Molly O’Neill joined The New York Times in July 1989 as a reporter for the Living/Style section. In addition to her regular assignment, she began writing the food column in The New York Times Magazine in 1992.

Before joining The Times, O’Neill was a restaurant critic at New York Newsday where she was responsible for two restaurant reviews and one news column a week. She was also a regular contributor to the paper’s magazine and feature sections.

O’Neill received her degree in English from Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She also studied at the University of Vienna as an exchange student, and in 1979 she attended La Varenne in Paris. After her studies she worked as an executive chef in a number of New England restaurants and in 1978 she founded Ceres, Inc., a non-profit organization promoting women in business. She also worked as a freelance writer, contributing to The Boston Globe, Gourmet, Travel &Leisure, Diversion and Food &Wine magazine. From 1984 to 1986, O’Neill was a contributing writer to Boston Magazine and she wrote the “Simply Splendid” column for Food &Wine.

In 1983, O’Neill wrote English as a Second Language, a program to train Indo-Chinese refugees for employment in the food service industry, and from 1982 to 1984 she collaborated with Lillian Hellman and Peter Fiebleman on Eating Together, a culinary memoir. She also wrote New York’s Cookin’, a community cookbook which was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection.