When she started a food blog in 2006, Kelly Dobkin had no idea it would lead to a career. The main goal of her since-discontinued blog was to break up the boredom of a day job she hated in film production. She would go out at night and write restaurant and bar reviews in her free time.

"I started writing about food as an escape from an extremely stressful assistant gig in film, because I found that all I was doing in my spare time was dining out.


Then at some point, after getting feedback from peers, I realized I could actually write about food as a career."

Now Dobkin is a senior editor for Zagat Buzz, working on stories about dining trends and new restaurants in New York, Denver, Dallas and San Francisco.

"Why is it more fun than being a PA?" she asked, and then answered her question: "Well, no one's yelling at you and you get to eat as much as you want."

Dobkin did not go straight from the blog to Zagat, but the blog experience certainly paid off. First, she landed an internship at Time Out in 2006. The next year she found a paying job at Eater in 2007 and continued to freelance on the side.

Because she wanted to learn about cooking fundamentals to better inform her writing, she enrolled in culinary school in 2010 at the International Culinary Center, while continuing to work for Eater.

During culinary school, Dobkin toyed with the idea of becoming a chef as a career. While it is something that still interests her, she has never gone through with it due to the prospect of financial instability.

Finally in 2011, she saw a job listing at Zagat, the company which was originally know for its narrow, red-covered books of reviews covering various cities. They were expanding their online coverage. Six months after she was hired as an editor, Google bought the company. 

Here she discusses what she still hopes to achieve at Zagat, how her own food writing effects her editing, her favorite stories to cover, and -- for you writers out there who want to write for Zagat -- the fundamentals of a good pitch.

What have you learned as a writer that has helped you become an editor?

Speed. Being able to write quickly and accurately with a certain kind of tone. As a blogger you learn how to juggle your email, RSS feed, Twitter account and more. You have to make sure you're on top of everything. When I first started at Zagat, we were much more focused on restaurant news. Initially, I was writing 12 posts a day and covering national content as opposed to NYC. I've moved back to NYC content since then.

What’s your favorite thing to cover?

I love telling untold stories. There's a piece I did recently that I wanted to do for years, which is a story called "10 Secret Weapons Behind NYC's Top Restaurants." It's about the people who work in a restaurant that make it tick but don't necessarily get the recognition that the executive chefs or general manager get. They're the people who are under the radar, such as the dishwashers, porters, pasta makers and tortilla rollers, but they're also the backbone of a restaurant. This one was one of my favorites. I really love reporting and interviewing.

If you had to pick, what other topics in food would you want to cover?

I would like to be involved in stories about food that involve the kitchen. A good example would be where I cook something with a chef or a chef shows me something I never knew before. I'm also interested in doing larger sociological stories. I think food is an interesting anthropological touch point of so many other other things in our world.

I'd like to do more of those stories where I put together a series of stories about a zeitgeist-y thing going on and tell it through the lens of food. If I did more freelance, I'd want it to be tangentially food-focused but not solely about food. I also have a side interest in food as medicine in the nutritional sense. Maybe that's another mini-career I'll have at some point -- I geek out on talking about Ayurveda and medicine. When I'm not feeling well, I usually turn to food as a healing mechanism.

What’s your biggest pet peeve as an editor?

My biggest pet peeve is when people turn in work that is full of typos -- when it's so easy to hit spell check -- or when it's full of factual errors or errors that could easily be prevented by doing a Google search. It's just general sloppiness. I think I've always been a writer that met my deadline, and if I couldn't, I gave notice. It seems that there's a lackadaisical attitude about deadlines that has emerged out of the technological boom. Turn in your work. Make sure it is presented well. If you want to continue writing for someone, why aren't you putting your best foot forward? Why isn't your story the very best it can be? I would say those two things.

What does a good pitch consist of?

It annoys me when writers pitch something that is not line with what the site or magazine would cover. You need to have a deep understanding of the publication before you pitch. For instance, people will pitch me product reviews when I am working at Zagat. Know your editor. Know your publication. Those are the basics. Looking at established rubrics that the site produces is a really easy way to get your foot in the door, as long as you're sure it hasn't been done before. Zagat focuses on new trends and new restaurants a lot, so make sure you're pitching something that's fresh. While there is a place for evergreen content, I'm always looking for ways to analyze what's happening now, so I'm drawn to timely pitches.

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