Michael Batterberry, founder of Food & Wine magazine, dies

Michael Batterberry, an authority on the aesthetics of food and culture who, with his wife, launched two magazines that influenced the thinking of home cooks and chefs alike, died Wednesday of cancer at a hospital in New York City. He was 78.

Batterberry was a journalist and historian before he and his wife, Ariane, founded Food & Wine magazine in 1978. It capitalized on, and contributed to, a new wave of culinary sophistication in the United States.

The Batterberrys sold the magazine after only two years, but the editorial formula they created - with down-to-earth features on diet foods, menus for one and step-by-step cooking instructions - has influenced dozens of other magazines and television shows.

Batterberry and his wife settled into a comfortable life as arbiters of taste and forecasters of trends in food. Their book "On the Town in New York," first published in 1973 and updated in 1998, is considered the authoritative history of dining in the country's culinary capital.

"Don't fall for the romance of early New York life," Batterberry said in 1991, describing older tastes in food. "Those were rough times. People wanted comfort, not challenge."

In 1988, the Batterberrys launched Food Arts magazine, lavishly produced for the hotel and restaurant trade. The magazine, whose small circulation of 56,000 belies its outsize influence, reports on new trends in dining and spotlights up-and-coming restaurants and chefs. Batterberry was editor until his death; his wife is publisher.

Michael Carver Batterberry was born April 8, 1932, to American parents in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, where his father was a business executive with Procter & Gamble.

The author of 18 books, Batterberry had little interest in writing about food until he married Ariane Ruskin in 1968 and settled in New York. They developed the concept for Food & Wine in the early 1970s but found little support until Hugh Hefner published a prototype in Playboy magazine and furnished startup money.

In May, Batterberry and his wife received a lifetime achievement award from the prestigious James Beard Foundation.

In addition to his wife, survivors include a sister.