Knowing restaurateurs Drew Nieporent, Costas Spiliadis, Tony May, Gennaro Picone, Tommaso Verdillo, Danny Meyer, Sirio Macchione, Alan Stillman, and the entire DeBenedittis family of Corona have done wonders for my life and my work. In special categories all their own are John Cuneo, for immortalizing me in cartoons, and Nina Griscom, once my television partner. When people remind me of our Food Network show, they always ask about her.
I have friends everywhere, which comes from being a wandering journalist. Glen and Marshall Simpkins in Boston bring peace of mind, while Alison Arnett has been both a colleague in criticism and an unfail-A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
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ing pal. I’ll always be grateful to Bob Phelps, who taught me how to talk about writing, a great gift. In Philly, I’ve been close to Ray Didinger and Maria Gallagher forever, and to Dan and Barbara Rottenberg longer.
My Canadian connections are Mike Boone in Montreal, Bob and Nancy Dunn out west, living proof that you don’t have to see people to remain close. In Los Angeles, Merril Shindler remains my restaurant guru, while Ron and Flori Wormser astonish me with their unselfishness. As a non-fiction writer I try to avoid novelists, but I’ve made an exception for the bard of Cleveland, Michael Jaffe.
Never failing me, no matter how often I forget to call, are Alexis Bespaloff and Cecelia Lewis. Unsurpassed in understanding are Gerri Hirshey and Mark Zwonitzer. Terribly missed is Steve DePietro; I was planning to hang out with him in my old age. Writers are supposed to avoid enduring relationships with public-relations people, but I’ve failed now and then, most profoundly with Margaret Stern, Ruth Hirshey, Karen Murphy, Pam Hunter, Melanie Young, Sally Fischer, and the man who cut the ribbon at Ratner’s, Joe Goldstein.
Just plain best-of-friends, and often showing up in pairs, are Kathy Levy and Michael Pecht; Robyn and Peter Travers; Willie Norkin; Susan Squire; Suzanne Ausnit and John Salak; Victoria and Stephen Worth.
Thank you, Ed and Pat Teague, the perfect in-laws. They even praise my cooking, which shows how great in-laws can be. I’m only a little envious that my sister, Lynn, inherited our mother’s skill at the stove, and that she lavishes her talents on my brother-in-law, Dick Adelman. I have yet to thank my mother and father, Ida and Norman, because I don’t exactly know how to do justice to them. My father didn’t live to see this book, and my mother won’t understand what it is when I show it to her, but my love for them has diminished not a whit. Their nobil-ity in old age taught me as much as their guidance when I was young.
My wine buddies have played a considerable role in my life. I bow to the generosity of Fred Shaw, Robert Groblewski, Glenn Vogt, Alan Belzer, and Jeff Joseph. Although Belzer and Joseph have both traveled long and far with me, even Belzer must admit that nobody surpasses 3 2 4
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Joseph as the man to have along when you have to eat a lot. His wife, Pat Jones, is nearly the perfect woman, and not only because she must live with her husband’s culinary demands. Larger than life is Carl Doumani. In a category all his own is Park Smith, a magnificent wine collector and a magnificent man. I just wish we didn’t always have to drink Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Thank you, Amy Cooper, the most understanding woman alive.
There is nobody like you.
I couldn’t do anything without Jenny Ciardullo, who looks after Sophie, our corgi. And I could not have written anything had Sophie not been upstairs with me in the cathode-ray gloom of my office, looking on.
I am indebted to everyone behind this book, starting with Kathy Robbins, my agent; and her deputy, David Halpern, whose soothing calls were of immeasurable help. My thanks to Susan Weinberg, the publisher of HarperCollins; Susan Friedland, my buddy at HarperCollins; and Michael Solomon, for his day-to-day sanity and editorial acumen.
And now we come to David Hirshey, the man behind this book and, perhaps, my career. He was the first person to tell me that I was born to be a food writer. Inasmuch as I was trying to be a news columnist at the time, I didn’t take it well.
Always, Dave was there for me, although he was never with me. My phone would ring and it would be him, calling from Michael’s restaurant in Manhattan, where he’d be having lunch with a bestselling author.
Me, he’d urge to work harder. “Just give me an hour,” he’d say, before demanding revisions that kept me up for a week. Without David Hirshey, this book wouldn’t exist. I might not even exist, at least in my present form. Thank you, Dave. Some things mean even more to me than a meal.
About the Author
A l a n R i c h m a n is a contributing writer for GQ, Condé Nast Traveler, and Bon Appétit, as well as the newly appointed Dean of Food Journalism at the French Culinary Institute. He lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife, Lettie Teague, a wine columnist and editor, and their two dogs, Sophie and Rudy. The dogs love Alan’s cooking.
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