Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Mel Brooks makes the world laugh. Watch the Producers Blazing
Speaker 2: saddles Young Frankenstein, Listen to the two thousand year old Man,
Speaker 2: or read his autobiography All About Me, and you are
Speaker 2: guaranteed to find yourself laughing out loud until it hurts.
Speaker 2: But for me, having known Mel for twenty five years,
Speaker 2: funny is not the first word I would use to
Speaker 2: describe this amazing man. Hungry, hungry, fiercely proud. Do you
Speaker 2: think that's your adjective? You get hungry with you. I
Speaker 2: get hungry when I see you. Wow, we love you there,
Speaker 2: fiercely proud of his children and his grandchildren, the first
Speaker 2: one to pick up a phone to a friend in trouble,
Speaker 2: refusing an award in opposition to the Iraq War and
Speaker 2: waiting to accept it from President Obama, manerable after the
Speaker 2: loss of people he loved. To Mel, food and wine
Speaker 2: are crucial. Many of his life's happenings have occurred in restaurants,
Speaker 2: and as for wine, he will tell you himself.
Speaker 1: Spill it all over the table.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to take this seriously today. It is home.
Speaker 2: We are together, lucky me. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: wine and family and friends and be prepared to laugh
Speaker 2: because mel Brooks is funny. So that was a serious introduction.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you what do you want to
Speaker 1: tell me that before we stopped talking, Before I forget,
Speaker 1: I would like to do my imitation of a cat,
Speaker 1: because not a lot of people know that I do it.
Speaker 1: I make your best cats sound in the world.
Speaker 2: Ready, I just want just gonna be I just need
Speaker 2: one second to really get myself into this.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's working the sound of a cat. That is
Speaker 1: that is a perfect sound. It's hard to do, hard
Speaker 1: to do. I do it in young Frankenstein. I think
Speaker 1: it's it's a dart throwing contest and one of the
Speaker 1: dots hits a cat and you hear you know, did you.
Speaker 2: Do the sound? I get there every night? Can you
Speaker 2: do it again?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 2: That's good? So what's a technique?
Speaker 1: Technique is to is to squash some air between your
Speaker 1: cheek and the front of your mouth.
Speaker 2: As we're talking about cats and fish, maybe fish, you
Speaker 2: know cats like to eat fish. We could actually read
Speaker 2: the recipe.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my favorite of all the all of all
Speaker 1: the things in the book. There's a good picture of
Speaker 1: it too in your cookbook River Cafe, London.
Speaker 2: Thirty because that was done for our thirty.
Speaker 1: Three threeh thirty years. Wow.
Speaker 2: Do you remember you came to the party?
Speaker 1: I did. Oh?
Speaker 2: You and Richard sat there the whole night in the
Speaker 2: oh yeah, in the restaurant, and everybody just came to
Speaker 2: your table. Everyone. Everybody wanted to see.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as important as the food on my plate.
Speaker 1: A lot of food, paid attention to all. He eats,
Speaker 1: Ali eats are supreme. Let me read the rest of Okay,
Speaker 1: there dover soul with Marjora. I don't know what marjoram is,
Speaker 1: but I love it. Okay, whatever it is, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: one bunch of fresh margarine leaves, one whole dover soul,
Speaker 1: weighing twelve to fourteen ounces three fifty to four hundred grams,
Speaker 1: scaled and cleaned. Of course, of course I'm not going
Speaker 1: to eat it with the scales on, never and with
Speaker 1: the stuff inside, No, sir. One lemon cut in half.
Speaker 1: I have lemons, Mayer lemons for my Mayer lemon tree.
Speaker 1: We're just outside here and they are golden yellow and
Speaker 1: running with lemon juice that is superior to anything in
Speaker 1: the world. So if I have a dover sole, I'll
Speaker 1: bring my lemons.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, we get armored lemons from Amalfi, so they're
Speaker 2: pretty good too.
Speaker 1: Okay, here we go. Pre eat the oven to four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit. That's pretty hot. That's pretty hard.
Speaker 1: Brush a large flat baking sheet with extra virgin olive oil.
Speaker 1: Scatter half the mordrum leaves over the sheet along with
Speaker 1: some sea salt and black pepper. Place the fish on top,
Speaker 1: season with sea salt and black pepper. Then scatter the
Speaker 1: remaining mordorum drizzle drizzle generously with olive oil. Okay, that
Speaker 1: sounds great. Bake for fifteen to twenty minutes. Tests with
Speaker 1: the point of a sharp knife inserted into the central
Speaker 1: with the thickest part of the soul.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: If cooked, the flesh should come away from the bone. Okay.
Speaker 1: Squeeze the lemon, either from a malfy or from mel
Speaker 1: Brooks's lemon tree, over the fish, and serve with any
Speaker 1: juices from the pans that are left. I like that.
Speaker 2: Let's begin at the beginning earliest food memories. What do
Speaker 2: you remember from you know, your early days. Did your
Speaker 2: mother cook?
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mother, okay, it was It was a standard Williamsburg,
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Jewish tenement food. So breakfast in the winter was
Speaker 1: always a hot cereal, cream of wheat or ralston which
Speaker 1: was the kind of Baridge brown porridge, and then in
Speaker 1: the summer cornflake strice krispies or wheaties.
Speaker 2: What year would that have been? How old would you?
Speaker 1: I would that would be thirty five. I'd be around nine.
Speaker 1: That's when I went my uncle Joe, shortest jew on earth.
Speaker 1: Short he was about four to four when when a taxi,
Speaker 1: a big checker taxi cab rolled down the streets of Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and there was no driver. That was Joe. There was
Speaker 1: no driver. It was so short it get just about
Speaker 1: peer over the you know. Anyway, Joe took me because
Speaker 1: his friend al was the doorman of the Alvin Theater
Speaker 1: on fifty second Street, and running at that same theater
Speaker 1: was Cold Porters Anything Goes. I had never seen a
Speaker 1: Broadway show. I was nine years old and Uncle Joe
Speaker 1: took me to see Anything Goes. I was stunned. I was.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it, even though we were in the
Speaker 1: second balcony as far away from the stage as you
Speaker 1: can get ethel Merman was too loud.
Speaker 2: No MIC's she was just she was in anything. Anything
Speaker 2: goes did say the mother, Yeah, yeah, the woman. It's
Speaker 2: on a ship, isn't it.
Speaker 1: And it's on the ship. Very good, yea. And Victim
Speaker 1: Moore was the gangster, the gang Yeah. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: so good. At the end, I nearly clapped my hands over.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't stop clapping and screaming and shouting. And
Speaker 1: then I got back an Uncle Joe's camp. I said
Speaker 1: to him, Uncle John, I'm not going in the garment center.
Speaker 1: Everybody at three sixty five South third Street, between on
Speaker 1: Hooper and Use three sixty five South third Street, everybody
Speaker 1: in that building worked in the garment center. They were
Speaker 1: shipping clerks, they were cutters, they were designers, they were salesmen.
Speaker 1: They every buddy I think on the street, the sixty one,
Speaker 1: three sixty three through sixty five, these tenements, everybody in
Speaker 1: the garments set. And I screamed at my uncle Joe,
Speaker 1: Uncle Joe, I'm not I'm not going into the garments that.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm gonna go into the show business. I
Speaker 1: loved it. I loved it, you know, and it changed,
Speaker 1: but it did and I did. And because of course
Speaker 1: he take you.
Speaker 2: To food, what do you take you out to eat?
Speaker 2: I always went to the theater as a kid, and
Speaker 2: then there was the meal afterwards, lunch before it was
Speaker 2: a day out.
Speaker 1: We had some favorites that Uncle Joe would take us to,
Speaker 1: where one was called Gallagher Steakhouse. They had like half
Speaker 1: a cow in the window. I always had these half
Speaker 1: cows in the window, you know, the raw meat hanging gallaghers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the and the steak was incredible. And sometimes you
Speaker 1: go to Jack Dempsey's restaurant.
Speaker 2: And what was that?
Speaker 1: And that was great, but you know it was it
Speaker 1: was all meat, it was. There never any fish in
Speaker 1: a restaurant. Yeah, and I never liked fish. I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever liked fish until I was seventy or
Speaker 1: eighty and I went to the.
Speaker 2: River Cafe, and so really you never ate fish.
Speaker 1: I hardly ever ate fish as But.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me that you you describe a kind
Speaker 2: of modest home life in terms of food, but you
Speaker 2: went out to restaurants.
Speaker 1: So a lot of Jewish restaurants were called dairy restaurants,
Speaker 1: and they serve stuff like blinches with sour cream and
Speaker 1: old dairy. You never mixed meat and dairy with something
Speaker 1: some religious nonsense.
