Meet IndyStar's new dining and drinks reporter Bradley Hohulin

It always irked me as a kid when family members told me to chew my food more slowly. You’re eating way too fast, they’d say. You need to enjoy it.

Of course I’m enjoying it, I’d think. That’s why I’m eating it way too fast.

Throughout my life, food has consumed me far more than I’ve consumed it, and I’ve eaten a lot. My mom says as a baby I would try to pull her jaw down while she cradled me if I saw her chewing something, as if I simply had to know what was on the menu. My 7-year-old heart held a regard for Rachael Ray that placed her somewhere in the vicinity of Jesus Christ — the main difference being Rachael Ray could make way more than bread and fish.

I’ve loved food as long as I’ve loved anyone or anything, which is debatably my foremost qualification to be IndyStar’s new dining and drinks reporter. Plus, I spent the last four years writing for the Indiana Daily Student newspaper at Indiana University, writing primarily about sports and occasionally about nudist resorts, mental health, beavers and, yes, food.

Now it’s my job to tell you where you might find a good bite to eat in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. It’s not a responsibility I take lightly.

On one hand, it’s just food, right? Sure. But on the other, it’s love, civilization, health, money, status, self-image and roughly a thousand other things. I believe most of us are just looking for a little satisfaction in life, and few things deliver it as quickly or as spectacularly as a good meal.

I want to meet and introduce you to the people and places that provide us with those meals. The kind of places you can’t wait to tell your friends about yet simultaneously want to keep to yourself. I don’t care if the restaurant's walls are adorned with James Beard awards or its floors are dotted with unidentifiable sticky spots.

In a way, all restaurants are beautifully temperamental machines constructed to serve, nourish and delight hungry people. At The French Laundry in California you can find a veteran sous chef carefully plating oysters. At the Springboro, Ohio, Taco Bell an underpaid 17-year-old may be using a spatula to scrape an unfortunate quesadilla off the floor because it’s the dinner rush and his manager insisted the customer would never know. Miles, paychecks, dinner tabs apart, the two businesses share the same goal.

By the way, did I mention I worked at Taco Bell for a summer?

So if you know a place or a dish you believe is worth talking about, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. While I question any chef’s ability to bring me as much joy as my mom’s meatloaf, I’m entirely open to suggestions.

And if you’re reading this thinking a 22-year-old with zero professional journalism experience would make a rather poor authority on your city’s dining scene, fair enough. I suppose you’ll just have to read along — you’ll either end up feeling pleasantly vindicated or pleasantly full.

Both sound pretty satisfying to me.Want to stay up to date on the latest local dining news? Click here to subscribe to our Indylicious newsletter

Bradley Hohulin is the dining and drinks reporter at IndyStar. Contact him at BHohulin@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter/X: @BradleyHohulin.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyStar's new dining and drinks reporter, Bradley Hohulin