Richard Olney

Chef, 
food writer 
& oenophile










There was a trio of influential gay male American chefs whose lives overlapped, spanning the entire twentieth century:

James Beard (1903-1985)
Craig Claiborne (1920-2000)
Richard Olney (1927-1999)

The least well-known of the three was Richard Olney. He was an advocate of  French cooking, but not in the grand manner. He promoted a far more relaxed country French cuisine. Olney was also a noted promoter of French wine from the Provence region. But unlike Beard and Claiborne, Olney directed his culinary empire from his home in Sollies-Toucas in Provence, France. An Iowa native, Mr. Olney left Brooklyn for France at the age of 24 and never moved back.

Two books published in the early 1970s established his career, “Simple French Food” and the “French Menu Cookbook”. Richard was obsessive about cooking with seasonal ingredients and making correct wine pairings with food. Olney was also the editor of Time Life’s influential series “The Good Cook”, the first cookbooks that used minimalist step-by-step photographs to explain traditional cooking technique. Published from 1978-1980, the complete set numbered 28 volumes, each edited by Olney.

Olney’s best known disciple is Alice Waters (b. 1944) of the famed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California. She claimed that, without Richard's mentoring, she would not exist. As to his closely guarded personal life, Mr. Olney was the one-time lover of celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower (b. 1942), who worked for many years as chef at Chez Panisse before opening his own restaurant. 

For the most part, however, Olney lived a hermit’s life on a hillside in a village inland from Toulon, where he dug a wine cellar by hand and built a brick cooking hearth in his kitchen. He slept in a tiny alcove off the kitchen (where his gardener confirmed that Olney had died in his sleep) and ate and entertained in good weather on a stone terrace under a grape arbor. To keep it "simple", he had no telephone, no car (didn't drive), no radio, no television. 

He was a neighbor of Lucie “Lulu” Peyraud, a petite chef and vintner who just turned 100 last month. In 1994 Olney published “Lulu’s Provençal Table”, a book that extolled her masterful, earthy cooking and wine production from her Domaine Tempier vineyard. Lulu promoted French cuisine as a way of living – not just eating. Food writer Steve Hoffman said that Olney “wished to teach us how cooking could be a path to well-being, a blessed pagan state of sensual, aesthetic and intelligent fulfillment.” Olney learned what he knew about French country cooking from Lulu, and his book about her has become a collector’s item.

Craig Claiborne

Craig Claiborne (1920-2000) was an American restaurant critic, food writer and cookbook author. Born in Mississippi, he was raised on the region's cuisine in the kitchen of his mother's boarding house. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he decided his passion lay in cooking, and he used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend the famed École hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Upon returning to the U.S., Claiborne became a contributor to Gourmet magazine, a food-products publicist and most notably the food editor of The New York Times newspaper in 1957, where he created the four-star system of rating restaurants still used today. He quickly rose to the very top of his profession. His writings exposed the American public to ethnic cuisines, especially Asian and Mexican foods. He had a long-time professional (but not personal) relationship with the French-born NYC based chef, author and television personality Pierre Franey, with whom Claiborne collaborated on many books and culinary projects.

Claiborne (left) with professional collaborator Pierre Franey:

Claiborne was a gay man who was born too soon to be able to live openly in the public eye, causing major frustration in his life. Although he was out to most of his friends and colleagues, he struggled to come to terms with his sexuality. He also drank way too much and ignored his deteriorating health as time went on. Claiborne left his books and papers to the Culinary Institute of America and a few other things to friends. However, he bequeathed his house in East Hampton, his apartment in NYC and everything else not specifically named in the will to his (married) lover, James Dinneen, a physician. The tale of their meeting is related in Thomas McNamee’s new book (2012), “The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat (Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance)”:

"The two were strolling past each other in Manhattan when they locked eyes, and it was love at first sight. Dinneen was married, with six children, and living in Florida. Yet in Claiborne style, the two had countless trysts over the next two decades in choice hotels throughout the world and dined exquisitely until age and illness parted them. Dying nearly a decade later, Dinneen left behind no acknowledgment of their even having met."

Claiborne wrote a memoir, "A Feast Made for Laughter" (1982), in which he detailed a dark and disturbing youth, despite the book’s lighthearted title. He took solace in the company of his mother’s African-American household staff as an escape from the taunts of his straight schoolmates, a difficult, doting mother (Claiborne didn't attend her funeral) and sexual involvement with his father.

James Beard, father of American gastronomy

James Beard (1903-1985) was a chef and food writer, generally recognized as the father of American gastronomy. He moved from Portland, Oregon, to NYC in 1937 to study singing and acting. Failing to find a niche in the theatre scene, he and a friend opened a catering company called Hors D'Oeuvre, Inc. He compiled his catering recipes into a cookbook titled Hors D'Oeuvre and Canapés (1940), and by 1946 he was starring in a televised cooking show. His career as an eminent American food authority took off.

Julia Child described Beard succinctly: “Beard was the quintessential American cook. Well-educated and well-traveled, he was familiar with many cuisines but remained fundamentally American. He was a big man, over six feet tall, with a big belly and huge hands. An endearing and always lively teacher, he loved people, loved his work, loved gossip, loved to eat, loved a good time.”

James Beard was also homosexual. He was kicked out of Reed College in 1922 for being gay. In his memoir, he stated, "By the time I was seven, I knew that I was gay, and until I was about forty-five, I had a really violent temper."

He never achieved satisfaction from his awkward homosexual orientation, so food was Beard's consolation. Over the next forty years, Beard operated a cooking school out of his apartment in New York, wrote dozens of books on cooking and food, and hundreds of articles on food for many different magazines.

In 1955, he established The James Beard Cooking School. He generated further income and financed his cooking schools by signing endorsement deals with various food brands, although it was distasteful for him to do so. In 1981, he and Gael Greene founded Citymeals-on-Wheels, which continues to help feed the home-bound elderly in New York City.

Beard died in New York City of heart failure, at the age of 81. After his death in 1985, his friends and former students organized the purchase of his Greenwich Village residence to establish and permanently house the James Beard Foundation. It is North America's only historical culinary centre, a place where all are encouraged to savor the creations of both established and emerging chefs from around the globe. The annual James Beard Foundation Awards are given at the industry's biggest party, part of a fortnight of activities that celebrate fine cuisine and Beard's birthday. The awards ceremony honors the finest chefs, restaurants, journalists, cookbook authors and restaurant designers in the country.