Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
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Speaker 1: to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
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Speaker 1: its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're in London,
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Speaker 1: store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty ninth of October.
Speaker 1: There is one email I cannot wait to receive each year,
Speaker 1: and it always starts like this, Ruthy, Kim and I
Speaker 1: are coming to London. Can we have a table at
Speaker 1: the River Cafe and will you be there? Answer to
Speaker 1: the first is yes and to the second, well yes yes.
Speaker 1: When Michael McCarty walks in, he immediately fills the room
Speaker 1: with his warmth and his kindness. He knows what working
Speaker 1: in a restaurant means introducing himself, recognizing staff from his
Speaker 1: last visit, and checking out the customers. Sean Owen, our
Speaker 1: executive chef, told me that on Monday night, he walked
Speaker 1: up to her at the pass and praised in detail
Speaker 1: the grouse he had just eaten. Restaurants are, of course,
Speaker 1: but he knows best. When he and Kim opened Michael's
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica in nineteen seventy nine, they brought California
Speaker 1: cuisine to the world, artichokes, asparagus, tomatoes, and peaches grown
Speaker 1: in the sun and eaten under the sun. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: California came to New York when they opened Michael's in
Speaker 1: Midtown Manhattan. When my brother Michael also and his wife
Speaker 1: Bianca married in New York, there was only one restaurant
Speaker 1: they wanted to celebrate in. We are family, And when
Speaker 1: Michael and Kim leave, I'll say goodbye, knowing there'll be
Speaker 1: another email in a few months time, Ruthie, We're coming.
Speaker 1: Will you be there, And the answer will be yes.
Speaker 1: So here we are, here, we are, You're here in
Speaker 1: the River Cafe. The sun is coming. You broughtably. It
Speaker 1: was gray and grim, So what we'll do if you're
Speaker 1: happy to do that is start by reading the recipe
Speaker 1: for the grouse that you ate the other night.
Speaker 2: Well, the roast grouse. This has all of my favorite
Speaker 2: ingredients in it.
Speaker 1: Oh good, What are they?
Speaker 2: The ponchetta, the time garlic butter without butter butter, four
Speaker 2: slices thin panchetta, two large fresh time, one garlic clove,
Speaker 2: peeled and chopped, twenty five grams of unsalted butter. Two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty mili liters aletico dipuglia. One grouse, plucked
Speaker 2: and cleaned. So you start preheat the oven to three
Speaker 2: hundred two hundred and thirty degrees. We're in England, so
Speaker 2: it's the puts it two thirty, place the times brig
Speaker 2: on the breast of the bird, cover with punchetta slices
Speaker 2: and tie the legs together.
Speaker 3: Put the grouse in a rusting tin and cook. Depending
Speaker 3: on the size and how rare you like the grouse,
Speaker 3: we serve them slightly pink. The easiest way to test
Speaker 3: for dunness is to pull the leg away from the
Speaker 3: body at the thigh.
Speaker 1: It's still blue.
Speaker 4: Cook for a little longer.
Speaker 3: Grouse very in roasting time because they differ so much
Speaker 3: in size.
Speaker 2: Remove from the oven and leave to rest two to
Speaker 2: three minutes and untie the string. Put over a medium
Speaker 2: high heat, add the wine reduced by half, return the
Speaker 2: bird to the pan, and coat in the juice is
Speaker 2: den serve This is delicious, served with cavello nero.
Speaker 1: Do you serve game in Michaels.
Speaker 4: We don't.
Speaker 2: We serve quail, squab, but they're off arm raised, beautiful
Speaker 2: low duck. Of course, we have great duck, but our
Speaker 2: squab is spectacular.
Speaker 1: Squab is the appeasial pigeon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, your pigeon here and the quails are sensational. That's
Speaker 4: about it. You know.
Speaker 2: To me, I find pheasant unless it's perfect, it's too dry.
Speaker 2: I mean that grouse last night was spectacular.
Speaker 1: So tell me about growing up the McCarty household. Was
Speaker 1: eating important in.
Speaker 4: Your Yes, it was a very interesting.
Speaker 2: We grew up in New York in the Hudson Valley,
Speaker 2: in a little town called Briarcliffe, Manor. My dad commuted
Speaker 2: thirty years to New York. My mother he worked with
Speaker 2: General Electric. He was the founder of the corporate communications.
Speaker 4: For ge and the forties.
Speaker 2: In the late forties, right after the War, and he
Speaker 2: graduated from Michigan with my mother and they moved.
Speaker 4: To Schenectady, New York, which is where go there.
Speaker 2: The building is still there, and my father was put
Speaker 2: in a room and the guy who hired him said,
Speaker 2: this is your this is going to be your partner
Speaker 2: and doing this turned out it was Kurt Vonnegut. So
Speaker 2: my father and Kurt spent five years in that ge. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they were there. If you look at some of
Speaker 2: his beginning books that were all take place in Connectedy,
Speaker 2: and then in about nineteen fifty they He went on
Speaker 2: to become a full time writer, and my dad moved
Speaker 2: to New York and City, but we remained. They remained
Speaker 2: friends all the way up until my father passed away.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, the whole crowd of my parents'
Speaker 2: friends loved to party. They entertained all the time, all seasons.
Speaker 2: We had a little beach shack in Missquarmiketrhode Islands. We
Speaker 2: were there and in Vermont in the winter, and everywhere
Speaker 2: we went, you know, we learned quickly, you know, what
Speaker 2: was growing there and how to cook it, and what
Speaker 2: were the traditions. And my mother and father, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like today where everybody teleentrically talks about food,
Speaker 2: you know, it was.
Speaker 1: More like this.
Speaker 4: This would have been in the fifties and the sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, I really got into this because
Speaker 2: of the The allure was the entertainment aspect.
Speaker 1: So they would have fun.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. We had huge party, huge parties.
Speaker 2: One party called the ten to ten and there were
Speaker 2: people that stayed from ten in the morning until ten
Speaker 2: at night. And there were like five different menus throughout
Speaker 2: that whole time.
Speaker 1: We participating or did you sit on the steps.
Speaker 4: And watch grabs?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: After a while, I was in the kitchen with my
Speaker 2: mother and she'd make her beef stragging off or she'd
Speaker 2: make you know, my father would make these like really
Speaker 2: good barbecue pork tenderloins and grill them and you know,
Speaker 2: and the whole thing. Again, it was always very simple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about the house with the kitchen. Was
Speaker 1: it a big kitchen?
Speaker 4: Well, my father, working for GE, we every house we
Speaker 4: moved to the appliances.
Speaker 2: She'd tear out the garden and she'd tear out the kitchen.
Speaker 2: Those are the two things. Yeah, And so she always
Speaker 2: had the latest ge you know, like I remember in
Speaker 2: New York at the one house we lived in, she
Speaker 2: put in the beginning of the modern sort of Jensen
Speaker 2: George Jensen super you know, modern refrigerators hidden in this
Speaker 2: into that and always but they always had a barbecue outside.
Speaker 1: She have a collection of cookbooks.
Speaker 4: She I gave her the Well she cooked basically from
Speaker 4: the New York Times cookbook and oh very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah sixties seventies. Yeah, that was that was the good cookbook.
Speaker 2: I introduced her to Julia Child after I got back
Speaker 2: from France, and we got her the Double Whammy, you know,
Speaker 2: the two cookbooks, and she poured over them.
Speaker 4: She passed away.
Speaker 2: Recently we got all the cookbooks back. We have them
Speaker 2: in a room in a box right now. We went
Speaker 2: through them once. But yeah, a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of mementos.
Speaker 1: Before we leave home. Tell me about your growing up
Speaker 1: in your house, Kim was.
Speaker 3: My household was very different because when I was born
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles, but my parents were from Youngstown, Ohio.
Speaker 3: We moved abroad to outside of Genevan, a little area
Speaker 3: called Conch when I was five. My father said he
Speaker 3: couldn't get a job anywhere. He was a chemical engineering
Speaker 3: and he kind of figured out this paint company. So
Speaker 3: he was a great salesman going around places. So we
Speaker 3: my mother being from the Midwest, she saw, you know,
Speaker 3: all this fresh salad in Geneva and all this stuff,
Speaker 3: but it had bugs in it. And they were very
Speaker 3: post war, you know, fifty sixties. So we had to
Speaker 3: go to like we were like army brats. We went
Speaker 3: to the canteen and got chef's boyard and iceberg lettuce
Speaker 3: and American candies, and.
Speaker 1: That's what we would eat fair enough. Yes, So she
Speaker 1: didn't know the place, the language, probably, and so she
Speaker 1: looked for.
Speaker 3: So we were always at the dentist because we had
Speaker 3: so many cavities.
Speaker 4: And yes, it wasn't until much much.
Speaker 3: Later that we realized that all the nutrients that were
Speaker 3: in these you know, food could cheese to be in excellent,
Speaker 3: excellent And for the I mean I was there from
Speaker 3: five to sixteen.
Speaker 1: Was what did they entertain? They did?
Speaker 3: They did not that much, not that much because my
Speaker 3: father was one of those men who were always traveling,
Speaker 3: always traveling, so we did not. It was very, very
Speaker 3: differct because Michael's family, Michael's family was all about food.
Speaker 3: My family, I was a family of three girls him
Speaker 3: a family of four boys, so we always had to
Speaker 3: be on diets, you know, because my father is very
Speaker 3: strict that way.
Speaker 4: They're pickers. They pick all day.
Speaker 1: Oh I see little bit sol day, little bits all day.
Speaker 1: Did you leave home at an age to go to
Speaker 1: college or where you went to front?
Speaker 2: I went to France as a junior in high school.
Speaker 2: So I'm sixteen and I got accepted to this program
Speaker 2: school year abroad. They had one in ren Brittany and
Speaker 2: one in Barcelona, and fifty young kids eat from all
Speaker 2: over and we would go and they put you in
Speaker 2: a family and you spend the year there and then
Speaker 2: you know, your brain is still clean, so you really
Speaker 2: pick up the fluency of the language. But the night
Speaker 2: before I got on the boat, my parents took me
Speaker 2: to Laurent, which was one of the.
Speaker 4: Classic you know, lives and lies in New York.
Speaker 2: And it looked like Maxims and it was September, and
Speaker 2: it was everybody was stunning, and everybody dressed up in
Speaker 2: those days and they were all tan, and they were
Speaker 2: all eating and having a big time going this is
Speaker 2: just like my parents' parties. About halfway through the meal
Speaker 2: in walks, the owner and the whole electricity level in
Speaker 2: the room ratcheted up like there was no tomorrow. He
Speaker 2: started working the tables like we do, you know, and
Speaker 2: you're greeting all your friends and your guests, and you're
Speaker 2: meeting new people, and it's a riot, and everybody's going
Speaker 2: crazy about the food and all of that. And then
Speaker 2: at the end of the meal, had his glorious meal.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the meal, you know, they
Speaker 2: bring a check. And I said, well, now this makes
Speaker 2: sense because my father a businessman, you know, I go
Speaker 2: back and forth, they go, wow, this is a throw party,
Speaker 2: and then give everybody a check, you see, so it's
Speaker 2: a business. The next day I get on the boat
Speaker 2: and it is the SS Aurelia, which was his last voyage.
Speaker 2: But it had fifteen hundred school year abroad students, most
Speaker 2: of them except for the fifty of us were in college,
Speaker 2: and it was run by the Italians. So and it
Speaker 2: took eleven days to get to Laharvo.
Speaker 4: Eleven eleven. I was like, you do do do?
Speaker 1: I went it was five?
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, no, no, this was a tanker.
Speaker 2: And at any rate, you know, they had five meals
Speaker 2: a day, they had boothe yeah, so it was sixteen.
Speaker 4: I was sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was pretty rowdy eleven days. But then
Speaker 2: I landed in laharv and I went to put in
Speaker 2: my family. And my family was a very interesting Bretton family,
Speaker 2: you know, classic folklore, love Britney.
Speaker 4: Guess what they did all the time?
Speaker 2: Eat, party, party, eat. They had a house on the
Speaker 2: beach like we did. They had one in the country.
Speaker 2: They had a nine hundred year old chatteau that had
Speaker 2: never seen repairs and maintenance for eight hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: of those years, and bathroom one open, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it was completely crazy. But I'd go down and there'd
Speaker 2: be the person that grew all the vegetables, the one
Speaker 2: who did the chickens, the one who did the beef,
Speaker 2: the pork.
Speaker 4: And that's who explained to me.
Speaker 2: The Eeko hotelier, the French hotel and restaurant school if
Speaker 2: you wanted to be a chef. We didn't have those
Speaker 2: in America. So then I went back to Paris.
Speaker 4: Spent the first half of the seventies in Paris, and
Speaker 4: that did it.
Speaker 1: You just studied cooking there.
Speaker 4: Yes, I graduated.
Speaker 1: Did you want to cook or did you want to
Speaker 1: be ann?
Speaker 4: Well? I realized early on I wanted to have a restaurant.
Speaker 2: When I realized early on that you had to be
Speaker 2: a good chef, and it helps, it helps, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you have the classic idea, you know, your chef walks
Speaker 2: out of you on a Saturday night, what happens. So
Speaker 2: it was sort of that ingrained in the fact, but
Speaker 2: I really got into it, you know, I mean living
Speaker 2: in Paris.
Speaker 1: What year were you in Paris?
Speaker 4: It's seventy two three of that.
Speaker 1: That's when I was there. Were you, Yeah, because Richard
Speaker 1: was building the Pompadou that's exactly when.
Speaker 4: That's exactly when it was happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were, we were, so we must have.
Speaker 4: Because Leo was still there.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And where did you live in Paris?
Speaker 2: I lived in several places. I lived right next to
Speaker 2: the rue Uftau, the market, yeah, the Yah, and then
Speaker 2: I lived down El San Luis in the beginning, and
Speaker 2: it was what were you doing?
Speaker 1: Did you work in restaurants?
Speaker 4: I worked one night in the three star restaurant. It
Speaker 4: was less Air, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: I said that's on the on the right back, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And after working one day there, I said, this is
Speaker 2: not for me. You know, I can learn more eating
Speaker 2: in this restaurant in one meal than I can spending.
Speaker 2: You know, this was still the old archaic way of
Speaker 2: running restaurants. What was that, you know, where you are
Speaker 2: sentenced to the potatoes for six months. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: they move on to the mushrooms. You know, it was
Speaker 2: still Remember this was the beginning of the new bell
Speaker 2: cuisine revolution and you had the Gone Mio had just
Speaker 2: opened and I was taught at the Cold on Blue
Speaker 2: which I went through for two and a half years.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that's where I met Julia in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two. Yeah, child, you know, she had come back
Speaker 2: and Madame Brassal was this a little tiny owner. She said, Michael,
Speaker 2: I think you need to meet this lady. So we
Speaker 2: went to lunch and it was at two o'clock and
Speaker 2: by seven we finished lunch. So we became pals for
Speaker 2: the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: And so you were at the Court of You studied
Speaker 1: restaurant or did you.
Speaker 2: I studied that was cooking, that was entirely cooking. And
Speaker 2: then at the Eco hotelier you study in the three years,
Speaker 2: you study all three You studied cooking mostly, then management,
Speaker 2: and then dining room. My first restaurant was actually in Anio,
Speaker 2: San Luis.
Speaker 4: It was a.
