Tejal Rao (born 1982 or 1983)[2] is a restaurant critic, recipe developer and writer based in Los Angeles.

[4] Rao was born in London, but spent time in Kuwait, Sudan, and France during her youth before settling in Cobb County, Georgia as a teenager.

[6] In 2013, Rao won the James Beard Foundation’s Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award for her work for The Village Voice.

[8] In 2016, she won the James Beard Foundation’s Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award once again, this time for her work at Bloomberg.

[9] In the same year, Rao joined the New York Times as a food department staff writer and monthly columnist for its magazine.