Speaker 2: Did your grandmother cook for you?
Speaker 1: My grandmother cook?
Speaker 2: What did she cooks? Which grandmother? Your mother's my mother's mother.
Speaker 2: I never knew my you never knew your father's.
Speaker 1: No, No, my father's grandmother. I did know. She did
Speaker 1: say to her meals best over meals in Bensonhurst where
Speaker 1: they lived in a big one family hand.
Speaker 2: Did they come with their first generation?
Speaker 1: I know they were. They were European?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so do you think your grandparents brought their
Speaker 2: food with them? The food they.
Speaker 1: Cooked the same stuff. Mostly it was chicken, chicken and
Speaker 1: chicken soup.
Speaker 2: And uh briscuit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they made brisket. Absolutely, they made brisket and brown potatoes.
Speaker 2: Do you know my grandparents came They were They came
Speaker 2: from Hungary and Russia. And my father remembers my grandmother
Speaker 2: having in the Lower East Side a carp swimming in
Speaker 2: the bathtub that they would make a filter fish out of.
Speaker 2: So do you imagine having they would bring it a
Speaker 2: live fish.
Speaker 1: Live fish?
Speaker 2: We would get a live fish.
Speaker 1: My brother Bernie and I were usually one week. We
Speaker 1: loved and we called them arty, and we fed them
Speaker 1: bread crumbs and we chased them around the bathtub. And
Speaker 1: then it was unspeakable. I can't even describe it. Irving,
Speaker 1: my old oldest brothers Irving and Lenny held us back.
Speaker 1: We were screaming, don't kill him, and my mother would say,
Speaker 1: we gotta eat, we gotta eat supper, and she she'd
Speaker 1: kill audience, serve him, it was and we would cry,
Speaker 1: and but we ate him.
Speaker 2: And then would you get another carp and kill that?
Speaker 1: We got another car.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting that they had live fish swimming in
Speaker 2: the back in the back, yeah they didn't.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you had to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my brother Michael, who you know, just wrote, I
Speaker 2: have found that something my father had written about his
Speaker 2: memories of food and just living in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 2: But you weren't in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 1: Were the Lower east Side? An extension of the Lower
Speaker 1: east Side was Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: That was probably one step up, was it.
Speaker 1: Well, it was one step up if you put it
Speaker 1: next to a section of Brooklyn called Bronzeville, East New York.
Speaker 1: And that was really where they had coal stoves. They
Speaker 1: didn't even have gas. Know, we had electricity and we
Speaker 1: had guess so we were one step of Browns built
Speaker 1: equal to the lower east side. And let me tell
Speaker 1: you that my mother used to make every once in
Speaker 1: a while on a Sunday night, she would make spaghetti.
Speaker 1: She would buy a box of Muller's noodles.
Speaker 2: They were flat, flat noodles.
Speaker 1: And she cooked them until they were dead.
Speaker 2: They'd be really soft.
Speaker 1: Oh, they were really soft. And then she'd put them
Speaker 1: in a baking pan and she would empty a bottle
Speaker 1: of Heinz ketchup over them. This is spaghetti. And then
Speaker 1: she'd bake it for thirty or forty minutes until the
Speaker 1: pan was dead, till everything was dead. And then she
Speaker 1: cut them into squares and served it to us and
Speaker 1: said spaghetti. And I was from eight years old to
Speaker 1: about thirteen or fourteen. That was spaghetti and it was okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really okay.
Speaker 1: Then I had joined a club called Baltzer Bugs. We
Speaker 1: made model airplanes. I think we enjoyed smelling the glue.
Speaker 1: Where do we like backing the planes? But we may so.
Speaker 1: One of the Baltzer Bugs was Bernie Steinberger, was Flappy Rothman,
Speaker 1: and there was Tony Galliani Italian an Italian, and Tony said,
Speaker 1: I'm going home. It was Sunday and I said, He said,
Speaker 1: I'm going home to have spaghetti. I said, we have
Speaker 1: spaghetti on Sunday too. He said, well try, you know,
Speaker 1: come on and have bar spaghetti. So I went home.
Speaker 1: I walked into his apartment, which was in green Point,
Speaker 1: a little on the edge of Williamsburg. As I walked in,
Speaker 1: I was assaulted by these incredible smells, just as the
Speaker 1: aromas of of garlic, and I mean, it was just incredible.