Speaker 2: Totally illegal could have come. It was as big as
Speaker 2: this room. It's at twenty people. Yeah, and uh, you
Speaker 2: know I Selouis was a different town in those days.
Speaker 2: It was more like a village and had two fish
Speaker 2: guys three.
Speaker 4: Weeks oh fabulous, several Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, my cooking school got out of about seven every night,
Speaker 2: so I would pre order the night before from everybody there.
Speaker 4: Wow, and then they would it would be on.
Speaker 2: My doorstep when I got there, so I could cook
Speaker 2: for my thirty or forty people.
Speaker 1: And what did you cook?
Speaker 4: Well, that was the beginning of how I sort of
Speaker 4: created what the modern American New American food. Again, like
Speaker 4: you did last night with the with the grouse. You know,
Speaker 4: you take a protein the market, you got really simple herbs,
Speaker 4: you use butter, you use salt and pepper, and you
Speaker 4: accompany it with like a little pasta or little little vegetables,
Speaker 4: you know, but very simple and stunning fish. You know,
Speaker 4: everything we did all that, we began to compose the South.
Speaker 1: That's a good fish because you know, we lived in
Speaker 1: the Marie, we lived on the Route Descent, and then
Speaker 1: we lived in the class and honestly, I used to
Speaker 1: get my laundry done on the There was that launder
Speaker 1: bat and I chose it because, you know, you crossed
Speaker 1: the sin every day to get your laundry, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: in the city would their baby, then you could cross
Speaker 1: the scind to have your you know, your sheets washed.
Speaker 1: It was. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was an amazing the first half
Speaker 2: of the seventies in Paris.
Speaker 1: How long was your How did your restaurant exist?
Speaker 4: Well, it was totally illegal and a totally fake.
Speaker 2: It was in the bottom floor of a friend's building, Okay,
Speaker 2: And I just ran.
Speaker 4: At that one year and then you came back to
Speaker 4: and then I.
Speaker 2: Graduated while I was in school. Once I graduated in
Speaker 2: seventy four, I came back and that's sort of where
Speaker 2: I learned what it means to run a restaurant.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
Speaker 1: steps away from the restaurant is now open in the
Speaker 1: morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and cristata from
Speaker 1: our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed hoops and
Speaker 1: River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates, Salumi, misty mozzarella, Brisquetta,
Speaker 1: red and yellow peppers, Vitello, Tonado and more. Come in
Speaker 1: the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
Speaker 1: No need to book see you here. Did Michael cook
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Actually, this is an interesting story if I can just
Speaker 3: say that the first meal in my apartment, he said
Speaker 3: he's going to bring me dinner. So I had a
Speaker 3: little cat. I was then, you know, doing my design
Speaker 3: projects all night. And he comes and he knocks on
Speaker 3: the door and he has two live pheasants and it's like,
Speaker 3: what like live and he lets them fly around the
Speaker 3: apartment and there's like they're going nuts nuts. So I
Speaker 3: grabbed my cat, I shut him and.
Speaker 1: Lock him in the apartment and I fly you left
Speaker 1: him in the part.
Speaker 2: I was doing two ways of preparing them, but I
Speaker 2: had to start with you know, part of the theory
Speaker 2: was how do you how do you prepare them?
Speaker 4: She ate it when she came back.
Speaker 1: I did not eat it. I did not. Was there
Speaker 1: a dessert?
Speaker 4: No, no, The dessert was in the dessert.
Speaker 3: When we were in going to school on Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 3: and Michael was teaching French cooking, and French. My roommate
Speaker 3: who said for the final you know, they would be
Speaker 3: bringing a raspberry sou fle.
Speaker 4: And then I was just in.
Speaker 1: I was in, food is seduction. It is, it is.
Speaker 1: You know, so many people can remember, Oh by your
Speaker 1: Friends in his podcast that he remembers cooking for Willow,
Speaker 1: the first thing he cooked for her. And you know,
Speaker 1: there was Michael Kaine's movie The Hipcress File where he's
Speaker 1: you know, and I think food for you know, male
Speaker 1: or female is part of It's very seductive. I think
Speaker 1: for women to have a man cook sexy, don't you think.
Speaker 3: But at that time, again, just going back to forty
Speaker 3: now forty eight years, no young college person was a cook.
Speaker 1: Mail was a cook.
Speaker 3: So everybody it was an extremely extremely suspicious my family,
Speaker 3: what chef?
Speaker 1: You're kidding?
Speaker 3: You know, Now it's a very elevated thanks.
Speaker 1: So we actually haven't started with Michaels because Michaels was
Speaker 1: your first major, major restaurant. It's still there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a restaurant that really brought the world a kind of
Speaker 1: way of looking at a restaurant, which was could be
Speaker 1: delicious food, incredible ingredients and fun. It wasn't intimidating, to
Speaker 1: make you feel stupid if you didn't know why. And
Speaker 1: so you did that at Michael's and.
Speaker 4: So called US California cuisine.
Speaker 1: Yes, really it was.
Speaker 2: Calibarty was basically the first regional American food, you know,
Speaker 2: which doesn't sound as sexy, but that's what happened in California.
