File this post under "braggadocio" if you must, but we will persevere nonetheless...
Most readers know Dave Lowry only from his expert reviews in St. Louis Magazine for the last 20+ years. If there is a more erudite or better qualified restaurant critic out there...well, there isn't one. Not around here anyway. (This editor should know... I'm the guy who fact-checks him every month, which incidentally has become a complete waste of my time.)
What isn't so widely known is that Lowry's musings go well beyond critiquing food. His articles have appeared in Coastal Living, in Playboy, and he was a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan--addressing women's health issues, no less--as well as several magazines in Japan, including Winds, the former in-flight magazine for Japan Airlines.
Even less known is that, for most of his life, Lowry trained in several disciplines of martial arts (especially Yagyu Shinkage Ryu ), and penned a dozen or so books on both Japanese culture and dojo (Japanese martial arts). His martial arts biography may help explain the genesis of his only food-related book, The Connoisseur's Guide to Sushi.
And last fall, when Seattle Metropolitan magazine needed a learned opinion on the most authentic Asian restaurants in their city, they reached out to none other than Mr. Lowry. His recommendations appeared in this article in their February 2011 issue.
Aside from his monthly dining critique and being the utility man for SLM's dining features, Lowry is a regular contributor to this blog, so It's ironic that one of his more memorable pieces (in this editor's opinion, anyway) that appeared in the magazine had nothing to do with food, but rather, with life, as observed from his bicycle seat Creve Coeur Park (article here).
When asked to provide an unknown factoid about himself, Lowry provided this: "I'm most proud of a handwritten note I got from the certifiably-quirky Helen Gurley Brown, asking me to 'please rewrite this without changing anything.'" I laughed so hard I never asked him how he did it.
