Author of the week: Marilyn Hagerty

last updated 8 January 2015

Marilyn Hagerty isn’t your typical food critic, said Amy Goetzman in MinnPost.com. The 87-year-old North Dakota scribe might be able to appreciate a $300 dinner as much as any of her elitist big-city peers, but her job requires covering the restaurant beat for the Grand Forks Herald. “Trouble is, in a town this size, about 55,000, you soon run out of fine eating places to write about,” she says. So Hagerty periodically gives warm attention to franchise restaurants too. One such review, which praised the city’s new Olive Garden, drew so much online attention that she briefly became world-famous last year. “All these comments started coming in. At first they were pretty insulting, but then they got a little nicer,” she says. At one point, two TV trucks even set up outside her house to cover the flare-up. Says Hagerty, “My neighbors just got the biggest hoot out of it.”

A collection of Hagerty’s gentle reviews has now been published under the title Grand Forks, but they surely won’t be the last of their kind, said Wade Goodwyn in NPR.org. “I’ve never really raked anyone over the coals,” says Hagerty. “I figure that the people who operate those businesses are working hard, they’re doing their best.” She remains devoted to her beat, and she’s found an unlikely ally in Anthony Bourdain, who wrote the introduction to Grand Forks. Bourdain initially mocked the Olive Garden review himself, then realized that Hagerty was covering a key, neglected part of the story about food in America. “I’m a reporter,” she says. “To me, it’s just fun to observe.”