Born in Sunflower, Mississippi, and raised on the region's storied cuisine in the kitchen of his mother's boarding house, Claiborne served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean conflict. After deciding that his true passion lay in cooking, he used his G.I. Bill scholarship to attend the prestigious École Hôtelière in Lausanne, Switzerland. Returning from Europe, he worked his way up in the food publishing business in New York as a contributor to Gourmet magazine, a food products publicist and finally food editor of the New York Times in 1957. Claiborne was the first man to supervise the food page at a major American newspaper and is credited with broadening the Times' coverage of new restaurants and innovative chefs. A typical food section of a newspaper in the 50's was largely targeted to a female readership and limited to columns on entertaining and cooking for the upscale homemaker. Claiborne brought his expert knowledge of cuisine and own passion for food to the pages, transforming it into an important cultural and social bellwether for New York and the nation at large.

Claiborne's columns, reviews and cookbooks introduced a generation of Americans to a variety of ethnic cuisines -- particularly Asian and Mexican -- at a time when average Americans had fairly staid, conservative tastes in food and what little gourmet cooking was available in cities like New York was exclusively French (and, Claiborne observed, not terribly high quality). Looking to hold restaurants accountable for what they served and help the public make informed choices about where to spend their dining dollars, he created the now-famous four-star system of rating restaurants still used by the Times and which has been widely imitated. Claiborne's reviews were exacting and uncompromising, but he also approached his task as a critic with an open mind and eye for cooking that was different, creative and likely to appeal to his readers.

Inspired by writers like M.F.K. Fisher, Claiborne also enjoyed documenting his own eating experiences and the discovery of new talent and new culinary trends across the country and across the world. Among the many then-unknown chefs he brought to the public's attention was the New Orleans restaurateur Paul Prudhomme. Few people outside the Deep South at the time had any awareness of Louisiana's Cajun culture or its unique culinary traditions. Along with Julia Child, Claiborne has been credited with making the often intimidating world of French and other ethnic cuisine accessible to an American audience and American tastes. Claiborne authored or edited over 20 cookbooks on a wide range of foods and culinary styles, including some of the first best-selling cookbooks dedicated to healthy, low-sodium and low-cholesterol diets. He had a long-time professional relationship and collaborated on many books and projects with the French-born New York chef Pierre Franey.

Claiborne was a fixture of the New York social scene for decades. His lavish, celebrity-studded birthday parties at his East Hampton estate were a regular event on the Manhattan social calendar. Despite his professional success, however, Claiborne harbored much self-doubt and private pain. He was gay and although "out" to most of his friends and colleagues, struggled to come to terms with his sexuality. In his 1982 autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter, Claiborne described a bizarre, almost Faulknerian, childhood and adolescence in small-town Mississippi where he was mocked by schoolmates for his meek temperament and dislike of sports and had explicit sexual contact with his own father on at least one occasion. His mother was a warm and very genteel Southern lady, but doting and often overprotective of her young son. The young Claiborne often sought solace in the company of his mother's Black kitchen and housekeeping staff, whose food, humor and culture he came to love.

Claiborne, who suffered from a variety of health problems in his later years, died at age 79 on January 22, 2000. In his will, he bequeathed his estate to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

One of the most famous episodes in Claiborne's career occurred in 1975 when he placed a $300 winning bid at a charity auction for a no price-limit dinner for two at any restaurant of the winner's choice, sponsored by the American Express company. Selecting his friend Pierre Franey as his dining companion, the two settled on the prestigious Parisian restaurant Chez Denis where they racked up a $4,000 tab on a five-hour, 31-course meal of foie gras, truffles, lobster, caviar and rare wines. When Claiborne later wrote about the experience in his Times column, the paper received a deluge of reader mail expressing outrage at such an extravagance at a time when so many in the world went without. Even the Vatican and Pope Paul VI criticized it, calling it "scandalous" [1]. Despite its scale and expense, Claiborne gave the meal a mixed review, noting that several dishes fell short in terms of conception, presentation or quality.