Allison Steele, a Germantown Friends School alumna and former intern for the Local, now covers the food/restaurant beat for the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Photo by Len Lear)

by Len Lear

Even when a story’s elements swing around like an Alexander Calder mobile, Allison Steele’s prose swings like a downhill slalom. Her sentences fill up with truth like a balloon in a Thanksgiving Day parade.

Steele, 39, a graduate of Germantown Friends School, was a journalism major at New York University almost 20 years ago when John Lombardi, then-editor of the Chestnut Hill Local for one year of unending controversies, hired her to be an intern. Lombardi definitely had his detractors for his gruff, take-no-prisoners approach to certain issues, but he clearly had an eye for writing talent. He urged her to write book reviews, even though the books and their authors had no “local angle,” simply because he thought her talent would shine more in those book reviews than in “hard news” stories, where colorful prose is more constricted.

And he was so right. The reviews were so sophisticated and rapturous, the language so elegant and effervescent that I could not believe they were written by a college student. I strongly believed that they would have been a snug fit for Time magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, etc.

I recall saying to Lombardi, “We have never had an intern who can write like Allison. It’s an epiphany. Even when a story has just a little bit of cake, her writing puts a lot of icing on it. If she sticks with it, she will definitely have a significant career in journalism or maybe even as a novelist!”

If I were only such a successful prognosticator for NFL and NBA games, I would be spending a lot more time in legal betting parlors and less time doing interviews. Steele, whose father, James, was a reporter for the Inquirer, had a primary interest in fiction while at GFS, “but there are not many paths open to you as a fiction writer. I could not see that as a viable career. I wasn’t looking to get rich or be an English teacher.”

Steele’s first internship, while still at GFS, was one month at the Kansas City Star (where Ernest Hemingway once worked). She wound up with one or two clippings (bylined articles). At age 20, she had the summer internship with the Local.

“I really didn’t appreciate what was going on,” she said, referring to the tornado tenure of John Lombardi’s editorship. “If I had come here at age 25, I would have appreciated it much more.”

At age 20, Steele then interned at the Baltimore Sun.

“The NYU student newspaper was not very good,” she said, “and I needed the clips and the experience.”

After graduating from NYU, Steele went to work as a full-time reporter for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire (the city has a population of about 60,000) for five years.

“There are not many murders in the entire state,” she said. “Only about 20 a year. But the ones they had were really interesting. I did general assignment, regional reporting, projects like a focus on the local National Guard because of the Iraq War. I covered the presidential primary, which was a lot of fun. I was the arts and entertainment editor for the last year there. I probably will not be an editor again. Too much responsibility, not enough fun. I loved living in New Hampshire, but you can only go so far in a paper that size.”

After Concord, Steele did a one-year paid internship at the Newark Star-Ledger (the paper Tony Soprano picked up in his driveway) and was then offered a job at the Inquirer, where she has been for the past 11 years. You have to have more nerve than a painful tooth to be a crime reporter, which she did for five years, bur she admits she finally “burned out.” For the past two years she has been producing a rip current of stories about food and alcohol, her fifth different “beat.”

“Given what’s happening in the restaurant scene here,” she said, “they thought there were more stories not being told, and I’m busy all the time. It’s hard to compare beats, but I was happiest covering Camden. This (food beat) is the least emotionally draining. Social media have really changed things. Some celebrity chefs don’t see newspaper stories as such a big deal anymore. Some restaurants and bars that are very successful will even say no when offered a story. That surprised me. They feel they can get their own publicity with social media. It is nice to give certain people a boost, though, like a Vietnamese lady who does coffee roasting. That is the kind of person it is great to put a spotlight on.”

Steele’s favorite food stories have been those on ice cubes, firefighters and their family meal ritual and the closing of Towey’s Tavern in Chestnut Hill.

“I get more positive feedback on food stories,” she said. “There was more negative feedback with crime stories.”

Thanks to her food beat, Steele has now had a chance to dine at some of Philly’s finest restaurants. Her own favorites are Res Ipsa, Laurel and Suraya.

Steele and her husband, Tom Muzzy, a contractor, live in Fishtown.

“I think the Inquirer will be my last job in journalism, but I’m not looking to leave Philly. The Inquirer is doing buyouts again, this time for those 55 and over. We have a lot of great new hires, although you cannot replace institutional knowledge.”

Steele was writing a true crime novel several years ago, but “it did not work.” She is now two-thirds of the way through (60,000 words) a novel that is “more of a beach read.”

For more information, email asteele@inquirer.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com