WASHINGTON — Born and raised in Worthington, Tom Sietsema’s home life set him up for success in his career as food critic for The Washington Post.
“I think one thing that sort of prepared me for my future job, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the fact that the kitchen was always this central place for people coming over and getting together,” Sietsema said in an interview. “My mom was a really good cook and a really good entertainer.
“Ours was one of those Midwestern families that sat down to dinner at 5:30 every single night. And my mom would always make a multi-course meal. We always had a salad, we always had a starch and a protein, and often we had dessert.”
Sietsema found the ritual of gathering around the table and breaking bread as a family was a stabilizing and wonderful thing.
“It’s something that I’ve always thought was a really important beginning for me at least,” he said.
That culinary journey has taken him from the best restaurants in the world to dining with those with little to share. Sietsema spent more than 25 years as a food critic at The Post.
In October, he left his position with a good portfolio of stories that he was proud of.
“I also felt like maybe it was time to do something different,” he said. “When The Washington Post announced these (staff) buyouts, I took one because the state of media is changing and I wanted to leave while I was still happy and productive.”
From mops to tops
Sietsema’s first job in journalism was at the Worthington Daily Globe. He was the janitor and would also bundle the newspapers fresh off the printing press to be delivered.
“They had great photographers and great columnists,” he said, “and just to be a small part of that back then was so exciting because I read all those people, and then to work alongside them and see them working was super exciting — even if I was observing them from my water bucket and a mop.”
Before graduating from Worthington High School in 1979, Sietsema spent his junior year as an exchange student in Worthington’s sister city — Crailsheim, Germany. The experience broadened his horizons and pushed him to explore the bigger world, taking him from the small town of Worthington to the nation’s capital.
“While I was in college (at Georgetown University), I had a couple internships that changed my life,” he said. “I worked for ABC News for ‘Good Morning America’ as an intern, and then I worked for Chicago Sun-Times as an intern, too, for the White House Bureau chief.”
While at the Georgetown University, Sietsema took the first journalism class offered — taught by an investigative reporter from The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, Sietsema was working at a pizzeria and was saving up his tip money to go to restaurants recommended in The Washington Post.
He started as food critic in 2000, and began spending 40 hours a week in restaurants.
“Every restaurant that I actually devoted a whole review to was based on three or four visits,” he said. “By the time I sat down to write about a restaurant, I would have eaten pretty much the whole menu. And I would have gone on a slow night and a busy night. I would have gone for dinners, I would have sat at the bar, I would have eaten a couple lunches or brunches so it was really fair to the restaurant that way. Because you can imagine if you go on a Monday and it’s slow and the dishwasher is broken, that would be a very different experience than having a full restaurant on a Saturday with lots of noise and full staff and everything working full tilt.”
In his 25 years at The Washington Post, Sietsema wrote more than 1,200 full restaurant reviews and about 50 dining guides, which took months to produce.
A fall dining guide would be something like the 40 or 50 best restaurants, and Sietsema would have to eat at around 70 restaurants to come up with his favorites.
“The fall dining guide never came out until October, but I started eating in earnest in late May and June,” he said. “And I was always looking for heavier dishes too because it came out in October. So, I wasn’t eating softshell crabs and watermelon salads. I was trying to find things that were haunches of meat and that sort of thing. I won’t have to worry about that anymore because I can just eat whatever I want. But at the peak I was eating about 10 meals out a week and The Post paid for all of that. And as you know it’s gotten really expensive to eat out and we have a lot of restaurants.”
Week in and week out, Sietsema would cover the food scene in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. He would also go to food hot spots such as San Francisco and New York, and traveled to China, London and Peru.
Politics and sausage
A memorable moment for Sietsema was when he covered the 2016 election, analyzing the lead candidates at the time: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“I interviewed family and friends and looked at menus that they had eaten. I looked at video of them eating. I queried people who knew about their tastes. And so I did food political profiles on all three people,” Sietsema said. “That was great because all of them were old enough and, in the case of Hillary Clinton, I could go through the archives and see how her taste evolved from first lady of Arkansas to first lady of the country and then going into the Senate and becoming an ambassador.
“And with Trump, too, … he is not what I would call a good eater. I learned a lot about those people simply by what, how they ate and how they viewed breaking bread with people.”
Sietsema said the most cooperating candidate was Sanders and his family. They would send him real-time photos of Sunday dinners in Vermont, waving at the camera and sharing everything that was in their refrigerator.
“I didn’t have quite that access with the Clintons or the Trumps, but Bernie was super helpful in that respect,” Sietsema said.
Going undercover
Another story he was proud to do involved the dining room at the Central Intelligence Agency in McLean, Virginia.
“What was fascinating about that is that you have to have a reservation to get in. It’s cash only. They don’t take credit cards because so many of the people eating there are undercover that they can’t use their real names,” he said. “I went with about eight people from the CIA so I got to try a cross-section of dishes … I was impressed with how good the food was for a government institution.”
