Phila Hach

Phila Hach — pronounced "File-ah Hah" (née Rawlings, June 13, 1926 – December 2, 2015) was an American chef, restaurant owner, innkeeper, and caterer who authored 17 cookbooks, including recipe collections for the 1982 World's Fair, Opryland USA and Cracker Barrel restaurants. She has been called the "grand dame of southern cooking" and counted as good friends Duncan Hines and Julia Child. Hach catered functions for the United Nations, U.S. mayors and governors, military personnel and celebrities, and was the one of the pastry chefs at the wedding of Princess Diana.

As a young flight attendant on international routes, she talked her way into the kitchens of top hotels in Europe on flight layovers, and was convincing enough to gain access to established chefs, in order to learn how haute cuisine kitchens operated. She hosted the first televised cooking show in the southern U.S., which ran on WSM-TV in Nashville from 1950 to 1956, and which won her a Zenith television award.

Hach won the Food Arts Magazine "Silver Spoon Award" in 2009 and was the 2015 winner of the Ruth Fertel "Keeper of the Flame Award", given yearly by the Southern Foodways Alliance to the "unsung hero or heroine who has made a great contribution to food". Hach was keynote speaker at large conventions including the Culinary Institute of America. Southern food writer Betty Fussell said of Phila Hach, "What the 'Grand Ole Opry' did for country music, she has done for Southern food..."

Hach was born in Nashville, the child of innkeepers Sophia and Arthur Lee Rawlings. Her mother, who was Swiss, also worked as a home demonstration agent for the U.S. Government during the great depression. Her job was to provide hot lunches to local schools. As a teen, Hach spent the summers of 1942-44 learning from a Hungarian chef at a summer resort, the former Lookout Mountain Hotel in Chattanooga. Hach stated, "He taught me not to waste anything, and to start with fabulous ingredients. Nothing is better than what it starts out to be". She earned a degree in music from Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, and also a bachelor's degree in foods and nutrition in 1949 from Vanderbilt University.

...
Wikipedia