Sneakeater

[Jesikka]

Barry Okun 1957-2025

I lost one of my dearest friends - my New York family - yesterday, although many of you know that I’ve been losing him for weeks and months. Barry Okun lost his battle with cancer yesterday afternoon. 

 

I met Barry when I was 23 years old. We met on an online food board, back in the days where every niche interest had an entire community participating in an online message board. The early days of egullet were crazy, with now famous chefs participating in highly contentious conversations about the best taco in NY, the best way to roast a chicken, and where to find a mythical possibly imaginary arepa lady under a bridge in queens. Even among a group of talented, opinionated and highly vocal people, Barry’s voice and incredible writing stood out. 

 

Eventually we met in person, at WD-50, where we had our first of thousands of meals together. I learned that Barry was an autodidact, a brilliant lawyer (who truly hated that job), a wearer of fedoras, and equally knowledgeable about theater, history, literature, music, NY, and pretty much everything as he was about food. He was also a widower who had lost his soulmate in Judy Fell and was trying desperately to find any path forward without her. 

 

From that night forward, in 2003 or so, Barry sheparded me through life in NY. He taught me to know and understand wine and booze, and we were part of an extraordinary emergence of the cocktail scene in NY. Barry was a proper diner, who started every meal with a cocktail and followed with an appetizer, main course and dessert, with a bottle of white, followed by a bottle of red. The bottles were always extraordinary and generally old world except for Pinot and a lot of Abe Schoener’s early wine experiments. On we went, eating at restaurants, writing about them, traveling the world and learning about food. Barry guided my knowledge, and despite having 24 years on me, he was always up for an outer borough trek and a conversation on any topic (I was finishing law school and he could speak about any legal topic with brilliance). We knew and wrote about chefs as they emerged: Wylie Dufresne, David Chang, Dan Barber, Suvir Saran, Dave Santos to name a few. These chefs knew us by our screen names and loved us or hated us and sent us dishes to try and give feedback on. It was a time that can never be recreated, that is hard to describe, and that Barry would do far more justice to write about. 

 

Decades passed in which we traveled to Philly and Piedmont and Kansas City, saw hundreds of plays - all of them weird as he preferred it and referencing things I didn’t yet know, covered every topic from esoteric Jewish doctrine to wine education, and became truly the closest of friends. Barry mingled into my friend group with ease because he knew a phd level amount about everything, but especially about music, literature, food, and drink. He was ornery, opinionated, and often difficult. He introduced me to Jeanie, who is one of my closest friends, because we were “two outspoken women who need to know each other.” Barry and I spoke every day from the time I was 23 to earlier this week when his last words to me were “can you come back later.” For the last few weeks, I sat by his bedside in the truly miraculous place that is Mount Sinai palliative care reading to him from Dante’s Purgatorio, which was the last book he was reading and not quite finished with. I think he knew how it ended. 

 

During the pandemic, we cooked virtually together every day, along with our friend Mitch, inspiring each other and trying to stay sane but mostly failing to overcome our neuroses, especially in combination. The meals we made were beautiful. Our sourcing was featured by Pete Wells in the New York Times. No topic was off limits and since 2020 we have sent thousands of texts on every topic. Nothing hurt more than when Barry stopped texting. I am heartbroken for so many reasons, but I will miss tapping into his endless intellect and knowledge the most. Losing Barry is like losing Ratners and Lespinasse and the original Second Avenue Deli, knowledgeable cab drivers that don’t use GPS, the old Essex market, the right to own our own bodies, quality journalism, and rule of law. We will never be the same. Those who did not know Barry will hardly believe this mythical creature might have existed.

 

He wanted nothing to do with religion (no shiva for sure), but he was as Jewish as they come; one of many unresolved contradictions that were Barry. His bookshelves are filled with Spinoza and Maimonides, resting comfortably near Das Kapital (the new translation by Paul Reitter that he was desperate to live to read), art books from all the latest shows, Superman comics, and a perfect box set of Jane Austen. He was raised on Long Island a d spent most of his adulthood in Prospect Heights, but he knew every corner of New York City and all its history and culture. He saw a play or music almost every night of the last two decades, although he was critical of much of what was produced and everything commercial. Although he dated many a beautiful (very) young woman, he loved Judy with all his heart and spoke of her always with reverence. In recent months he watched me fall in love, and made room in his often cynical heart to celebrate that.

 

We loved to say that we met on the internet and nothing more, but there is so much more to be said. For me, for him, please raise a glass of extraordinary wine to the extraordinary man. There will never be another like Barry Okun and we shall never be the same.

[StephanieL]

Thank you for this heartfelt post, Jesikka.  I was dreading this news.  Barry was so kind and supportive to me and N, even treating us to dinner at Le Bernardin when N got her PhD.  I'll miss him very much, and will raise a glass tonight from the other side of the country.

[taion]

Oh my goodness. I’ve benefited immeasurably from Barry’s knowledge over the years. It was always such great fun to cross paths with him at restaurants or at shows. Not many people are as fun to butt heads with as he was. I wish I had gotten to know him better. May he rest in peace.

[taion]

There was a period of a few years when I was going to see various shows not much less often than Barry was. I had barely any bandwidth to go out to restaurants at all in those days. I have no idea how he managed it.

[Diancecht]

my condolences, @Jesikka

[GerryOlds2TheReturnofGerry]

Thanks for this wonderful remembrance. May his memory be a blessing.

I always loved reading his posts on here. I think I sat next to him once when I was on assignment anonymously (he posted about his meal the next day and mentioned briefly chatting with a couple which I'm pretty sure was me and my girlfriend at the time) and I regrettably didn't say hello. I wish I had told him how much I appreciated his writing.

[backyardchef]

This is sad news. I had just sent him a note a week or two ago to check in and knew something was wrong when he didn't reply. He was always warm and gracious and kind when I was with him. May his memory be a blessing. 

[sweatshorts]

This was a lovely tribute Jesikka. I learned so much from his writing on here -- I'll miss his posts.

[AaronS]

sneak was the reason I joined this site - something about how easy it was to get people to fuck you if you took them to perry street made me sign up in 2007 or whenever it was. it had everything I liked about his posting - it was funny, a little overly personal, and you I could tell whether or not I'd want to eat there. about a year later I found out I had sat next to him at the general greene and decided I'd introduce myself the next time I saw him, which would be soon given how many places we were both frequenting at the time. that didn't happen until a sit down meal at the original fox face location, where I didn't say hi because he was on a date. I did finally talk to him in person on the street in prospect heights a few years ago. more importantly I'm one of the many who really enjoyed his posts here over the years. I hope he knew how much I enjoyed interacting with him here.

Edited January 14 by AaronS

[splinky]

Jesikka, I'm so sorry for your loss. What you've written is incredibly moving. May Barry's memory be for a blessing.