Joe Hyde, in the words of novelist Robert Crichton, was “sort of semilegendary”. He attracted those of genius and personality and impacted the lives of many with color and whimsy. In 1971 he authored a brilliant cookbook Love, Time and Butter and catered many meals for a broad array of notables. He died on Friday, February 23rd at Nyack Hospital from complications of emphysema, said Phil Hyde, his son. His children were with him when he died.

Robert H. Boyle, an author and a long-time senior writer for Sports Illustrated best summed up the most memorable aspects of Joe’s life in an article written for the magazine profiling “Remarkable Champions and Experts, Sportsmen and Men of Gusto”. The profile on Joe was called “Trick or Truite: Here Comes Joe Hyde”.

Elegance and simplicity were the why and the wherefore of Chef Joe Hyde…

Gastronomically, Joe Hyde belonged to the classic French school, with the emphasis, as an admiring food critic of The New Yorker once put it, on “preserving the essential greatness of the ingredients, rather than exalting them to complicated and recognizable heights.” At one point he did about 60 parties a year while living with his family in Sneden’s Landing, a small enclave in Palisades, New York and a house on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard. He loved nothing better than to have a client ask if the fish was fresh – for he was then able to say that he had caught it himself at the Vineyard the day before.

Hyde, who died at 79, was born surrounded by the “Beautiful People”. His maternal grandmother, Mary Lawrence Tonetti, a sculptress, started the artistic colony at Sneden’s Landing on the Hudson River. Hyde’s neighbors have included Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Katherine Cornell, Jerome Robbins, Mike Wallace, Aaron Copland, Noel Coward, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Bill Murray and Burgess Meredith. As a youngster, Hyde taught Olivier how to sail; his boat was named Fiddle-dee-dee, a favorite expression of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Hyde’s father, Bobby Hyde, was a well-known eccentric in his time having founded the bohemian community on Mountain Drive in Santa Barbara, California during the 50’s and 60’s. He authored Winds of the Gobi as well as Six More at Sixty detailing the adoption of six Mexican children with his third wife, Floppy.

Elegance and simplicity were the why and the wherefore of Chef Joe Hyde…

Joe went to prep school at Millbrook and then to college at Trinity in Hartford. Upon graduating from Trinity in 1950, Hyde decided on a conventional career, the hotel business, because he enjoyed meeting people. He went to work at Hotel Raleigh in Washington D.C., and there he started in the kitchen. He perceived immediately, he recalled, that cooking was his destiny. There was no interruption in this life path when he was drafted into the army where he wound up serving as cook for a heavy-mortar company in Korea, taking along a Betty Crocker Cookbook. There he improvised and was remembered for many creations – one made with hamburger meat, garlic, tomato sauce and sliced cheese that he proudly stated “the boys liked it – they called it “Holy Mattress”.

On return to civilian life he worked as a room clerk at the Statler Hilton in NY before going to France where he worked as an apprentice at famed “Chez Nandron” in Lyons, a city considered at the time to be the culinary capital of the world. He next became an assistant poissonier, or fish cook, at the Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne where he trained under the legendary Fernand Point. At the time it was regarded by many as the best restaurant in the world.

After two years in France, Hyde returned to the United States to become chef at the Jupiter Island Club in Hobe Sound, Florida. One of his triumphs there was a chicken poached inside a pig’s bladder, which he prepared for Sir Osbert Sitwell and Marshall Field.

Hyde spent a summer as head chef at the Misquamicut Club in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. At one point Cole Porter wrote a letter of introduction to Le Pavillion but Hyde ended up working at the Waldorf in NY and then went to Brussels for one year. He later decided to teach cooking at UCLA. When his mother’s home fell vacant, he returned east to teach in the family mansion known as the Old Library because it had once served as one in the nineteenth century. Built in 1685, the house was also celebrated as a meeting place of George Washington and Lafayette.

In a roundup of cooking schools, The New York Times went beyond the city line to include Hyde’s school because his classes had “too much merit”. Similarly another Manhattan food expert wrote, “It is not my custom to concern myself with matters beyond the limits of my own borough, but I have an excuse in this case – that I would go a lot farther afield than Rockland County to find a teacher with Mr. Hyde’s combined gifts for cooking and teaching”.

