The New York Times Magazine called Arthur Schwartz “a walking Google of food and restaurant knowledge.” As the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News, which he was for 18 years, he was called The Schwartz Who Ate New York. Nowadays he is best known as The Food Maven. Whatever the sobriquet, he is acknowledged as one of the country’s foremost experts on food, cooking, culinary history, restaurants, and restaurant history.

Although he writes and teaches extensively, Schwartz may be best known as a radio personality. For 13 years, he broadcast on WOR radio, at the time one of New York’s premiere talk stations. His daily show was called Food Talk with Arthur Schwartz. It won the IACP’s Award of Excellence in Electronic Media, and he was also named Cooking Teacher of the Year by the New York Association of Culinary Professionals. He left the station in 2004 to pursue other interests. Since then, he has been broadcasting on a National Public Radio affiliate, WHDD, Robin Hood Radio, in Sharon, Connecticut. His 30-minute segment is live every Monday morning and is podcast and archived at www.robinhoodradio.com.

Over the nearly 52 years of his career as a food journalist, he has written seven award-winning cookbooks, including, in 2004, Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food: An Opinionated History with Legendary Recipes which was named both Cookbook of the Year and best book on an American subject by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). It was also nominated for a James Beard book award, as were several others of his books.

The book after that, Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, (2008) was named best American-subject cookbook by the IACP, was nominated for a James Beard book award, and was cited by American Library Association (Sophie Brody Medal) for its contribution to Yiddish literature.

Arthur is best known for putting food in cultural context.

For example, his book Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania, (1998) is full of historical, political, agricultural, and other cultural background, as well as more than 300 recipes. It hit the Los Angeles Times “Hot List,” the nation’s only cookbook bestseller list, and won awards, but made Schwartz the acknowledged U.S. expert on the cuisines of the Italian south. The Italy-America Chamber of Commerce and the region of Campania honored him as such at a gala dinner. He recently received a Distinguished Service Award from the Italian Trade Commission, and he has been honored several times, including at New York City’s City Hall, for his contributions to the Italian-American community of his city. He is also featured on James Madison High School’s Wall of Distinction – in good company with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Carole King.

Until 2012, Arthur had a cooking school in Paestum, Italy, just south of the Amalfi Coast, where he conducted weeklong classes that also include cultural touring. He is also available for customized gastronomic/cultural tours from Rome, Southern Italy, and Sicily. In his last book, The Southern Italian Table: Authentic Tastes from Traditional Kitchens, published by Clarkson Potter in fall of 2009, he guides the reader/cook to all the regions of the Italian South – Campania, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily.

His other books are: Cooking In A Small Kitchen (Little Brown, 1979), What To Cook When You Think There's Nothing In The House To Eat (HarperCollins, 1992), and his best-selling paperback, Soup Suppers (HarperCollins, 1994), which contains more than 100 recipes for main-course soups, with accompaniments and desserts to round out the menu. After 40 years, Cooking in a Small Kitchen has been re-published by McMillan as part of a series called Classic Cookbooks.

He is also the author of numerous articles for a wide range of American and European magazines. Schwartz has also taught both hands-on and demonstration cooking classes at all the major venues in New York City, on Long Island, and in New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as privately in his home kitchen. He has been a visiting lecturer in Southern Italian cooking at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and a lecturer on food writing and editing at the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone, California. He has also lectured at New York University, New York City Technical College, and at the Institute for Culinary Education (ICE).

You might say Schwartz was born with a wooden spoon in his mouth. His paternal grandfather was first a professional chef, then a food manufacturer, then a curmudgeonly waiter in a Jewish dairy restaurant. His maternal grandmother's home cooking was the envy and despair of the neighbors. His father could spend an entire day shopping for just the right ingredients for one dinner. In short, he grew up in a food-obsessed Brooklyn family that went, and still goes, to any length for a good meal.

As for TV, he was the food critic on Fox network's (WNYW-TV) local morning show, Good Day New York, and he has appeared several times on Martha Stewart’s national broadcast, appeared many times as a guest on the Food Network, on the Today show, Good Morning America, Live With Regis and Kathy Lee, as well as many local morning shows across the country. At one time, he was the national spokesman for the National Dairy Council. He produced and appeared in a documentary on New York hot dogs for Japanese public television, was featured in a documentary produced by Al Jezeera TV on New York street food, and is currently participating in a documentary on how the food of immigrants changes in America, as well as another on the history and lore of the bagel.

Schwartz is now in demand as a restaurant consultant and lecturer. He has lectured extensively before library and museum audiences, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Port Washington, N.Y., Greenwich, Conn., and Spring Lake, N.J. public libraries, the 92nd St. Y, and at private clubs, including the Princeton and Columbia Clubs, the Yale Club and the very social Century Club. He has also lectured at metro New York synagogues, as well as at events benefiting many charities, including Jewish Federation, Hadassah, National Council of Jewish Women, Rotary Clubs, and Chambers of Commerce. His lecturing style is casual and entertaining. Indeed, the late San Francisco radio personality Gene Burns said, “Schwartz is actually a stand-up comic, not the informative lecturer he pretends to be.”

Arthur is listed in Who’s Who in America and is an entry in the recently published Savoring Gotham, an encyclopedia of New York food culture.