Speaker 1: Then I sat down. They served this warm, squiggly spaghetti,
Speaker 1: real spaghetti, squiggly but not dead. Fought back and sauces
Speaker 1: red thick, red, beautiful sauce with meatballs in it, and
Speaker 1: sprinkled on top of it was this white stuff snow.
Speaker 1: I think it was Parmazan cheese. And I took I
Speaker 1: took one bite and I started to cry.
Speaker 2: Did you cry?
Speaker 1: I wept? I wept, and I said, Tony, this is
Speaker 1: this is spaghetti. This is spaghetti. I was about fourteen,
Speaker 1: and I just wept and I went When I came home,
Speaker 1: I said, Mom, you're not making spaghetti. I don't know
Speaker 1: what tide of stuff is that cardpoint? But it's not spaghetti.
Speaker 2: You're starting to tell me about your her mother's food.
Speaker 2: What was her mother's food when you went to your grandmother's.
Speaker 1: Well, we went to the state. It was, I know,
Speaker 1: they made little dishes before to celebrate the Jews freedom
Speaker 1: from slavery in Egypt, and had something with apples and
Speaker 1: stuff that was supposed to mimic the mortar that the
Speaker 1: Jews carried up to make sure these big stones stayed together.
Speaker 1: And then some salt for the heart, for the suffering,
Speaker 1: for the tears, and it was a lot of those
Speaker 1: little things. And then she served this thing called the
Speaker 1: filter fish with red horse rice has they called it
Speaker 1: crane crane or grain, and it was just thrilling. I
Speaker 1: loved it.
Speaker 2: So you love food from food?
Speaker 1: I tasted food. My mother wasn't making food. She was
Speaker 1: she was making something at bathroom food.
Speaker 2: So do you think your mother was not?
Speaker 1: And the first time I had Chinese food? Where was
Speaker 1: that Inburg? We never went to it. My mother said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to a Chinese restaurant, all right. And
Speaker 1: each meal, the whole meal menu twenty five cents, and
Speaker 1: the Chinese restaurant and the Chinese restaurant, and you got
Speaker 1: you got egg that's right. First. Then you got chowmine, oh, cholmine.
Speaker 1: And then you got a yellow ball with little pieces
Speaker 1: of ice in it, round ball that was the ice
Speaker 1: cream dessert. And and then some portun cookies with with
Speaker 1: the paper in it that you know. I hate the paper.
Speaker 1: I hate everything. Everything was, everything was sweet.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
Speaker 2: steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
Speaker 2: morning and Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and cristada from
Speaker 2: our past your kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops
Speaker 2: and River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, Misti, mozzarella, brisquetta,
Speaker 2: red and yellow peppers for Tello, tonato and more. Come
Speaker 2: in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in
Speaker 2: the bar. No need to book, see you here.
Speaker 1: One of the most delicious things was very simple. We
Speaker 1: lived at five five stories up in this tenement and
Speaker 1: I was I wasn't going to come up. They will
Speaker 1: get that I was not going to come up for lunch.
Speaker 1: I was not why because there was five stories and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to leave the game, right, So we
Speaker 1: took a break in the game and we all had lunch.
Speaker 1: They all brought bags and stuff with them, sat on
Speaker 1: the carry of my friends and my mother would throw
Speaker 1: in it throw down in a brown paper bag, kaiser
Speaker 1: roll smeared with a lot of butter, fresh butter, and
Speaker 1: almost a whole tomato sliced and salted and put that
Speaker 1: and it was the most delicious thing. You catch it,
Speaker 1: and I'd always catch it. But one time I missed it.
Speaker 2: I was going to say five stories up as.
Speaker 1: One time I missed it and splat blast, you heard
Speaker 1: the sound, and the bag was crammed with wet So
Speaker 1: I very carefully peeled that what used to be the
Speaker 1: bag away from the sandwich, and I began eating the sandwich,
Speaker 1: and I once again cried. It was so great. It
Speaker 1: was the closest thing to pizza.
Speaker 2: When did you have your first pizza?
Speaker 1: Oh? I had my first pizza when I was I
Speaker 1: was sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 2: So as a teenager, you lived at home, and then
Speaker 2: when did you leave you When you left home, did
Speaker 2: you cook for yourself?
Speaker 1: Well? I didn't leave home home, Okay, I was sent
Speaker 1: to Virginia Military Institute the Army. There's a guy that
Speaker 1: came to my high school and we were going to graduate.
