If you tune into 100.7 The River during your drive to work, you may have noticed that radio deejay Kitty Kinnin loves food.
Kinnin shares a recipe every day, whether it's Meatless Mondays or Man Food Fridays, on her blog on the station's Web site. During her jazz and blues show on Sunday mornings, she interviews chefs from Walter Royal of the Angus Barn to Daniel Schurr of Second Empire. A few of her lucky fans can win Kat Pack outings, where they can go to dinner with her.
"The older I am, the more I'm into food," Kinnin said during a lunch interview at 18 Seaboard.
Cooking is her relaxation, and it has crept onto her shows. When Kinnin first mentioned putting recipes on her blog, Clear Channel's vice president and Raleigh market manager Dick Harlow says he questioned the idea. But now he admits he was wrong.
"People seem really to be into her food stuff," Harlow says.
That makes sense to him. The River's listeners are an over-35 crowd who, like Harlow, might enjoy dinner at home with friends more than carousing in Glenwood South. Besides, he says, the public has responded to Kinnin's return to Triangle radio, sending more e-mail to the station about her than any other deejay.
Kinnin was an on-air personality at WRDU-FM (106.1) and WFXC-FM (Foxy 104.3) in the 1980s and 1990s. After that, she moved to Wilmington to do television. About two years ago, she moved back to the Triangle. That's when Harlow called, asking her to return as an on-air personality in the mornings.
Kinnin says her mother was an excellent cook. Kinnin cooks free-form, rarely measuring ingredients, except when baking. She loves when listeners call to chat or write an e-mail message about trying her recipes. (She says she responds to all e-mail from fans.)
Each month, Kinnin profiles a chef on her Sunday show. The chefs pay for the interview, but Kinnin says she chooses the chef. The chef gets an ad on the station's Web site for a month. Kinnin shares a clip of her interview with the chef each Sunday for a month.
She loves to ask chefs to pair a dish with music: Chef Walter Royal chose ribs and Patti LaBelle; chef John Toler of Bloomsbury Bistro chose cassoulet and Edith Piaff.
"I want people to know how stellar our Triangle chefs are," Kinnin says.
