CMH Gourmand – Eating in Columbus & Ohio

The King (of local food writers) is dead. The Grump is gone.

Doral Chenoweth, best known locally as the Grumpy Gourmet, missed his first deadline, when his passed away on Sunday (September 15th). I had not heard from him for a while so I checked in with him via Facebook earlier last week. I hope that if he did see my message, he knew he was in my thoughts.

The “Grump” was the “food critic” (a term we both detested) for the Columbus Dispatch from 1982 to 2000 as both the Grumpy Gourmet and Doral Chenoweth. His writing was engaging, authentic, personal and reflected his wry and sometimes subversive sense of humor. I miss him, he was a true free spirit, revolutionary, big thinker and old school journalist that shared countless stories of misadventures and mishaps he survived throughout his life. Before the Dispatch he wrote for the Columbus Citizen and the Columbus Star.

I first met him in the early 1990’s when he would invite readers to share a meal with him and assist in writing a review. We dined at Chef’s Place in Hilliard. At that time, I was fumbling for way to become a writer of some sort and because I enjoyed his style of writing so much, I jumped at the opportunity to eat with him. I was not disappointed. He was the curmudgeon I expected but also a caring person who offered me a lot of wisdom and some tip sheets on food writing. Later in life, I dined with him socially, instead of professionally, at Bono Pizza which was operated by his good friends Bill and Peggy Yerkes. I then visited the Grump at his home many times where I had the opportunity to sit in his office filled with countless stacks, piles and shelves of books, articles and archives galore. Peggy Yerkes was still in his life, this time, as a caregiver for his wife and later the Grump himself. He loved ham salad from the Hills Market so I would take a quart with me whenever I saw him as my tribute.

The mold, if Doral could ever be temporarily confined, was broken when the Grump was born, we don’t have writers or personalities like the Grump anymore. He did shape my style of writing in many ways. He did not compromise on using his own “voice” in his writing which mirrored how his spoke. His approach, at least later in his Grumpy Gourmet days was to visit a place several times before he wrote an actual review and where possible, if he could offer constructive feedback, he did so, with the goal of making the place better. We both were of the opinion, that a bad restaurant did not need a poor review as extra help in closing but only rated such a negative review if the owner(s) needed to be knocked down a notch or two or if they were resting on assumed laurels.

I have been reading a lot of old Grumpy Gourmet columns over the summer (you can too by reading through the Columbus Dispatch Archives via the Columbus Metropolitan Library) which has brought back memories of my own misspent youth when I always looked forward to what he had to share each week. Later in my writing life there were more than a few times I would receive a call from the Grump beginning… “Ellison, I have an idea……” He was never 100% sure about this blogging thing but I took some satisfaction in his statement that I “was one of the good ones, and did it for the right reasons.”

The Grumpy Gourmet is unlikely to Rest In Peace, my guess is that he is already Ranting, Inciting and Pranking wherever his soul may be.

Goodbye Grump, it was a good ride.

(If anyone has any memories of the Grumpy Gourmet, please post and share with the rest of us).