Farewell Robert Steinberg

My friend Robert Steinberg died this week after a 20-year bout with lymphoma, and I am much too sad to write about anything else.  Robert, a physician whom I met briefly when he was a resident at UCSF, was already well into his illness when he gave up his medical practice to co-found Scharffen Berger chocolates with John Scharffenberger in the mid-1990s.  We got reacquainted around then at a Chefs Collaborative meeting in Walpole, New Hampshire, where he introduced me to Burdick’s chocolates and, over the years, to much else about high-quality chocolate (see the book that he and John wrote).   As a doctor, he had no illusions about the state of his health but there was no question that chocolate gave him reason to live.  I managed to see him on most of my trips to San Francisco, but this last time – the weekend of Slow Food Nation – he didn’t feel well enough.  He had been ill for so long, and complained about it so little, that I thought he would live forever.  No such luck.  Robert, farewell.  This world will miss you.