Hannah Selinger: The Unflinching Voice of the Culinary Underbelly

Hannah Selinger has made a name for herself as a writer who doesn’t just pull back the curtain on the fine-dining industry—she rips it clean off. A former sommelier and beverage director, she now wields her words like a well-honed chef’s knife, dissecting the toxic cultures, unspoken hierarchies, and personal reckonings that define the world of food, wine, and power. Unflinching, unsparing, and unapologetically furious, her work is less a love letter to restaurants and more an autopsy.

From the Floor to the Page: Selinger’s Path to Writing

Selinger didn’t arrive at writing from the periphery—she was deep in the trenches. She spent years working in some of the industry’s most high-profile establishments, including David Chang’s Momofuku, where she served as beverage director. Her time in restaurants wasn’t just about pouring wine; it was about navigating the egos, abuses, and relentless grind that define high-end hospitality.

Eventually, she traded her stemware for a keyboard, becoming a sharp-edged critic of the industry she once worked in. Her essays and reported pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Eater, and Food & Wine, often tackling the underbelly of restaurant culture—its excesses, its abuses, and its deeply ingrained misogyny.

The Rage-Fueled Reckoning of Cellar Rat

Selinger’s debut memoir, Cellar Rat, is not a nostalgic, rose-colored reflection on the food world—it’s a battlefield report. A blistering, unsentimental account of her years in the fine-dining trenches, the book reads like a war journal soaked in spilled Bordeaux and broken glass. Her prose crackles with fury as she skewers everyone from celebrity chefs to managers, critics, and even her own lovers.

No one is safe in Cellar Rat. Gwyneth Paltrow is an “icy little troll.” Jimmy Fallon fakes a mushroom allergy to save face. The farm-to-table movement is a sham. Even industry titans like Tim Zagat and David Chang are dragged into the fire, their reputations scrutinized under Selinger’s unrelenting gaze.

But beneath the razor-sharp observations and biting humor, there’s something more personal—a deeper wound she is both exposing and protecting. The book’s most harrowing moment, a problematic sexual encounter with celebrity pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, arrives late, buried under layers of outrage and exhaustion. She renders it in detail, yet also with a deliberate vagueness, leaving readers unsure if this was the moment that hardened her or merely another notch in a long line of disillusionments.

Selinger provides a raw account of the restaurant world, highlighting the demanding schedules, intense work culture, and personal sacrifices involved. She reflects on the "long shifts on erratic schedules, an after-hours drinking culture that got her a DUI conviction, and unpredictable, angry bosses.

Beyond the Restaurant Industry: A Voice That Won’t Be Ignored

Selinger’s work extends beyond food writing. She is a storyteller of power imbalances, of self-reckoning, of the ways ambition collides with identity. Whether she’s writing about the performative nature of restaurant hospitality, the failures of industry leaders, or the broader cultural shifts within food and wine, her work is relentless in its honesty.

Her voice is not warm and inviting—it is sharp, caustic, and often polarizing. But in an era where the restaurant industry is still grappling with its #MeToo moment, its labor abuses, and its cultural reckoning, Selinger’s unfiltered perspective feels necessary. She doesn’t want to romanticize restaurants—she wants to tell the truth about what happens inside them.

Love her or hate her, Hannah Selinger is impossible to ignore. And in an industry that has thrived on silencing the voices of those it exploits, that may be exactly what makes her so dangerous—and so vital.