Arnold Greenberg, who began his career selling pickles and herring from a New York City storefront and went on to become a founder of Snapple, the international beverage giant, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 80.

Pat Bruno, longtime Sun-Times restaurant critic, dies

Frank J. Prial, whose Wine Talk column in The New York Times introduced many Americans to the world of wine in the 1970s, when a new passion for fine food and drink was taking hold in the country, died on Tuesday in West Orange, N.J. He was 82.

Larry Marchetti’s ability to charm guests was equalled by his skill at keeping the kitchen running smoothly at the Como Inn, one of Chicago’s most successful, long-running restaurants.

Mr. Marchetti also was a train buff who kept the model railroads in good working order at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Lincoln Park Conservatory and that cornerstone of Rush Street, Butch McGuire’s tavern.
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Mr. Marchetti was the son of Giuseppe and Yolanda Marchetti, founders of the landmark Como Inn, which operated in Chicago for 78 years. It started with 13 tables. Thanks to its warm welcome and consistent, tasty Italian food, it expanded to multiple dining and banquet rooms that could accommodate more than 1,000 diners at a time.

Before closing in 2001 to make way for townhomes, it was a destination for celebration and degustation.
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Art Ginsburg, the delightfully dorky television chef known as Mr. Food, died at his home in Weston, Fla., Wednesday following a struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81.

Mr. Ginsburg — who enticed viewers for decades with a can-do focus on easy weeknight cooking and the tagline “Ooh! It’s so good!”
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Mr. Ginsburg had an unlikely formula for success in this era of reality cooking shows, flashy chefs and artisanal foods. With a pleasantly goofy, grandfatherly manner and a willingness to embrace processed foods, Mr. Ginsburg endeared himself to millions of home cooks via 90-second segments syndicated to 125 local television stations around the country.

And though he published 52 Mr. Food-related cookbooks, selling more than 8 million copies, he was little known to the nation’s foodies and mostly ignored by the glossy magazines. That was the way he liked it.
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Mr. Ginsburg made his television debut in 1975 in upstate New York on a local morning program. His Mr. Food vignettes were syndicated in nine television markets by 1980. His popularity peaked in 2007, when he was appearing on 168 stations.
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Kathleen Clancy believed in the power of prayer and holy water, and hot tea and Irish soda bread — which she baked until she was 101.

She lived to be 105, nearly every one of those years in good health.
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n 1954, Mrs. Clancy boarded the SS Brittanic to join her husband. The parting from her family in Ireland was sorrowful. “Back in those days, when you said goodbye, it was like goodbye forever,” her son said. There was no social media, and for most, no telephones or jet travel.

They moved to North Mohawk Street, where Mrs. Clancy had to get used to a landlady who berated her for what she perceived as a declasse habit: hanging her wash on the line.

Fortunately, most of the Clancys’ culture clashes were comical. Her kids were leery of an American food with an odd name: hot dogs. When someone handed her a bowl of popcorn, she daintily took only a few kernels, not realizing she was being offered the whole bowl. She’d never seen popcorn before.
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“She was a great cook,” said her son Bill. “She loved to bake her own bread — the soda bread, the brown bread, the currant bread and the Christmas cake. She loved the home, and she loved the people to come in and visit.”

Cathy2 wrote:Mr. Food, known for ‘It’s so good!’

Art Ginsburg, the delightfully dorky television chef known as Mr. Food, died at his home in Weston, Fla., Wednesday following a struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81.

Mr. Ginsburg — who enticed viewers for decades with a can-do focus on easy weeknight cooking and the tagline “Ooh! It’s so good!”
...
Mr. Ginsburg had an unlikely formula for success in this era of reality cooking shows, flashy chefs and artisanal foods. With a pleasantly goofy, grandfatherly manner and a willingness to embrace processed foods, Mr. Ginsburg endeared himself to millions of home cooks via 90-second segments syndicated to 125 local television stations around the country.

