Don’t call him a critic. Q&A with The Bee’s food and drink reporter

Culture and food is the lens with which food and drink reporter Sean Timberlake approaches new destinations.

Food became his niche when he was an editor for a travel magazine. His experience is vast, having covered the topic for 20 years. Timberlake has been writing professionally for 30 years.

Timberlake has been The Sacramento Bee’s food and drink reporter for almost six months, and he has covered a lot in his time. During The Bee’s second ever Zoom webinar event, Timberlake answered questions about the Sacramento food scene from California Politics Editor Lauren Chapman.

Here’s what he had to say.

How do you explain the difference between your positions as a food and drink reporter and a food critic?

“The word critic to me feels a little haughty and elitist,” Timberlake said. “I don’t like to yuck other people’s yum, so when I report I’m gathering facts and information to paint a picture.”

Timberlake said he likes to let the reader know what to expect so they can make their own conclusions and decisions.

“Food is the thing that probably most both unites and divides us,” Timberlake said. “We all have to eat, and we all do it differently. I try to be careful to not add too much of my personal taste and just focus on the facts at hand.”

How do you decide which restaurant to highlight or talk about?

Timberlake sees new things come up on social media all the time, and sometimes people even approach him, so he is always aware of new things, he said. He also listens to his friends, as well as people in the food industry.

“I’m paying attention to if I hear that chefs have moved from one place to another,” Timberlake said. “That’s interesting to me because they’re taking their personal magic from one place to another to elevate or create something different, so I’ll follow that.”

How have you made this concerted effort to branch out beyond ‘classically upscale’ restaurants?

Timberlake said the Sacramento food scene is similar to the one in Los Angeles, saying that there’s so many amazing and very easy to overlook places in nondescript strip malls all over the place.

He said he obviously looks at the fine dining scene as that’s also important to his beat, but he likes to go looking for new places and “hop” his way through and try different ones and see what he can experience from that approach.

What was the motivation behind the Black-run and -owned kitchens story?

“Sacramento has a very long and interesting Black history,” Timberlake said. “There’s just so many stories there, and so much humanity to dig into.”

He said that approach even went beyond the kitchen where he handed out free food to people in need at the Shakur Center, an action he said extends from work done my the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.

“Anyone who is making food their cultural mission is very interesting to me, and in the Black community I think that is a very, very deep well,” Timberlake said.

Tell us about Veronica Fernandez-Alvarado and Camila Pedrosa’s work and the larger coverage of Sacramento’s food scene.

Timberlake said it has been amazing working with Pedrosa and Fernandez-Alvarado, and said they pass stories back and forth from each other all the time, because sometimes he can’t make it or one of them can’t make it to an event.

“It is nice having a team of people that is collaborative like that, and they also have both done great work in terms of exploring different economic levels within the dining scene,” Timberlake said.

Timberlake said if you were looking for budget-friendly food recommendations, Fernandez-Alvarado and Pedrosa do a series called On a Budget. It includes more than just food and some of those recommendations are pretty incredible as well.

The team is also exploring other ways to help Sacramentans find budget-friendly restaurants, including “save and splurge” nights — comparing two restaurants at wildly different price points with similar cuisine in the same area.

You’re approaching your six-month anniversary on May 10. What’s the story — so far — that you’re proudest of?

“My proudest story has nothing to do with food or drink at all actually,” Timberlake joked.

He shared that he covered a story about pear farmers in the California Delta, who were posting about being harmed economically by Argentine imports. Timberlake thought it was fascinating so he reached out to them, had a lot of great conversations and ultimately went down here to hear from the farmers and their experience.

“What I learned was that the imports weren’t the only issue,” Timberlake said. “In fact it was a multifaceted problem that conspired to create a problem where they were getting boxed in.”

Timberlake found out the imports were coming in late in the Argentine season, which was early in California’s season. He said it was critical that the farmers could sell their own product, but they were also dealing with a collapsing cannery industry. Timberlake said he is still in touch with the farmers and plans on following up.

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