Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: There are very few people who, even if you rarely
Speaker 2: see them, stay close to your heart. For me, it's
Speaker 2: Wolfgang Puck. I'm often and asked who inspired Rose and
Speaker 2: I when we opened the River Cafe, and the answer
Speaker 2: is Wolfgang. Before he created Spago, the choice for choosing
Speaker 2: a restaurant was eat delicious food, but be sure to
Speaker 2: dress up and be prepared to feel intimidated by the
Speaker 2: somier chef or just the atmosphere in the room, or
Speaker 2: eat less well, but go out and have fun in
Speaker 2: a lively, exciting, friendly place. With Spago, Wolfgang taught us
Speaker 2: we could do both, and he turned the world upside down.
Speaker 2: He made Pizza's luxurious airport food, delicious, wood ovens for cooking,
Speaker 2: and took chefs out of basement kitchens so diners could
Speaker 2: see them and they could see the diners. Wolfgang is
Speaker 2: legendary for being generous with his knowledge, teaching and spiring
Speaker 2: and mentoring young people who wanted to be like him.
Speaker 2: A few months ago, he came to the River Cafe
Speaker 2: for dinner with his family. To everyone working there, it
Speaker 2: felt like a visit from the gods. For me, it
Speaker 2: was a visit from a man I love, but rarely
Speaker 2: see a man who is close to my heart.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I have asked everybody who's been on to read a
Speaker 2: recipe from a River Cafe book that they like, but
Speaker 2: I would rather read a recipe from your book. And
Speaker 2: that recipe is for what we call chicken spargo, And
Speaker 2: I think in your cookbook you call it chicken with
Speaker 2: garlic and parsley. Do you want to read this recipe?
Speaker 3: All right, go on, let's go with our chicken begarlic
Speaker 3: and parsley. This auntley has been on the many Ospargo
Speaker 3: since we opened. He continues to be one of their favorites.
Speaker 3: And we still make it for special people because as
Speaker 3: a souvenir. Really, okay, take two hold chickens about two
Speaker 3: pounds each, two small heads of garlic, separates into clothes
Speaker 3: and peeled quart off, a couple of parsley leaves, salt,
Speaker 3: freshly ground white pepper, two tablespoon of unsalted butter, and
Speaker 3: the juice of large lemon half and bone. The chickens
Speaker 3: leaving the first wing joined intact in a small saucepan
Speaker 3: Plunge the garlic clothes in boiling water for a minute.
Speaker 3: Cut the garlic into paper tin slices, Toss in a
Speaker 3: pool with parsley and season stuff. A little of the
Speaker 3: garlic mixture in the pockets underneath the skin of the chicken.
Speaker 3: Pressed and tides. Transfer to a large plate, copper and
Speaker 3: chill until ready to use. Grill the chickens seven to
Speaker 3: ten minutes per side, or just until the pinkness disappears.
Speaker 3: Do not overcook. Heat the butter in a sotae pan
Speaker 3: and in it gently soteed the remaining mixture of garlic,
Speaker 3: lemon and parsley. Add lemon juice and season one.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice. Do you remember writing it?
Speaker 3: I remember when I bade it.
Speaker 2: Were you? Where were you?
Speaker 3: So it was the first cookbook. It was a Mamison cookbook.
Speaker 3: The second cookbook was up at Spargo. So I did that,
Speaker 3: and I think that was in eighty six or something
Speaker 3: like that when I wrote it. And it was interesting
Speaker 3: because when it came out, I you know, people didn't
Speaker 3: really know me that well. In La Yes, And there
Speaker 3: was an agent named Mike Owitz he founded Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so he came with his wife and Michael Eisner and
Speaker 3: Jane Eisner. They came for dinner and I think it
Speaker 3: was Judy Oviz's birstay. So gave her a cookbook and
Speaker 3: signed and said happy birthday, Judy. And Mike said, Wolfgang,
Speaker 3: how come I don't know about that? I said, Mike,
Speaker 3: you are a big agent, you represent Paul Newman and
Speaker 3: Barba Streisan. What you're going to know about the cookbook?
Speaker 3: And he said, bet did you promote it? I said, well,
Speaker 3: we did some shows like LA in the morning show
Speaker 3: in LA and some radio shows and things like that.
Speaker 3: And he said, you have to promote it nationally and
Speaker 3: I said yeah. They tried to my PR person tried
Speaker 3: to get me on Good Morning America or the Today's Show,
Speaker 3: and then they said no, no, no, we have Julia Child's.
Speaker 3: We don't need you. We don't need another a cook
Speaker 3: on the show. And he said, well, that's crazy. So
Speaker 3: he called up the vice president from ABC. He flew
Speaker 3: up out. A few days later, they came to the restaurant.
Speaker 3: I cooked the menu for them. I cooked their dinner
Speaker 3: for them on a little napkin, on a paper napkin.
Speaker 3: He signed a contract with ABC, so I do once
Speaker 3: a month's Good Morning America. So and from then on
Speaker 3: I was on TV.
Speaker 2: That's the beginning. Yeah, you mentioned Julia child Did you
Speaker 2: ever meet her?