Speaker 1: We were seventeen. We're going to be eighteen and graduated
Speaker 1: from Eastern District High School. Our claim to fame was
Speaker 1: a red hour back was a great, incredible basketball coach
Speaker 1: and world famous and he was on the team and
Speaker 1: he was a genius. Anyway, I left because the guy said,
Speaker 1: if you can pass the test, you'll be in the
Speaker 1: Army Specialized Training Reserved program and it would stand you
Speaker 1: in good stead because later when you were drafted or
Speaker 1: taken into the regular Army, you already had some background
Speaker 1: in military and you could maybe choose your branch of service. Great, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I took the test and the test was not hard.
Speaker 1: It was how much is doing too? I said, well,
Speaker 1: if you put them next to each other, you got
Speaker 1: twenty two, you know. But it was easy and they
Speaker 1: wanted you. So when I was seventeen, they sent me
Speaker 1: to v m I, Virginia Military Institute, the West point
Speaker 1: of the South, and uh go to restaurants in Lexington, Virginia.
Speaker 1: And when the waitress to take your order, she answer
Speaker 1: back one thing. She said you want grits with that?
Speaker 1: And we said what she said, do you want grits
Speaker 1: with that? We said, no, grits are made with gri that.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't understand.
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand later.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like plent It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 2: what was it like the food in the military. Was
Speaker 2: that awakening?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Can I can be very honest with you and
Speaker 1: say some words.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, this is a podcast. We can do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a podcast, we can do it. I remember
Speaker 1: the only thing the army had a I went into
Speaker 1: the mess hall at four Dicks, and I was shocked
Speaker 1: by what I saw on a on a great big griddle,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe twelve feet by twelve and it was just enormous.
Speaker 1: I saw a thousand eggs, sunny side up, and you'd pick.
Speaker 1: You'd say, give me two, give me three, give me four,
Speaker 1: and then that was that was eggs. And then there
Speaker 1: was like a trash barrel clean one of course, that
Speaker 1: had oatmeal in it, and then there was it was
Speaker 1: just that kind of you know, so it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 2: We're homesick.
Speaker 1: I was homesick.
Speaker 2: Could be so homesick? How old were you.
Speaker 1: Oh, well I was. I was nearly old enough to
Speaker 1: be in the regular army, so I was seventeen and eighty. Yeah.
Speaker 2: To take you out of Brooklyn, to take you out
Speaker 2: of your hair, yeah, put you in a place.
Speaker 1: It was a strange place. But anyway, we're all together
Speaker 1: and we we you know, we alearned to each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you take anything away from that experience?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did. They were They were unusually nice to us,
Speaker 1: these cadets, these Southern cadets they had, and they taught
Speaker 1: us never to lie. Honor is the best thing. You know.
Speaker 2: That stayed with you, and.
Speaker 1: Stay that stayed with me. Hardly, I hardly ever lie.
Speaker 1: Except in show business. You're forced to liar.
Speaker 2: Say something, to tell somebody their work is good. To
Speaker 2: do that good. Always tell something.
Speaker 1: You look so great today, you know that.
Speaker 2: I said. A friend of mine once interviewed Isaiah Berlin,
Speaker 2: you know, the philosopher said, he said, when you admire
Speaker 2: somebody's work, you just say I loved your work. And
Speaker 2: they said, no, no, no, that's for the work you
Speaker 2: didn't think so much of. If you really loved their work,
Speaker 2: you I died, you know, I was on the floor.
Speaker 2: You know how do you how do you give I love?
Speaker 2: Your work is for the people whose work you didn't like,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what you say. That's fine. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: then what happened after.
Speaker 1: The and anyway? I went into the real army and
Speaker 1: there I saw a thousand eggs sunny side fourth That
Speaker 1: was Fourth Dicks, New Jersey. What you would have been,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you exactly. June forty four, I was transferred
Speaker 1: from v M I to four Dicks. I was in
Speaker 1: the regular army. And then there was a thing that
Speaker 1: was on the table. It was a big round bowl
Speaker 1: with stuff in it, and it was not at the table.
Speaker 1: It was like where where the cooks were, you know,
Speaker 1: And they had big spoons and they could slop it.
Speaker 1: They could they put it on on some toast, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I didn't. I never took a chance.
