Trailblazing Texas food journalist Dotty Griffith dies at 71

Dotty Griffith, pioneering Texan food journalist, Daily Texan Hall of Fame winner, cookbook author and longtime restaurant critic for The Dallas Morning News, died on September 13 of pancreatic cancer in her family’s home in Dallas. She was 71.

Until shortly before her death, she wrote a weekly restaurant and food column for Katy Trail Weekly. As an associate professor, she taught a class in food writing at the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas for five years up until this spring semester. Les Dames d’Escoffier, a women’s organization dedicated to food and wine service, awarded it a journalism scholarship for UNT students earlier this year.

Griffith, a 5th generation Texan, was a Texas original remembered by friends and colleagues alike as wild and fearless, intelligent and loyal, and quick-witted than anyone they had ever met.

Griffith was a pioneering journalist who took recipes from the “women’s sections” of newspapers and incorporated them into serious discussions about kitchens and restaurant trends. She was more than a food journalist. She enjoyed talking about how to dress a deer as well as summarizing complex policy guidelines. All delivered with their signature rapier wit.

The author of 12 cookbooks and a prolific freelance writer for publications such as The New York Times and Southern Living, Griffith was the ACLU’s first communications director for Texas and was often seen on television and at major events for the great Texas “personality” she was.

“Dotty had this great dry sense of humor in Texas,” said Dallas chef Dean Fearing, a longtime friend and cookbook contributor.

She didn’t play favorites despite being friends with everyone, he says, and she brought chefs to justice in a tough restaurant town.

“I can’t always say that when she inspected me at the mansion [restaurant] I’ve always loved their reviews, ”says Fearing. “She threw me around and I had to be jumped around. Back then I was out and about a lot and not in a restaurant. It wasn’t up to par. And because of her, I really said, ‘If I want to be a chef at the Mansion, I have to stay at the Mansion.’

“She really helped me get back to planet earth and do what I have to do – be a chef and not be a big star chef.”

Much of Griffith’s legacy in food journalism is her role in the birth of modern Texas and Southwest cuisine, which Fearing co-ran with chefs Stephan Pyles from Dallas and Robert Del Grande from Houston.

“Dotty drove Dallas into the modern food world,” says Fearing. In the early 1980s, Dallas was mostly made up of French, Italian and continental restaurants, and “you really had to be a rebel,” he adds. “I like the fact that she supported us and what we did [with Southwest cuisine]. It’s easy not to support if you didn’t understand, or didn’t like, or didn’t think it was necessary. … Dotty helped establish Texas food, support it and make sure we stick with it. “

Her influence during her tenure on the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Awards Committee went a long way in establishing Texas as a serious food region. She was also the author of cookbooks such as Wild About Chili, 1985; Celebrating the Grilling, 2010; The Texas Holiday Cookbook, 1997 and 2013, and The Ultimate Tortilla Press Cookbook, 2018.

Griffith began her career at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held many roles for the school newspaper The Daily Texan, including law and state policy, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1972.

Dotty Griffith published The Texas Holiday Cookbook in 1997 through Gulf Publishing, with photos by Rick Turner Photography. (Rick Turner Photography)

“More people eat than they choose”

“She really was a pioneer,” said Bob Mong, president of the University of North Texas at Dallas and former editor of The Dallas Morning News.

Griffith began her 36 years with The News in 1972 as a general-purpose reporter. Mong remembers her as strong, smart, and determined.

“She was part of a group of really smart women from UT,” he says. “It seems strange to say now, but they wanted women to be on the newsroom.”

Terri Burke, Griffith’s longtime friend and editor at The News and later her boss at the ACLU in Texas, says Dotty showed all doubters in those early days that she had deep thinking and a quick, analytical mind.

“I’m fortunate to have a lot of bright and funny friends, and I don’t think I have a friend who’s funnier or faster than Dotty,” says Burke. Griffith once attended a tasting at a Dallas hotel where Burke’s husband worked. “She said to him, ‘You just have to lose some of this food.’ It has become a catchphrase in our family. She didn’t mince her words, but gave good advice. “

In 1977, Griffith became the food editor. In 1996, Griffith became a restaurant critic for the newspaper, a position she held for 10 years. In 2006 she retired from The News.

“She represented ambitious female journalists,” says Mong. “I thought she was fearless in her dealings with herself. She always had a point of view.