Speaker 3: I met Julio Childs many times. She was a very
Speaker 3: good friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No. I really
Speaker 3: loved her and she was really funny. And I told
Speaker 3: her that story about you know, we did a symposium
Speaker 3: or something, and she said, you're wolfing. And since you
Speaker 3: own nowadays, don't bot me anymore?
Speaker 2: What did you do on the what did you.
Speaker 3: I made the most complete created thing. We had a
Speaker 3: producer on Good Morning America, Sonya Slvi right, an English lady,
Speaker 3: and she was very good friends with Julia, and she
Speaker 3: actually didn't want me to feel on the show or
Speaker 3: she wanted Julia. No, she wasn't very happy. And I
Speaker 3: made crazy things like I made. I showed people how
Speaker 3: to make a simple chocolate to play. But you have
Speaker 3: to time it just perfectly, because you don't have your
Speaker 3: life life on TV. You only have five minutes, so
Speaker 3: you have to put it in the open at the
Speaker 3: right time and then hopefully, you know everything goes well,
Speaker 3: you take it out and it looks good and then
Speaker 3: the segment day is overst.
Speaker 2: Julia dropped famously dropped the chicken on the floor. But
Speaker 2: did you have disasters or was it pretty?
Speaker 3: You know, I never really had bad things happened. I
Speaker 3: just was so nervous. At that time. They had David
Speaker 3: Houtman was the host, you know, and he was like
Speaker 3: six foot five dolls and talked what you're gonna cook
Speaker 3: for me today? And that's not the irre shaken. I
Speaker 3: was nervous seeing all the cameras. I was already old. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I had already Spargo was opening my serities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's young.
Speaker 3: That's young today for me, everything is yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So going back to youth and young, tell me
Speaker 2: about your family. Did you grow up with good food?
Speaker 3: You know, it's very interesting. My mother was a chef,
Speaker 3: a professional chef, but she didn't own a restaurant. She
Speaker 3: worked for a small hotel on a beautiful lake in Krinthia,
Speaker 3: which is the southern part of Austria next to Italian Slovenia.
Speaker 3: And so she was a good cook. And my stepfather
Speaker 3: was a coal miner and totally crazy and alcoholic and everything,
Speaker 3: and my mother was like an angel. I don't know
Speaker 3: how the young and the younger together, but it's impossible
Speaker 3: and so I went to school, and then the summer
Speaker 3: I went to see my mother on the lake there
Speaker 3: and helped her in the kitchen sometimes. And then I
Speaker 3: went swimming, and I picked up tennisports. There was a
Speaker 3: little tennis club next to the hotel, and I made
Speaker 3: a little money. And then when I was fourteen, I
Speaker 3: had to decide what to do, because you're the school finished.
Speaker 3: At fourteen, I was finished with school and we didn't
Speaker 3: have the money to go to Vienna to study. I
Speaker 3: actually wanted to be an architect, did you Yeah, But
Speaker 3: then we didn't have the money to go. So then
Speaker 3: my mother found me a job as an apprentice in Phila.
Speaker 2: Can I just ask you about your father.
Speaker 3: My father actually was very wealthy. My mother was working
Speaker 3: for a doctor in a small town. But for a
Speaker 3: small town, he had the Mercedes like after the war,
Speaker 3: you know, in nineteen forty eight, forty nine fifty. So
Speaker 3: his mother, my father's mother, told him he cannot marry
Speaker 3: my mother because my mother came from a poor background.
Speaker 3: My grandmother was working in the fields for a farmer,
Speaker 3: you know. So he didn't marry her.
Speaker 2: Oh, he never married her.
Speaker 3: I never married her. So my mother then went back
Speaker 3: started to work in restaurants, and I was saying, and
Speaker 3: I was a little kid. My grandmother was taking care
Speaker 3: of me. So then my stepfather.
Speaker 2: As I got I didn't let you be not Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My stepfather said cooking is not a profession for men.
Speaker 3: You should be a carpenter, or you should be a mason,
Speaker 3: or you should be a mechanic or whatever. Cooking is
Speaker 3: for women. And he said you're good for nothing. Because
Speaker 3: I hated to help him and everything. So I still
Speaker 3: remember when I left, which was fifty miles a weight,
Speaker 3: where I was starting my apprenticeship and I was fourteen
Speaker 3: years old. I went to the train station with a
Speaker 3: little silkcase and then I take the train and as
Speaker 3: I was walking out the house, he said, oh, you're
Speaker 3: good for nothing. You're going to be back in a month,
Speaker 3: and then cry for money and everything. I said, I'm never.
Speaker 2: Coming back at age forteen.
Speaker 3: At fourteen, yeah, And then I go there. I started
Speaker 3: my apprenticeship and the chef there was as crazy as
Speaker 3: my stepfather. So I went from on to the next
Speaker 3: and you know, what do you.
Speaker 2: Doing here in the kitchen?
Speaker 3: Here in the kitchens? Yeah, he was drunk all the time. Too,
Speaker 3: and screaming like crazy, throwing think like crazy, like it
Speaker 3: happened the old time more than they think. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: so like three or four weeks into my apprenticeship on
Speaker 3: a Sunday, Sunday lunch was always the busy day. And
Speaker 3: I was doing the potatoes and making the mashed potatoes
Speaker 3: that was like my job, and feeling onions and carrots,
Speaker 3: watching the spinach, and we run out of mashed potatoes,
Speaker 3: We run out of potato potatoes. And at the end
Speaker 3: of the service, he's queened like crazy, Oh you good
Speaker 3: for not saying, yeah, well, go back home. So he
Speaker 3: told me, okay, you're fired, go back home to your mother.
