Robert Sietsema grew up in Illinois, Minnesota, and Texas, and began writing about food while living in New York City’s East Village and playing bass in a band called Mofungo (a misspelling of a beloved Puerto Rican dish of mashed plantains). Circulated among musicians and food writers he admired, his food fanzine, Down the Hatch, detailed the rise of ethnic eateries in New York and around the globe and could be considered a forerunner to the food-blog phenomenon. For the last 12 years, he’s been the restaurant critic for The Village Voice and a regular contributor to Gourmet. Sietsema lives in Greenwich Village with his wife and has a daughter currently studying engineering.