Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao is a critic at large. She joined The New York Times in 2016 as a reporter and columnist for The New York Times Magazine and became the paper’s first California restaurant critic in 2018. She started the newsletter The Veggie in 2021.

Ms. Rao was previously a restaurant critic at The Village Voice and Bloomberg News. She won a Vilcek Prize in creative promise and two James Beard Foundation awards for her restaurant criticism, and her work was anthologized in the 2018 and 2019 editions of “The Best American Food Writing.” She was born in London and lives in Los Angeles.

Basic Guidelines for Shared Inquiry

Read the selection carefully before participating in the discussion. This ensures that all participants are equally prepared to talk about the ideas in the work.
Most of us need to read short stories more than once.
Support your ideas with evidence from the text. This keeps the discussion focused on understanding the selection and enables the group to weigh textual support for different answers.
Discuss the ideas in the selection and try to understand them fully before exploring issues that go beyond the selection. Reflecting on the ideas in the text and the evidence to support them makes the exploration of related issues more productive.
Listen to other participants and respond to them directly. Directing your comments and questions to other group members, not always to the leader, will make the discussion livelier and more dynamic.
Expect the leader to only ask questions. Effective leaders help participants develop their own ideas, with everyone gaining a new understanding in the process. Participants should look to the leader for questions, not answers.

Friday, August 18, 2023

Tues, Aug 22 @ 7:30 PM [MT] via Zoom

Friday, August 4, 2023

Tues, Aut 8 @ 7:30 PM [MT] via Zoom

Tejal Rao

Tejal Rao is a critic at large. She joined The New York Times in 2016 as a reporter and columnist for The New York Times Magazine and became the paper’s first California restaurant critic in 2018. She started the newsletter The Veggie in 2021.