Speaker 3: And I was saying, I said I cannot go back home,
Speaker 3: but my specially my stepfather. Yeah. So that was probably
Speaker 3: the worst day in my life. So I went on
Speaker 3: the thing and I said I'm gonna jump in the
Speaker 3: river and kill myself. And I was fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: You know, I did not say I said I cannot
Speaker 3: go back home. So I was standing on the river
Speaker 3: there looking down and said, what will happen if I die?
Speaker 3: You know, what is happening or what is hell or what?
Speaker 3: And it was all these thoughts were going through my head.
Speaker 3: And then after a while, I said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna go back to more and see what happened.
Speaker 3: So I went back back to the restaurant. Back to
Speaker 3: the restaurant, so I bent. I couldn't sleep all night.
Speaker 3: I went really early to the restaurant. Then the apprentice,
Speaker 3: who was it both me, came and saw me there.
Speaker 3: I said, oh, you're back. He was so happy. I said,
Speaker 3: I don't have to build potatoes. So he hit me
Speaker 3: down in the vegetable seller and I was peeling potatoes there.
Speaker 3: And after a few weeks the chef comes down and
Speaker 3: sees me and start screaming what you're doing here? He
Speaker 3: said get out of here, and screamed, and that was saying.
Speaker 3: And then I said, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving.
Speaker 3: And then he called the owner. The owner was a
Speaker 3: little had a little more empathy and sent me to
Speaker 3: They had another small hotel in town, and they said,
Speaker 3: maybe he goes over there. And there had they had
Speaker 3: a lady who was the chef, and she said, just
Speaker 3: do your job and be quiet and don't do anything
Speaker 3: stupid and everything will be fine. And sure enough, I
Speaker 3: stayed there for three years, did my apprenticeship, and after
Speaker 3: that I left for France.
Speaker 2: When you think of your own children, don't you. We
Speaker 2: think about how we treat a fourteen year old, how
Speaker 2: you treat your children. I saw you the night you
Speaker 2: came in with your children. Yeah, and I saw the parenting.
Speaker 2: I saw the love, I saw the kindness, patience, and
Speaker 2: then you just think what you had been through. You know,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. We had a young woman who worked for
Speaker 2: a very famous restaurant in London and she said that
Speaker 2: she was once taking soufles out of the oven and
Speaker 2: the chef came over and put a frying pan over
Speaker 2: her head and said, if these soufles don't rise, this
Speaker 2: frying pan's going to be on your head. And I said,
Speaker 2: what you should have done is put the soufles back
Speaker 2: in the oven, gone got your coat, left the restaurant
Speaker 2: and gone to the police. You should go to the
Speaker 2: police because that is abuse. But you know, somehow, that
Speaker 2: idea that somehow, because everybody's under pressure in a kitchen,
Speaker 2: it's okay, it's not okay. It's old fashioned and it's wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, physical wrong, emotional abuse is totally wrong. And I
Speaker 3: think one of the lessons I learned from them. I said,
Speaker 3: I never want to be like my stepfather and I
Speaker 3: never want to be like the first chef I worked for,
Speaker 3: because I think they did the opposite. And I said,
Speaker 3: you know, if somebody that makes a mistake, somebody does
Speaker 3: something wrong, I'm going to show them how to do
Speaker 3: it right. And sometimes it takes more than once. But
Speaker 3: you want to teach people. And I think for me
Speaker 3: that was really an important part. And later on I
Speaker 3: opened as cooking school, so I had to teach people.
Speaker 2: No. And so you got on the train and went
Speaker 2: to where did you went to France?
Speaker 3: So then I went down the France. I went to
Speaker 3: Dijon first and worked in a restaurant called Trofeizon. I
Speaker 3: told you that I was seventeen. Seventeen, yeah, so said,
Speaker 3: I have a son now seventeen. I said, wow, if
Speaker 3: he would go, tell me tomorrow he's going to work
Speaker 3: in Mexico City or somewhere. Let's say, I don't know,
Speaker 3: not by yourself. I'm gonna send a shadow for you.
Speaker 3: And so I went to France and then I was
Speaker 3: working there, and after like a year or so, I
Speaker 3: started to speak French. I didn't speak it at the beginning,
Speaker 3: and then we had a party at the restaurant and
Speaker 3: it was because we got a star in the gid
Speaker 3: Mischland right and rest had a star. It just got
Speaker 3: a new style. It didn't have one, but got this down.
Speaker 3: And then I took one of these red books, looked
Speaker 3: through it and I said, oh shit, there it's one star,
Speaker 3: two star, three star restaurant. So I said, I'm not
Speaker 3: going back to Austria before. I don't work in at
Speaker 3: least in a two star, hopefully in the street star.
Speaker 3: So I wrote to Bocus to tour grow to Las
Speaker 3: sal Or total all these famous three star restaurants. The
Speaker 3: first one who said yes was Raymondally at Boumania in.
