Hi! I’m Cathy Chen Erway, a food writer, creative director, author and podcaster based in New York City. I was an early food blogger who founded a blog called Not Eating Out in New York in 2006, and wrote a memoir based on that, The Art of Eating In, in 2010. I went on to write a cookbook about my mother’s homeland, The Food of Taiwan: Recipes From the Beautiful Island, in 2015, which is the first Taiwanese cookbook from a major US publisher. I’ve written the cookbook Sheet Pan Chicken, which was named one of the “Best Cookbooks of 2020” by The San Francisco Chronicle, and I co-wrote Win Son Presents: A Taiwanese American Cookbook, which was a finalist for the IACP Awards’ Restaurant & Chefs cookbook category in 2024.

I’ve won a James Beard Award for my food writing at the digital magazine TASTE in 2019, and my column there, Know Your Chicken, won an IACP Culinary Award in 2021. I currently write the column Shelve It, which explores the ins and outs of everyday grocery items, and was nominated for both a James Beard Award and an IACP Award in 2023. I hosted the podcast, Why We Eat What We Eat, which was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2018; and the podcasts Self Evident, about Asian American stories, and Eat Your Words on Heritage Radio Network.

I’m also a Creative Director of Copy at Saatchi & Saatchi. And I sometimes teach Food Writing for the Media at Boston University’s School of Gastronomy and Food Studies.