My Dinner with Jacques (Pépin)

Years ago when I was just a beginning my food writing career I finally started getting somewhat regular freelance assignments with a local print media outlet. It was an established and largely read, daily newsy sort of thing that had a Wednesday food section as well as some special food features on the weekends. The food department was managed by a long-standing food editor was also the main contributor (aside from a restaurant critic)and I would sneak in-between with a unique assignment a couple of times a month, at least for a few years. To say I was unwelcome would be an understatement. I didn’t work in their offices but came downtown with my typed up (!) assignments to file my stories. Sometimes I did a food shoot for my recipes in their photography studio. At those times, the resident food writer would bristle with our limited interactions and things felt definitely frosty. There was gossip too that I chose to ignore that made me suspect my days there were measured due to the office politics at hand.

One day, I read that famed celebrity chef Jacques Pepin, then with PBS, was doing a meet-and-greet in Montreal. A big admirer and PBS watcher, I was desperate to meet him! I called the PBS PR person who led me to the program director and I asked her for a press pass to the event. She said it ‘was possible’ but she wanted to first check my credentials. “Would it be ok to call someone in charge, she asked, where I worked to cross check things since there were very few passes. This was also in a time before LinkedIn et al. I gave her the food editor’s contact…