Doris Muscatine, 80; Writer Extolled California Cuisine

Doris Muscatine, whose books about San Francisco’s innovative approach to food and wine helped define the California cuisine of the 1970s and ‘80s, has died. She was 80.

Muscatine died Saturday at her home in Berkeley of complications from a fall, her daughter, Lissa, told The Times.

She began writing about California cooking in the 1960s with such books as “A Cook’s Tour of San Francisco” (1963), which included recipes from some of the city’s popular restaurants.

She also wrote for specialty magazines throughout her career and was an editor of “The University of California/Sotheby Book of California Wine” (1984), one of the first books to fully explore the newly burgeoning California wine industry.

Muscatine had been following the local food and wine scene for a number of years when, in the 1970s, a younger generation of California chefs began to emphasize fresh local ingredients. Through her writing she helped call attention to their ideas.

“Doris saw California cuisine develop firsthand, and she understood what it meant,” said Narsai David, owner of Narsai’s restaurant in the Bay Area until it closed in the mid-1980s. With Muscatine he was coauthor of the cookbook “Monday Nights at Narsai’s” (1987). He is now the food and wine editor for KCBS radio in San Francisco.

Muscatine’s interest in wine increased in the late 1950s during an extended trip to Italy. She later wrote “A Cook’s Tour of Rome” (1964) and a memoir, “The Vinegar of Spilamberto and Other Italian Adventures With Food, Places and People” (2005).

In the more recent book, Muscatine “elegantly distilled a lifetime of visits to Italy into a memoir,” wrote a New York Times reviewer.

Friends knew her to be a wonderful cook, thanks in part to her study of French cooking at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris in the early 1960s.

Winemaking became increasingly important to her when she and her husband, Charles, became part owners of Park-Muscatine Vineyard in the Napa Valley area in the mid-1970s. They supplied grapes to several local wineries including Ridge Vineyards.

“Doris was very knowledgeable about wine and grapes,” said Paul Draper, Ridge Vineyards’ chief executive and winemaker. “She was quite passionate about grape-growing.”

Born Doris Corn in New York City, she graduated from Bennington College in Vermont before marrying Muscatine in 1945. The couple moved to California three years later when he joined the English department at UC Berkeley. They had two children.

A longtime political activist, Muscatine supported her husband when he refused to take the loyalty oath required of UC faculty members during the anti-communist era after World War II. He was fired and remained unemployed for several months but was later reinstated at Berkeley.

Along with writing books on food and wine, she also wrote “Old San Francisco: The Biography of a City From Early Days to the Earthquake” in 1976.

She was host of several television programs, including “Cook’s Tour With Doris Muscatine” in 1964, and was a consultant for a PBS television series about San Francisco’s culinary history in 1999.

In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by her son, Jeff, and six grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in her name can be made to Bennington College, Development Office, 1 College Drive, Bennington, VT 05201.