Alan Hooker; Restaurateur

Alan Hooker of Ojai, founder of the award-winning Ranch House restaurant in Ojai who helped introduce the lighter fare that came to represent California cuisine, has died in an Ojai convalescent home. He was 90.

Hooker was a successful jazz pianist in 1949 when he and his wife, the former Helen Hanna Miles, gave away their possessions and headed West from Ohio to join Jiddu Krishnamurti, the late philosopher who taught at Ojai.

“I would literally wake up in the night in Ohio and say, ‘Ojai! Ojai! I have to get to Ojai!’ ” Hooker said in a 1992 interview.

He was born July 10, 1902, in Carpentersville, Ill., and attended Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., for two years, paying for his schooling by playing piano.

Hooker was managing a bakery in 1950 when he and his wife opened the 16-table Ranch House in Meiners Oaks, which featured fresh-picked herbs and a vegetarian fare in a meditative garden setting. He added meat and fish dinners to the menu in the late 1950s.

The Ranch House has since expanded to 120 tables and is a fixture in guides to fine dining. The restaurant was given an award by Travel Holiday magazine for 17 straight years, has received Wine Spectator’s grand award eight years running and last year was given a five-diamond ranking in food critic Richard Balzer’s Best of the Best guide.

“Alan was born with a very sensitive palate,” said Helen Hooker, who added that her husband learned to bake bread at age 9.

“In the years since we started the restaurant, the food has changed in California,” she said. “Very quietly, he’s had a great deal to do with it.”

In 1972, Alan Hooker published a best-selling vegetarian cookbook that continues to influence contemporary cooks.

Wolfgang Puck, chef at Spago in Los Angeles and a cook closely identified with the lighter California cuisine, praised Hooker in a 1992 interview for his influence.

“He has cooking that is very warm and comfortable,” Puck said. “And you talk with him and it is like talking with your father.”

Also surviving are a brother, Donald Hooker of Illinois, and a sister, Dorothy Hooker Nye of Monterey.

Funeral arrangements were handled by the McDermott-Crockett Mortuary of Santa Barbara.