GENTLE READERS:
Miss Dish goes to lots of shindigs: A restaurant opens,
a menu changes, a new chef comes aboard; these events all
call for a function.
Often these little get-togethers are produced by a public-relations
professional. One of the best in the Portland restaurant
biz is Bette Sinclair. Normally Miss Dish doesn't
praise people who are paid to make other people look good,
but she'll make an exception for Sinclair.
Why? Well, for starters, Miss Dish is often, um, indelicate
in print with some of Sinclair's clients. Other PR types
might ban a sassy Dishling for such offenses, especially
in the touchy hospitality field. Not Bette Sinclair. She
writes thank-you notes! And as for banishment, as Sinclair
told Miss Dish at the recent pre-opening function for Ira's,
the restaurant that's taking over the old Zefiro
spot on Northwest 21st Avenue, "There are no bad girls--just
some naughty ones."
As waiters delivered little potatoes with caviar and crème
frâiche, Miss Dish gabbed with Sinclair about her
way of publicly relating. First, you need to know that before
she picked up the clients she has today, Sinclair was an
innocent 18-year-old with hippie-long blonde hair living
in L.A. in the late 1960s. She had left her family in Tigard
to try out the University of Southern California. But she
didn't last long there.
She started hitting the scene and hanging out at Warren
Beatty's pad. "Everyone dated Warren Beatty," she says.
And she had her first taste of matzoh-ball soup at the famous
Canter's deli. She calls the 1960s "the last great
era," but after two years of partying at mansions, she was
done with it all and headed back to Oregon. She got married,
had a few kids and moved to Mexico, where her then-husband
worked.
Back in Portland in the early 1980s, she worked on fund-raisers
and sat on boards, "doing the things that women who don't
have to support themselves do." After a divorce, Sinclair
found she did need to support herself and 12 years
ago opened her own PR agency.
Doug Schmick, of McCormick & Schmick's
fame, became an early mentor. It's been one long smorgasboard
ever since. She calls her specialty area the "happy industry,"
and accordingly she gained 10 pounds the first few years
she started digging into it (she eats out at least three
times a week). She saves most of her respect for the people
actually cooking the food. "They work really hard," she
says.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 5,
2000
|