He had someone with him at all times while he was there, and he was even assigned a CIA photographer because he wasn’t allowed to bring his own. He also could not have any electronics on him, so wrote all of his notes with a pen and paper.
In the job as a food critic, many disguises are used. From toupees to facial hair, and fake teeth to different glasses, Sietsema has taken on the form of many, including as an undercover dishwasher to explore restaurants. It was that undercover aspect that made his tablemates at the CIA laugh.
“We’re comparing our little strategies and one of them said our jobs are a lot alike,” Sietsema said. “And I think that’s true. If you’re a restaurant critic and they know who you are, you can get a different waiter, you can sit in a prettier part of the dining room, they can be out of certain dishes that they’re not particularly proud to be serving that day. A lot of things can go on to change your experience and I always wanted to eat in the same way that a regular diner would who is paying his or her hard earned money for a meal away from home.”
Miriam’s Kitchen
After eating at thousands and thousands of restaurants, Sietsema said one place he remembers most fondly is Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, D.C.
“I stood in line at a homeless shelter that was known for its food, and this is right around COVID time, and so I stood in line, no one knew who I was,” he said. “And I was served this delicious, restaurant quality food, hot coffee, and they treated everyone as if they were guests in a restaurant, even though it was a homeless shelter.”
There were real chefs cooking the food from scratch, not using cans or boxes. They would even make vegetarian dishes for those with dietary preferences. The homeless shelter still exists today and “does a great job of feeding the homeless community,” Sietsema said.
Another memorable experience was in India. After getting tired of eating in fancy restaurants and hotels, he asked a taxi driver where he and his friends like to eat.
“He took me to this kebab joint outside the city — far from all the hotels and everything,” he said. “There was this … little shack on the road and they were grilling meat over a charcoal oven and to the side was this cook who was chopping peppers and onions on a tree stump. Was I a little worried about getting sick? A little bit. But I was really curious to try what a lot of the people could afford to eat there versus expensive food in tourist hotels.”
“Yes, there’ve been fabulous, expensive places around the world, but those two come to mind as places that I will never forget,” he added.
Other highlights from his career include speaking at the Blair House, a federal government office across the street from the White House; watching fireworks from Hillary Clinton’s office at a Fourth of July party at the State Department and producing an online dining chat with his readers every Wednesday.
“I got to talk to people all over the world,” he said about his dining chats. “It was the most important thing I did every week because it created a community — a food community — and I wanted it to be non-political. I wanted it to be sort of a safe place where people could come with their food questions. And I did that for 26 years almost. So people would look to me for etiquette advice and dining advice and how to resolve disputes and then I got to know them, they got to know me.”
Restaurant recommendations
Among his dining advice is trying the sniff test at an unfamiliar restaurant.
“Does it smell like real food is being cooked? Do you smell spices? Do you smell onions? Do you smell beef if it’s a barbecue place?” he said. “I think it’s really important for you as the diner to go into a place with a good attitude. Go in with a smile on your face and your positive energy can’t help but be picked up by the staff.”
Sietsema said because restaurants are part of the hospitality industry, a lot of people take advantage of that.
“They think, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday, I get a free cake.’ When have you ever gone to a dentist and they decide to give you a free cleaning because it’s your birthday?” he said. “Where did that ever start?”
Other advice includes leaving the restaurant once you’ve paid.
“The only way restaurants make money is when people are seated and ordering things,” Sietsema said.
With his quarter-century tenure at The Post behind him, Sietsma would like to create a lifestyle newsletter that involves restaurants, traveling and a weekly recipe.
“I love traveling so much,” he said. “What my partner and I would like to do is, like after a year or so, maybe rent different parts of the world, just see what Cambodia is like, just to see what Berlin, Germany is like, just to see what New York City is like. We only have so much time on this planet and I want to see more of it and do it sort of at my own speed.”
But he doesn’t see himself spending all of his time dining out.
“I look forward to reacquainting myself with my kitchen and cooking some more,” he said. “I like having more control over what I eat.”
Something he’s already started doing is hosting Lamburger Nights, where he brings six random people from different walks of life over to his home for dinner.
When he visits home in Worthington, Sietsema said his favorite places to eat are now gone — Michael’s and the popcorn wagon that would show up at Chautauqua Park and elsewhere.
“Now, I would say my favorite place to go is my mom’s kitchen and her tuna salad, which she always makes in a big Tupperware bucket and which I could eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner because I’m her son and it’s delicious and I’m off duty,” he said.
While it was a lot of work, Sietsema found a lot of joy in his job, and he owed it to his upbringing.
“It’s just been the best,” he said. “I’m so proud to be from Minnesota and from Worthington specifically. I think I had great teachers. I had role models throughout the community. I had great parents, a loving family and all the building blocks.”
