[3] After school, Wells freelanced as fact-checker for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, before working for the former in a public relations capacity.
[6] The awarded works include a 2001 story about connoisseurs of single-malt Scotch whisky[7] and a 2003 essay on a tour Wells took of Southern smokehouses with the founder of a "Bacon of the Month" club.
[6] While dining editor, Wells wrote a semi-regular column called "Cooking with Dexter" for The New York Times Magazine, about working in the kitchen with his young sons.
[9][10] He also frequently produced dispatches for the newspaper's "Diner's Journal" blog and occasionally wrote restaurant reviews and essays.
Wells identified issues with the quality of the food and the atmosphere, criticizing the menu as "random and purposeless," and noting that the servers could be "oddly unaccommodating.