Speaker 2: That then moved to France, that moved to Italy, and
Speaker 2: that moved to England where instead of everybody cooking you know,
Speaker 2: remember I said I was taught at Scoffier cooking, but
Speaker 2: the new bel cuisine revolution was going on, so you
Speaker 2: could waiver back and forth. And learning the Escofia method
Speaker 2: was extremely important to me because that's the Latin of
Speaker 2: French cooking, and if you learn that fluently, you could
Speaker 2: speak ten other languages.
Speaker 1: It's like knowing poetry before you write, for you verses exactly.
Speaker 4: And so that is what you know.
Speaker 2: When we we sourced everything, we had to convince probably
Speaker 2: forty five different farmers to switch over to growing you know,
Speaker 2: broad leave arugula. They didn't have basil, and you wanted
Speaker 2: spices in those days, you went to the supermarket to
Speaker 2: the dry spice rack.
Speaker 4: You know, there was nothing unless you grew it in
Speaker 4: your house.
Speaker 2: But it you know again, and then that I mean,
Speaker 2: I remember the friend chefs coming over and they were going,
Speaker 2: you know what Nouvea becuz he sort of gave us
Speaker 2: the push, you know, out of the nest. But now
Speaker 2: we're going to go back and we're going to go
Speaker 2: back to our grandmother's food, you know, and we're going
Speaker 2: to remember where we grew up in Perry Gord or
Speaker 2: in Brittany or wherever, and we're going.
Speaker 4: To begin to go focus on that. I remember Michel Garard.
Speaker 2: We're eating at the buttau Fook and he says, I'm moving, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I said where you go? And he says, my
Speaker 2: wife has this cool place down outside of Bordeaux.
Speaker 4: He goes down there in the middle of nowhere. It
Speaker 4: creates this whole.
Speaker 2: Thing based on that environment down there, and it was
Speaker 2: just this beginning of that.
Speaker 1: Did you find that it was tough in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Did people come to the restaurant and say, Wow, this
Speaker 1: is amazing or was it hard to get Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was people were surprised that it was so. I mean,
Speaker 3: Michael was twenty five when we opened. Did you have
Speaker 3: investors who know I mean a loan unmotunately, things did
Speaker 3: not cost what the costs now to build to build
Speaker 3: out a place. But also one thing about Los Angeles
Speaker 3: and the way of dining is that everything was very
Speaker 3: dark and dank used to be. It was like the
Speaker 3: speakeasy feel that you would go to Dominic's. So to
Speaker 3: have a restaurant that had a garden in Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: whoa and then did not have the waiters wear tuxedo.
Speaker 3: You know, I just were you know, Ralph Lauren Polo.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I told Jerry Magden, who was in the food business,
Speaker 2: in the art business, and in the clothes business. His
Speaker 2: father owned magnets, and he's said, I'm not putting him
Speaker 2: in tuxedos. Do you have a little young America? Everything
Speaker 2: was about America. Do you have a young American designer
Speaker 2: that we could utilize his come over time? And he
Speaker 2: goes see at the corner over there, that big that's
Speaker 2: that's Ralph Lauren.
Speaker 4: He calls it Polo. I said, great, So we still
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 2: In New York use the pink Polo shirt with the
Speaker 2: reptie and the khaki pants and uh.
Speaker 1: And so your role in the restaurant was to be
Speaker 1: both of you front of house and changed the menus.
Speaker 2: Oh, I wrote the menus and then we had with
Speaker 2: our original crew. We had like a stunning roster and
Speaker 2: uh Nancy Silverton, Yeah, she was the night cashier and
Speaker 2: she said, I want to do that pastry prep thing,
Speaker 2: and so she did that at night and then she
Speaker 2: came into day and then I sent her to France
Speaker 2: to work at Lenoka and Plant and she came back
Speaker 2: and was our pastry chef and she fell.
Speaker 4: In love with the grill guy, Mark Peel.
Speaker 2: And they opened camp But before that they they went
Speaker 2: and opened Spago for Wolfgang.
Speaker 4: Then they opened Campani.
Speaker 1: Wolfgang was amazing too. Oh yeah, you think that. I
Speaker 1: remember going to Mount Maison and the eye that this
Speaker 1: French restaurant, and you know that it was great in
Speaker 1: the car park, wasn't it? But it was an incredible
Speaker 1: food and fun. But that you know, his next restaurant
Speaker 1: was basically Pizzaza was shocking, Yeah, shocking. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: it and he did that and that was it. We
Speaker 1: we all friends, were you.
Speaker 4: From the beginning? Yeah? John?
Speaker 1: Thing I think is that when you start a restaurant,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody tells you how competitive and that throat.
Speaker 1: And what Rose and I found was people were so kind,
Speaker 1: you know. And when Rose died, the place was full
Speaker 1: of I think they were all calling each other and saying,
Speaker 1: you better get down there and help uti. But I
Speaker 1: mean I never knew that. But I've never found it
Speaker 1: that cut through. Maybe it's just the people that we
Speaker 1: deal with, people that we like to be with, the
Speaker 1: kind of restaurants we run. I think it's a good group,
Speaker 1: don't you Like for.
Speaker 2: Our sixteen for our forty fifth anniversary party, I had
Speaker 2: sixteen of my former chef's come back and cook and
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, five of the Barbravos stars
Speaker 2: now and all this and that, and they were all
Speaker 2: there and they had a blast, and we had four
Speaker 2: hundred people and they ate everything under the sun.
