Justin Lo loves his Welsh corgis. They’re adorable, sure—check out their joint Instagram—but they also happen to be harbingers of good fortune. “It all started with my dogs,” laughs Lo.
When Lo and his husband moved to Richmond from New York City in 2018, Lo admits he was a “begrudging participant” at best. The Yale Law School grad was able to satiate his passion for litigation with his new job as associate counsel (new senior counsel) at the Virginia State Corporation Commission, but he feared his social life would be banal.
To Lo’s delight, he discovered an exciting hospitality industry that was also uber dog friendly. Inspired by all the patio pups, Lo penned a roundup of dog-friendly restaurants for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. While doing research for this one-off, Lo mused, ‘What if I wrote about food here?’
Lo had only ever written food reviews in college (Harvard, by the way) but he impressed then editor Karri Peifer enough that the RTD brought him on as a food critic in 2019. He has since cemented himself in the scene, expertly evaluating restaurants with the voice and precision of a much older gourmand. “I call myself an accidental food critic,” says Lo who, by no accident, won the 2023 Virginia Press Association critical writing award for his coverage of restaurants.
Beyond his astute cuisine criticism, Lo expertly covers issues that affect Richmond’s Asian-American community, like when Asian-American owned restaurants were impacted by racism during COVID-19 or the history of Horsepen Road, Richmond’s oft forsaken version of a Chinatown.
“Writing [for the RTD] got me more actively involved as an advocate for the AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community,” says Lo, who served on the Virginia Asian Advisory Board (VAAB) from 2019-2023. Dining out in the community, especially when he’s with pups Kensington and Buckingham, has helped Lo forge connections, from the VAAB to the organizations with which he is currently involved: Equality Virginia, Virginia Humanities, Richmond SPCA and Firehouse Theatre.
“It’s important for me to give back in areas of my life that I feel passionate about,” says Lo. “I feel there are ways I can enrich my community in the process of doing what I love, which I guess is the dream, right?”