Speaker 2: Provence, Abomania. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's an amazing restaurant. But he was on the hell
Speaker 3: yeah yeah. He was the most amazing personality. Not only
Speaker 3: he started cooking when he was like fifty professionals when
Speaker 3: he was fifty years old, but he was so passionate
Speaker 3: about the ingredients. He had a lot of land there too.
Speaker 3: He had six gardeners who bought like the best cabayon melono,
Speaker 3: strawberries or peas or green beans. Really small, you know,
Speaker 3: So it was really an amazing experience to have somebody
Speaker 3: at that age. He was already seventy years old, but
Speaker 3: he was so passionate and you know, going back and
Speaker 3: forth in the dining room. And then he used to
Speaker 3: come into the kitchen with Elizabeth Taylor, and all of
Speaker 3: us young guys looked at her and said, oh my god.
Speaker 3: All one time he came in with Barcelo Mastroianni and
Speaker 3: Katherine the Nerve, and I said, oh Jesus Christ, I
Speaker 3: want to feel like him. So I stayed there for
Speaker 3: two and a half years, and he was the first
Speaker 3: person actually who respected me and says, you know what.
Speaker 3: He made me feel good, And I.
Speaker 2: Agreed the idea of the whole thing, of the ingredients
Speaker 2: of the farm, of the taking the melon, the best melon.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: But I grew up on a farm, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: in a village with fifty people, with two farmers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: with two farmers next to each other. We got the milk,
Speaker 3: like in the morning. I used to go with the can,
Speaker 3: go to the farmer. They filled it up and we
Speaker 3: picked it up two hours later. That's how we had
Speaker 3: the milk. We didn't even have a refrigerator. When I
Speaker 3: grew up, we didn't have plumbing in our house. So
Speaker 3: the water we had the spring outside. You had to
Speaker 3: pump it and get the water, bring it in. If
Speaker 3: we want to take wash ourself, my mother had to
Speaker 3: turn on the stove, put charcoal in it or put
Speaker 3: it in it, heat up the water and then we
Speaker 3: washed ours.
Speaker 2: So when you left Bowmania, you went to Paris. What
Speaker 2: did you so?
Speaker 3: When I left Moomania, I went to Monaco and worked
Speaker 3: at Lottel de Parine Monaco, this big ground hotel like
Speaker 3: in the old style, you know, like they conser may
Speaker 3: and the onion soup and the vegetable had all people
Speaker 3: perfectly turned and so on. And then I went to
Speaker 3: see mister Tullier and I said, you know, I really
Speaker 3: don't like to work at Lottel the Parine there. Maybe
Speaker 3: he can help me find another job. And he said okay,
Speaker 3: and then he said I'm going to Paris. He was
Speaker 3: good friends with the owners of Maxims at that time,
Speaker 3: and then he found me work at Maxims in Paris,
Speaker 3: which was a three star restaurant at that time.
Speaker 2: When you went in, what level were you? So?
Speaker 3: I went in like a chef the party, and a
Speaker 3: year or so is the night chef, so I was
Speaker 3: responsible for the kitchen after from ten thirty to one
Speaker 3: in the morning.
Speaker 2: So they kept cooking to one in the morning.
Speaker 3: Because each time when there, I know, when there was
Speaker 3: a show, like at the theater, the opera, they used
Speaker 3: to come twenty thirty people after the opera, you know,
Speaker 3: all dressed perfectly, and have dinner at midnight.
Speaker 2: Basically, this was in the sixties, was it.
Speaker 3: That was in the early seventies, early seventies. A friend
Speaker 3: of mine sat, you know, if you want to make money,
Speaker 3: you have to go to America. You know, in America
Speaker 3: you make a lot of money and this and that,
Speaker 3: and you know, I was always fascinated by the movies,
Speaker 3: by the people writing the Big House and every saying,
Speaker 3: and by John Wayne, the Cowboys and everything, so that
Speaker 3: I have to go and see. And then at that
Speaker 3: time it started also with the hip in San Francisco
Speaker 3: and everything. I said, I'm want to try to smoke
Speaker 3: some marijuana, and I was saying, and you couldn't find
Speaker 3: it in my village. So I went to America first
Speaker 3: to New York. And I didn't like New York. I said,
Speaker 3: it's nothing like Paris and so forth. And then a
Speaker 3: friend of mine who owned Charles Mason, who owned like Renuis,
Speaker 3: found me a job in Indianapolis. I love auto racing.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of Formula one. So when they
Speaker 3: said Indianapolis, the five hundred miles of Indianapolis, the most
Speaker 3: famous race in the world, and I said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to Indianapolis. So I had almost no manuela English a
Speaker 3: little bit. So I took the greyhound pass from New
Speaker 3: York to Indianapolis. It lasted like thirty hours or something
Speaker 3: like that, and I said, shit, that's Indianapolis. It's nothing.
Speaker 3: I imagine it being something like Monocle, maybe on the
Speaker 3: river or something really beautiful, you know. And it was
Speaker 3: flat and a few high rise buildings in the center.
Speaker 3: And then I said, where is the race? Where is
Speaker 3: the race? So I went out to speedway and I said,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is Indianapolis. So I had to
Speaker 3: stay there. I had no more money left.
Speaker 2: You had a job in a restaurant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a job there. I was a chef
Speaker 3: in a French restaurant. I still remember. I told the
Speaker 3: manager from New York on the phone. I said, I'm
Speaker 3: not cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. You didn't have to Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: he said, no, no, no, no, we have a nice restaurant.
