Third Coast Cuisine

Collin was a legend in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast and was the city's first restaurant critic.  This write up is By Judy Walker, The Times-Picayune:

The New Orleans Underground Gourmet, Richard H. Collin, died late Tuesday (January 19, 2010) at home in Birmingham, Ala., where he relocated after Hurricane Katrina. He was 78.

Collin was the author of “The New Orleans Underground Gourmet,” and was the city’s first newspaper restaurant critic, starting at the New Orleans States-Item in 1972.

He and wife Rima Collin wrote “The New Orleans Cookbook,” published by Knopf in 1975, which remains in print and has become a classic.

Mr. Collin also was emeritus professor of history at the University of New Orleans and a Theodore Roosevelt scholar.

“The New Orleans Underground Gourmet” was the first guide in book form to New Orleans restaurants “and it sold like hotcakes,” said Gene Bourg, former restaurant critic at the Times-Picayune. “Everybody was talking about it.”

New Orleans States-Item editor Charles A. Ferguson said his wife had seen the Underground guide and suggested hiring Mr. Collin to write a column about restaurants.