Patrons Shunned Restaurant : State Health Chief Dines Out to Calm Wave of AIDS Hysteria

It was not your average, quiet mid-week dinner in a French restaurant.

The combined glare of seven television cameras shone on the party of the state’s top health official, Dr. Kenneth Kizer, and the 20 staff members who trooped in behind him. They dined at Bon Appetit restaurant in the affluent Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks to make a point about AIDS.

When the Sacramento Bee reported that Herb Finger, the restaurant’s former chef--who had not worked at Bon Appetit for five years--recently died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, business dropped more than 50%. Crank calls persisted: “Hear you’re serving AIDS on the menu,” one caller said, and then hung up.

Kizer, the state director of health services and an appointee of conservative Gov. George Deukmejian, who sometimes has been accused by gay activists of not doing enough to battle discrimination against AIDS victims, said he decided to dine there to take a symbolic stand against what he called “AIDS hysteria.”

“We wanted to show that you don’t get AIDS from eating food,” he said, noting that the “hysteria” has spread far beyond Bon Appetit and Sacramento.

A worried state restaurant association official said that with half a million people employed in the industry in California, AIDS-related death in the food business--like any other business--”is going to happen again. To assume not would be folly.”

“It’s very sad and terrible that despite all the knowledge and awareness discussed and promoted that AIDS cannot (be) transmitted through food and food handling, we’re dealing with some people’s perception of things, not the reality,” said Stan Kyker, executive vice president of the California Restaurant Assn.

The reality of a dramatic drop in business hit Bon Appetit owner Ralph Granthem hard the morning of Jan. 23, when the Bee ran a short obituary of Finger. Well known in the area for his “New American” cuisine, Finger had prepared meals for parties given by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. as well as Deukmejian, according to current Bon Appetit chef Jim Turknett.

So Bon Appetit became a temporary focus of anti-AIDS and anti-gay rage, Granthem said. “I guess people are bitter about AIDS,” he said. “We just became the target for that. We got cancellations by the dozens . . . We had staff just standing around.”

Assemblyman Art Agnos (D-San Francisco) also joined Kizer at the dinner, praising Granthem’s “courage” in supporting an employee sick with AIDS--although Finger never worked for Granthem, who bought the restaurant three years after Finger left.