Speaker 3: We make Da Color launch and we make dobar soil
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. So I said, okay, I'm coming.
Speaker 3: So I stayed a year there, got my green cut
Speaker 3: there because nobody immigrates to Indiana and I was the
Speaker 3: only one at the immigration And then from there I
Speaker 3: got a job out here in Los Angeles, Yeah, in
Speaker 3: a restaurant downtown from the same company who was running
Speaker 3: the restaurant in Indianapolis. Yeah. And then at about six
Speaker 3: months later, I met Patrick Deray. He owned ma maysone,
Speaker 3: and I started to work there in the morning and
Speaker 3: worked at night downtown in the restaurant called Francois, and
Speaker 3: because I wanted to make money to open my own restaurant.
Speaker 3: And then after a while, Patrick said, oh, why you
Speaker 3: don't come and bee the chef at my Maizon. So
Speaker 3: finally I said, okay. I started there, and I get
Speaker 3: my first paycheck there and I got to the bank,
Speaker 3: it bounced. I said, oh my god. You know, I
Speaker 3: had no idea about the business. Pod So I came back.
Speaker 3: I said there's no money in the bank, they can
Speaker 3: pay me. You know. It wasn't a lot of money.
Speaker 3: A few dred box and then he said, okay, I'll
Speaker 3: make you a partner in the restaurant. So he gave
Speaker 3: me like ten percent of the restaurant. It's like having
Speaker 3: ten percent.
Speaker 2: Of ye place with the checkpount. That's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I said, okay. I started to buy food.
Speaker 3: I went to see, for example, the guy who brought
Speaker 3: us the fish. Everything was on cod. You had to
Speaker 3: pay them cash when they brought the food. And I said,
Speaker 3: where is your place? So I went downtown to this
Speaker 3: fish place, and I saw, for example, there was a
Speaker 3: famous restaurant called Scandia. Here they used to buy cooked
Speaker 3: lobster for their lobster cocktails. I used to buy the
Speaker 3: lobster shelves to make lobster stock, or lost the bisky
Speaker 3: and things like that. So I had almost no money.
Speaker 3: So for ten dollars, maybe I made soup, I made
Speaker 3: the sauce, I made this, I made that, and lit little.
Speaker 3: The restaurant starts to get better or some weirds. I
Speaker 3: remember was one of my first guests. I over.
Speaker 2: Yeah is a good eater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So and I always used to. He always used
Speaker 3: to come early for lunch and say, so, what do
Speaker 3: you make today? What did you make today? So and
Speaker 3: I always tried to make new things, and he was like,
Speaker 3: I gave him a little taste, like at eleven or
Speaker 3: so and then uh, he said, oh, you give me
Speaker 3: so little, only that's how you're going to serve it.
Speaker 3: I said, no, I just give you a little taste.
Speaker 3: He said, well, I want to see how the whole
Speaker 3: thing is. And so I gave him a whole plate
Speaker 3: at eleven o'clock and then he had lunch at twelve
Speaker 3: thirty with his guests. So but then so little but little.
Speaker 3: All these people came, like Billy Wilder, you know, is
Speaker 3: Australian famous director, and Jack Lemon, and so I start
Speaker 3: to meet old people. And one of my favorite ones
Speaker 3: who just passed the way is Sidney Poitier, Yeah, whom
Speaker 3: I met at Bier. And I said, I met already
Speaker 3: some crazy people. Sidney Poitier wasn't crazy, but I remember
Speaker 3: Peter O'Toole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he drank a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he drank a lot. And I had
Speaker 3: the little motor bike and that Bomania they had like
Speaker 3: different villas where they people had rooms, and I was
Speaker 3: they came home to do his villa. Oh my little
Speaker 3: motor bike, and he had his foot on the ground
Speaker 3: and I said, hopefully I don't lose him. They way there.
Speaker 2: I think the acting and actors and filmmakers and people
Speaker 2: artists love food. Yeah, and they just and I remember
Speaker 2: coming to Mammaison. It was amazing. My brother said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take you to the best restaurant. It's the
Speaker 2: best restaurant ever. And we Richard now were visiting here
Speaker 2: after he finished the Pompertu Center and we went and
Speaker 2: it was like, this is the restaurant was it was?
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 3: Parking It used to be a parking lot. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so Patrick put a little fence around and put like
Speaker 3: a tent on And then I have asked the fan
Speaker 3: plastic jails like you would find in a little cafe somewhere,
Speaker 3: you know, with no style at all. But it became
Speaker 3: really famous at Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Knew and was associated with you. I mean it really
Speaker 2: Even just in the last few days, Sad and I
Speaker 2: have been talking to mel Brooks, We've been talking to
Speaker 2: Michael Mann, and we've been talking to before We talked
Speaker 2: to Michael Caine and they always describe restaurants once from
Speaker 2: the past, and they described it as a place where
Speaker 2: you went into, you saw people, you knew, you saw,
Speaker 2: you had incredible you know, like seats, and you knew
Speaker 2: the waiters. But nobody talked about the food. Nobody. They
Speaker 2: talked about restaurants as places that were scene, but they
Speaker 2: didn't talk about good food. And I think what you
Speaker 2: brought to La was from what everyone says to me,
Speaker 2: and I believe it myself, is you brought good food
Speaker 2: because I don't think that going to a restaurant meant
Speaker 2: eating well, it meant doing a deal, that meant being
Speaker 2: told you a great Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, no, totally. The people didn't know. Like I used
Speaker 3: to make people an omelet, and you're an omelet the
Speaker 3: way alone in friends that is so often the inside
Speaker 3: and cooked outside. They used to send it back and said,
Speaker 3: that's not cook Oh my, I used to drive me
Speaker 3: crazy crazy. Yeah, and often it happened like that, you know,
Speaker 3: like I like the fish a little undercooked. Now people
Speaker 3: eat raw fish, and they were singing in every restaurant,
Speaker 3: but I undercooked the salmon. We got beautiful king salmon.
