Soleil Ho

Soleil Ho is an American chef, food writer, podcaster and restaurant critic. Formerly co-host of the podcast The Racist Sandwich, she is now the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Born into a Vietnamese-American family, Ho was raised in New York. According to Ho, she was embarrassed as a child by the "brothy, weirdly fishy" dishes that her family ate, at least in part because of how other children might react. Ho graduated from Grinnell College in 2009.

As a chef, Ho has worked at restaurants in New Orleans , Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon and Puerto Vallarta, where her mother owned a restaurant.

She co-authored “Meal,” described as a "graphic novel on culinary mentorship, queer romance, and eating insects".

In 2019, she replaced Michael Bauer, who retired after 32 years as the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Ho has joked that Bauer, her predecessor at the newspaper, held the job since she was "not even a fetus".

Ho is careful about the connotations of the words she selects. A specific example is that she does not use the term "kaffir lime" because kaffir is a racial slur in South Africa. More generally, she does not think that "ethnic" food is a legitimate concept. Ho says "The imprecision of the word—and the assumption that it doesn’t apply equally to people and cuisines associated with Europe or white America—gives me such a headache." She considers terms like "sustainable," "responsibly grown" and "farm-to-table" to be marketing buzzwords that are too often abused.

Ho mentions poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, food critic Ruth Reichl and newspaper critic-at-large Wesley Morris as among her influences. She says that she wants to write about restaurants that "tell a story" which may focus on "race, gender, class or the culture of the Bay Area".

Concerned about her legacy in a high profile position, Ho commented, "What if I screw up and no one ever hires a queer woman of color for a role like this again?"