Fred Ferretti, Reporter Turned Writer on Food, Dies at 90

Fred Ferretti, who lined a panoply of breaking information occasions for New York Metropolis newspapers earlier than turning into finest recognized for his prolific writing on delicacies, comestibles and cooking for The New York Occasions after which Gourmand journal, died on Monday at his residence in Montclair, N.J. He was 90.

His demise was confirmed by his son Stephen.

After a newspaper profession that started with The New York Herald Tribune and ended with The Occasions in 1986, Mr. Ferretti grew to become a contributing editor at Gourmand and wrote a column known as Gourmand at Massive.

He delved into each facet of consuming, profiling up and coming restaurateurs and cooks, providing tips about weight-reduction plan whereas eating out (by his account he as soon as misplaced 50 kilos from wholesome consuming), assaying rising merchandise and delicacies, and writing opinions of luxurious eateries so undiscovered that it was nonetheless attainable to guide a desk (although probably not for lengthy if his evaluate was a rave).

His curiosity, if not his urge for food, was insatiable. He wrote in regards to the origin of the Lady Scout cookie, how the Military was remodeling mess halls from gaggy to gourmand, the affect of gamma rays on meat, and the emergence of a gastronomical paradise within the rising Chinese language immigrant enclave in Flushing, Queens.

He revealed a prodigious number of potato dishes being served in Eire, why Hawaiians appreciated Spam and the way historic Egyptians made pasta. He took a behind-the-scenes have a look at airline meals (which one reader known as an oxymoron), interviewed the chief bartender at Harry’s in Venice and profiled Joseph Baum, the World Commerce Middle advisor liable for feeding a possible day by day buyer base that equaled the inhabitants of Albany, N.Y.

Reviewing a number of London restaurant guidebooks that supplied conflicting recommendation, he really helpful shopping for all three in order that “you’ll by no means once more need to agree with Somerset Maugham, who as soon as wrote, ‘If you wish to eat nicely in England, have breakfast 3 times a day.’”

Mr. Ferretti was the creator of a number of books, together with the lavishly illustrated “Cafe des Artistes: An Insider’s Have a look at the Famed Restaurant and Its Delicacies” (2000), which evoked the charming Manhattan bistro — murals of bare nymphs and all — that George Lang presided over at One West 67th Avenue till 2009.

Earlier, he drew on his shoe-leather newspaper reporting to research one of many main tales he lined for The Occasions, New York Metropolis’s mid-Nineteen Seventies fiscal disaster, in his guide “The 12 months the Huge Apple Went Bust,” printed in 1976.

The yr earlier than, he got here out with “The Nice American Ebook of Sidewalk, Stoop, Grime, Curb and Alley Video games” (1975), a information, written with Jerry Darvin, to the road sports activities — a lot of them lengthy forgotten — that he performed rising up in New York Metropolis.

“In my day, all it took for youths to amuse themselves was a Spaldeen and a brush deal with,” he advised The Occasions in 1996.

Armand John Ferretti, the grandson of Italian immigrants, was born on March 3, 1932, in Manhattan to Herman Ferretti, a grasp carpenter, and Theresa (Rossi) Ferretti, a homemaker, and spent a few of his boyhood years in Queens.

He was attending Bishop Loughlin Memorial Excessive Faculty in Brooklyn when he started working as a messenger for The Herald Tribune. That stint, within the late Fifties, was interrupted by two years of Military service in Japan. Returning to The Trib as a duplicate boy, he adopted the identify Fred.

In 1959, he married Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, who grew to become an authority on Chinese language delicacies in America. They reviewed eating places collectively for the New Jersey weekly part of The Occasions. She survives him together with their sons, Stephen and Christopher, and a granddaughter.

As a rewrite man at The Trib, Mr. Ferretti wrote about Lee Harvey Oswald’s final day at massive and his seize after assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963. He headed the newspaper’s 1964-65 World’s Honest protection and served as Metropolis Corridor bureau chief in 1965-66.

When the paper ceased publication in 1966, he wrote for New York journal. He additionally labored as a author, editor and producer for NBC Information.

After he joined The Occasions in 1969, Mr. Ferretti earned a bachelor’s diploma in English literature from Columbia College. He was named Metropolis Corridor bureau chief and lined a variety of occasions, together with the bloody jail riot in upstate Attica, N.Y.; the nation’s Bicentennial celebration and the introduction of legalized playing to Atlantic Metropolis.

In 1971, when Norman Lear’s “All within the Household” premiered, Mr. Ferretti, briefly within the position of TV critic, wrote: “Tonight the Columbia Broadcasting System Tv Community will discover out if Individuals assume bigotry and racism, because the prime parts of a scenario comedy, are humorous.” He didn’t. The racial and ethnic epithets spouted by Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, he wrote, “don’t make one snicker a lot as they power self‐aware, semi‐amused gasps.”

Along with Gourmand, he wrote for Journey & Leisure, Meals & Wine and Meals Arts magazines and a weekly column known as “Travels with Fred” for the Copley Information Service.

In 1989, members of Entrée, a journey and meals publication, voted Mr. Ferretti “Greatest Meals Author in America.”

For all the intense topics he lined, he may at instances betray an irrepressible puckishness.

In 1972, when New York courts have been contemplating banning the movie “Deep Throat” as obscene, Arthur Gelb, The Occasions’s metropolitan editor on the time, assembled a choose, if barely sheepish, group of reporters to go to a close-by Occasions Sq. pornographic theater to evaluate the movie for themselves.

“Lower than midway by way of the movie,” Mr. Gelb recalled in his guide “Metropolis Room” (2003), “the theater’s loudspeaker blared out, ‘Mr. Arthur Gelb, metropolitan editor of The New York Occasions, is needed again at his workplace.’ I discovered later that it was Fred Ferretti who impishly had known as the movie show’s supervisor. ‘Mr. Gelb is difficult of listening to,’ Fred advised him, ‘so be certain and web page him good and loud.’”