Joe Yonan got the cooking bug from his Indiana-born mother who let him use her stand mixer when he was 8 years old because it was cool. The first real dish he learned to make was chicken-fried steak.

Joe is the Food and Travel editor of The Washington Post, where he’s worked since moving to Washington from The Boston Globe in 2006. His team at the Post has twice been awarded the James Beard Foundation award for the nation’s best newspaper food section.

He also pens occasional features for both Food and Travel, including the monthly “Cooking for One” column, which won honors from the Association of Food Journalists. Joe’s writing for The Post and The Boston Globe has appeared in three editions of the “Best Food Writing” anthology and he is the author of the recently released “Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One” and the co-author of “The Fearless Chef” (2004) with Boston chef Andy Husbands.

Joe was born in Albany, Ga., the same year the local high school’s head cheerleader was none other than Paula Deen, but his family moved to San Angelo, Texas , where he was raised. After realizing his passion was to combine food and journalism, Joe earned a professional chef’s diploma from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts outside Boston . He earned a bachelor of journalism in 1989 from the University of Texas at Austin.