Charlotte restaurateur, educator Catherine Rabb remembered as ‘simply the best’
Don and Catherine Rabb were in their first year of marriage when Fenwick’s restaurant came up for sale on Providence Road in Myers Park.
They put in a bid and won, surprising even themselves.
“Now what do we do?” Don Rabb recalled the couple asking.
Money was tight, Rabb told The Charlotte Observer on Thursday. They couldn’t afford to change the restaurant’s name if they wanted to, he said.
“Catherine knew how to cook,” he said. “That was a good thing, because I didn’t.”
That was in 1984, and the American cuisine restaurant is still going strong.
Don Rabb was at the restaurant as usual Thursday as the lunch crowd rolled in.
“Staying busy” is how he’s enduring the loss of the woman he met in Charlotte, fell in love with and married, Don Rabb said. He is from New Orleans, and she was from Cleveland, he said.
Catherine Jane Rabb died on Dec. 8 after a two-year battle with cancer. She was 64.
Rabb said he and his family have received an outpouring of support from so many people whose lives his wife touched. He wants them to know he thanks them.
Wine expert
A certified sommelier, Catherine Rabb taught hospitality and wine classes at Central Piedmont Community College and, in 2004, she joined the Johnson & Wales University faculty.
A University of South Carolina graduate, she taught the first classes offered on university’s new Charlotte campus, according to her obituary. She was a senior instructor specializing in wine and other beverages.
Rabb owned two other restaurants in Charlotte, Catherine’s and Fenwick’s at Cotswold, and a large catering service.
For years, she wrote the “On Wine” column in the Observer and was a regular on WCNC’s “Charlotte Today” show.
When reporters needed an expert on the culinary scene, they often turned to Rabb.
She gave advice in a 2003 Observer article titled, “Which Fork First? Take a Stab at Our Quiz and Sharpen Your Table Manners.”
She also was “an ardent and early supporter” of the annual “Soup on Sunday” fundraiser for Hospice and Palliative Care.
And she did it all while juggling the demands at her busy Fenwick’s, always smiling, positive and energetic, friends, students and colleagues recalled in online tributes.
Inspired others
“A beautiful spirit that everyone loved,” read an online tribute this week. “Always had a smile and left you with a warm feeling,”
“The kindest and most compassionate person I ever had the pleasure of working, learning, and being friends with,” another of the many posts said.
Rabb taught what she loved, and it showed, friends, colleagues, customers and former students said.
Charlotte culinary expert Heidi Billotto, who knew Rabb since Fenwick’s opened, called her friend’s enthusiasm contagious.
“Catherine loved her work, the restaurant and the Fenwick’s family of staff and customers, alike,” Billotto posted on her HeidiBillottoFood.com website.
Right person
Charlottean Dillard Richardson was among the many culinary students Rabb inspired.
In the online tribute page, Richardson said Rabb taught the first wine education classes he took. Before that, as the Observer’s On Wine columnist, Rabb had answered a question from him seeking advice on getting started in wine as a student/enthusiast.
“I asked the right person!” Richardson wrote. “I’ll never forget Catherine’s kindness, humor, and ability to share her great culinary and wine.”
Richardson told the Observer on Thursday: “She was simply the best.”
Rabb wrote her longtime column not for the experts, but for the rest of us.
She wrote in a conversational, sometimes self-deprecating, yet authoritative way, with advice a novice might never have known.
“Pick a Wine for Thanksgiving that won’t Eclipse the Food,” the headline on her Nov. 16, 2011, column advised.
“It’s easy to get in a rut with anything,” began her Jan. 11, 2012, column. “January is a great time to climb out and try new things.”
In a column Tuesday in Unpretentious Palate, the online publication covering the city’s food and drink scene, Rabb’s former Observer editor, Kathleen Purvis, described her as a pioneer among women chefs in Charlotte who “was the least snobby wine expert I’ve ever known,” who worked tirelessly but always with a smile.
“The loss doesn’t leave a hole – it leaves an entire empty vat in my heart,” wrote Purvis, a longtime, award-winning food writer.
‘Deeply important mentor’
So felt Brion Cephus.
During his studies at Johnson & Wales, Cephus told the Observer, Rabb transformed his vision of who and what he could be.
Cephus thought he’d work as a line cook and eventually manage a culinary team, he said. Now he does wine program consulting and private events through his personal brand, “The Certified Wino,” Cephus said.
“She was a deeply important mentor for me as a budding wine professional & her passing was a loss not only for me, but for the entire restaurant scene of Charlotte,“ he said in a Facebook message.
Memorial service
Rabb also is survived by two sons, a stepson, a sister and two brothers, according to her obituary.
A memorial service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Jan. 8 at St. Stephen United Methodist Church, 6800 Sardis Road in Charlotte. The service will be live-streamed at www.ststephenumc.net.