In 1966 Hyde gave up teaching to devote himself full-time to catering. He shifted his kitchen from the Old Library to a sort of miniature palace nearby that had been built by his Uncle, Eric Gugler, an architect and designer of the executive offices in the West Wing of the White House. There, amid historic frescoes, triumphant arches and heroic busts, Hyde turned out smoked bluefish, stuffed eggs, poached salmon and orange mousse.

Hyde had cooked and catered in all sorts of places. At a party at a manufacturing plant, he used a forklift truck to serve the appetizers. When the Broadway musical Camelot opened, he catered the party for lyricist Alan Jay Lerner. He also catered parties for the Josh Logans, including one party in honor of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones. Carter Burden, the social former NYC councilman, wrote Hyde several letters complaining he could not find the persimmon ice cream that was left behind.

In the early 70’s he worked with Charles Chevillot and opened the famed restaurant “La Petite Ferme” in the village and later moved it to a location on 71st and Lexington. Clientele included Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Also in the 70’s, Hyde and Everett Poole who ran a fish market in Menemsha, on Martha’s Vineyard, began turning out a line of frozen fish and shellfish dishes, prepared by “Famous Chef Joe Hyde”. One Vineyard resident went to three dinner parties in a week, and all the hostesses passed off Hyde’s dishes as their own. Boyle remarked in his article, “They should have known better, the Vineyard being true Hyde territory at the time”.

He was admired by his culinary peers. Julia Childs included a number of tips from Joe Hyde in her books and also enjoyed a friendship with many generations of Hydes and Tonettis. Marian Morash, of the Public Television show, The Victory Garden, frequently utilized Joe’s concepts and recipes in her books and on the show. When Jock Gifford opened his restaurant The Straight Wharf in Nantucket Joe frequently served up his most famous dishes as the featured chef for its first two seasons. During this same time he also worked at Jock’s restaurant The Harvest in Cambridge.

A noteworthy eccentric in his own right – it was often rumored, and Hyde was convinced as well, that Sneden’s neighbor Mike Nichol’s had based the Jack Nicholson character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on the unique personality of Joe Hyde. Bob Boyle wrote “At Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard, where fishing for striped bass can be a pretentious production calling for belted waders, plug bags and floating flashlights, Hyde once appeared on the beach carrying a rod and wearing a dark blue suit, brightly polished black shoes and a derby hat. As the other anglers watched in silence, Hyde waded into the surf up to his armpits, caught two twenty-pound stripers, tipped his bowler to onlookers and departed, dripping wet”.

In his later years he resided in Sneden’s in the “Little House in the Woods” which had been built by his parents, where he had been raised as a small child and had started his own family. At the time of his death he was a resident at a senior living facility, Dowling Gardens, in Sparkill, NY which is run by Dominican nuns. There he continued his trademark of entertainment by turning quiet bingo and poker games into wild affairs usually ending with a reprimand from the sisters who would sternly refer to him as “young man”. His daughter Anne said “With his last breath so went a magical era in Sneden’s that none of us who lived any part of it, will ever forget”.

During his time in Sneden’s, after his return from Korea, Hyde married Abigail Wrenn and had three children; Anne Tonetti Hyde (Dunsmore), Philip Lawrence Hyde and Barry Lawrence Hyde. Anne lives in California with her husband Michael and has founded a fundraising company serving clients that include President Bush, UCLA Medical Sciences, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation LA Chapter and now the LA County Museum of Art. Barry is the Chief Marketing Officer at the USGA in Far Hills and was named one of the “Top 40 under 40” influences in the world of golf. Phil runs Anne’s company, Capital Campaigns and graduated with honors from Cornell University’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management.

Joe is also survived by his 5 grandchildren; Alissa and Mary LeGassick of Los Angeles, California and Kyle, Joseph “Austen” and Margaret Hyde of Houston, Texas. His brother, Francois Hyde lives in Londonderry, Vermont and sisters, Anne G. Bjorklund and Susan B. Macy reside in Santa Barbara, California and Lake Tashmoo in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts respectively.

More information can be found on www.celebratingjoehyde.com