“The restaurant critic role is always a tough job herself, and she has her strong reporting skills behind it,” added Mong. “And she didn’t just want to do the critic job, she wanted to do something with it. It really paved the way for future critics. “

Burke recounts one of Dotty’s famous lines: “When I asked her why she switched to eating, she said, ‘I’ve found that more people eat than they choose.'”

Dotty Griffith cooks blue corn tortillas at the Dallas Morning News photo studio in Dallas on September 14, 2018. (Nathan Hunsinger / employee photographer)

A food evolution

Griffith’s time reporting on Essen in Dallas was truly a renaissance and a time of evolution. Times changed. The grocery departments shifted from entertaining only housewives to coverage that took women in the workplace into account, and the stories had broader appeal and coverage. The dining world in Dallas also evolved, from French and Italian restaurants to more creative and rebellious, chef-oriented dishes sourced from local farms.

“She was there at a crucial moment when our society was changing,” says Burke. “I don’t know if she realized it then, but she was on the front line.”

Mong reiterates that she was one of the first people to really take up the southwest kitchen in Dallas and Houston. “She really understood what was going on,” he says.

Griffith appreciated and understood Texan food, from chilli to Southwestern cuisine to Tex-Mex. She even played a pivotal role in placing the original frozen margarita machine, a creation from Dallas, in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The machine was invented in 1970 by Mariano Martinez of the Martinez Mexican Cuisine restaurant, when, inspired by Slurpees, he adapted a soft ice cream machine to create margaritas.

Griffith spoke to her colleague at the Smithsonian, Dallasite Rayna Green, who was the curator of the American Food and Wine History Project.

“You did the research and the rest is history,” says Griffith’s longtime friend Dedie Leahy. “It was clearly Dotty’s recognition of the historical significance and value of this invention, which is so much a part of Texas history and is still a recognizable, hugely popular drink today, that it deserves to be with Julia Childs Kitchen at the Smithsonian . “

After ‘The News’

In 2008, Griffith became director of public education for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, first in Austin and later in Houston, where she worked with her former boss, Burke.

“I became executive director in January 2008, and immediately called Dotty and said, ‘This is a mess and I need help,'” says Burke. “She came to participate, to find out what a communications department should look like, and stayed for five years.”

Burke says people thought she was crazy to hire someone to be a grocery editor, but “She was quick to show them her analytical mind.”

She was quick witted but in a way that really got to the heart of the subject, which made her a fun friend and a great journalist.

Burke recalls a time when she had to grapple with the subject of drone use in law enforcement. She studied for weeks.

“I met Dotty on the way to an interview and after a brief explanation she said, ‘Oh boy, so you’re talking about little boys and their toys, huh.’ So I said that line in the interview, and it became a clip on the Jay Leno show. … It’s just a great example of how she could really get to the heart of a subject. “

Griffith returned to Dallas in 2013 as Executive Director of the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association, but later left that position to return to full-time writing and teaching food.

She became Associate Professor of Journalism at UNT, where she created and taught a course in culinary journalism.

In recent years, Griffith has been recognized for her contributions to food journalism. In 2018, Griffith was named the Austin Daily Texas Hall of Fame Honoree to the University of Texas and also received the Legends Award from the Press Club of Dallas.

And although she had a long and groundbreaking career, she is remembered by loved ones as a proud mother, grandmother and friend.

Her two adult children are attorneys: Kelly Griffith Stephenson is an Assistant US Attorney in San Antonio and Caitlin Stephenson Porto is a litigation and criminal defense attorney in Kansas City, Missouri.

“She’s a very loyal friend,” says Burke. The kind of friend who will step in and help out right away. “Dotty is the original bionic woman. She has two artificial knees, two artificial hips and one artificial ankle, ”says Burke. When Burke’s elderly mother had her knee replaced and was in Houston for six weeks, Griffith went downstairs to take care of her because “she was best at knee replacement.” “She said, ‘Here, I can help. I can do this. ‘”

“She is as close to a sister as I could have been.”

Griffith was born in Terrell, Texas in 1949 to Edward M. and Dorothy Koch Griffith. Her parents precede her in death. She is survived by her son Kelly Griffith Stephenson and his wife Jessica (Jess) Gilles of San Antonio and their son Griffith Philip Stephenson; Daughter Caitlin Stephenson Porto from Kansas City and her husband Tom Porto and granddaughters Isabelle Mary Porto and Genevieve Lee Porto; as well as Tom Stephenson and Sally Giddens Stephenson and their son Jack from Dallas.

Dotty Griffith speaks to Gary Cogill on the set of Good Morning Texas in 1999.(Natalie Caudill / 135805)

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