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Gary He
@garyhe
Photojournalist. 2x James Beard Award loser + winner. Danny Glover punched me in the face once and it's been downhill since then.
New York City.garyhe.comJoined February 2009

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Had a giant piece on these two places in the bag for the 2020 cycle. Interviews and everything done, but COVID hit before PA primary. Excited to see what young reporters bring to the food on the campaign trail beat in ‘24.
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when she finally posts you on main:
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We spent three months with the owner of Saigon Social, a Vietnamese restaurant in New York City that has only ever existed in pandemic-era limbo. “I slept at the restaurant every night that first month because I was so depressed,” Helen Nguyen said. nyti.ms/3NbJhq8
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having spent the past 2 years following the work of photographer , the unofficial documentarian of the NYC restaurant industry throughout the pandemic, i'm thrilled to share that he has this incredible piece in the today
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Thought I was done covering the pandemic, but then Omicron arrived and called. So I found a restaurant and embedded—and promptly got COVID. Three months later, my first solo double byline: a 1700-word, 30-picture interactive in the paper of record
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Second anniversary of the best pandemic restaurant story, which introduced everyone to Michelin-starred take out, and foreshadowed the risks that essential workers were going to take over the next months/years. It’s been a journey, one that’s not quite over just yet…
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"No aspect of life in America’s largest city was left untouched in its early days, but perhaps none was as drastically or visibly altered as its restaurant industry." great story + photo essay from
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i've got one or two more restaurant things left to do in new york but then i would really like to get back to being the person that or randomly texts "would you happen to be near XYZ city next week" and being able to answer yes
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The pandemic will continue to impact restaurants, of course. But with the opening of the ~new~ Jing Fong next week, my almost two year arc is complete. To end: the lifting of a Phoenix to the wall of the new restaurant, a symbol of both Jing Fong's and the city’s rebirth. -30-
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The restaurant apocalypse never happened. And being on the ground alongside the workers and owners, I really didn’t see a lot of the fear/hesitancy that was popular in other coverage. Just New Yorkers grinding away through another calamity—as a native, this felt familiar.
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A couple of months turned into over a year. Some restaurants reverted back to the “talk to our PR person” mentality, but others left an open door for me. At Di An Di, I even went with the owners as they got vaccinated in March, a pivotal moment in the reopening of restaurants.
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It soon became apparent that the pandemic would be with us for a while. But because there were so few other people in the field, I was able to get inside a lot of places—Veselka (w/ ), EMP, etc. Eventually I was checking in on about a dozen places every week or two.
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As the pandemic started impacting everyone, we ripped into broad coverage. Last night at Gotham. Carbone. Immigrant workers. Masa. All that epicenter stuff from the dark months. But I would check in with Jing Fong every week or two to see what they were doing.
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Almost two years ago, and I discussed the impact of the virus on the Chinese community, weeks before the first case hit the U.S. We thought that tracking a single Chinatown restaurant would be one way to tell the story. It ended up being Jing Fong, which closed in March.
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Good journalism that involves actual journalism! Staying there, talking to people, waiting for things to happen. Refreshing in the genre.
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So @jbonne of @resy came to me a few months ago and said we want your work, give us whatever you want. I decided to go behind the scenes for what will probably be the most epic pandemic opening, 63 floors up atop 70 Pine: SAGA. blog.resy.com/2021/08/saga-n
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