Levine grew up in Cedarhurst, New York, and graduated from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles in 1969. He attended Grinnell College in Iowa with a BA in Music, and in 1985, earned his MBA from Columbia Business School.

Levine's first book New York Eats was a guide to New York City's best non-restaurant food. Published in 1992, Levine’s research stretched back to the 1970s. A follow-up, New York Eats (More), was published in 1997. In 2005, he commemorated pizza's centennial in America by consuming 1,000 slices of pizza for Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, which also includes cartoons, poems, and essays about pizza by writers and chefs, including Nora Ephron, Garry Trudeau, Calvin Trillin, Ruth Reichl, Mario Batali, and Roy Blount Jr. His most recent book, The Young Man and the Sea was published in May 2007, a collection of more than 100 seafood recipes and fisherman stories from Chef David Pasternack of New York's Esca. Levine has also written many food pieces for the New York Times.

In December 2006, he founded the food website Serious Eats, covering cultural trends within the food community, chef gossip, restaurant reviews and message dialogue among readers, involving blogs, video, social network, and community-created food content. Regular columnists on the site include Batali and cookbook author Dorie Greenspan. He is known by his colleagues and staff as the Serious Eats Overlord.

Serious Eats has been praised by PBS’s MediaShift as “the next generation of food media.” In 1997, Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl called Levine “the curator of New York's far-flung food museum” and “a missionary of the deliciouson a crusade to see that the people who make food get the recognition they deserve.”

As a television personality, Levine is currently the co-host and consulting producer for “Reservations Required” on the Ultra HD Channel. He also created, co-produced and co-hosted (along with Vogue magazine food critic Jeffrey Steingarten) “New York Eats” for the Metro Channel. As a former radio producer, Levine created and hosted “Dish” for WNYC, New York’s NPR affiliate, which was twice nominated for James Beard Awards for Electronic Media.

Levine has also co-produced records for Dr. John and written about music for Rolling Stone and the New York Times.