Anyone who reads the blog may have seen an October 13 comment by Leah Zeldes. Leah is a local writer who, apparently, doesn’t get return emails from chefs. Don’t be shocked; it happens all the time to loads of journalists. As a publicist, I hear about it day in, day out.

The old saw goes: Chefs are often too busy to get back to the very people who are trying to write about them.

What struck me most about Leah’s comment wasn’t her comment at all. It was that it jogged a memory of an email Dana Cowin wrote me a while back. I had let her know about RIA’s Chef Registry, a service that connects journalists to chefs directly. She proclaimed it a great idea (and Food & Wine magazine uses the service regularly, so we know they backed up her exclamation).

Especially, she added wryly, if the chefs use it.

Think about it: It is shocking enough that chefs, who pay publicists to get them press, don’t respond to a local writer looking for sources. But what I find truly amazing is that a chef —  really, any chef — actually doesn’t make the time to respond to the editor of Food & Wine.

How wrongheaded is that?