The State - News from Feb. 6, 1987

A Sacramento restaurant suffered a sharp decline in business when patrons discovered that a chef who had worked there five years earlier had died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. “It’s bizarre,” said Ralph Granthem, owner of Bon Appetit in suburban Fair Oaks. He said the obituary of chef Herb Finger, published Jan. 23 in the Sacramento Bee, had mentioned both the cause of death and the fact that he had formerly worked at the Bon Appetit. Doctors, Granthem pointed out, know that AIDS cannot be transmitted through cooking. Nonetheless, he said, several catering jobs, one of them to serve 200 people, were canceled immediately afterward. “We served two people Sunday,” Granthem said. “Saturday night we did 21, when we would usually have nearly 100.”