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New Columns appear each Tuesday. 11APR06 Doral Chenoweth writes about the business of restaurants and the food industry in the Columbus, Ohio, Metro area. Reader comments are welcome by telephone. 614-538-1822. Email the Grump: thegrumpygourmet@wowway.com Send food stuff here: iPLATE@grumpygourmetusa.com Send weird stuff here: alferd_e_packer@wowway.com E-mail messages must include name and telephone for a reply. |
 Following Richard Otte's advice, "Make yourself a public nuisance." |
11APR06 Permit Me a Point of Personal Privilege: Celebrate Richard Otte This Internet column is dedicated to Richard Otte, former managing editor of The Columbus Dispatch. Since this RE$TAURANT$blog's inception and henceforth there is to be a small bronze panel on the HOME page to remind me each week that I must write according to the narrative rules set down for me by Richard Otte. A group of his friends held a celebration of his life Sunday, April 8, at the Captain's Club in Cooper Stadium. I was one of his personal and journalistic friends. He was directly responsible in 1982 for bringing me back to the Dispatch, forgiving me for departing that newsroom in the 1960s to take a marketing job. The Otte Rules for the Grumpy Gourmet: (1) Cover food and restaurants just like sports writers cover sports. (2) Avoid private clubs that would not have you as a member. (3) Pay your checks. (4) Take me to lunch once in a while since you have the expense account. (5) Avoid racetrack clubhouses where touts are unwelcome. (6) Make yourself a public nuisance. I try to conform. Many of the Otte Rules relate to my original employment as a saloon columnist for the Columbus Star, a thick weekly tabloid published by the Dispatch Printing Co. Otte and then Dispatch editor, Luke Feck, were very much aware of columnists taking advantage of freebies given to reporters by public relations people. In the case of covering restaurants and the wine industry, press reps plied their trade with offers of junkets, free meals, cash, booze, prostitutes, free rental cars, hotel rooms, fine watches, wines by the case, and often aprons or t-shirts emblazoned with a restaurant name. An ethics concession went with the aprons and t-shirts. Otte and Feck permitted me to keep those to be given away when on speaking assignments. Problems arise. I've had to call wine distributors and ask them to reclaim a case dropped off with the newspaper's front desk security. Probably the unique problem came when a wine maker dropped off a case of red wine glasses, each etched with this identity: The Grumpy Gourmet. We solved the ethics problem. I left one on Feck's office shelf of useless objects and service club medallions; one beside Otte's computer to hold pencils and golf tees. Yes, I kept the rest, one each for my children, each of whom admonished me never to mention that wine again. Afterwards, I always referred to that popular vino as "a convenience store wine." As for Otte's Rule on race tracks, he recalled that my first Dispatch-Star tour had caused the Star to go through a legal hassle (in pre-Sullivan vs. New York Times days) when I wrote this little rim shot about a track club house: "The steak served to me on the plate should have been running on the track." That memory is sufficient to keep me out of key clubs, Playboy clubs, tracks of any configuration, and private business clubs.
Otte's Rule instructing me to become a public nuisance came when I made a list of Top 10 places serving spaghetti and meatballs - this city's most popular item on Italian menus. At the time Columbus had a count of around 60 places doing meatballs. Sixty not counting church suppers and school cafeterias. Great debate resulted. One eatery of long survival in town had an owner who took exception. His place did not make my list. He didn't call me. He called Otte. Supposedly he prefaced his remarks by telling Otte that I was a public nuisance. I liked that. The meatball mogul thought he would eradicate this plague upon our city, this restaurant nuisance with an invitation to test his creation. He invited Otte and family to have a spaghetti and meatball dinner on the house. "Be my guest," or words such as. In one or our many elevator conferences, the invitee related the invitation to me. I asked Otte, "What did you tell'em?" "I told him I was a vegetarian." by Doral Chenoweth 614-538-1822 |
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