Manny’s: Meet the Chronicle’s New Lead Food Critic: MacKenzie Chung Fegan

The San Francisco Chronicle has a new lead food critic. MacKenzie Chung Fegan joined the Chronicle in January, and she has gotten straight to work, getting to know the Bay Area dining scene, preparing to draft her first reviews and sampling many (many!) dumplings.

How does she decide where to eat and what to order? Does she make reservations under pseudonyms or wear disguises in the dining room? And how does she view the role of food criticism in the era of TikTok and Yelp?

You’ll hear about all that and more on March 21 at Chronicle Live at Manny’s, where Fegan will join Chronicle Food Editor Janelle Bitker for an in-depth conversation about stepping into the “rom-com job” of professional food critic.

A Bon Appetit alum, Fegan will dish on growing up in the Bay Area restaurant industry, preparing to take over the role from departing critic Soleil Ho and how the San Francisco dining scene compares to her recent home in New York.

She’ll also share where she’s been eating since arriving in San Francisco and take questions from our audience.

Get your tickets today to join us live at Manny’s to meet MacKenzie!

MacKenzie Chung Fegan became the San Francisco Chronicle’s Restaurant Critic in 2024. A former senior editor at Bon Appétit, her writing on the intersection of food, drinks, culture, and politics has also appeared in GQ, Playboy, Vice, Paper and Wine Enthusiast. Her profile of chef Brandon Jew for Resy appears in the 2021 edition of “The Best American Food Writing.” In a previous life, she was a video director and producer; her documentaries have won Webby Awards and screened at museums including the Centre Pompidou. In previous previous lives, she worked for social justice organizations like the Ford Foundation and Human Rights Watch, hosted an arts and culture show on a Brooklyn cable channel, and lived on a dubiously buoyant tugboat in Alaska. The New Yorker once called her family’s San Francisco restaurant “the best Chinese restaurant in the world,” an accolade for which she can take no responsibility.

Janelle Bitker spearheads the San Francisco Chronicle’s Food & Wine department. She joined the newspaper in 2019 as a food enterprise reporter, covering restaurants as well as Bay Area culture through a food lens. Previously, she served as a reporter for Eater SF, managing editor at the East Bay Express, and arts & culture editor at the Sacramento News & Review. Her writing has been recognized by the California Newspaper Publishers Association and Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

Chronicle Live at Manny’s is a monthly series of conversations featuring Chronicle journalists discussing the most pressing issues in the Bay Area and having a little fun along the way.