The Sonoma Table

(Photo Credit: Paul Harris)

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, widely known as M.F.K. Fisher, was an American food writer and essayist who left an indelible mark on the culinary literary landscape. Fisher's work transcends mere recipes, delving into the realms of culture, history, and personal reflection. Her eloquent prose and insightful observations about the intersection of food and life have made her a revered figure in the world of gastronomy.   In a career spanning more than 60 years, she wrote hundreds of stories for The New Yorker, as well as 15 books of essays and memories. Her notable works include "How to Cook a Wolf" and "The Art of Eating," where she shares not just recipes, but stories that resonate with the universal and timeless connection between food and the human spirit.

In a nod to this extraordinary force within one of our pillars, LDEI established the M.F.K. Fisher Award in 2006 to recognize excellent works by women in all media that broaden understanding of the diversity and depth of the intersection of food and culture. Read about the past winners here.

M.F.K. spent the last 20 years of her life in Glen Ellen, here in Sonoma County on the Bouverie Preserve. It was during this time when our very own Sonoma/SF Dame Kathleen Hill became great friends.  This newsletter focuses on Kathleen and her personal memories of this iconic woman writer.

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Before I was old enough to vote or even drink legally, I was a Peace Corp intern and worked in the White House.  I have never been impressed by much since then. But one night my husband, Gerald Hill, and I went to dinner with Sonoma Mayor Jeanne Markson and her husband Dick at a local Sonoma restaurant. Dick had the physical therapy concession at Sonoma Valley Hospital, and M.F.K. Fisher was one of his regular, or maybe slightly irregular, patients. Dick mentioned that M.F.K. and David Pleydell-Bouverie were dining at the far end of the room. I said while I had never read any of her work, I had read a lot about her and would love to meet her.

Suddenly she was standing beside me, so close she was all I could see to my left. Of course I stood up to greet her, as I was taught to do because she was “older,” a relative term 40 years later. Our eyes locked, we hit it off, and she invited me up to her house on Bouverie’s ranch in Glen Ellen the next day, suggesting we get together at 6 a.m. I declined, and we negotiated a time when I wasn’t cooking or getting kids ready for school.

That led to many weekday conversations for the next seven years, which included me reading and making her requested changes to her unpublished work multiple times and taking her to art shows and concerts.

One morning Mary Frances’ longtime assistant, Marsha Moran, called me and said Julia Child was on her way to the house and asked if I would like to come up. After a one-second meditation, I said yes.

During the conversation, Mary Frances asked me to get a certain French cookbook from her shelves. Julia asked Mary Frances if she and I would like to translate it
with her, and Mary Frances responded, “Yes, if Kathleen will do
the work.” This was the day I cooked lunch for the three of us
from what was left in the fridge.

(Kathleen standing; Mary Frances sitting below Kathleen;
Julia Child sitting on right)

And then there was the Bill Moyers PBS interview where Mary
Frances almost didn’t “show up” and the producers called me in a panic, afraid she would be incapable of getting herself ready and alert with Bill Moyers on his way. I had known Bill Moyers from my time at the Peace Corps where he was Deputy Director under President Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver.

When I got to Last House - Mary Frances’ two room residence on the Bouverie Preserve, she was spread out on her chaise lounge, seemingly very weak. I reminded her who was coming, knowing she worshiped him. They actually had a fabulous conversation sitting face to face and obviously were totally aware of and devoted to each other’s work.

Always fascinating were Mary Frances’ fans and near worshipers who came to meet and be close to her, wanting to emulate the life she wrote about. It was here that I had the wonderfully good fortune to meet Julia Child, Alice Waters, Anne Lamott, Margrit and Robert Mondavi, Evan and Judith Jones (Julia Child’s editor), Jack Shoemaker, Madeleine Kamman, Dori Greenspan, surrealist collector Judith Mallin who invited me to dinner in New York with Julie Man Ray, Napa bookstore owner and teacher Marietta Voorhees, novelist Sue Miller with whom I stayed in Boston, and transgender Welsh historian and travel writer James/Jan Morris with whom my husband, Gerald Hill, and I became good friends.

To learn more about her, Mary Frances encouraged me to travel to London to meet and interview her friend, the British writer Sybil Bedford whose books Mary Frances’ sister Norah Barr gave me. Sybil’s and my dinner conversation lasted through two bottles of wine. Mary Frances then encouraged me to visit famed artist Helen Frankenthaler in Connecticut, whom I interviewed at her home near Darien.

One of the professors on my Masters committee in political psychology, Mack McCarthy, asked me to arrange for him to visit and read his poetry to Mary Frances, which I did, and he returned and read to her four times. In 1992 as he and the rest of the academic committee were quizzing me on my thesis, I got a chill and a feeling that something had flown from my shoulders. I wrote McCarthy a note on a post-it that I thought she had just passed, and he said “Get out of here. Go to her.”

I did, and eventually wrote Mary Frances’ obituary for the James Beard House newsletter, at Dori Greenspan’s request, and for the Sonoma Index-Tribune.

—Written by Dame Kathleen Hill with introduction by Dame Lisa Stavropoulos