David Lebovitz (born 1958) is an American author primarily known for writing about food. He worked as a dessert and pastry chef before starting to write cookbooks. He also wrote a memoir about his experiences buying and renovating an apartment in Paris.
In 1999, two years after Jim Leff and Bob Okumura founded Chowhound, the online discussion forum in 1997, Lebovitz launched his eponymous baking and desserts website. Thus, he is considered one of the earliest, if not, the original "food blogger". Lesley Chesterman wrote in NUVO in 2022: "Having launched his website in 1999, before food blogs really even existed, you could argue that Lebovitz all but created the genre."
In addition to his food blog, Lebovitz also publishes an online newsletter. The recipes in his books and on his blog are often reprinted (with permission) or adapted in food columns, and he has been interviewed for articles in mainstream digital and legacy media.
Lebovitz, who was born in 1958 and grew up in Connecticut, started working in restaurant kitchens while a teenager, including in upstate New York, USA. In the early 1980s, Lebovitz moved to San Francisco, California, where he worked as a line-cook, and then a pastry chef at the Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, known for being an early advocate of farm-to-table cuisine. Lebovitz worked at Chez Panisse for thirteen years before launching his website and writing his first cook book. He moved to Paris, France in 2004.
Since relocating to Paris, Lebovitz' has continued to blog about food. He has published eight cookbooks, and written guest columns for the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times. In 2017, Lebovitz published a memoir recounting his experiences with the Parisian real estate market.
Lebovitz' impact and influence on food blogs and blogging was discussed by Jennifer Lofgren in a 2013 journal article about how food blogs had evolved over the preceding twenty-five years.