Harry Kohn

Stan was a great friend.

From Politico - 02.19.2025

Per an obit from Seth Mydans: “Stan Sesser, an eclectic journalist for the 

New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal whose subjects ranged from the 

emergence of fresh-food California cuisine to land mines in Laos and 

genocide in Cambodia to explorations that included sampling the world’s 

most fiery chili peppers in Northeast India, died on January 27 at his home 

in New York. He was 81.”

Stan Sesser, an eclectic journalist for the New Yorker and the Wall

Street Journal whose subjects ranged from the emergence of fresh-food

California cuisine to land mines in Laos and genocide in Cambodia to

explorations that included sampling the world's most fiery chili peppers

in Northeast India, died on January 27 at his home in New York. He was

81.

His death from a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) came

after a 15-year battle with the disease, said his husband, Prasong

Kittinanthachai, known as Yai, a Thai professor of philosophy.

Even as he lost his ability to speak, then to walk, then to rise

unaided from his wheelchair, Mr. Sesser was determined to live a full

life, continuing, almost until the end, to pursue his passions for opera

and long evenings at New York's finest restaurants.

Mr. Sesser first made his mark as a young restaurant critic for the

San Francisco Chronicle, documenting the emergence of what became

known as California cuisine, giving a high profile to one of its creators,

Alice Waters and her innovative restaurant, Chez Panisse. His columns

highlighted small, immigrant-driven restaurants and were collected into

two books, together with his fellow restaurant reviewer, Patricia

Unterman.

He then took a post as an assistant professor of journalism at the

University of California at Berkeley, before returning to reporting, first

for the Wall Street Journal, then as the Southeast Asia correspondent for

the New Yorker.

In that role, he was one of the first reporters to enter the closed

nation of Laos, still scarred by American bombing during the Indochina

war; interviewed members of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

and was one of the few reporters to report from Myanmar (then called

Burma) after the nationwide massacres of 1988, including a long

interview with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader.

He collected these reports in a book called "The Lands of Charm

and Cruelty: Travels in Southeast Asia," of which the writer Raymond

Bonner said, "One shares the author's experiences with delight, while

recognizing how perilous the journey is." For the Wall Street Journal he 

covered both politics and the arts, particularly opera, and moved to 

Hong Kong and then to Bangkok where among other things he wrote 

for a special feature section called "The Saturday Essay."

The loose format of this section gave free play to his wide-ranging

interests which, besides fiery chili peppers, included joining a walking

safari in South Africa; flying across the Pacific to sample "the best peach

on earth" in Yangshan, China; traveling to Lapland to test mosquito

repellents; examining counterfeit hairy crabs in China; touring Bangkok

on a Segway; flying on what he called the world's most dangerous

airline, Air India, and telling the story of highly eligible Western women

who could not find a date in Bangkok, where exotic, tractable women

are plentiful.

His professional and personal travels took him to some 40

countries, but when Mr. Sesser was asked later to name the place,

anywhere in the world, that he would most like to revisit, it was back at

home in the United States, Niagara Falls.

"Concerning Stan's voracious appetite for life, I would mention

music," wrote a friend, Alex Kerr, in an email. "He traveled all over

Europe and America attending concerts and operas, especially, as I

remember, the Ring Cycle in Bayreuth. Yai was the perfect partner for

him because Yai was also very erudite."

He and Mr. Prasong regularly attended concerts at the Manhattan

School of Music, near their home, and Mr. Sesser endowed the Stan

Sesser Career Award in Voice at the school, mainly for students of opera.

A wine connoisseur and collector, he would bring half a dozen

bottles from his private cellar when he celebrated New Year's Eve at his

favorite restaurants in New York or Bangkok, where he also had a home.

He financed some of his personal travels by selling some of his bottles.

Mr. Sesser was committed to fitness and long-distance running, and

once, on a cruise ship where he could not go for a run, Mr. Prasong said,

he jumped into the sea and took a long swim.

Stanford Nathan Sesser was born on April 6, 1943 in Cleveland,

the son of Benjamin Ralph Sesser, who managed a plumbing supply

business, and Belle (Matz) Sesser, a homemaker.After graduating from 

Shaker Heights High School, where he worked on the school paper, he 

enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor's and 

Masters degrees and served as managing editor of the Columbia 

newspaper, the Spectator.

After graduation he went to work for the Wall Street Journal from

1967 to 1971, after which he took a post an assistant professor of

journalism at Berkeley.

He moved on to become West Coast Editor of Consumer Reports

Magazine, after which he joined the San Francisco Chronicle and

became one of its two restaurant critics.

Ken Hom, a celebrity chef based in Bangkok and France, who

knew him at the time said in a telephone interview: "Stan was influential

in spreading the word about what was going on in the Bay Area and he

should be honored for that. He was a great writer and when you read his

pieces you almost salivated."

He joined the New Yorker Magazine in 1989, where he worked

until 1994 when a new editor, Tina Brown, made extensive changes to

the staff.

During those years Mr. Sesser appeared seven times as a guest on

the NPR program "Fresh Air" with political analyses about Asia and

wrote opinion pieces for The New York Times.

He also published a book called "Life Along the Mekong: Asia's

River People from China to Vietnam."

Mr. Sesser spent the next five years as a freelance journalist before

he joined the Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong and then

Bangkok. When that regional newspaper folded the Wall Street Journal

kept him on as a lifestyle correspondent from 2006 to 2011, when he

began suffering the first symptoms of the disease that took his life.

He married Mr. Prasong, his partner of many years, in 2015, Mr.

Prasong became an American citizen, and they continued to divide their

time between New York and Bangkok.

He is survived by Yai, his daughter Sasha Sesser-Ginzberg and her

mother, Abby Ginzberg.

Andrew Krotinger

Stan was in my Honors English class at Shaker and was a very bright and sensitive student whom I really never got to know well but respected his obvious intelligence and dry wit.  I did not stay in touch with Stan after high school but knew of his various journalistic endeavors and great interest in food. RIP

Barbara Jan. Katz

Like Andy Krotinger, I was an AP English classmate of Stan's, and I did not know him well.  (Both he and I were shy at the time, I think.)  But Stan was clearly oh-so-smart and also clearly off the beaten path and also clearly a very nice person.  He reached out to me several years ago after some online postings, and we had a good catching-up conversation.  I am so glad that things have changed enough in our society since our high school years that Stan was able to have the kind of meaningful, socially and legally recognized relationship that he deserved.  My great sympathies to his family.