The Man Behind The Celebrity Chefs -- Seattle Publicist Louis Richmond Has Helped Turn Many Restaurants And Chefs Into Household Names

The voice on the phone sounds impatient, the words rushed.

An interview? Yes. Friday? Fine. In a flash, Louis Richmond, owner of the voice, agrees to an interview date.

Richmond operates at a fast-food pace, even if he made his name promoting white-tablecloth restaurants and top chefs - ones he's helped turn into celebrities.

If you recognize the names of Seattle chefs Monique Barbeau or Kathy Casey or have heard of Fullers restaurant or the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, Richmond may be one of the reasons.

He's a public relations man, one of those behind-the-scenes people who help shape consumers' decisions - including eating habits - by generating publicity for clients.

He's anything but laid-back

Richmond, who made an unlikely career switch from classical music to PR, has won national public-relations awards and last year was named, "hands down," Seattle's best PR person by the Seattle Weekly.

The owner of the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, Eric Temple, says Richmond has generated huge amounts of media attention to the train - news stories Temple figures equaled $1 million worth of paid advertising over three years. News-media types call Richmond helpful, savvy and accurate, although with a controlling bent at times.

A fit marathoner at 52, Richmond's Eastern accent reveals his Philadelphia roots, and his intense style is anything but Northwest laid-back. Whether because of or in spite of these trademarks isn't clear, but he's made his PR mark, especially on the local food scene.

Star-status chefs help lure diners into restaurants. The eateries of L.A.'s Wolfgang Puck, San Francisco's Jeremiah Towers and New Orleans' Paul Prudhomme all benefit from the fame of their owner-chefs.

Clients include Nabisco, chefs

Richmond Public Relations represents restaurants, food companies (including giant Nabisco) and non-food businesses, but Richmond is particularly linked to the celebrity of three talented young women chefs - Casey, Caprial Pence and Barbeau - who've all been head chefs, in turn, at Fullers restaurant in the Seattle Sheraton Hotel & Towers.

What is a celebrity chef? To give you an idea, here's what Barbeau, the current chef, has been up to lately:

-- She was in New York last week as a presenter at the James Beard Foundation awards, which in 1994 named Barbeau and Tom Douglas of the Dahlia Lounge best chefs in the Northwest.

-- She's featured in two new books, "Home Food," by Debbie Shore and Catherine Townsend, and Julia Child's "In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs," and will appear in a segment of Child's new TV cooking series. She's been featured recently in Gourmet and other magazines.

-- She was a guest chef recently at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Barbeau, in fact, was hired by the Sheraton - with a yes vote from Richmond - not only for her skills as a chef, but her PR poise.

She is so in demand now that Richmond mainly manages her publicity opportunities; he doesn't have to create them. But whether dreaming up publicity schemes or simply exploiting them to the max, Richmond is often called one of PR's most creative minds.

A bear comes to dinner

Once, in the '80s, when working for the Sheraton, he had a circus bear dine at what is now the hotel's Pike Street Cafe. The bear arrived by limo, registered at the hotel desk with a paw print and sat at a table to dine on salad. Because of changed attitudes toward animals, Richmond says he wouldn't do that stunt today, but it worked then. The story made news nationwide.

He employs more sophisticated tactics, too, such as having chefs cook for high-profile charity events. And more. When Pence was the Fullers head chef, Richmond choreographed a trip for her and two other Fullers chefs to the then-Soviet Union.

They'd been invited by Soviet officials who dined at Fullers during planning sessions for the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle. Richmond invited a New York Times reporter along, and the stories ran in newspapers across the United States.

Later, Pence and top Russian chefs cooked for the Soviet ambassador in Washington, D.C.. Again, widespread publicity. "Louis knows how to get what he wants. He's pretty persuasive," Pence says today. "He never said no to the press, which made him somebody they always came to."

Launching a young chef

Richmond first honed his chef-promoting skills with Casey, in the mid-1980s. New at the Sheraton then, he spotted her in the kitchen and saw potential. A talented, inventive chef, Casey, then 22, also had a "look," with her spiky, blond hair and wild earrings.

"She stuck out from the crowd, she had presence," Richmond recalls in his downtown, art-bedecked office, with its desk of pink Turkish marble. Tieless, in white shirt and gray slacks, he makes it clear he'll give this interview all the time needed.

With Richmond's help and Sheraton backing, young Casey was soon in local media and then on ABC's "Good Morning America." Cooking for The New York Times's Craig Claiborne yielded more publicity.

Casey and Pence now have successful post-Fullers careers - Casey with food writing and a busy restaurant-consulting business, and Pence with her own Portland restaurant and a TV cooking series.

While their talents are unquestioned, there's no doubt that smart PR and corporate support also helped boost them into the limelight and Fullers into national notice.

Still, some other Seattle chefs, such as Douglas, get media attention without that kind of backing. In Douglas' case, knowing observers credit not only his creative cooking but his willingness to cook for countless charity events.

Mauny Kaseburg, who's done PR consulting for such restaurants as Ray's Boathouse, says publicity will draw customers once, but an eatery must be good to bring them back.

`Destined to be a musician'

Richmond's creative impulses, so effective in publicity, were once turned elsewhere. Anyone not tuned in to Seattle's classical-music history might be surprised to learn he founded and directed the Northwest Chamber Orchestra in the 1970s, taught music at the University of Puget Sound and, earlier, was a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra, in Washington, D.C.

"I was destined to be a musician," he says. Encouraged by his mother, a bookkeeper, and his father, a repairer of dental tools, he saw classical music as "cool, not nerdy," and spent hours practicing his cello.

Studies at the Eastman School of Music and Temple University followed, and by 22 he was in the National Symphony. But he found he didn't enjoy orchestra playing, so moved on to teaching music, eventually at UPS. But academia didn't suit him either - "I hated it, really" - and he couldn't earn a living only with the chamber orchestra.

So he abandoned music, applied for a marketing job at the Alexis Hotel and got it. Later came the Sheraton, and, in 1992, his own public-relations company.

He still thrives on Bach, and tells his staffers to model their press releases after the composer's music: As with Bach's every note, make every word count.

An inhaler of the written word who often reads until midnight, Richmond spent his recent Hawaiian-vacation beach time reading Camus' bleak existential novel, "The Plague." But he also watches "Seinfeld."

His staff of 12 includes his son, Lorne, an account executive, and wife, Betty Ann, a psychotherapist who also helps out at the PR company.

Where does Louis Richmond, restaurant promoter, like to dine? Most of all at his Montlake home, on Betty Ann's cooking.