha". Web.researcha.com.
  2. Neustatter, Angela (3 November 1996). "Is it time confessional man shut up?". The Independent. London.
  3. https://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/results?datasetname=england+%26+wales+births+1837-2006&firstname=j&lastname=rayner&eventyear=1966&eventyear_offset=0&mothersmaidenname=chetwynd
  4. "Who's Who". Oxford University Press. 1 December 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u119824. Cite journal requires |journal= (help); |chapter= ignored (help)
  6. Rayner, Jay (2 March 2003). "Tales my mother never told me". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 6 May 2010.
  7. Rayner, Jay (17 September 2020). "I put negative reviews on pause after lockdown. Here's why that must continue". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  8. "The Jewish Quarterly". The Jewish Quarterly). 16 March 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
  9. The Kitchen Cabinet at BBC Archived 15 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 6 June 2015
  10. Independent https://inews.co.uk/culture/radio/food-podcasts-five-best-cookery-out-to-lunch-jay-rayner-off-menu-496639
  11. "2011: a good year for facial hair". Open Road. 29 December 2011. Archived from the original on 18 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
  12. "VIDEO: Masterchef star Jay Rayner brings foodie fun to Northampton". 12 October 2018. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  13. "Interview with Jay Rayner". digyorkshire.com. 27 May 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  14. Announcing - a new collection of my scorching reviews of terrible restaurants
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