Jane Ries, whose bright personality and trusted voice as the food critic of The Post and Courier earned her acclaim and admiration in Charleston, died Oct. 10. She was 77.
Friends of the family confirmed her death was due to breast cancer, a disease Ries had been battling on and off throughout her adult life. She is survived by her sister Betsy and brother Chip.
"She had an incredible, positive spirit and attitude," said Sheila Wertimer, Ries' close friend. "She had a wonderful laugh. A lot of joie de vivre. Even when she was very, very sick she was always just a wonderful time."
Ries served as critic during the merger that brought The Evening Post and The News and Courier together to form The Post and Courier. Throughout the 1990s, she reviewed restaurants (using the surname Kronsberg) at a time when Charleston restaurants embraced the concept of “Lowcountry cuisine.”
More seafood hit restaurant menus and chefs started bringing a seasonal approach to traditional and technically sound Southern cuisine. Wertimer frequently dined with Ries while she worked at the newspaper.
"There was a group of us, and it wouldn’t be her real review, and she’d go there to kind of check out the place," Wertimer said. "A lot of them were restaurants that are not around anymore."
Ries' 1995 review of Fast & French. Sheila Wertimer/Provided
Many of Ries’ reviews were about restaurants that are still open today, such as Gaulart and Maliclet’s Fast & French. In the 1995 review, she declared the Broad Street restaurant was “the French version of our old fashioned lunch counters, but with a lot more panache.”
Before her work as a critic, Ries started one of Charleston’s first formal cooking classes in her Queen Street kitchen. This caught the attention of Gian Carlo Menotti, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who founded Spoleto Festival USA in 1977.
Around this time, Menotti hired Ries to be his private chef, and for the next eight years she cooked “dinners on a shoestring for the visiting divas, ballet companies, musicians, performers and local dignitaries whom Menotti entertained," according to the book “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen” by Matt and Ted Lee.
Callie White, co-founder of Callie's Charleston Biscuits (now Callie's Hot Little Biscuit), met Ries during this time, a period of the city’s history she fondly describes as “a crazy, wild, free era.”
“She was my person to appreciate food with, and I think there’s no other woman in town that’s as respected and admired,” White said. “I’m going to feel this loss greatly.”
When the Spoleto Festival first landed in Charleston, Ries spearheaded the opening of its own temporary tearoom in the first floor of the Fort Sumter House, owned by Countess Alicia Spaulding Paolozzi. Ries and volunteers would host dinners in Menotti’s house at night and lunch for ticketholders during the day at the Fort Sumter House.
In 1997, Ries published “Charleston: People, Places and Food,” in which she called the South “not only a geographic area in America, but also a state of mind.” She went on to work as a real estate agent at Disher, Hamrick & Myers.
Ries was diagnosed with cancer decades ago; White estimates that she was in her 30s. She went into remission and remained in good health until the cancer came back in 2016. According to Wertimer, Ries was still throwing dinner parties this year. White also commented on her friend’s bravery during her most recent fight with breast cancer.
“She rocked a scarf like no one I’ve ever known,” White said. “She handled that beautifully and never was complaining or anything else.”
Arrangements for Ries are being handled by James A. McAlister Funerals and Cremations.