Speaker 3: From up from Alaska, and I cooked it just so
Speaker 3: it's still a little undercooked in the middle. I still
Speaker 3: remember one customer came with the plate in the kitchen
Speaker 3: and said, my salmon is not cooked. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: I just looked at them. I said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I cook it for you well done. You know. It's
Speaker 3: like I said, I cannot deal with that with these people.
Speaker 3: So it was hard at the beginning. The same way
Speaker 3: in Indianapolis when I was there, you know, every steake
Speaker 3: had to be well done. I said, no, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: cook it pink in the inside. I even turned down
Speaker 3: the light in the dining room.
Speaker 2: I think that when people go to Australia and they say,
Speaker 2: you know, Melbourne or you know, London is such a
Speaker 2: great city now for food and they've got the culture food.
Speaker 2: But you know, you go to Paris and you get
Speaker 2: in a taxi cab and the driver can tell you
Speaker 2: how to cook a sea bass. You know, you go
Speaker 2: down the street in the Mamarte, which is you know,
Speaker 2: there's an ordinary street and you can smell the bread.
Speaker 2: I think that's the culture food, not not whether it's
Speaker 2: a great food scene, but that is in the hot
Speaker 2: in Austria, you had that. In Europe you haven't. I
Speaker 2: don't know why, you know. I don't want to make
Speaker 2: Americans angry American, but there is not that culture.
Speaker 3: Totally, not food totally not because unfortunately, the immigrants came
Speaker 3: from England. The immigrants came from Holland and from Germany.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
Speaker 3: You in England. Yeah, London has great restaurants and ever
Speaker 3: we're saying. But in Holland or in Germany, maybe, but
Speaker 3: I think the whole culture is different. Where you go
Speaker 3: and get the fresh spaghette in the morning, where you
Speaker 3: let the cheese stand outside so not out of the refrigerator,
Speaker 3: and so forth. So people did know that, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think unfortunately that what happened in America, you
Speaker 3: had small pockets, like in Saint Louis, you had a
Speaker 3: little region with Italians there. They all were together, they
Speaker 3: barely spoke English, but they cooked the way the food
Speaker 3: they cooked in southern Italy or in the old time,
Speaker 3: even in New York. You know, Little Italy used to
Speaker 3: be very traditional. Obviously it has changed one hundred percent now,
Speaker 3: but I think you had little pockets with immigrants where
Speaker 3: you actually could get good food and you know traditional
Speaker 3: would not fancy food, not travels off, but really traditional
Speaker 3: home cooked food. So I think part all in all
Speaker 3: all over, you know, like I was in Indianapolis. I
Speaker 3: mean it was like crazy, you didn't know where to
Speaker 3: go and eat.
Speaker 2: But now, I mean, how do you find comparing La
Speaker 2: now to LA when you came, do you think it
Speaker 2: is a radical change?
Speaker 3: I think LA is one of the most exciting cities
Speaker 3: white because we have so many parts of the cities,
Speaker 3: like from a little Tokyo to Korea Town, to China Town,
Speaker 3: to Little India to Little Ethiopia, so you havea yep,
Speaker 3: totally it's not too far actually from here where you
Speaker 3: can get really interesting food and you know, like going
Speaker 3: to restaurants in Monterey Park, you know, you feel like
Speaker 3: you're in Hong Kong when you're going to Sunday families
Speaker 3: out there all pig tables and everything. They come around
Speaker 3: with them some carts and everything. So it's so different,
Speaker 3: you know, And I remember I went to one the
Speaker 3: first time. We used to get bronze shrimps out here
Speaker 3: from the island. We call it Santa Baba from the
Speaker 3: Santa Babe Island, and I always just gonna grill them,
Speaker 3: but sometimes they get mushy. And then I went to
Speaker 3: a Chinese restaurant and they made this drunk construant where
Speaker 3: they just dropped them in the soup or whatever and
Speaker 3: red wine in it and cooked them a little bit.
Speaker 3: And I said, wow, they're crunchy. They're really good. Why
Speaker 3: do I try to grill them? And everything was very
Speaker 3: how to keep them that firm, you know? And so
Speaker 3: I learned, and I went more to the restaurant on
Speaker 3: my days off when I was at Mamizon or when
Speaker 3: I opened Spargo. And that's also then one day I said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I want to open a Chinese restaurant,
Speaker 3: not a real Chinese restaurant, because I didn't even know
Speaker 3: how to use a walk. So I said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to open a restaurant and read French techniques and Chinese ingredients.
