>From his NY Times (www.nytimes.com) obituary:

As a food and restaurant critic, he loathed the term "gourmet" because
he thought everything should taste better. He once gave all of
Chinatown four stars.

He and his wife, Karen Hess, a culinary historian, collaborated on "The
Taste of America" (Grossman, 1977), a book that began with the
question, "How shall we tell our fellow Americans that our palates have
been ravaged, that our food is awful, and that our most respected
authorities on cookery are poseurs?"

The answer is 336 withering pages, not a few of them efforts to deflate
the eminent food writers Julia Child and Craig Claiborne.

John Hess's website (blog) reported his death as follows:

Friday, January 21, 2005


John Hess (1917-2005)

John L. Hess died this morning at the age of 87. He passed away peacefully in
his sleep.


Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are ---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I was very sad to read this here, the first news I had. When I was a young
and floundering restaurant critic, I found _The Taste of America_ and it
gave me renewed heart to fight the rascals and frauds. John was also a real
journalist who covered French affairs for the Times. Brought back to New
York, he exposed fraud in the nursing home industry, and faced an
(unsuccessful) $1 million libel suit. In recent years, his occasional pieces
on Social Security in _The Nation_ were spirited and sharp. He also wrote a
long piece for _Grand Street_ about hwy culture coverage in the New York
Times would never be worth anything as long as it was supervised by the
fashion editor. This was not male chauvinism, no one married to Karen Hess
could ever be opposed to strong women. Rather it was an insight that there
are absolute standards that transcend the different. When we first met,
almost 30 years ago, we had to ask each other if we were of the left or
right. It was the combination of high and unaltered standards with a strong
streak of populism that made him as a critic and journalist.

As Jack Newfield wrote after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, "The rock
is back at the bottom of the hill...."


--
-Mark H. Zanger
author, The American History Cookbook, The American Ethnic Cookbook for
Students
www.ethnicook.com
www.historycook.com





"Combat Lit" > wrote in message
...
> John Hess's website (blog) reported his death as follows:
>
> Friday, January 21, 2005
>
>
> John Hess (1917-2005)
>
> John L. Hess died this morning at the age of 87. He passed away peacefully
> in
> his sleep.
>
>
> Though much is taken, much abides; and though
> We are not now that strength which in old days
> Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are ---
> One equal temper of heroic hearts,
> Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
> To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
>
>