I’m not as fat as I could be nor as thin as I should be. – Elmer Dills*
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* When ELV was beginning his second career as a food writer in the early ’90s, he called and wrote a number of restaurant critics to get some tips on practicing the craft. Dills was one of the few who returned his call. (Alan Richman and John Mariani were the others.) He couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful, and it was during that conversation that he spoke the above words to us. R.I.P. Elmer Dills.
Elmer Dills educated Southern California about food. He was the best. I remember as a kid watching channel 7 news and couldnt wait to see his segment. Always very discriptive, honest and showed fine food was accesible for everyone to enjoy.
Thanks for sharing your start-up
He truly was an anti-Semite. He was a CIA case officer in Berlin before becoming a food journalist, told me many times that the Jews were at fault before the Holocaust, and Knew next to nothing about food. Obviously, you did not know the man, so I’ll forgive you this one-time lapse in your normally reasonable judgment. See that it doesn’t happen again.
For decades I watched him on Channel 7’s local newscasts. He turned me on to many restaurants and many new cuisines.
My wife and I found a wonderful northern Italian restaurant in Woodland Hills in July of 1996. We kept it as our secret knowing that when Elmer found the place, so would the rest of Los Angeles. He did and our days of walking in to find an empty table went bye bye.