Robert S. Galen.
A fork, a notebook, a Sunday.

I am Robert S. Galen — a physician, Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology, and former Senior Associate Dean in the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia, where I also chaired the Division of Public Health at the Biomedical Health Science Institute and founded the Global Health Program.

I matriculated in the six-year medical program at Boston University School of Medicine, graduating in 1970. While still in medical school I held an externship at Manned Spacecraft in Houston, Texas during the July 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing — a week I remember almost as vividly as my first proper porterhouse. I am best known as co-author of the medical text Beyond Normality: The Predictive Value and Efficiency of Medical Diagnosis (1975), and I hold a number of patents, including US 5,695,949 — a combined assay for current glucose level and intermediate or long-term glycemic control.

A life spent in diagnostics teaches you to look closely and to distrust easy verdicts. A steakhouse, it turns out, rewards the same habits. Five years ago I started eating at a different one every Sunday and writing it down before bed. 260 Sundays later it has become this — a small archive of steakhouses across 14 countries, kept honestly and without ceremony.

I am not a critic. I sit down, I order what looks right, I talk to whoever is friendly enough to talk back, and the next morning I write it down while the taste of it is still on me. If any of it is of use to you, that is a happy accident. If you ever find yourself in the same city as I am, send word — I will keep a chair warm.

— Bob

Restaurant tips, corrections, arguments about doneness, or just hello — bobgalen@gmail.com.

Read more about my academic career on Wikipedia.