Speaker 1: Do you think the values that what you learned in
Speaker 1: those early early early days stayed with you?
Speaker 4: Oh? Completely?
Speaker 1: And what would what if you somebody was going to
Speaker 1: say I'm going to open a little restaurant or a
Speaker 1: big restaurant. Was do you have some values that you
Speaker 1: would say? I mean I have some, and I wonder
Speaker 1: what yours might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, again, I think you have to be completely
Speaker 2: clear on what your concept is and does anybody care
Speaker 2: about that concept? You know, there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: that randomly open places. You know, again, it's a combination
Speaker 2: of your location and what you're trying to put in
Speaker 2: that location. And today it's even it's the craziest I've
Speaker 2: ever seen it. In the mid seventies, there were six
Speaker 2: or seven restaurants in any major city in the United States.
Speaker 4: Now there's like.
Speaker 2: Thirty in every neighborhood. I mean, you come to la
Speaker 2: you can up believe it. And they keep opening and
Speaker 2: they keep closing, which is something that's always happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, the values are simple, you know. You you really
Speaker 2: have to have your idea down. You've got to understand
Speaker 2: the market today worse than before.
Speaker 4: You could be much more naive in the old days.
Speaker 4: And like labor cost and yeah, labor is the worst,
Speaker 4: you know, and fortunately, our ability to buy ingredients. I mean,
Speaker 4: the food we buy today is so unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, we started the Farmer's market and in Santa
Speaker 4: Monica forty years ago, and you say.
Speaker 1: We started the farmer's market.
Speaker 2: Who started the city of Santa Monica gave us the
Speaker 2: space as a community outreach, right, you know, it was
Speaker 2: very early on. Yeah, and in Santa Monica was a
Speaker 2: tough city. I was chairman of the Arts Foundation. We
Speaker 2: did a lot of public art and they thought that
Speaker 2: the idea of this would be good, and we said,
Speaker 2: are you kidding? And so they put it together and
Speaker 2: you know, then we had to find Remember during seventy
Speaker 2: five to when I opened in seventy nine, half my
Speaker 2: battle was finding farmers to grow the products that we wanted.
Speaker 2: And you know, we brought all the seeds in for France.
Speaker 2: I flew in duck eggs. We started a duck farm
Speaker 2: because that was the one product that was not up
Speaker 2: to snuff.
Speaker 3: We'd go to the airport at two o'clock in the
Speaker 3: morning to pick up fish and cheese.
Speaker 4: My big mistake was not founding fedeggs.
Speaker 1: We I mean time, we didn't have to go probably
Speaker 1: as far. But Rose and I used to bring back
Speaker 1: cheeses from We'd go to Italy and bring back parmesan.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a famous story about Rose ordering to
Speaker 1: bring back a huge pumpkin and they wouldn't let her
Speaker 1: put it in package, so she poked a seat for
Speaker 1: the pumpkin. Yeah, she put a seat, and then it
Speaker 1: turned out that that was the only seat. The head
Speaker 1: was in club class, and so we always said the
Speaker 1: Pumpkin came back club and we came back.
Speaker 4: And I love it.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of but now, the access to ingredients.
Speaker 1: I remember there was when we did our first cookbook,
Speaker 1: Random House said that we had to trial. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: the New York Times that a woman who lived in
Speaker 1: Maine and she had to be able for every recipe
Speaker 1: that was in the book, be able to buy the
Speaker 1: ingredients within forty miles of her house.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: You know, so I forget salted anchovs, salted kickers or
Speaker 1: you know. But California, we always do think of California
Speaker 1: as the farmland of oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Great, well, you know it. It was a very interesting time.
Speaker 2: I mean, Alice Waters in, Jeremiah Tower and Mark Miller
Speaker 2: and Berkeley, and you know, they had wonderful growing regions
Speaker 2: around there. Plus they had the fish and us down
Speaker 2: in southern California. We had a little country called Mexico
Speaker 2: that had one of the greatest, greatest growing regions. And
Speaker 2: our own area vent tour north of US is called
Speaker 2: the Ox start Plains one of the five biggest, best
Speaker 2: growing regions in the world. And you know the strawberries
Speaker 2: had come from there, Harry's berries everything.
Speaker 1: You know, it's tomatoes. And you were involved in the
Speaker 1: restaurants from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: You know, just by default. I mean I was in
Speaker 3: design school. I always have always had an art practice.
Speaker 3: But yes, fortunately, you know, it's a mixed thing because
Speaker 3: with Michael having many different restaurants at some point someone
Speaker 3: when in Denver, went in Detroit, Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: When he wasn't traveling.
Speaker 3: I always felt the responsibility of having a presence there.
Speaker 1: And that being said, I mean, as you know.
Speaker 3: In the restaurant business, and a lot of the men
Speaker 3: that own the restaurant businesses, they don't want their wives involved.
Speaker 3: Michael is a very you know, he's a generous person.
Speaker 3: Because even though it was a lot of work on
Speaker 3: my end, I was fortunate that I could actually be involved.
Speaker 2: Also, what was also very important is that we had
Speaker 2: such we were such a gathering place for all the artists.
