VIDEO: A love poem to meat and a beloved food writer, who died suddenly not long after event.

Earlier this month, the same night he was to attend the James Beard Awards that he serves as a member of the awards committee, Joshua Ozersky was found dead in his Chicago hotel room.

As the New York Times wrote in the aftermath, 

Mr. Ozersky was well known — and both loved and loathed — as one of the most forceful food writers in the country.

As the founding editor of New York magazine’s Grub Street blog and later a columnist for Time and Esquire, Mr. Ozersky wrote about restaurants, chefs and food with conviction, humor and an attention to history.

But it was his joyful willingness to be bluntly opinionated that won him sworn enemies (a few) and loyal friends (far more) in the ranks of chefs and restaurateurs.

He mocked vegans and vegetarians and called out fellow food writers for accepting free meals, a practice that came back to haunt him in 2010, when Robert Sietsema, then the Village Voice restaurant critic, criticized Mr. Ozersky for enlisting top chefs to cater his wedding reception free of charge.

An autopsy the morning after he was found did not determine how he died.

Subsequent tests were scheduled but no results have been published.

We do know how he lived.

His first food book was written under the pen name Mr. Cutlets and called Meat Me in Manhattan (2003), working as a manual of the island's best burgers, pork chops, steaks, ribs, sausages and such.

He launched something called Meatopia as a book party for Meat Me that came to be a traveling party.

This year it served as a headlining event at 2015 Pebble Beach Food & Wine, which also starred memorable chefs like Cal Stamenov and Daniel Boulud. 

The Weekly was there, which led to this video tribute to the foods the man loved so much.