Adam Platt

Platt was born in Washington DC, and is the son of Nicholas Platt, the former president of the Asia Society, in New York City, and a career diplomat for the US Foreign Service who served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Zambia, and the Philippines. He is the older brother of the actor Oliver Platt, who has said he used his brother's real-life eating experience to inform his performance as the imperious restaurant critic Ramsey Michel in Chef (2014 film). Platt credits his rambling childhood -- the Platts lived for extended periods of time in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo — with shaping his wide-ranging and eclectic appetites.

Platt has said his “lumberjack size” makes it difficult to disguise himself in restaurants. In January 2014 he became one of the first prominent restaurant critics in the US to do away with what he described as the pretentious "Kabuki dance" of fake disguises and anonymity, when New York magazine's former editor, Adam Moss, decided to feature him on the cover.

Prominent New York restaurateurs, including Mario Batali and Keith McNally, have taken issue with his reviews over the years, and in 2013 he was kicked out of Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone's West Village restaurant, ZZ's Clam Bar.

Adam Platt (born July 18, 1958) is an American writer and restaurant critic. He is currently the senior restaurant critic for New York, a position he has held since July 2000, when he succeeded Gael Greene. He won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for Restaurant Reviews in 2009, and has been nominated for the same award multiple times.