Speaker 1: But once I said, you know, I said, the guy's
Speaker 1: next to me, ate it. So I took a chance
Speaker 1: and I got it. And I said to them what
Speaker 1: is that? What this we're eating? And they said, ship
Speaker 1: on a shingle? I said, what ship on a shingle?
Speaker 1: It turned out to be cream beef on toast, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't so bad. But the army, you.
Speaker 2: Know, did they send you abroad? Did you go?
Speaker 1: Yeah, eventually, But let me tell you, at breakfast and
Speaker 1: old meals in the army, there was no short cutting.
Speaker 1: You You got into a lot of trouble. If someone
Speaker 1: said passed about or past the jam or past the whatever,
Speaker 1: you passed it. If you stopped and took some of
Speaker 1: it and put it on your plate, that was short cutting.
Speaker 1: And you had to leave the table in the middle
Speaker 1: of your meal. That said your your.
Speaker 2: Throat, So you pass and then you waved.
Speaker 1: You passed it and waited, you waited. And then when
Speaker 1: we were on bivouac. Bivouac means when you're you're on
Speaker 1: a campsite. You pitched tents and you sleep on the ground,
Speaker 1: and then you go through a mess line with this
Speaker 1: stuff to eat with. It's all aluminum. And then there
Speaker 1: were indentations for food in it. Yeah, and then they
Speaker 1: always did the same thing. It was beef stew. They
Speaker 1: put the beef stew in the deepest dish, in the dray.
Speaker 1: Then yes, for the let's say the mashed potatoes. You figured, well,
Speaker 1: there's a big spot next to it. It's deep. Give
Speaker 1: that No, on the meat.
Speaker 2: On the meat, and then mashed potatoes on the.
Speaker 1: Meat on the meat, and the at the top it off,
Speaker 1: or slice beaches on top of the mashed potato. And
Speaker 1: there were places in each plate for sections where everybody
Speaker 1: you can eat like a person. But they invariably put
Speaker 1: beef stew, then meshed potatoes and then and I don't know, so.
Speaker 2: You always cared about how food tasted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there was one big another, very big revelation
Speaker 1: about food. Jeane Wilder, I could cry. Take him, He's
Speaker 1: so sweet, sweetest invited Anne and I to dinner at
Speaker 1: his house and in the village, at his house apartment
Speaker 1: in the village. I forgot what we ate, but he
Speaker 1: served wine. Up until then the only wine I had
Speaker 1: ever really never cared for wine. I don't say it
Speaker 1: tastes a little sour. Oh, up until then, mana Chevitzai
Speaker 1: carmel is a sweet Jewish wine. And I tasted this wine.
Speaker 2: Was it a French wine?
Speaker 1: It was a French wine, Santa's steph, you know, And
Speaker 1: I said, what is this? He said, it's wine. I said,
Speaker 1: so this is wine? And he got me hooked. And
Speaker 1: from that day I think I was twenty something whatever
Speaker 1: for twenty six I don't know to that day to this.
Speaker 1: If I have wine, it's always a good wine. It's
Speaker 1: either a good Italian wine or a good French one,
Speaker 1: or a good and a half of Valley wine. But he
Speaker 1: taught me that wine wine could actually taste, really taste good,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And so how did you make the kind of voyage
Speaker 2: from tasting wine to having one of the great sellers.
Speaker 2: And well, up.
Speaker 1: Until Blazing Saddles, I was hanging on the show business
Speaker 1: with the skin of my teeth, not making any money.
Speaker 1: The first movie I made was The Producers, good movie.
Speaker 1: I won the Academy Award for the screenplay, but just
Speaker 1: about broke even. And then the next one was The
Speaker 1: Twelve Chairs, which was a foreign movie kind of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a good, very one of my best movies,
Speaker 1: but alas, it didn't make a penny. So I was
Speaker 1: thinking of going back to television, where I was doing
Speaker 1: all right, I was making money. And then Blazing Saddles
Speaker 1: and that was an explosion. Busted open the doors and
Speaker 1: windows and gave me enough money to buy a house
Speaker 1: and you know, finally pay pay for dinner and didn't
Speaker 1: have to slip me money under the table.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: I was okay, blazing saddles did it? And that?
Speaker 2: How did you educate yourself in wine? Did somebody help
Speaker 2: you or did you?
