The tongue bath for the down-on-his-fancy-restaurants teevee chef reminds me I never got around to spilling this bile, drafted before I went off the grid for too many weeks:

Maybe 10 years ago or so, I picked up the intercom in my office and my consort’s studio manager said Charlie Trotter was on the line. All these years on, I still remember being shocked. I called him. He never called me.

And what a call it was. He wanted to warn me the food coven was out for my scalp after my review of a cookbook by one of their icons, who they did not feel was properly idolized. They had asked him to sign their lynch note, but he had picked up the phone instead. And so I am at the guilt level of dealing with his death. When he was trashed by a little prick at the biggest-clout paper in the country, I did not pick up the phone and give him my support. I figured he would roll with whatever the fallout was because he was, after all, Charlie Trotter,  chef super-hero.

But I’m writing this here and now to get on the record what an asshole that little prick was. When the nothingburger I am once mentioned him by name here on this barely read site, he lost his shit completely. I got an ugly email from him, one even my seen-it-all consort thought was around the bend.

So his fee-fees were very delicate. But he had no problem going onto the battlefield and shooting the wounded for his own aggrandizement. Thanx allah for my biggest fan, who Tweeted about the shabbiness of the treatment one of the most revolutionary chefs in history was subjected to by a newspaper that once prided itself on integrity. And we were not the only ones with elephant memories. From what I hear, Mr. Thin Skin is very lucky he was not a fly on the wall at the after-funeral drinking sessions. To quote one DM: “Yea… That guy was all biz until the real biz gave him heat…I tell u one thing people yesterday have not forgotten nor will they.” I also heard “many folks wrote NYT last year regarding the horrible story.” [At least this new “chef not left behind” piece shows our editors is learning.]

I think my first Tweet after hearing Charlie had died was that he had always been great to me even back when my first Siamese’s name was better known than my own. You could call what he did media manipulation, but I prefer to think of of it as mutual respect. He took care of his own. (Or so I hope.) The two or three days I spent collaborating on a series of “Chef” columns with him for the NYTimes were beyond mind-blowing. I came home convinced he was worthy of a New Yorker profile (and what did I ever do about pitching that?) The guy started out as a gymnast. And drove a hyperexpensive sports car (not sure if it was a Jaguar in 2002) on which the driver’s side door did not work. He had so many quirks and contradictions. But he was a singular human being who will live on in my memory till I lose the last bit of that. As he does in the great book his best pal has written.