The famed cooking school originated in a small storefront in Upper Arlington and later moved into prime space Downtown at the Lazarus department store.
During the run of La Belle Pomme, some of the most famous chefs in the country — Jacques Pepin, Marcella Hazan, Anne Willan, Giuliano Bugialli, Rose Levy Beranbaum and Sheila Lukins — passed through its doors to share techniques, recipes and a passion for well-prepared food.
Those doors closed 20 years ago this month.
The founder, Betty Rosbottom, didn’t start the school with the goal of creating a Columbus institution. The native of Memphis, Tenn., was transplanted to the middle of Ohio after her husband accepted a teaching position at Ohio State University.
Rosbottom, a French major, had been studying cooking in Philadelphia before the move. She initially began working as a translator for the Columbus Museum of Art.
“No one was giving cooking classes in Columbus” at the time, Rosbottom said, so she placed an ad in the Upper Arlington newspaper and started teaching in her home.
Before long, the classes outgrew her house and she faced a decision: pursue a master’s degree in fine arts and continue working at the museum or put all her resources into the cooking school.
“I loved art, and I loved food,” she said.
The museum curator helped Rosbottom make up her mind, telling her: “Do the food. We have lots of people getting an M.A. in art history.”With a $5,000 loan, Rosbottom rented a storefront on Northwest Boulevard at North Star Road in 1976 and opened La Belle Pomme — French for “The Beautiful Apple.”
The school attracted some of the biggest names in cooking.
Television had few cooking programs at the time, and chefs had to travel to make their names known. The school had a reputation for selling out classes — which meant cookbook sales for chefs.
“I think they really enjoyed coming to Columbus,” Rosbottom said. “People were anxious to learn; they were welcoming.”
When Pepin visited in 1978, the French chef taught standing-room-only classes for three days.
After Italian cooking legend Hazan visited the next year, Time magazine wrote about the school and the growing gourmet movement in Columbus.
The school was so popular that, in just a few years, Rosbottom expanded to a larger space — and, in 1981, Lazarus approached her about buying the school and moving it to the Downtown store.
She had been in business only five years, Rosbottom said, but she eagerly accepted the offer because she would remain the director of the cooking school. There were other benefits, too: The school expanded its kitchen space, and she obtained a budget for advertising and access to a housewares department filled with state-of-the-art equipment. Plus, Lazarus sent her to trade shows annually, allowing her to stay on top of trends.
Perhaps most important to Rosbottom, the sale meant that the school could accept more students.
At its peak, 5,000 students a year attended La Belle Pomme, filling the seats of more than 100 classes.
“The best part of the school was the people,” Rosbottom said. “They came from far and wide — not only from Columbus and the suburbs but Dayton and northern Ohio, too.”
Lee Ritchie, a German Village real-estate agent, still keeps a binder filled with the recipes she received from the classes she took, beginning in 1985, at La Belle Pomme.
“I feel like Betty Rosbottom kind of made a difference in my life,” Ritchie said. “Not only did I learn how to cook — techniques — but also how to source ingredients, where to shop. They introduced me to the North Market.”
Ritchie remembers Rosbottom as warm and gracious. The school’s teachers made the classes fun, and she later joined a wine-tasting group with some of them.
“It opened up my world, really, to food and wine, and I really thank her for that.”
Rosbottom put together a small, loyal staff of teachers — including Steve Stover and Rich Terapak, who have been teaching together for 35 years.
The school, Stover said, became a touchstone for central Ohio food enthusiasts — a small fraternity at the time.
“Betty deserves a lot of credit,” he said. “She really brought cooking to the masses in Columbus.”
The school’s closing, in 1995, was bittersweet for Rosbottom.
On the one hand, the closing allowed her to be in the same city with her husband, who several years earlier had accepted a teaching position in Massachusetts. (The couple were commuting between there and Columbus.)
Yet the school had propelled Rosbottom into a career in food that continues. For decades she wrote the syndicated cooking column “For the Gourmet,” which appeared for 20 years in The Dispatch; she is at work on her 12th cookbook.
Rosbottom still teaches — including an occasional class in Columbus, often at the Seasoned Farmhouse cooking school in the Clintonville neighborhood.
The class, owner Tricia Wheeler said, typically fills up in an hour.
Wheeler, an Akron native, had heard so much about Rosbottom when she moved to Columbus more than 20 years ago that she featured her in the first issue of Edible Columbus, a magazine she began publishing in 2010.
Before opening the Seasoned Farmhouse, Wheeler tapped Rosbottom for advice on how to run a cooking school.
“She really is a teacher at heart,” Wheeler said. “She really taught a whole generation to cook."