Speaker 3: So we opened Hinoa in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: I remember when you opened Sparko, how shocked everybody was.
Speaker 2: You know that this French chef, this man who came
Speaker 2: from Michelin Star Restaurants, did mam Maison. And what's going
Speaker 2: to be Movegang's next project a.
Speaker 3: Pizza pizza restaurant.
Speaker 2: It was really shocking. I told you know, it was
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I remember the editor in chief of Bona Pettite magazine
Speaker 3: took me for dinner and my then girlfriend really Barbara,
Speaker 3: my ex wife, and she tried to talk me out
Speaker 3: of what I'm gonna do. She said, how can you
Speaker 3: be a chef like that working at Boma Nian at
Speaker 3: Maxims and opening a pizza place. I said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm going to open a restaurant. I want great ingredients,
Speaker 3: but have fun.
Speaker 2: Have fun. That's the whole thing that you don't have
Speaker 2: to the same thing in London when we did the
Speaker 2: River Cafe. Yeah, and why can't you You know, people
Speaker 2: come and I don't care what people were in my restaurant.
Speaker 2: I couldn't care if they come with their kids. I
Speaker 2: don't care if they come in jeans. To you, it's
Speaker 2: just like who cares. It's you can here and we
Speaker 2: treat you well.
Speaker 3: And especially in Los Angeles, you know, where it's warm,
Speaker 3: the climate is different. You don't get all pancas. You
Speaker 3: go to New York close to Wall Street, you know
Speaker 3: you have all pancas. They all have their suits and
Speaker 3: and everything. It's different here. People are. You know, in
Speaker 3: the movie business and the record business, they come, you know,
Speaker 3: totally different. I remember one time I was very friendly
Speaker 3: with David. He actually did the first cover of my
Speaker 3: co Yeah, and so he a friend of mine, opened
Speaker 3: a fancy French restaurant, you know, one with the high
Speaker 3: chairs and the fancy plates and the vizing. But you
Speaker 3: had to wear a jacket and David Harky had to
Speaker 3: sweat on or whatever it was in the summer time,
Speaker 3: and they didn't let him in. And he came after
Speaker 3: back to Mamizo and says, you know what just happened
Speaker 3: to me? Yeah, I said what he said, They didn't
Speaker 3: let me in. I said, should I call them back?
Speaker 3: He says, no, I will never go back there again.
Speaker 2: Richard. My husband never wore a tie.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He would take his children to the connor to the
Speaker 2: clarriages and they wouldn't let him in. And one time
Speaker 2: a maitre d said, you know, mister Rogers, don't think
Speaker 2: that we're picking on you, because yesterday we wouldn't let
Speaker 2: Nuriev in, as if they were proud of it, you know,
Speaker 2: even Nurie. If we wouldn't let in you know, that's
Speaker 2: but somebody My friend of mine had an assistant who
Speaker 2: worked for you as a front of house manager, and
Speaker 2: she said that people used to come in and say,
Speaker 2: bring a bottle of champagne to the table, I'll pay
Speaker 2: for it now and say it's from Wolfgang the status
Speaker 2: you know, or seat me first before somebody else. We
Speaker 2: had this crazy. It was crazy.
Speaker 3: The sitting was like at the old Spargo was still
Speaker 3: important because we have these window seats, and everybody wanted
Speaker 3: to see at the window seats. I remember one time
Speaker 3: Sammy Khan, who was a famous song right up, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: was there and he was sitting in the second row,
Speaker 3: not at the window, and next door was the table
Speaker 3: with Alan and Melen Perkman, who did all the songs
Speaker 3: from Baba'streisan. And something calls me over and says Wolfgang.
Speaker 3: I want to ask, because they don't have any and
Speaker 3: how come I have to sit in the second row?
Speaker 3: I said, you get this sameful anyway, I didn't know
Speaker 3: that that is the important part. So it's we had
Speaker 3: people storm out of the restaurant, some of them if
Speaker 3: they didn't get the table they wanted. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was also difficult. You know, there's people the insecurity and
Speaker 3: I was saying, ah, I remember, like we had the
Speaker 3: head of MGM at that time was Daniel Melnick, and
Speaker 3: they set him in the back and of the restaurant.
Speaker 3: It was like Siberia, and I go, Dan, you know what,
Speaker 3: we have a table up front. If you want a
Speaker 3: better table up front, He said, what do you mean
Speaker 3: a better table? I said, yeah, well on the window.
Speaker 3: He says, you know wherever. I say, it's the best table,
Speaker 3: so I don't care where it is.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I agree. I've seen that with people who people come
Speaker 2: in sometimes and say I want the best table, and
Speaker 2: I guess there is no best table because you know
Speaker 2: Lucian Freud like that one, but then somebody else like
Speaker 2: that one, and you know the idea. But do you
Speaker 2: think it's better now? Do you think?
