Born in Lisbon during WWII, Patricia Sharpe found enchantment in words as a child. In December 1974, she joined Texas Monthly and became the definitive authority on where and what to eat in Texas as its restaurant critic. In December 2024, 50 years to the month, she retired.
Reflecting on “the greatest job opportunity ever,” Sharpe dishes on her era-defining career with Meetings Today Senior Contributor Jeff Heilman.
Your life began in another time and dimension.
Dad was State Department, stationed at the American Embassy. I was 3 when we returned to Austin, so few Lisbon memories, but lasting impressions of my parents reading Beatrix Potter books and other classics to me at night. Dad also invented stories, like the adventures of a little girl and her animal friends.
That was my awakening to the meaningfulness of stories and storytelling in life.
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To quote The Wind of the Willows author Kenneth Grahame, who also read bedtime tales to his son, “Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow!” Where did words first take you?
I still have my childhood copy of that book. From the University of Texas at Austin, I taught briefly before joining the Texas Historical Commission as the writer for their state-wide historical marker program. It was a fabulous Texas education that set me up for Texas Monthly, which launched in February 1973.
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Sounds like serendipity.
It was. I caught the July 1973 issue in a grocery store. The cover depicted “pork barrel” Texas politics with a fleshy naked man inside a meat case. I loved it, wanted in and was hired after a resume blitz.
My first task was the worst, proofreading our 50-page Dining Guide. But I loved the restaurant reviews, and Texas Monthly, then unknown, had nobody on staff who knew food. I understood that bringing sophistication to the page as a dining critic was the greatest job opportunity ever and I took it with gusto, starting with reviewing 175 Mexican restaurants in Texas and Mexico for our “Best of” roundup.
You must have a steel metabolism.
I addressed eating in my James Beard Award-winning “Confessions of a Skinny Bitch” article in 2006. My rule for reviews, including trying at least 18 dishes for my monthly “Pat’s Pick” column, was only a bite or two. Discipline is a health imperative for any food critic.
What are some highlights from crisscrossing culinary Texas for 50 years?
Michelin reviewing Texas was unimaginable in 1974. The evolution of the food scene since then feels like time travel. Pivotal turns include the 1980s, when four renegade male Texas chefs and Dallas culinary consultant Anne Lindsay Greer put Texas in the national spotlight with their revolutionary Southwestern cuisine. “The Gang of Five” was a collective effort but Anne made the movement what it was.
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What are your top restaurant picks for groups?
Many folks still think Texas cuisine is chicken-fried steak, BBQ and Tex-Mex. Planners can touch on those, but reflecting our big cities, Texas dining is cool, diverse and international.
Michelin star winner March in Houston impressed me with their fine regional Italian cuisine.
At Dallas-area Roots Southern Kitchen, Tiffany Derry celebrates her grandmother’s Southern cooking. Fort Worth’s Don Artemio does great interior Mexican food.
In 2003, in an era of transformation equivalent to Southwestern cuisine, Tyson Cole put Austin on the map with his still brilliant Japanese fusion restaurant Uchi.
Cured by top Texas culinary ambassador Steven McHugh and the wonderful new Pullman Market food hall are standouts in San Antonio’s Pearl District.
