In food circles, dismay

The food world appears to be reacting with more dismay than shock at news of financial irregularities at the James Beard Foundation, the leading promoter of gastronomy in America. The group gives chefs from around the country a showcase in James Beard’s old Greenwich Village brownstone and hands out awards each May at every level of the industry: chefs, restaurants, food writers and more.

The New York Times reported last week that the nonprofit, tax-exempt organization could not account for hundreds of thousands of dollars raised at lavish dinners for which food, chefs’ services and often wine were donated and for which patrons paid up to $150. The foundation’s longtime president, Len Pickell, resigned after the disclosures, which followed an internal audit. And the Office of the New York State Attorney General is investigating the foundation after it failed to file financial disclosure statements for two years as required by law for charities.

But what has some chefs, journalists and sponsors most riled is that the Times investigation indicated that the foundation devoted only a tiny fraction of its revenue to scholarships for aspiring culinarians: $29,000 out of $4.7 million last year. The organization’s newly elected chairman contends that the figure is closer to $200,000 if scholarships it administers are included, but some Beard supporters already are pulling out in disgust.

Many more, however, are taking a wait-and-hope attitude. As more than one insider said in interviews over the last week, the Beard Foundation is too important to the industry -- and the awards must go on.

“I don’t want it to die,” said Ariane Daguin of the foie gras and game dealer D’Artagnan, a sponsor. “But I want it cleaned up.”

Ruth Reichl, editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, resigned Monday from the restaurant awards committee.

“We don’t know, any of us, whether money was misspent,” Reichl said. “The one solid fact is that what we thought was a charity is not giving money where we thought it was giving.”

Gael Greene, longtime restaurant critic for New York magazine, resigned from the advisory board last week; she said she was offended by the apparent lack of financial oversight by the board of trustees and by the paucity of scholarship money.

Jerry Shriver, a features writer at USA Today, resigned from the restaurant awards committee on Monday. Others, such as Barbara Fairchild, editor in chief of Bon Appetit magazine and a member of the journalism awards committee, are standing by the foundation.

The New Yorker decided, “after long discussions,” to give the money raised this month at its Moveable Feast to God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit food delivery service, rather than the Beard Foundation as previously announced, said the magazine’s publisher, David Carey.

Los Angeles Times columnist David Shaw and restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila, who were members of the restaurant awards committee, also resigned from that panel Monday. In previous years, The Times submitted its work for consideration for Beard journalism awards, and its writers won a number of them, but it will cease participation in the awards pending the outcome of the investigation.

And some chefs are taking a much closer look at where they donate time and energy. Charlie Palmer of Aureole in New York and Las Vegas and Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg, Calif., said he had heard of chefs canceling dinners for the foundation, but he would not name names. “It’s unfortunate,” he said. “It could be such a great thing. Now, you have to tell me where the money goes if you want me to do anything.”

“A lot of us have wondered over the years what’s up with this,” said Charlie Trotter of Chicago, a longtime Beard Foundation supporter. He added that chefs were always puzzling over the math on the dinners. His own scholarship fund, he said, had “given money to the Beard Foundation just for scholarships, and I wonder what ever happened with that.”

Changes underway

Others are more pragmatic. Marcel Desaulniers of the Trellis in Williamsburg, who is scheduled to present a dinner in November at the Beard House with another Virginia chef, says “this certainly can’t help in terms of corporate sponsorship.” But “people are not going to say, ‘I’m not going to the James Beard House.’ It’s too tantalizing.”

David Burke of Davidburke & Donatella in New York is scheduled to cook at the house on Sept. 27. “I have a commitment, and I keep my commitment,” he said. “Whether or not I will continue to do so is another question.”

George P. Sape, a New York lawyer who was elected last week to the new position of chairman of the board, said Monday that the foundation was already making changes. The reconfigured board is intent on becoming more accountable, he said, with one member acting as executive director overseeing day-to-day operations until a professional can be hired. In the past, the board met infrequently and primarily got information only from Pickell. As a result, Sape said, “money was used for purposes that had the board known, we would have said no.”

Hints of the trouble were first reported in the New York Daily News in July. The New York Post weighed in with more details in August, including the state inquiry. (A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said last week that he could not comment on any investigation but confirmed that one had been begun after two anonymous tips were received.) The New York Times followed up with its front-page report on Sept. 6.

Burke said “there was always grumbling among chefs” over where money raised was going. In the wake of the disclosures, Melanie Young, the awards director, said she was working “to create a distance between the awards and everything else that’s going on.”

“They’re not a fundraiser,” she said. “They’re a program. Do the Tonys raise money?” She described the awards as separate and solvent.

The $1-million budget for the awards, however, comes from the foundation as well as from corporate sponsors and ticket sales. “It’s all James Beard money,” Sape said.

Some in the food world are hoping for changes in how chefs are chosen to cook at the house, often portrayed as the culinary Carnegie Hall. Eric Ripert of New York’s Le Bernardin, who was at a recent dinner and said he owed much of his career advancement to the foundation, added that he was surprised to read in the New York Times that chefs were selected from “publicity materials, sample menus and word of mouth.” “They have to have someone tasting,” he said.

Some complaints have been voiced that more “country club chefs” with deep-pocket backers are coming in. Chefs donate time and staff and usually give their food allowance back to the foundation. But they absorb air fare and hotel costs; one chef said a dinner cost him at least $20,000.

Ripert said the organization was already starting to solicit input from chefs, and Sape said the trustees hoped to make the advisory board more active.

But the bottom line is where it always has been.

“It’s been the talk of everyone in the industry what the scholarship money goes for, where the money goes,” Palmer said. “Nobody wanted to ask questions. Everyone wanted to get a Beard award.”