Speaker 3: I think it's a little better. But there are still
Speaker 3: some restaurants when you have boots and things like that
Speaker 3: where they say, okay, I want the first boots, or
Speaker 3: I want this on that or like I remember one
Speaker 3: time it was in the eighties two when I had
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Taylor came with some people and we had one
Speaker 3: guest who comes all the time, always sat on their
Speaker 3: table too, and they saw Elizabeth Taylor, like four tables
Speaker 3: down there, and then they came back the next day,
Speaker 3: the next time, next week, we set them on the
Speaker 3: regular table. They said, we don't want this table, we
Speaker 3: want the table.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. So when you cook, you have a son
Speaker 2: who's a chef. Yeah, so did he did? He become
Speaker 2: a chef because he was influenced by your cooking at home?
Speaker 2: Do you cook it home?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I cook at home. Let's now since the kids
Speaker 3: are gone, really you know? So, but Byron, who is
Speaker 3: my second son, and he always was interested in cooking.
Speaker 3: And even when he went to high school, he at
Speaker 3: Howard Westlake, they had a chemistry class and he wanted
Speaker 3: to do a molecular gastronomy class with the chemistry class.
Speaker 3: So he said, okay, we can do different things, you know,
Speaker 3: learn chemistry, but with food. And so he was really
Speaker 3: into this whole thing, you know, like the stuff with
Speaker 3: Arian Ferrad then all the things. Or I think I
Speaker 3: want him to hopefully take over one day because it
Speaker 3: is like a family business, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But if you think about family and you think
Speaker 2: about food, and you think about your mother being a
Speaker 2: pastry chef and the suffering that you went through in
Speaker 2: your early days. I mean it's heart rendering when you
Speaker 2: think of food is comfort. Is there a food that
Speaker 2: you would reach for for computer?
Speaker 3: It's often I reach for simple things, you know, like
Speaker 3: if it's in the morning, it might be just someone
Speaker 3: good oatmeal or something like that, you know. And obviously
Speaker 3: sometimes I still feel like eating a gulash or a venash.
Speaker 3: Nets are from my childhood. Child, yeah, and that's still popular.
Speaker 3: And I think for me still the simpler things are
Speaker 3: the better. Bone. I love vegetables, I love fruits, so
Speaker 3: that's why I still go to the farmer's market and
Speaker 3: so forth. You know. So I think, to me, food
Speaker 3: is such an important part of life because I think
Speaker 3: it's one of the only time in this modern world
Speaker 3: where we actually can sit together and talk and enjoy
Speaker 3: the time. I think, enjoy the food, enjoy and have
Speaker 3: a good time. To me, it's the most important part.
Speaker 3: That's why I think a restaurant should be fun. You know.
Speaker 3: A restaurant should be a place you enjoy. If you
Speaker 3: want to go to a church somewhere and pray, go
Speaker 3: to the church, you know, or if the chefs want
Speaker 3: to impress you and says, how did I do. I said,
Speaker 3: you know what, this thing is not about you, This
Speaker 3: thing is about us. You know, this thing is about
Speaker 3: the guests in the restaurant. So I think that's a
Speaker 3: big difference. Mostly what I hear is the male chefs
Speaker 3: are really more ego centrics and they think it's about them,
Speaker 3: the food whatever, How did they perform basically, you know,
Speaker 3: And a women's chef often will say, I hope you
Speaker 3: like my food. I hope you enjoyed your time at
Speaker 3: the table, you know, instead of feeling, oh, it's about me.
Speaker 3: And I always said, you know, to me, the most
Speaker 3: important part is that the guests are happy when they leave.
Speaker 3: They can't wait to come back, make a reservation, maybe
Speaker 3: already on the way out. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: we are in business for forty years. And like I
Speaker 3: come here to the Bell Hotel, I know almost everybody.
Speaker 3: I go to Spargo, I know the people, so I
Speaker 3: think it's a nice way for me. I almost feel
Speaker 3: like I'm going to a party every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a great job, and I think that.
Speaker 2: I always say I want people to feel better when
Speaker 2: they leave than when they came in. And I certainly
Speaker 2: feel better now leaving you than when I came in
Speaker 2: because we had such a good talk. Thank you.
Speaker 3: We cannot eat right now. No, okay, smoke some pizza
Speaker 3: for practice.
Speaker 2: We've just been brought. Can you tell me what we've
Speaker 2: just been brought?
Speaker 3: We have here a little smoke someone pizza, I think,
Speaker 3: which is a staple at Spargo too, and everybody says, oh,
Speaker 3: I made it for them. One time at Spargo we
Speaker 3: had smoked salmon, priyosh and gil cream or whatever like
Speaker 3: we had traditional way. One day we ran out of
Speaker 3: bread and then I said, what I'm going to do
Speaker 3: and so I just cooked the pizza, do in the owen,
Speaker 3: cut in slices, and seffted with that, played off smoked salmon,
Speaker 3: and then I said, you know what, I just gonna
Speaker 3: put it all together myself. So I cooked the beats,
Speaker 3: I put the del cream on it, put the smoked
Speaker 3: salmon on it, put a little caveo on top, and
Speaker 3: then I cut it and I said, wow, this is
Speaker 3: really perfect. It's like the crispy crust and it's warm,
Speaker 3: and there they smoked salmon on top. And I said,
Speaker 3: all I need is a glass of champagne and then
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe look book is now available in bookshops
Speaker 1: and online. It has over one hundred recipes beautifully illustrated
Speaker 1: with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book
Speaker 1: has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
Speaker 1: host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
Speaker 1: for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for
Speaker 1: Cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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