Radio host Jim White, who co-created Savor Dallas and Restaurant Week, died

Jim White, the passionate co-founder of two Dallas foodie occasions, has died.

White battled sudden onset most cancers, spouse Vicki Briley-White mentioned CultureMap.

White created Savor Dallas, the meals and wine competition that was created in 2004 and has been held yearly since 2005. It was bought by Dallas morning information in 2014 and labored till 2018.

White additionally co-founded KRLD Restaurant Week, a still-thriving annual occasion identified at this time as DFW Restaurant Week. She raises cash for 2 native charities: the North Texas Meals Financial institution and the Lena Pope House.

Earlier than White acquired concerned with festivals, he was a radio veteran, working as a morning information anchor on KRLD-AM (1080) and producing “The Restaurant Present with Jim White.” He beforehand labored at KEGL-FM, Information reported in 1995.

White’s efforts to supply a meals and wine-focused radio present, and later create Savor Dallas, have been new to Dallas.

“Yearly, legions of meals and wine lovers journey to locations like Aspen, New Orleans, and Banff Springs, Alberta, for famend meals and wine weekends,” Information‘ particular contributor Kim Pierce wrote in 2004 when Savor Dallas was created. Briley-White famous that “half of the folks there are from Dallas, Texas,” so the couple created a multi-day soiree that celebrated cooks, winemakers, and foodies proper right here in our hometown.

In any case, White had already constructed a listener base of foodies on the radio.

Immediately, Dallas has a dozen or extra meals festivals with the identical initiative, a fervor White first noticed.

In its early days, Savor Dallas additionally featured girls winemakers throughout women-specific seminars. “Ladies wish to find out about wine,” Briley-White mentioned in 2004.

Over time, the Whites have labored with prime Dallas cooks together with Kent Rathbun, Misti Norris, Stephan Pyles, Paula Lambert, Dean Fearing, David Uygur, Tre Wilcox and Tim Byres. The Whites secured meals and wine tastings inside town’s most iconic buildings, together with the Crow Assortment of Asian Artwork, the Nasher Sculpture Heart, the Latino Cultural Heart, the African American Museum, Centennial Corridor, and the Dallas Museum of Artwork. .

CultureMap he aptly calls White “the unique Dallas fanatic.”

Jim Moroney, who knew White in his function as former chairman, president and CEO of Dallas morning informationsays White’s love of meals and wine was contagious.

“The second you met Jim, you knew you have been within the presence of vitality and fervour: vitality for the occasion he was internet hosting and a ardour for meals and wine,” says Moroney, who’s Information‘editor emeritus. “You could not assist however get caught up within the second and the enjoyable. He exuded joie de vivre in all the things he did.”

We’ll replace this story when the funeral preparations are made public.

For extra meals information, observe Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.