R.W. APPLE — known everywhere except in his byline as “Johnny” — was a unique personality in American journalism. A distinguished war correspondent and political writer, an outrageous, larger-than-life character with a huge appetite for good food and drink, he was one of the last of the old-style long-lunch journalists in an age of a sandwich and a glass of mineral water.

A renaissance man with an encyclopaedic knowledge of foreign affairs, history, architecture, opera and sports, he could produce a piece of news analysis or coverage of a battle at the drop of the hat, and would claim he had eaten and drunk his way around the world at the very best restaurants, all on The New York Times.

His expense account was the envy of his colleagues. After one gargantuan meal in London with his managing editor he insisted on picking up the tab. “You’d better let me get that,” he said. “They’d never believe it coming from you.”

He had, a friend said, “the best mind and the worst body in American journalism”. He travelled, on assignment, with his own pepper mill and produced two highly praised books on travel and restaurant tips, Apple’s Europe and Apple’s America.

He distinguished himself covering the Vietnam War in the 1960s as The New York Times bureau chief in Saigon and also reported on the Gulf War, the Iranian revolution and the collapse of the communist Eastern bloc. He was also The New York Times bureau chief in Lagos, Nairobi, Moscow, London and Washington.

During his decade in London from 1976, Apple, an anglophile, bought a cottage in the Cotswolds. He got to know all the important people, covered the political scene, the Falklands conflict and travelled widely in Europe, indulging his interests in wine and food and amassing an impressive wine cellar.

Earlier, covering Watergate, his relentless questioning of President Nixon’s press secretary produced the admission that all previous explanations about the affair were “inoperative”. During the 1976 presidential election campaign, he was one of the first to spot the relatively obscure Jimmy Carter as the likely winner.

Raymond Walter Apple Jr was born in Akron, Ohio. His father owned a chain of grocery stores and hoped his son would take over the business. But as a teenager he was smitten by journalism and was much taken, he said, by “wonderful, romantic bylines” of reporters writing from faraway places. “It seeped into my consciousness that these people were actually being paid to do this.”

At Princeton University he worked for the Daily Princetonian and took a degree in history from Columbia in 1961. He worked briefly on The Wall Street Journal then at the Newport News Daily Press. After working for NBC News in New York he joined The New York Times for a career that lasted for more than 40 years.

He became bureau chief in Albany, the New York state capital, covering Robert Kennedy’s 1964 Senate campaign and was sent in 1966 to Saigon where he won the George Polk and Overseas Press Club awards. He went back to Washington and was called “America’s most powerful political reporter” by the journalism magazine More in 1976.

He continued to cover politics through the 2004 presidential elections and in 2002 was made associate editor. But more and more he wrote about food, stating “I travel to eat” and to learn about “the best local stuff, the mangosteens in South East Asia and the baby soles in Belgium, the morels in upstate Michigan and the quails in Texas”.

For his 70th birthday he invited friends to his favourite Paris bistro, Chez L’Ami Louis, for heaps of fois gras, roast chicken, escargots, scallops and pommes Anna, with huge quantities of burgundy and Calvados.

“From his sick bed he hammered out his last words to readers, negotiated the details of the menu and music for his memorial service, followed the baseball playoffs and the latest congressional scandal with relish,” said The New York Times executive editor Bill Keeler. “He was himself to the last.”

Apple died from cancer at his home in Washington. His first marriage to Edith Smith, a former vice-consul in Saigon, ended in divorce. In 1982 he married Betsey Pickney Brown, who became his travelling companion, driver and partner at table. She survives him, along with two stepdaughters from the first marriage.

R. W. Apple, journalist, was born on November 20, 1934. He died on October 4, 2006, aged 71.