After eight years, we said goodbye to restaurant critic Andrew Ross at the start of 2025. Today, we introduce our new critic — not so new really, as you’ll hear in a moment. We’re also taking the opportunity to make a few changes in our approach to restaurant reviews: To begin, we are bringing the job in-house.

Tim Cebula has been reporting and writing strong, compelling food stories for the Press Herald since early 2022. Previously, he was a longtime writer and editor at Cooking Light magazine. “Editor” was his nominal title, that is, but listen to him describe the day’s work:

Tim Cebula

“What I often felt like was a professional eater/taste tester. We had to taste test every recipe that went into the magazine (about 100 in each issue), as well as any that were developed separately for special interest publications. The associate and senior editors would meet in the test kitchen every day at lunchtime and we’d taste, evaluate and formally rate (on a five-point system) each dish, then work with the test kitchen cooks on ways to improve them if needed. Over the course of my time there, I did this with literally tens of thousands of dishes.”

Tim was also in charge of Cooking Light’s chef and restaurant coverage, and he spent nearly seven years as a chef himself at restaurants in the Berkshires. All in all, could he be better prepared for the job of restaurant critic? We’re excited about the depth and perspective that someone who understands the industry from the inside out can bring to our reviews. And we’re happy he’ll continue to write feature stories as well.

At the same time, as is probably self-evident, we are dispensing with anonymity. We’re behind the curve on this, in fact. Back in the day, former New York Times critic Ruth Reichl was famous for her outlandish disguises meant to prevent restaurants from realizing a critic was in the house. But a dozen or so years ago, American food writers began to engage in a robust discussion about the merits of anonymity for critics, and many publications — among them, Forbes, New York magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the LA Times — decided it served no purpose.

Frankly, in a day and age dominated by social media and camera telephones, is anyone actually anonymous? And if a critic is spotted, realistically how much can a restaurant do to improve that person’s dining experience on the fly? Perhaps assign him a better table or give her more attentive service, but critics are practiced in recognizing (and calling out) special treatment. And in the back of the house, the chef and kitchen crew likely can’t instantly upgrade their menu, ingredients or prep. (Our critic will make reservations under another name.)

We’ve made two additional changes in our review coverage. In the past, we’ve always waited three months before reviewing new restaurants to give them time to figure out their rhythms and routines. We’re reducing that period to two months, which we believe is adequate for a new restaurant to polish its food and service. And in this painful period of newspaper cost-cutting, we’ll be running the reviews every other week.

Our restaurant reviews return next week.