Armand J. Ferretti

Armand J. “Fred Ferretti” of Montclair, NJ passed away peacefully in his sleep on March 7, 2022. Fred was predominantly known as an awarding winning journalist and reporter; his unchanging byline lasted throughout a half-century in newspapers, magazines and books, and for television and radio. He is best known for his work in The New York Times and Gourmet Magazine from the 1970’s to early 2000s.

He was also fond of saying that he did not care to be known as a “journalist” but rather as a constant, insistent reporter, a “curious voyeur” who traveled much of the world, gathered up bits of it, ate much of it, lived on occasion in parts of it and wrote about it with a sense of discovery.

For eighteen of those 50 years he reported and wrote for The New York Times in every one of its many sections. He was variously, he recalled, a sports reporter who covered the Orange Bowl; author of a primer on how to select New York’s best beefsteak. He wandered about his city as a latter-day Baedeker searching into its little-known corners and found as a kind of cultural detective in a Madison Avenue gallery a stolen African deity, the Afo-A-Kom, and saw to its return to Cameroon.

Mr. Ferretti’s first encounter with the newspaper business was with The New York Herald Tribune. He landed a job with the “Trib,” as it was known, as a messenger out of high school, and worked his way up from copyboy, through its re-write bank to police reporter and to Bureau Chief of the newspaper’s 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. He was, as well as Chief of The Tribune’s City Hall Bureau in 1965-66. He remembered fondly his time on rewrite, writing against the clock and would cite with pride his obituary of Edward R. Murrow, written on deadline; his full-page article describing in detail Lee Harvey Oswald’s last day at large, and capture, after shooting of President John F. Kennedy; and for being the being the sole writer, organizing on deadline the story of riots that shook Harlem in the 1960’s.

His time at The Herald Tribune was interrupted for two years by his induction into the U.S. Army where, in June of 1957, because of his reporting experience he was placed in charge of a press camp in northern Japan with responsibility for observing the Army’s coverage of the first civilian trial in occupied Japan of an American soldier, William Girard, for the shooting death of an innocent Japanese woman. During the trial Mr. Ferretti lived in a General’s Command Post van in the northern town of Maebashi and provided material assistance to scores of working reporters from around the world, an assignment that earned him one of the U.S. Army’s highest decorations, the Army Commendation Medal pendant with Service Ribbon.

When The Tribune ceased publication in 1966 Mr. Ferretti worked briefly as a contributor to Time Magazine and as a news writer and editor for NBC News, before joining NBC initially as an editor, then as a correspondent then producer of its nightly 11:00 pm New York newscast from 1966 to 1969.

He joined The New York Times in 1969. Born and educated in New York City, Mr. Ferretti

earned his Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from Columbia University while working at the NY Times. Initially he was a media reporter and critic who covered television and radio for the cultural news department. He also served as a New Jersey state correspondent with a column titled “About New Jersey,” and as a general assignment and political reporter. In 1975 he was made the City Hall Bureau Chief and covered the fiscal crisis in New York City, for which he and his team of reporters were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He was also nominated for a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Attica prison uprising in 1971. As the lead reporter for the Times, he was one of a small pool of reporters who attended the first negotiations between the inmate representatives and the state parole authorities, and reported on them.

During his years at The Times, Mr. Ferretti had an ancillary career as a freelance magazine writer. While writing for every section of The Times, he contributed articles to more than 70 publications including Esquire, Time, Playboy, More, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Food Arts, Barron’s, Metropolitan Home, Cosmopolitan, George, Seventeen and the Columbia University Journalism Review. He also contributed articles to New York Magazine for which he covered politics and specifically the Ocean Hill/Brownsville School District Teacher Strike, the worst teacher strike in history (1968).

In the 1980’s, the New York Times began to change organically, leaning heavily on feature articles that enclosed its news columns. In addition to his city desk assignments, Fred Ferretti began writing for many of these fresh sections; covering assignments that included contributing to its regular “About New York” Column, personal accounts of everyday New Yorkers, and occasionally writing a social column, “the Evening Hours.” He was soon switched to the Living Section, for which he wrote features about chefs, wineries, food and restaurants. These caught the eye of Conde Naste. Jane Montant, Gourmet Magazine’s Editor offered him his own column; a personal look at the vagaries of food and “those that abuse it” as he liked to say. It was entitled “A Gourmet At Large.” He roved periodically throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East and India writing this column for fifteen years after leaving the New York Times in 1986. Mr. Ferretti also wrote a weekly syndicated column for the Copley News Service called “Travels with Fred.”

In 1978 during the citywide strike of New York’s newspapers, Mr. Ferretti, with assistance from the staff of National Public Radio, created a radio weekly called “The Sunday Papers” with himself as editor along with reporters, writers and critics of the New York Times coming together in a roundtable to report on the week’s doings. It won a Broadcast Media Award from the Broadcast Communications Arts Department of San Francisco State University.

Internationally, Mr. Ferretti has been recognized for his writing, particularly those of culinary history, the Republic of Italy and the Kingdom of Belgium both of which conferred knighthoods upon him. In France he is an honorary Officier of the prestigious Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne, a member of Compagnie des Mousquetaires D’Armagnac. He was also made a member of the Portuguese Wine Society, the Ordem dos Companheiros de Sao Vicente.

With all of his experience, he has consulted on food and wine and chefs for Singapore Airlines as a former member of its International Culinary Council. He served for a time as a member of the Advisory Board of the French Culinary Institute. Most recently, he was Food and Wine Editor for the on-line publication and archives of travelclassics.com.

Mr. Ferretti has also received recognition from his colleagues and contemporaries at times over his long career. The New York Press Club awarded him its Heart of New York Award in 1977. In 1987 and 1988, he received The Grand Prize from Italy’s Il Premio Internazionale Maria Luigia Duchessa di Parma de Giornalismo for the best essays about Parma’s food history. In 1989, Entrée, a travel and food newsletter, polled its members who voted for Mr. Ferretti as “Best Food Writer in America.”

He has authored five books of varied instincts, all relating to his life and reportorial experiences:

The Great American Marble Book (1973)

A book of nostalgia.

The Great American Book of Sidewalk, Street, Curb & Alley Games (1975)

A subsequent follow-up.

Afo-A-Kom: Sacred Art of Cameroon (1975)

Based on his reporting series about a Sacred Cameroon statue stolen

and discovered in a Madison Avenue Gallery.

The Year the Big Apple Went Bust (1976)

A day-by-day chronology of New York’s fiscal crisis.

Café des Artistes (2000)

An Insider’s Look at the Famed Restaurant & It’s Cuisine (Great Restaurants of the World)

Mr. Ferretti is married to the author, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, a leading authority on Chinese Cuisine in America, author of eleven cookbooks, famed as a chef, consultant and cooking instructor. Fred is survived by his wife Eileen; two of his children; Christopher, former newspaper writer now chef and cooking instructor at The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA; Stephen, former NBC News Assistant Producer and General Manager, Major League Lacrosse New Jersey Franchise; his nephew John Ehrlein of Delray Beach, FL. and his wife AnaLee and four children Mia, Jack, Thomas and Elliott; He is pre-deceased by his sister Grace Ehrlein and brother-in-law Jack Ehrlein of Deerfield, FL. and his daughter, Elena, 6-Time Emmy Award winning freelance television producer (Martha Stewart Living) and former online columnist (Fox Foodie). Currently, Fred has one granddaughter, Elliott Ferretti-Gray, a junior at Avenues The World School in NYC.