Trevor White (food critic)

Trevor White is an Irish publisher, food critic and museum director. Born in Dublin, he worked at Food & Wine before launching The Dubliner magazine in 2001. Ten years later he created the civic initiative "City of a Thousand Welcomes" and the Little Museum of Dublin.

The Dubliner

The Dubliner was a monthly city magazine. Its contents included opinion pieces, political and social commentary, and reviews of restaurants, books, music, comedy, theatre, movies and art. The magazine was targeted at a Dublin audience, however it soon became available in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.^[1]

The magazine was admired; Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair described it as "a fantastic publication" but according to White it was "an instant failure", and within a few months it was close to bankruptcy.^[2]

In 2004 the Irish electorate approved a citizenship referendum, which meant that children born on the island of Ireland to parents who were both foreign nationals would no longer have a constitutional right to citizenship. The head of the KKK, Ray Larson, gave an interview to the magazine in which he praised then-Justice Minister Michael McDowell and the Irish voters for restricting citizenship "according to bloodlines rather than birthplace." ^[3]

In 2006, The Dubliner libelled Elin Nordegren, Tiger Wood's ex-wife, and printed nude photographs purporting to be of Nordegren.^[4] Nordegren sued the magazine, of which White was the publisher, in a Dublin court and won substantial damages.^[5]

White struggled to keep The Dubliner afloat for eight years"^[6] before selling The Dubliner—and its 100 Best Restaurants Guide—to magazine publisher Michael O'Doherty in November 2008.^[7] Shortly afterwards, O'Doherty explained, "The Dubliner is a magazine I've long admired. Launched nine years ago, shortly after VIP, it has a compact but loyal readership, and a reputation for top-class writing. Sure, it has featured the occasional 10-page yawn-fest about Aosdána, but now that I own the business, I can replace that with pictures of Twink." ^[8]

The period is recounted in The Dubliner Diaries, published by Lilliput Press in 2010.

The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants

White also published The Dubliner 100 Best Restaurants Guide, and it became the best-selling restaurant guide in Ireland.^[9] In 2008 restaurant critic Ernie Whalley wrote,^[10] "It would be more correct to call the much-hyped annual 'Dublin's 30 Good and 70 Very Average Restaurants'.

City of a Thousand Welcomes

In 2011 he launched a civic initiative called City of a Thousand Welcomes. It is a greeting service that sees volunteer Dubliners welcome visitors to the city by bringing them out for an informal chat over a free cup of tea or a pint. It was hoped that the initiative would attract 1000 volunteers to sign up as Dublin Ambassadors within three months. The Irish Times reported that the target was reached within 24 hours.^[11]

In July 2011, The Boston Globe reported that "one of the goals of the project… is to stamp out… cynicism and encourage Dubliners to embrace their history of connecting with others by welcoming them."^[12]

Little Museum of Dublin

In 2011, White announced plans to open a new museum in Dublin on St Stephen's Green, and invited the public to loan or donate artifacts for the museum,^[13] to be called "The Little Museum of Dublin". The museum tells the story of Dublin in the 20th Century.^[14] In October 2014, Susannah Clapp wrote in the Observer, "Go to its exemplary Little Museum and you get a neat tot of Dublin’s élan. Even the captions are both captivating and captious. Tradition is there all right, and so is mischief."^[15]

Works

White is the author of Kitchen Con (2006), a social history of restaurant criticism and The Dubliner Diaries (2010), an account of his time as a magazine publisher. Reviewing The Dubliner Diaries in the Sunday Independent, Eamon Delaney ^[16] wrote, "Of all the places I associate with the now lamented Celtic Tiger, it must be standing in the offices of the neophyte Dubliner magazine, overlooking the glorious city intersection of Wicklow Street and South William Street, as it stretched up towards St Stephen's Green, with prosperous and trendy citizens busily flitting about or sitting outside cafes." ^[17]

Personal life

He is married to Susan Jane Murray, a noted nutritional cook who writes a regular column for The Sunday Independent and has often featured on Tom Dunne's show on Newstalk radio.

External links

• The Little Museum of Dublin

References