November 1996: Remembering Louis Szathmary

It was one of those awful covers created and executed on deadline: a photograph of a museum store model of Rodin’s “Thinker.” Atop his head, we had placed a miniature toque, deadline-designed by our art director.  Next to the statue, we printed this: “Worried About Beef?” The inference, I assumed, was obvious, wasn’t it? There had been a shortfall of beef because of a deliberate thinning of the herds by cattle ranchers; and we felt it our duty, having donned our “thinker’s” toque, to advise our readers how to cope. I was but a couple of years into my career as editor of Restaurant Hospitality. What could I have been thinking?

Hot on the heels of what we later referred to as “That Stinker Cover,” I received in the mail a copy of the cover from a Chicago restaurateur. Next to “Worried About Beef?,” he had scribbled, “No, but I am about your art director.” I was offended. Who the hell was this guy to assume an aesthetic superior to mine or my art director’s? What followed was an exchange of letters between me and Chef Louis Szathmary that, were we not 375 miles apart but next door to each other, might easily have resulted in fisticuffs or its oral equivalent.

Had I given it some thought, instead of precipitously shooting my mouth off, I would have thanked Louis for his opinion and for his taking the time to do just that, and gone on with my life, arranging, perhaps, to meet him some day.

Those some days came and went. Eventually, we met—at Travel/Holiday magazine reunions, at his great restaurant in Chicago, The Bakery, and at conferences sponsored by this organization or that. Always at his side was his good and gracious wife, Sadako (below, with Louis).

What had started out adversarially evolved into a warm and endearing friendship where fellowship reigned and reflections on what this industry was all about and where it was going dominated our conversations. Like so:

At a reception, Louis and I discuss the relationship between customer and owner. I hem and haw: the customer is always right, I hem and haw. Not so, argues Louis, who, in the years I knew him, never once hemmed or hawed. “Patrons masquerading as know-it-alls, who offend my staff with demands that border on the pathological and, in the process, offend everyone else in the restaurant within hearing distance, are told to leave,” he says, “and warned never ever to return.”

Involved as a panelist in a debate between restaurateurs and critics who had high praise, indeed, for his candor and his wonderful restaurant, he nonetheless—ignoring their gushings—took their craft to task by insisting that the bunch of them “didn’t know the difference between shiitake and Shinola.” It remains, to this day, one of my favorite quotes.  

Never one to mince his words, Louis was true to his values and principles, refusing to deviate from or amend them because, maybe, it would have been politically correct to do so. He was proud of his profession and no one was going to sully it with shameful sucking up, mindless criticism, or stupid metaphors like a photo of The Thinker wearing a toque.

Louis Szathmary died October 4.