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Phyllis C. Richman (born Phyllis Chasanow on March 21, 1939, in Washington, DC) is an influential writer who served as the food critic for the Washington Post for 23 years, a role that caused Newsweek magazine to name her "the most feared woman in Washington".[1] Washingtonian magazine listed her as one of the 100 most powerful women in Washington. Richman is also the author of 3 popular murder mysteries set in the restaurant world, and of many articles, written for such publications as Gourmet, Bon Appétit and Food Arts. She has appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including the Diane Rehm Show, NPR's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Personal Life

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The second of four children, Richman was born to Abraham and Helen Chasanow. Her father was a part-time lawyer and a civil servant. After being fired from his US Navy job as a security risk, Chasanow brought suit; the case eventually won an apology from the Navy and a change in government regulations. It also led to the movie Three Brave Men (with Ernest Borgnine playing the role of Chasanow) and to a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the Washington Daily News by Anthony Lewis.[2] Helen Chasanow worked as a real-estate agent. When Richman was very young, the family moved to the experimental town of Greenbelt, Maryland, built by the Roosevelt Administration on the model of the British New Towns. It was in the progressive environment of Greenbelt that she grew up.

Richman enrolled at Brandeis University, from which she graduated with honors in 1961.[3]That same year she intended to apply for graduate work at Harvard University but received a letter from a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, who doubted that she would be able to combine academic work with "responsibilities to [her] husband and a possible future family".[4] Instead, Richman did graduate work in city planning at the University of Pennsylvania and later in sociology at Purdue University.

Following her junior year of college, she married Alvin Richman, who went on to teach political science at Purdue before specializing in public opinion polling for the United States Information Agency and the State Department. They had three children: Joe (the independent producer of Radio Diaries on NPR), Matt (an audio engineer) and Libby (a TV producer). The Richmans divorced in 1985. She is now married to Bob Burton, a retired statistician at the US Department of Education. They live in Takoma Park, Maryland. In 2009 Richman was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but she has not let it slow her down entirely, and she continues to contribute freelance articles to various publications.[5]

Professional Life

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Richman began her career as a food critic at the Baltimore Jewish Times, where she worked for two years.[6]In 1976 she was hired by the Washington Post and served as the newspaper's restaurant critic until her retirement in 2000. She was the first woman to hold that position.[7]. She also served as the newspaper's Food Editor from 1980-1987. Her nationally syndicated weekly column "Richman's Table" appeared from 1985-1989. Between 1973 and 1980 she wrote several other columns, including one on feeding children (1973-1976), "Try It" (1974-1980), and "Turning Tables", which appeared in the Washington Post Magazine from 1976-1980, and in the Washington Post Weekend section from 1980-1990. As a restaurant critic, Richman "kept a low profile, was rarely photographed, and often wore a silk scarf over the bottom of her face when she went out in public."[8]

Until her retirement, Richman served on the James Beard Restaurant Awards committee and also on the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards executive committee, as well as on the editorial board of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture.

Richman turned to prose writing in the mid-1990s, publishing her first culinary murder mystery, The Butter Did It: A Gastronomic Tale of Love and Murder, in 1997. Publishers Weekly gave it a rave review: “Richman’s prose is as smooth and easy to swallow as premium ice cream...She brings a welcome angle and authenticity to the expanding menu of culinary mysteries.”[9]

Awards

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Productive Aging Award, Jewish Council for the Aging, 2010 [10]; Duke Zeibert Capital Achievement Award, Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, 2006 [11]; Penney-Missouri Journalism Honorable Mention (for movie review on the role of food in The Godfather Part III); First Place, Best Newspaper Section, Association of Food Journalists (1986)[12]; Nominee, James Beard Foundation newspaper awards, 1994, 1996, 1997[13]; Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America (James Beard Foundation, 1985)[14]

Novels

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  • The Butter Did It: A Gastronomic Tale of Love and Murder (HarperCollins, 1997, nominated for an Agatha award [15])
  • Murder on the Gravy Train (HarperCollins, 1999)
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Ham (HarperCollins, 2001)

Other Books

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  • Best Restaurants & Others: Washington, DC (101 Productions, 1980, 1982, 1985; Ortho, 1989)
  • The Washington Post Dining Guide (1996, 1998)
  • Barter: How to Get Almost Anything Without Money (with Constance Stapleton) (Scribner, 1978)

References

  1. ^ Dornenburg, Andrew and Karen Page (1998). Dining Out: Secrets from America's Leading Critics, Chefs, and Restaurateurs. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. At http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dornenburg-dining.html
  2. ^ http://www.medialaw.org/events/185-anthony-lewis
  3. ^ "Finding the Inner Foodie".
  4. ^ Richman, Phyllis. "Answering Harvard's question about my personal life, 52 years later".
  5. ^ Richman, Phyllis. "Singing, Dancing, Moving".
  6. ^ Gibbs, Hope Katz. "Lunch with Phyllis".
  7. ^ Voss, Kimberly Wilmot (2014). The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 149.
  8. ^ Gibbs, Hope Katz. "Lunch with Phyllis".
  9. ^ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-018370-7
  10. ^ http://www.accessjca.org/programs/productive-aging-dinner/
  11. ^ http://www.ramw.org/news/mayor-anthony-williams-receives-duke-zeibert-capital-achievement-award-restaurant
  12. ^ http://www.afjonline.com/uploads/AFJ%20Awards%20Competition%20Winners%201986-2012.pdf
  13. ^ http://www.jamesbeard.org/awards/search/richman+phyllis?
  14. ^ http://www.jamesbeard.org/awards/search/richman+phyllis?
  15. ^ http://www.malicedomestic.org/agathaawards_past.html
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