Speaker 4: It's Anamonica in Venice.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the artists.
Speaker 4: Oh listen, I mean we had.
Speaker 1: Deep and corn at Hockney. I mean Robert Graham who
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: I mean that was really Venice was the kind of
Speaker 3: hub then and also for the past since we opened,
Speaker 3: we always had a space upstairs that I always put
Speaker 3: up shows of all the arts. So like you know,
Speaker 3: I even did shows of Ed Ruscha, the playwright, David Mammott.
Speaker 4: Because he's a photographer, photographer.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I used to teach I myself used to teach a
Speaker 3: class for architects, so all the architects. I would do
Speaker 3: a lot of shows for them, and it was so
Speaker 3: charming because here there they were all competing on big projects.
Speaker 3: These were all the la architects. And then they'd have
Speaker 3: their painting on the wall and they go, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: so nervous, I have my painting on the wall.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It was like so personal for them.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 1: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thank you. What about the move to New.
Speaker 2: York, Well that we did in nineteen eighty nine, again,
Speaker 2: like Kim was pointing out, those days of restaurants were
Speaker 2: totally dark, Yeah, totally you know, what do you call
Speaker 2: the red velvet curtains. You could be there at noon
Speaker 2: and it was like you were there at midnight. And
Speaker 2: so we're sitting in this dark bar. We walked through
Speaker 2: this dark, cavernous thing and open up the back door
Speaker 2: and there's this huge garden out in the back and
Speaker 2: I go back quietly and I say.
Speaker 4: This is it. This is the place I can tell
Speaker 4: I know exactly yet. And what's Sea Dress twenty four
Speaker 4: West fifty fifth.
Speaker 1: So that's right in the theater.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're right just above the just above the.
Speaker 1: Also in a lot of media television, all.
Speaker 2: The whole media world was there. Everybody's still there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but all the italent agencies were there, you know.
Speaker 1: I see them.
Speaker 4: Was on the corner. William Morris.
Speaker 1: Was that the days of the three martini lunch or that.
Speaker 2: It was the beginning of the transition out of that
Speaker 2: funny enough because.
Speaker 3: And women and women becoming a major business women. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was the.
Speaker 1: Big interesting thing. Well, tell me about the Well I
Speaker 1: think that also.
Speaker 3: Well, since I've always been a salad eat, you know,
Speaker 3: Michael started adding salads and greens to and the men
Speaker 3: were being concerned about their diets and how they were looking.
Speaker 1: But I think since.
Speaker 3: Michael and his staff were the first that really engaged
Speaker 3: with the women that walked in the doors, and they
Speaker 3: felt comfortable, they didn't feel like they were put upon,
Speaker 3: you know, and they felt like they were given some
Speaker 3: you know, gredence. And they all just started to come there.
Speaker 3: And then when all the women started, of course all
Speaker 3: the men come too.
Speaker 1: And it's always.
Speaker 4: Felt it was a very big literary Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ed always came, always, yes, it always came yeah,
Speaker 1: my brother Michael, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And but all the agents from IM and CIA and
Speaker 2: William Morris came, and most of.
Speaker 4: Them were women. Remember something. We I found the place
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy nine. It took me until nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: nine to make the deal with it. Young we know, Wow,
Speaker 4: he was seventy eight.
Speaker 1: We started seventy nine when you opened Michael's.
Speaker 2: Yeah in LA and we were supposed to open in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and I was so wedded to this place
Speaker 2: that I waited until nineteen eighty nine. He calls me
Speaker 2: and he says, okay. So that was one of the
Speaker 2: reasons we took off like a bat out of hell.
Speaker 2: There was because during that entire ten year period anybody
Speaker 2: from New York that came to La eight in our restaurant,
Speaker 2: So we had a complete list of people.
Speaker 4: That knew who we were when we opened. It just
Speaker 4: took off like a bat.
Speaker 1: If you were thinking now about the changes, people always
Speaker 1: say to me, I've never been interested in trends or
Speaker 1: fashion or what's going to be the next big thing
Speaker 1: at all. You know, I just say, we just try
Speaker 1: and do better. You know, we try and do better.
Speaker 1: But do you find that people who eat in the
Speaker 1: restaurants now are a different kind of crowd. I kind
Speaker 1: of think that here in London and they've become more
Speaker 1: interested in food, They're really interested, you know, that they're
Speaker 1: more traveled, that they're interested about wine really and do
Speaker 1: you think they've also become more more did you find
Speaker 1: that people are more demand they would eat off menu
Speaker 1: or you.
Speaker 2: Know, unfortunately the kind of style of the cooking we
Speaker 2: do is so accessible and we made it that way,
Speaker 2: you know, as Kim said, you know, we were in
Speaker 2: the land of the bounty of the greens, and so
Speaker 2: the vegetables and the nobody had a salad on their menu.
Speaker 2: You know, you ordered to sell I bear. Remember how
Speaker 2: the French they would eat it after dinner. Yes, you know,
Speaker 2: God forbid they had cheese. But Coleman Andrews could never
Speaker 2: get over the fact that we had this unbelievable dessert
Speaker 2: table that had a cheese plate on it that was
Speaker 2: bigger than the desserts.
Speaker 4: And that took a lot of getting people too used
Speaker 4: to it.
Speaker 1: Americans. When I was growing up, you'd have cheese like
Speaker 1: with your drinks in the beginning.
Speaker 4: Always always no.
Speaker 2: But I mean I think that the explosion of the
Speaker 2: different kinds of food, or remember something. When I opened
Speaker 2: in seventy nine, you wanted Italian food. There were two kinds.
Speaker 2: Northern Italian with the white sauce, Southern Italian with the reds.
Speaker 4: That was it. There was none of this regional stuff,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: I mean it was there, but nobody ate it and
Speaker 2: arrest but Chinese food, same thing, fake Chinese food. This
Speaker 2: is before the Japanese went nuts and the Thaie and
Speaker 2: the Vietnamese and everything. I mean, it's so widespread now,
Speaker 2: it's like, as I say, the revolution was televised, it's working, you.
Speaker 1: Know, it is exciting. I think you know, as you
Speaker 1: say there it can be difficult. We can't say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we try and say yes.
Speaker 3: I think these days you say yes to everything.
Speaker 1: Don't you think it makes like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the world, the restaurant world is definitely not in
Speaker 2: a great place. It's especially in America. Least we have
Speaker 2: a ton that are closing. You know, it is so
Speaker 2: costly to operate in America today. People keep talking about
Speaker 2: inflation in the cost of food. Is it that's expensive?
Speaker 2: But it's not like labor costs.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: And you asked earlier about what kind of advice would
Speaker 2: you get give to someone young wanting to open a restaurant,
Speaker 2: I said, get a great least. That's the number one
Speaker 2: reason why restaurants go out of business. They can't afford
Speaker 2: you know, they got stars in their eyes and they go, yeah,
Speaker 2: sure we'll sign that, you know, and you can't afford that.
Speaker 4: You know. It's fundamental rules.
Speaker 1: So food is you know, restaurants are all this excitement
Speaker 1: and they're also fun and friendly, but they're also comfort
Speaker 1: and so is food. Food is matty things. Food is
Speaker 1: something that you want to share or when you have
Speaker 1: excitement because you're in a new city. But it's also comfort.
Speaker 1: So if you had to go to food for comfort,
Speaker 1: is there a food would you like to go for
Speaker 1: as kid.
Speaker 3: Well, I probably would always go for your stratch of
Speaker 3: Tell ice cream.
Speaker 1: Oh oh as oh because actually my fond that it
Speaker 1: had to be from the River Company.
Speaker 3: No, but I definitely because my father who always felt
Speaker 3: that we ate too much, but we would always give.
Speaker 3: We give him like leaders.
Speaker 4: Buy them from you your strate.
Speaker 3: To Tell ice creams and in the middle of the
Speaker 3: night we'd all go scoop and.
Speaker 1: Skeep the ice cream in the middle. It was just
Speaker 1: would bring such joy.
Speaker 2: It's an accurate statement from Kim because her favorite thing
Speaker 2: in the world is dessert and ice cream in particular,
Speaker 2: she could dispense with the rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just have us. I love us. What was
Speaker 1: your comfort food?
Speaker 4: Oh? I got too many.
Speaker 1: I mean it's insane. You don't have rules here.
Speaker 2: I am a pork guy. I'm a consummate pork chops uh,
Speaker 2: fresh time grilled, pan seared. I find the veal and
Speaker 2: pork are best pants seared.
Speaker 4: Uh. And I'm a big fan of Bays English muffins.
Speaker 2: You may not know them, but they are from Chicago
Speaker 2: and they're particular that my mother we they're they have
Speaker 2: a certain baking soda taste to it. It's not sour though,
Speaker 2: it's not white, it's not wheat, and it is spectacular.
Speaker 2: And I do that with Lando Lakes butter and chunky
Speaker 2: peanut butter and Smuckers strawberry.
Speaker 1: More and more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then I eat it with a slice of thirty.
Speaker 1: Year old butter. Peanut butter and.
Speaker 2: Strawberry and more butter on the top side more on
Speaker 2: top of the both both sides.
Speaker 4: You put the butter on, Okay, then you put the
Speaker 4: Then you put the peanut butter.
Speaker 1: Is it melted, So there's the butter. Is it hot?
Speaker 4: It's hot. Yeah, you toast it.
Speaker 2: You put that on it, Then you put the strawberry.
Speaker 2: Then you put the top on it. And you eat
Speaker 2: that with a big glass of milk and a side
Speaker 2: of compete thirty year old compte.
Speaker 1: That because it wasn't enough on it.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's the balance again, okay, the balance of that.
Speaker 1: Could I have one of those at Michael's?
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's not on the menu in our brunch days.
Speaker 1: It's so bad for you, it's okay.
Speaker 2: Turkey BLTs is another one. The day after Thanksgiving. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we make turkey bl teas on those same English muffets.
Speaker 4: With a very thick tons of Helmans mayonnaise.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm coming home. Where does the mayonnaise go? This
Speaker 1: isn't the BLT doesn't go on that other.
Speaker 2: No, no, Hello, my father was a peanut butter and
Speaker 2: mayonnaise guy.
Speaker 1: So let's go have some food now and have some
Speaker 1: fun and some hungry aleviation and comfort. Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: thank
Speaker 4: You, thank you time