Speaker 1: Well? Once once I tasted those wines and I looked,
Speaker 1: I looked up. You know, I got a book. I
Speaker 1: got a few books. Can you find a book? Take
Speaker 1: a look, look up on the on the shelf there,
Speaker 1: look up on the shelf. See if you find a
Speaker 1: wine book. Yeah. So I've always got books find finding
Speaker 1: out well.
Speaker 2: You know, if somebody said they want to learn about wine,
Speaker 2: would you say.
Speaker 1: Read, I would say read. I would say read. I
Speaker 1: would say read. Yeah, yeah, what book? That Bordeaux?
Speaker 2: So then you just learned. And you visited, and you.
Speaker 1: And I visited, you know, and I went cheval Blanc
Speaker 1: invited me the owner of the chateau, and I spent
Speaker 1: the weekend.
Speaker 2: Do you still go down Do you have your wine
Speaker 2: cellar downstairs? Do you go downstairs?
Speaker 1: I don't drink much wine now because of my belly.
Speaker 1: I can't drink a lot of wine.
Speaker 2: But you can drink some.
Speaker 1: I can drink some, Yeah, I can, I can. I
Speaker 1: can drink some.
Speaker 2: What do you feel about Italian line?
Speaker 1: I love Italian mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love a barollo.
Speaker 1: And you know, the wines can be soft and wonderful,
Speaker 1: they can be rough and beautiful. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of wat.
Speaker 2: It's changed now. You know, there's a new generation of
Speaker 2: Italian winemakers whose father's werem was farmers. You know, everybody
Speaker 2: had a vineyard and chianti or whatever. And then this
Speaker 2: new generation of taking it seriously. And I actually even
Speaker 2: came to California to learn more about wine.
Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: We talked about food in the army. But what I'd
Speaker 2: like to talk to you about food and filmmaking so
Speaker 2: or television. When you were working in film and the studios,
Speaker 2: what would food be like? There would there be a
Speaker 2: canteen where you ate? What would they call the commissary?
Speaker 1: What would they commissary?
Speaker 2: Commissary?
Speaker 1: What was that mesole? Yeah, in the movie studios it's
Speaker 1: a commissary.
Speaker 2: And what happened? What was that like?
Speaker 1: Well? Some some had a fox was very good, really,
Speaker 1: I mean fox you could get an omelet, you know,
Speaker 1: are the other studios didn't know what an omelet was,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: So tell me about a lunch. Would you stop for
Speaker 2: lunch and would you all meet other actors from other films.
Speaker 2: Everybody would just meet. There was that a way of
Speaker 2: kind of meeting people. Who did you when you had
Speaker 2: the commisary?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well mostly the folks that I met, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff that you know Allan lad Jr. Who ran
Speaker 1: Fox often liked to eat at my table. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the guy who just passed away lest this literarlier this
Speaker 1: year with Richard Donner. Yes, I loved so much. He
Speaker 1: was so mischievous. And uh Jay Canter, who at one
Speaker 1: time as an agent for MCA handled Marlon Brando, Grace, Kelly,
Speaker 1: I mean, and they all liked him because he was
Speaker 1: soft and sweet than he was. So Jay used to
Speaker 1: eat with.
Speaker 2: Us, and he was on the movie set was and
Speaker 2: he had You wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Invite people to come to the Commissary, they'd come to
Speaker 1: the Fox and eat with us.
Speaker 2: Your good friend Alan Up whenever he was in town,
Speaker 2: told me to ask you a story about Carry Grant. Yes,
Speaker 2: what's the story about Carry Crah.
Speaker 1: It's a good story.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I was not yet a filmmaker, but I was writing
Speaker 1: a movie for a guy called Marvin Schwartz on the
Speaker 1: universe a lot. So I'm writing this movie and I
Speaker 1: look across the way and I see Grand Art g
Speaker 1: r a n Art, and I say to Marvin Schwartz, Marvin,
Speaker 1: what the hell is Grand Grandhart? Who works there? He says,
Speaker 1: that's Carry Grant. That's carry Grant. That's about twenty feet away.
Speaker 1: It's thirty feet away.
Speaker 2: But here was this smell.
Speaker 1: This was I can tell you exactly fifty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think fifty nine.
Speaker 2: So you're watching.
Speaker 1: I'm watching to see carry gran I'm watching, and sure
Speaker 1: enough a Rolls Royce comes. A guy gets out of chauffeur.