And though he published 52 Mr. Food-related cookbooks, selling more than 8 million copies, he was little known to the nation’s foodies and mostly ignored by the glossy magazines. That was the way he liked it.
...
Mr. Ginsburg made his television debut in 1975 in upstate New York on a local morning program. His Mr. Food vignettes were syndicated in nine television markets by 1980. His popularity peaked in 2007, when he was appearing on 168 stations.
...

David Taub, Introducer of Pinot Grigio Wine to U.S., Dies at 72

Russell Libby, one of the nation’s leading advocates for organic farming, died on Sunday at his farm in Mount Vernon, Me. He was 56.

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Mr. Woodland and Bernard Silver were students at what is now called Drexel University in Philadelphia when Silver overheard a grocery-store executive asking an engineering school dean to channel students into research on how product information could be captured at checkout, Susan Woodland said.

Mr. Woodland notably had worked on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military’s atomic bomb development team. And having already earned a mechanical engineering degree, Mr. Woodland dropped out of graduate school to work on the bar code idea. He stole away to spend time with his grandfather in Miami to focus on developing a code that could symbolically capture details about an item, Susan Woodland.

The only code Mr. Woodland knew was the Morse Code he’d learned in the Boy Scouts, his daughter said. One day, he drew Morse dots and dashes as he sat on the beach and absent-mindedly left his fingers in the sand where they traced a series of parallel lines.

“It was a moment of inspiration. He said, ‘instead of dots and dashes I can have thick and thin bars,’” Susan Woodland said.
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Alexander Leaf, a versatile physician and research scientist who was an early advocate of diet and exercise to prevent heart disease, and who traveled the world to make important discoveries about increasing human longevity and to help scientifically establish the dangers global warming poses to the human species, died on Dec. 24 in Boston. He was 92.

Fred L. Turner, 80, worked with founder Ray Kroc, started Hamburger University

JimInLoganSquare wrote:Harry Heftman

Paul McIlhenny, Head of a Tabasco Empire, Dies at 68

Les Blank, whose sly, sensuous and lyrical documentaries about regional music and a host of other idiosyncratic subjects, including Mardi Gras, gaptoothed women, garlic and the filmmaker Werner Herzog, were widely admired by critics and other filmmakers if not widely known by moviegoers, died on Sunday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 77.

The GP wrote:

JimInLoganSquare wrote:Harry Heftman

Jim-

Thanks for posting this. Harry sounds like he was a great guy.

Arsen R. Demirdjian opened the Armenian restaurant Sayat Nova just off North Michigan Avenue in 1970, developing a loyal cadre of customers for a family-run business.

Dolores Jean Grey Reynolds worked to make her customers feel at home during the 17 years she owned and ran the venerable South Side restaurant Army & Lou's.

Leonard Marsh, a Founder of Snapple, Dies at 80

Joseph A. Unanue, Former Chief Executive of Goya Foods, Dies at 88

Sam Farber, who was spurred by a fiend in the form of a vegetable peeler to start Oxo, the housewares manufacturer whose ergonomic rubber handles grace its kitchen utensils in many homes, died on Sunday in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 88.

Penelope Casas, a Greek-American writer from Queens who was an authority on the foods of Spain, and helped introduce Americans in the 1980s to a continental Spanish cuisine distinctly different from its Mexican and South American counterparts, died on Aug. 11 in Manhasset, on Long Island.

Leslie Land, a food and garden writer who published “The 3,000 Mile Garden,” a collection of her correspondence with the British horticulturalist Roger Phillips that became a series on public television, died on Aug. 10 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She was 66.

Dave148 wrote:

Leslie Land, a food and garden writer who published “The 3,000 Mile Garden,” a collection of her correspondence with the British horticulturalist Roger Phillips that became a series on public television, died on Aug. 10 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She was 66.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/busin ... .html?_r=0

Edith “Eadie” Levy, the mother of restaurateur brothers Larry Levy and Mark Levy, died Aug. 28. She was 92.