Speaker 1: He opens the back door, bounding two steps at a
Speaker 1: time up up the stairs to Grandharts in a gray
Speaker 1: it has got to be Good's, dark gray with talk stripes,
Speaker 1: double breasted carry Grant. It was him. I said, holy shit,
Speaker 1: carry Grant. I can't believe it. So one day soon
Speaker 1: after that, I'm walking down about twelve thirty two, the
Speaker 1: commissary at Universal. I hear a little click clack behind me,
Speaker 1: and I turn around and I hear mel Brooks. I
Speaker 1: jun't believe it. It's your mel Brooks. I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's Carry Grant. I said, how do you
Speaker 1: know me? He said, I got your record. I just
Speaker 1: bought your record. You cost me one thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: bought so many records. And then he said, wed, where
Speaker 1: are you going? I said to the company. He said, well,
Speaker 1: let's go together. So wow, I'm going to have lunch.
Speaker 1: I had lunch with Carry Grant. I called my brother Bernie, Lenny, Irvy.
Speaker 1: I called everybody, Williamsburg there. You wanted to know what
Speaker 1: he ate? I said he had two poached eggs, Yon toast,
Speaker 1: but I tunic, Yeah, okay. Next day, phone rings, it's
Speaker 1: Carr Carry Yeah, it's Mal Carry Mal come lunch. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: boom together, Me and Carry Grant. We walked down the
Speaker 1: Wednesday was me and carry it. Thursday, Me and we're talking.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite color? I say blue? He says yellow.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite car? I say a buick? He says
Speaker 1: the rolls or yeah, comes right. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they ask him. I don't you know. I know it's
Speaker 1: gonna call. I run out of dialogue. So the phone rings,
Speaker 1: and I say to Marvin, if it's Carry Grant, I'm
Speaker 1: not in, which is not true, but I mean it
Speaker 1: makes makes for a great.
Speaker 2: Did you see him ever again?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: All the time one of the carry Grant stories.
Speaker 1: You know, I used it in my stand up stuff
Speaker 1: and I made it funny, but actually, if I told
Speaker 1: the truth, it was really very touching because he was
Speaker 1: really a good act dirt, and he had made some
Speaker 1: very beautiful, you know, intelligent soft films about love and
Speaker 1: people and and and they have none of it. I
Speaker 1: kept saying, why don't that was such a great picture?
Speaker 1: What did they make? You said, because the money was
Speaker 1: in in the light comedies.
Speaker 2: So I think that you know life through food and
Speaker 2: through your family and to your grandparents and coming here
Speaker 2: to do this home and memories.
Speaker 1: Food at the River Cafe still there is literally some
Speaker 1: of the best. And and I've eaten in some really
Speaker 1: great restaurants, you know, and I've had duck at the
Speaker 1: Tour Doje and you know, yeah, my finest omelets with
Speaker 1: Madame Romainne de Leon. Never split an omelet. She said,
Speaker 1: if you split a little run, she said, you can
Speaker 1: split a steak, but never split it on lit.
Speaker 2: When I came here, I told Danny, remember Danny the chef,
Speaker 2: And I said, I was coming to see you. And
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I once made a risotto for
Speaker 2: mel and he came up to the past and he said, Danny,
Speaker 2: you made that RESULTO. You should be proud of yourself.
Speaker 2: And it was so something, so meaningful because you didn't
Speaker 2: say I'm proud of you, and you said you should
Speaker 2: be proud of yourself. So I'd like to end this
Speaker 2: by saying, mel Brooks, you should be proud of you.
Speaker 2: I love you, Thank you. One last question. If food
Speaker 2: is something to alleviate hunger, if food is something to
Speaker 2: give someone we love, it's also comfort. There is a
Speaker 2: kind of food that we go to, we need to
Speaker 2: come from.
Speaker 1: We have when I have a really outstanding meal, like
Speaker 1: like your spaghetti have you made for my son Max?
Speaker 1: We we just came in upon your and Max was
Speaker 1: hungry and you said I'll make him and you may
Speaker 1: have made him some spaghetti, and I take it was
Speaker 1: the most delicious spaghetti in the world. When food is
Speaker 1: really good, it serves the soul. It serves the soul.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about dover soul. But when food
Speaker 1: is really good, it serves more than just the belly
Speaker 1: and the hunger, and it serves the soul. And you
Speaker 1: should be very proud of yourself. And the restaurant that
Speaker 1: that's one of the best restaurants in the world. You bet.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair