Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: adamized Studios.
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, hungryly, proud. Do you think
Speaker 2: that's your adjective? You get hungry with you. I get
Speaker 2: hungry when I see you. We love you there, fiercely,
Speaker 2: proud of his children and his grandchildren, the first one
Speaker 2: 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. Vulnerable 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 3: 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 2: I want to tell you what do you want to
Speaker 2: tell me.
Speaker 3: That before we stopped talking, Before I forget, I would
Speaker 3: like to do my imitation of a cat, because not
Speaker 3: a lot of people know that I do it. I
Speaker 3: make ther best cats sound in the world.
Speaker 2: I just I just need one second to really get
Speaker 2: myself into this.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's my work doing the sound of a cat.
Speaker 3: Wo that is that is a perfect sound. It's hard
Speaker 3: to do, hard to do. I do it in young Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's a dart throwing contest and one
Speaker 3: of the dogs hits a cat and you hear you.
Speaker 2: Know, did you do the sound? I get there every night?
Speaker 2: Can you do it again?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 2: That's good? So what's the technique?
Speaker 3: Technique is to is to squash some air between your
Speaker 3: cheek and the front of your mouth.
Speaker 2: As we're talking about cats and fish, maybe about fish.
Speaker 2: You know cats like to eat fish. We could actually
Speaker 2: read the recipe.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, my favorite of all the of all of
Speaker 3: all the things in the book. There's a good picture
Speaker 3: of it too in your cookbook River Cafe, London.
Speaker 2: Thirty because that was done for our thirty.
Speaker 3: Three threeh thirty years. Wow.
Speaker 2: Do you remember you came to the party?
Speaker 3: I did? Oh agreed?
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 3: It wasn't as important as the food on my plate.
Speaker 2: A lot of food.
Speaker 3: Paid attention to all he eats, All he eats are supreme.
Speaker 3: Let me run the rest of Okay dover soul with Marjoram.
Speaker 3: I don't know what Marjoram is, but I love it. Okay,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, whatever it is, one bunch of fresh
Speaker 3: margarine leaves, one whole dover soul, weighing twelve to fourteen ounces,
Speaker 3: three fifty to four hundred grams, scaled and cleaned. Of course,
Speaker 3: of course I'm not gonna eat it with the scales on,
Speaker 3: never and with the stuff inside. No sense. One lemon
Speaker 3: cut in half. I have lemons, Mayer lemons for my
Speaker 3: Mayer lemon tree just outside here, and they are golden
Speaker 3: yellow and running with lemon juice. That is superior to
Speaker 3: anything in the world. So if I have a dover sole,
Speaker 3: I'll bring my lemons.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, we get armored lemons from Amalfi, so they're
Speaker 2: pretty good too.
Speaker 3: Okay, here we go. Pre eat the oven to four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit. That's pretty hot. That's pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Brush a large flat baking sheet with extra virgin olive oil.
Speaker 3: Scatter half the modorum leaves over the sheet along with
Speaker 3: some sea salt and black pepper. Place the fish on top,
Speaker 3: season with sea salt and black pepper. Then scatter the
Speaker 3: remaining marjoram drizzle. Drizzle generously with olive oil. Okay, that
Speaker 3: sounds great. Bake for fifteen to twenty minutes. Tests with
Speaker 3: the point of a sharp knife and certing into the
Speaker 3: central of the thickest part of the soul. Ah. If cooked,
Speaker 3: the flesh should come away from the bone. Okay. Squeeze
Speaker 3: the lemon, either from a malfy or from mel Brooks's
Speaker 3: lemon tree, over the fish, and serve with any juices
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, my mother, okay, it was It was a standard Williamsburg,
Speaker 3: Brooklyn Jewish tenement food. So breakfast in the winter was
Speaker 3: always a hot cereal, cream of wheat or Ralston which
Speaker 3: was a kind of Baridge brown borridge, and then in
Speaker 3: the summer corn flakes, rice krispies or wheaties.
Speaker 2: What year would that have been? How old would you?
Speaker 3: I would that would be thirty five, I'd be around nine.
Speaker 3: That's when I went my uncle Joe, shortest jew on earth.
Speaker 4: Short he was about four to four when when a taxi,
Speaker 4: a big checker taxi cab rolled down the streets of
Speaker 4: Brooklyn and there was no driver.
Speaker 3: That was there was no driver. It was so short
Speaker 3: it get just about peer over the you know. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Joe took me because his friend Al was the doorman
Speaker 3: of the Alvin Theater on fifty second Street, and running
Speaker 3: at that same theater was Cold Porters Anything Goes. I
Speaker 3: had never seen a Broadway show. I was nine years
Speaker 3: old and Uncle Joe took me to see Anything Goes.
Speaker 3: I was stunned. I was. I couldn't believe it. Even
Speaker 3: though we were in the second balcony was far away
Speaker 3: from the stage as you can get ethel Merman was
Speaker 3: too loud, No MIC's she was just she.
Speaker 2: Was anything goes. Did she say the mother? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the woman. It's on a ship, isn't it.
Speaker 3: And it's on a ship? Very good? Yeah. And Victim
Speaker 3: Moore was the gangster of the gangs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was so good. At the end, I nearly
Speaker 3: clapped my hands over. I just couldn't stop clapping and
Speaker 3: screaming and shouting. And then I got back an Uncle
Speaker 3: Joe's camp. I said to him, Uncle John, I'm not
Speaker 3: going in the garment center. Everybody at three sixty five
Speaker 3: South third Street, between on Hooper and Use three sixty
Speaker 3: five South third Street, everybody in that building worked in
Speaker 3: the garment center. They were shipping clerks, they were cutters,
Speaker 3: they were designers, there were salesman and they everybody I
Speaker 3: think on the street, the sixty one, three sixty three
Speaker 3: through sixty five, these tenements, everybody in the garments set.
Speaker 3: And I screamed at my uncle Joe, Uncle Joe, I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not going into the garments that I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go into the show business. I loved it.
Speaker 3: I loved it, you know, and it changed, but it
Speaker 3: did and I did. And because 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 3: We had some favorites that Uncle Joe would take us to,
Speaker 3: where one was called Gallagher Steakhouse. They had like half
Speaker 3: a cow in the window. I always had these half
Speaker 3: cows in the window, you know, hanging gallaghers. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the and the steak was incredible. And sometimes you go
Speaker 3: to Jack Dempsey's restaurant.
Speaker 2: And what was that?
Speaker 3: And that was great, but you know, it was it
Speaker 3: was all meat. It was. There never any fish in
Speaker 3: a restaurant. Yeah, And I never liked fish. I don't
Speaker 3: think I ever liked fish until I was seventy or
Speaker 3: eighty and I went to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: And so really you never ate fish.
Speaker 3: I hardly ever ate fish as.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to me that you you describe a
Speaker 2: kind of modest home life in terms of doing your food,
Speaker 2: but you went out to restaurants.
Speaker 5: So a lot of Jewish restaurants were called dairy restaurants,
Speaker 5: and they serve stuff like blinches with sour cream and
Speaker 5: old dairy.
Speaker 3: You never mixed meat and dairy with something some religious nonsense.
Speaker 2: Did your grandmother cook for you?
Speaker 3: My grandmother cook?
Speaker 2: What did she cook? Olsh grandmother? Your mother's mother's mother.
Speaker 2: I never knew, you never knew your father's.
Speaker 3: No, no, my father's grandmother, I didn't know. She did
Speaker 3: say to her meals best over meals in Bensonhurst where
Speaker 3: they lived in a big one family had.
Speaker 2: Did they come their first generation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, they were. They were European.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so do you think your grandparents brought their
Speaker 2: food with them the food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, culture they cooked the same stuff. Mostly it was chicken,
Speaker 3: chicken and chicken soup.
Speaker 2: And uh briscuit.
Speaker 3: 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 it filter fish out of.
Speaker 2: So do you imagine having a look, they would bring
Speaker 2: it a live fish.
Speaker 3: Live fish.
Speaker 2: We would get a live fish.
Speaker 3: My brother Bernie and I were usually one week we
Speaker 3: loved and we called them alreaty and we fed them
Speaker 3: bread crumbs and we chased them around the bathtub. And
Speaker 3: then it was unspeakable. I can't even describe it.
Speaker 2: Killing Irving.
Speaker 3: My older oldest brothers Irving and Lenny held us back.
Speaker 3: We were screaming, don't kill him. And my mother would
Speaker 3: say we got to eat, we gotta eat supper, and
Speaker 3: she'd kill audience, serve him, it was and we would
Speaker 3: cry and but we ate.
Speaker 2: Him and then would you get another carp and kill that?
Speaker 2: We got another carp It's so interesting that they had
Speaker 2: live fish swimming in the back in the Yeah, they did.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that you had to say.
Speaker 2: My brother Michael, who you know, just wrote I have
Speaker 2: found that something my father had written about his memories
Speaker 2: of food and just living in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 2: But you weren't in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 3: The Lower east Side, an extension of the Lower east
Speaker 3: Side was Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: That was probably one step up, was it.
Speaker 3: Well, it was one step up if you put it
Speaker 3: next to a section of Brooklyn called Bronzeville, East New York.
Speaker 3: And that was really where they had coal stoves. They
Speaker 3: didn't even have gas. Yeah, and we had electricity and
Speaker 3: we had guess so we were one step of Brownsbilt
Speaker 3: equal to the lower east Side. And let me tell
Speaker 3: you that my mother used to make every once in
Speaker 3: a while on a Sunday night, she would make spaghetti.
Speaker 3: She would buy a box of Muller's noodles.
Speaker 2: They were flat, flat noodles.
Speaker 3: And she cooked them until they were dead.
Speaker 2: They'd be really soft.
Speaker 3: Oh, they were really soft. And then she put them
Speaker 3: in a baking pan and she would empty a bottle
Speaker 3: of Heinz ketchup over there, This is spaghetti. And then
Speaker 3: she'd bake it for thirty or forty minutes until the
Speaker 3: pan was dead, till everything was dead. And then she
Speaker 3: cut them into squares and served it to us and
Speaker 3: said spaghetti. And I was from eight years old to
Speaker 3: about thirteen or fourteen. That was spaghetti and it was okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was really okay. Then I had joined a club
Speaker 3: called the Baltzer Bugs. We made model airplanes. I think
Speaker 3: we enjoyed smelling the glue. Where do we like baking
Speaker 3: the planes? But we may so. One of one of
Speaker 3: the Baltzer Bugs, it was Bertie Steinberger, was Flappy Rothman,
Speaker 3: and there was Tony Galliani Italian an Italian, and Tony
Speaker 3: said I'm going home. It was Sunday, and I said,
Speaker 3: he said, I'm going home to have spaghetti. I said,
Speaker 3: we have spaghetti on Sunday too. He said, well try,
Speaker 3: you know, come on and have bar spaghetti. So I
Speaker 3: went home. I walked into his apartment, which was in
Speaker 3: green Point.
Speaker 2: A little on the.
Speaker 3: Edge of Williamsburg. As I walked in, I was assaulted
Speaker 3: by these incredible smells, just as the aromas of of garlic,
Speaker 3: and I mean, it was just incredible. Then I sat down.
Speaker 3: They served this warm, squiggly spaghetti, real spaghetti, squiggly but
Speaker 3: not dead, fotback and sauces red thick, red, beautiful sauce
Speaker 3: with meatballs in it, and sprinkled on top of it
Speaker 3: was this white stuff snow. I think it was parmesan cheese.
Speaker 3: And I took I took one bite and I started
Speaker 3: to cry.
Speaker 2: Did you cry?
Speaker 3: I wept? I wept, and I said, Tony, this is
Speaker 3: this is spaghetti. This is spaghetti. I was about fourteen,
Speaker 3: and I just wept and I went When I came home,
Speaker 3: I said, Mom, you're not making spaghetti. I don't know
Speaker 3: what 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 3: When we went to the sata was, I know they
Speaker 3: made little dishes before to celebrate the Jews freedom from
Speaker 3: slavery in Egypt, and had something with apples and stuff
Speaker 3: that was supposed to mimic the mortar that the Jews
Speaker 3: carried up to make sure these big stones stayed together.
Speaker 3: And then some salt for the heart, for the suffering,
Speaker 3: for the tears, and it was a lot of those
Speaker 3: little things. And then she served this thing called the
Speaker 3: filter fish with red horse rices. They called it crane,
Speaker 3: crane or grain, and it was just thrilling. I loved it.
Speaker 2: So you love food from food?
Speaker 3: I tasted food. My mother wasn't making food. She was
Speaker 3: she was making something at bathroom food.
Speaker 2: So do you think your mother was not?
Speaker 3: And the first time I had Chinese food? Where was
Speaker 3: that Bluesburg? We never went to. My mother said we're
Speaker 3: gonna go to a Chinese restaurant tonight, and each meal,
Speaker 3: the whole meal menu twenty five cents.
Speaker 2: And the Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 3: And the Chinese restaurant and you got you got eggs first,
Speaker 3: then you got chowmine, Oh, chowmine, and then you got
Speaker 3: a yellow ball with little pieces of ice in it,
Speaker 3: a round ball that was the ice cream dessert, and
Speaker 3: and then some fortune cookies with the paper and that,
Speaker 3: you know, I hate the paper. I hate everything. Everything
Speaker 3: was sweet. One of the most delicious things was very simple.
Speaker 3: We lived at five five stories up in this tentement,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't I wasn't gonna come up. They will
Speaker 3: get that. I was not going to come up for lunch.
Speaker 3: I was not why because there was five stories and
Speaker 3: I didn't want to leave the game. So we took
Speaker 3: a break in the game and we all had lunch.
Speaker 3: They all brought bags and stuff with them. Sat on
Speaker 3: the carve of my friends and my mother would throw
Speaker 3: in it, throw down in a brown paper bag, kaiser
Speaker 3: roll smeared with a lot of butter, fresh butter, and
Speaker 3: almost a whole tomato sliced and salted and put that
Speaker 3: and it was the most delicious thing. And I'd always
Speaker 3: catch it. But one time I missed it.
Speaker 2: I was going to say five stories up as.
Speaker 3: One time I missed it, and splata you heard the sound,
Speaker 3: and the bag was crammed with wet so I very
Speaker 3: carefully peeled that what used to be the bag away
Speaker 3: from the sandwich, and I began eating the sandwich, and
Speaker 3: I once again cried. It was so great. It was
Speaker 3: the closest thing to pizza.
Speaker 2: When did you have your first pizza? Oh?
Speaker 3: I had my first pizza when I was I was
Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as a teenager, you lived at home and
Speaker 2: then when did you leave? When you left home, did
Speaker 2: you cook for yourself?
Speaker 3: Well? I didn't leave home. Oh, okay, I was sent
Speaker 3: to Virginia Military Institute the Army. There's a guy that
Speaker 3: came to my high school. We were going to graduate.
Speaker 3: We were seventeen. We're going to be eighteen and graduated
Speaker 3: from Eastern District High School. I claim to fame. Was
Speaker 3: a red hour back was a great, incredible basketball coach
Speaker 3: and world famous and he was on the team and
Speaker 3: he was a genius. Anyway, I left because the guy said,
Speaker 3: if you can pass a test, you'll be in the
Speaker 3: Army Specialized Training Reserved program and it would stand you
Speaker 3: in good stead because later when you were drafted or
Speaker 3: taken into the regular Army you already had some background
Speaker 3: in military and you could maybe choose your branch of
Speaker 3: service and great, okay. So I took the test and
Speaker 3: the test was not hard. It was how much is
Speaker 3: doing too? I said, well, if you put them next
Speaker 3: to each other, you got twenty two, you know. But
Speaker 3: it was easy and they wanted you. So when I
Speaker 3: was seventeen, they sent me to VMI Virginia Military Institute,
Speaker 3: the West point of the South and go to restaurants
Speaker 3: in Lexington, Virginia. And when the waitliss to take your order,
Speaker 3: she answer back one thing. She'd say, you want grits
Speaker 3: of that? And we said what she said? Do you
Speaker 3: want grits with that?
Speaker 2: Nor that? I just couldn't understand.
Speaker 3: I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2: Later, it's kind of like polent. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: you know, what was it like the food in the
Speaker 2: military Awakening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I can be very honest with you and
Speaker 3: say some words.
Speaker 2: That's this is a podcast. We can do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's a podcast. We can do it. I remember
Speaker 3: the only thing the army had a I went into
Speaker 3: the mess hall at four Dicks and I was shocked
Speaker 3: by what I saw on a on a a great
Speaker 3: big griddle, maybe maybe twelve feet by twelve. It was
Speaker 3: just enormous. I saw a thousand eggs, sunny side up,
Speaker 3: and you pick, you'd say, give me to give me three,
Speaker 3: give me four, and then that was that was eggs.
Speaker 3: And then there was like a a trash barrel clean
Speaker 3: one of course, that had oatmeal in it. And then
Speaker 3: there was It was just that kind of you know,
Speaker 3: so it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 2: Were homesick? I was homesick, could be so homesick? How
Speaker 2: old were you?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Well I was. I was nearly old enough to be
Speaker 3: in the regular army. So I was seventeen and a
Speaker 3: half young to.
Speaker 2: Take you out of Brooklyn, to take you out of
Speaker 2: your yeah, put you into place.
Speaker 3: It was a strange place. But anyway, we're all together
Speaker 3: and we we you know, we held onto each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you take anything away from that experience?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did. They were they were unusually nice to us,
Speaker 3: these cadets. Yeah, these Southern cadets. They had and they
Speaker 3: taught us never to lie. Honor is the best thing,
Speaker 3: you know. That stayed with you, and stay that stayed
Speaker 3: with me. Hardly, I hardly ever lie, except in show business.
Speaker 3: You're forced to liar.
Speaker 2: Say something, to tell somebody there.
Speaker 3: To do that good. Ally, you look so great today,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: That, I said. A friend of mine once interviewed Isaiah Berlin,
Speaker 2: you know, the philosopher ya. He said, when you admire
Speaker 2: somebody's work, do you just say I loved your work?
Speaker 2: And they said, no, no, no, that's for the work
Speaker 2: you didn't think so much of. If you really loved
Speaker 2: their work, you I died, you know, I was on
Speaker 2: the floor. You know, how do you how do you
Speaker 2: give I love? Your work is for the people whose
Speaker 2: work you didn't like it? You know, you say, that's fine?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: But then what happened after.
Speaker 3: The and any anyway? I went into the real army
Speaker 3: and there I saw a thousand eggs Sonny Sun.
Speaker 2: That was in the real army.
Speaker 3: Fourth that was Fourth Dicks, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: What year would that have been, mel.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you exactly. June forty four. I was transferred
Speaker 3: from v M I to four Dicks. I was in
Speaker 3: the regular army. And then there was a thing that
Speaker 3: was on the table. It was a big round bowl
Speaker 3: with stuff in it, and it was I'm not at
Speaker 3: the table. It was like where where the cooks were,
Speaker 3: you know, and they had big spoons and they could
Speaker 3: slop it. They could they put it on on some toast,
Speaker 3: and you know, and I didn't. I never took a chance.
Speaker 3: But once I said, you know, I said, the guy's
Speaker 3: next to me, ate it. So I took a chance
Speaker 3: and I got it. And I said to them, what
Speaker 3: is that? What is this we're eating? And they said,
Speaker 3: shit on a shingle? I said, what shit on a shingle?
Speaker 3: It turned out to be cream beef on toast, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't so bad. But the Army, you know.
Speaker 2: Did they send you abroad? Did you go?
Speaker 3: Yeah, eventually, But let me tell you, at breakfast and
Speaker 3: all meals in the Army, there was no shortcutting. You
Speaker 3: got into a lot of trouble. If someone said passed
Speaker 3: a butt, or passed the jam, or passed the whatever,
Speaker 3: you passed it. If you stopped and took some of
Speaker 3: it and put it on your plate, that was shortcutting.
Speaker 3: And you had to leave the table in the middle
Speaker 3: of your meal. That's it, your your throat.
Speaker 2: So you pass and then you wave.
Speaker 3: Passing and waited, you waited, and then when we were
Speaker 3: on bivouac bivouac means when you're you're on a campsite,
Speaker 3: you pitched tents and you sleep on the ground, and
Speaker 3: then you go through a mess line with this stuff
Speaker 3: to eat with it's all aluminum, and then there are
Speaker 3: there are indentations for food.
Speaker 2: In it, yeah, trays.
Speaker 3: And then they always did the same thing. It was
Speaker 3: beef stew. They put the beef stew in the deepest
Speaker 3: dish in the dray. Then yes, for the let's say
Speaker 3: the the mashed potatoes. You figured, well, there's a big
Speaker 3: spot next to it. It's deep. Give that no on
Speaker 3: the meat.
Speaker 2: On the meat, and then mashed potatoes on the meat on.
Speaker 3: The meat, and then the top it off, or slice
Speaker 3: beaches on top of the mashed potato. And then places
Speaker 3: in each plate for sections where everybody you can eat
Speaker 3: like a person. But they invariably put beef stew, then
Speaker 3: mesh petted, and then and I don't know, so.
Speaker 2: You always cared about how food tasted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there was one big another, very big revelation
Speaker 3: in about food. Jeane Wilder, I could cry taking him,
Speaker 3: he's so sweet, sweetest, invited Anne and I to dinner
Speaker 3: at his house and in the village at his houshest
Speaker 3: apartment in the village. I forgot what we hate. But
Speaker 3: he served wine. Up until then the only wine I
Speaker 3: had ever really, I never cared for wine. They don't
Speaker 3: say it tastes a little sour. Oh. Up until then,
Speaker 3: mana chevitz and carmel is sweet Jewish wine. And I
Speaker 3: tasted this wine.
Speaker 2: Was it a French wine?
Speaker 3: It was a French wine, Santa stef you know. And
Speaker 3: I said, what is this? He said, it's wine. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is wine. And he got me hooked. And
Speaker 3: from that day I think I was twenty something whatever,
Speaker 3: twenty four, twenty six, I don't know. To that day
Speaker 3: to this if I have wine, it's always a good wine.
Speaker 3: It's either a good Italian wine or a good French
Speaker 3: wine or a good and half of valley wine. But
Speaker 3: he taught me that wine could wine could actually taste
Speaker 3: really taste good, 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 3: And well, up until Blazing Saddles, I was hanging on
Speaker 3: the show business with the skin of my teeth, not
Speaker 3: making any money. The first movie I made was The Producers,
Speaker 3: good movie. I won Academy Award for the screenplay, but
Speaker 3: just about broke even. And then the next one was
Speaker 3: The Twelve Chairs, which was a foreign movie kind of
Speaker 3: you know made it was a good, very time, one
Speaker 3: of my best movies, but alas it didn't make a penny.
Speaker 3: So I was thinking of going back to television, where
Speaker 3: I was doing all right, I was making money. And
Speaker 3: then Blazing Saddles and that was an explosion, busted open
Speaker 3: the doors and windows and gave me enough money to
Speaker 3: buy a house, and you know, finally paid pay for
Speaker 3: dinner and did not have to slip me money under
Speaker 3: the table. And I was okay, Blazing Saddles did it.
Speaker 2: And that How did you educate yourself in wine? Did
Speaker 2: somebody help you?
Speaker 3: Or?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: Once, once I tasted those wines and I looked, I
Speaker 3: looked up. You know, I got a book. I got
Speaker 3: a few books. Can you find a book? Take a look,
Speaker 3: look up on the on the shelf there, look up
Speaker 3: on the shelf. See if you find a wine book. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I've always got books finding out.
Speaker 2: You know, if somebody said they want to learn about wine,
Speaker 2: would you say.
Speaker 3: Read, I would say read, I would say read. I
Speaker 3: would say read yeah, yeah, what book is that now? Bordeaux?
Speaker 2: So then you just learned and you visited, and you.
Speaker 3: And I visited, you know, and I went cheval Blanc
Speaker 3: invited me the owner of the chateau, and I spent
Speaker 3: the weekend.
Speaker 2: Do you still go down Do you have your wine
Speaker 2: cellar downstairs? You go downstairs.
Speaker 3: I don't drink much wine now because of my belly.
Speaker 3: I can't drink a lot of wine.
Speaker 2: But you can drink some.
Speaker 3: I can drink some. I can, I can, I can
Speaker 3: drink some.
Speaker 2: What do you feel about Italian wine?
Speaker 3: I love Italian wine. I love a barolo, you know.
Speaker 3: And the wines can be soft in wonder for they
Speaker 3: can be rough and beautiful, you know, and a lot
Speaker 3: of minds a great.
Speaker 2: It's changed now, you know, there's a new generation of
Speaker 2: Italian winemakers whose fathers were and was farmers. You know,
Speaker 2: everybody had a vineyard and gianti or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: this new generation of taking it seriously and they actually
Speaker 2: even came to California to learn more about wine.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we talked about food in the army. But
Speaker 2: what I'd like to talk to you about food and filmmaking,
Speaker 2: so or television. When you were working in film and
Speaker 2: the studios, what would food be like? There would there
Speaker 2: be a canteen where you ate? What would they call
Speaker 2: the commissary?
Speaker 3: What would they commissary?
Speaker 2: Commissary?
Speaker 3: What was that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: In the movie studios, it's a commasary.
Speaker 2: What happened? What was that like?
Speaker 3: Well? Some some had a Fox was very good. Fox
Speaker 3: actually had really I mean Fox, you could get an omelet,
Speaker 3: you know. Other studios didn't know what an omelet was.
Speaker 2: You know, So tell me about a lunch. Would you
Speaker 2: stop for lunch and would you all meet other actors
Speaker 2: from other films? Everybody would just meet. There was that
Speaker 2: a way of kind of meeting people. Who did you
Speaker 2: meet when you had commissary? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, mostly the folks that I met, you know, the
Speaker 3: stuff that you know Allan Ladd Jr. Who ran Fox
Speaker 3: often liked to eat at my table. Yeah. And the
Speaker 3: guy who just passed away lest this earlier this year
Speaker 3: with Richard Donner, Yes, I loved so much. He was
Speaker 3: so mischievous. And Jay Canter, who at one time as
Speaker 3: an agent for MCA handle Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, I mean,
Speaker 3: and they all liked him because he was soft and
Speaker 3: sweet than he was.
Speaker 2: So Jay used to eat with us, and he was
Speaker 2: on the movie set.
Speaker 3: And well he had you would invite people to come
Speaker 3: to the conversary. They'd come to the Fox and eat
Speaker 3: with us.
Speaker 2: Your good friend Alan Up who whenever he was in town,
Speaker 2: he told me to ask you a story about Carry Grant. Yes,
Speaker 2: what's the story about Carry kran Oh, it's.
Speaker 3: A good story.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I was not yet a filmmaker, but I was writing
Speaker 3: a movie for a guy called Marvin Schwartz on the
Speaker 3: universe a lot. So I'm writing this movie and I
Speaker 3: look across the way and I see grand Art g
Speaker 3: r a n Art, And I say to Marvin Schwartz, Marvin,
Speaker 3: what the hell is Grant? Grandheart? Who works there? He says,
Speaker 3: that's Carry Grant, that's his Carrie Grant. That's about twenty
Speaker 3: feet away. It's thirty feet away.
Speaker 2: What here was this smell?
Speaker 3: This was? I can tell you exactly fifty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think fifty nine. So you're watching, I'm watching to
Speaker 3: see Carry Grant. I'm watching, and sure enough a Rolls
Speaker 3: Royce comes, I know, a guy gets out of chauffeur.
Speaker 3: He opens the back door bounding two steps at a time,
Speaker 3: up up the stairs to Grandharts in a gray It
Speaker 3: has got to be a good dark gray with chalk stripes.
Speaker 3: Double breasted Carry Grant. It was him. I said, holy shit,
Speaker 3: Carry Grant. I can't believe it. So one day soon
Speaker 3: after that, I'm walking down about twelve thirty two, the
Speaker 3: commissary at Universal. I hear a little click clack behind me,
Speaker 3: and I turn around and I hear mel Brooks. Don't
Speaker 3: believe it. It's mel Brooks. I said, oh my god,
Speaker 3: it's Carry Grant. I said, how do you know me?
Speaker 3: He said, I your record. I just bought your record.
Speaker 3: You cost me one thousand dollars. I bought so many records.
Speaker 3: And then he said, but where are you going? I
Speaker 3: said to the company. He said, well, let's go together.
Speaker 3: So wow, I'm going to have lunch. I had lunch
Speaker 3: with Carry Grant. I called my brother Bernie, Lenny, Irvy.
Speaker 3: I called everybody Williamsburg. They you wanted to know what
Speaker 3: he ate? I said, he had two poached eggs yon toast,
Speaker 3: but I had Tunicial. Yeah. Okay. Next day, phone rings,
Speaker 3: it's car Carrie, Yeah, it's mail Carry Mal. They come
Speaker 3: lunch yes, well boom together, Me and Carry Grant we
Speaker 3: walked down the Wednesday was me and Carry in Thursday.
Speaker 3: Me and We're talking. What's your favorite color? I say blue?
Speaker 3: He says yellow. What's your favorite car? I said buick?
Speaker 3: He says the rolls or yeah, comes right. I don't
Speaker 3: know what they ask him. I don't you know. I
Speaker 3: know it's gonna call. I run out of dialogue. So
Speaker 3: the phone rings, and I said to Marvin, if it's
Speaker 3: Carry Grant, I'm not in, which is not true, but.
Speaker 2: I mean, did you see him ever again all the time?
Speaker 2: One of the carry Grunt stories.
Speaker 3: You know, I used it in my stand up stuff,
Speaker 3: and I made it funny, But actually, if I told
Speaker 3: the truth, it was really very touching because he was
Speaker 3: really a good actor, and he had made some very beautiful,
Speaker 3: you know, intelligent soft films about love and people and
Speaker 3: and and they did have none of it. I kept saying,
Speaker 3: why don that was such a great picture. What did
Speaker 3: they make? He said, because the money was in the
Speaker 3: 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, food.
Speaker 3: At the every cafe still is u literally some of
Speaker 3: the best. And I've eaten in some really great restaurants,
Speaker 3: you know, and I've had duck at the Tour Do Jean,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: An omelets with the Madame Romayne de Leon. Never split
Speaker 3: an omelet. She said, if you.
Speaker 2: Split it, it'll run run.
Speaker 3: She said. You can split a steak, but never split
Speaker 3: an omelet.
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 risutto. 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.
Speaker 3: Proud of you.
Speaker 2: I love you, Thank you. One last question. Food is
Speaker 2: something to leave you ate hunger. If food is something
Speaker 2: to give someone we love, it's also comfort. There is
Speaker 2: a kind of food that we go to we.
Speaker 3: Have when I have a really outstanding meal, like like
Speaker 3: your spaghetti you made for my son Max. We we
Speaker 3: just came in upon you and Max was hungry, and
Speaker 3: you said, I'll make them, and you made him some spaghetti,
Speaker 3: and I take it was the most delicious spaghetti in
Speaker 3: the world. When food is really good, it serves the soul.
Speaker 3: It serves the soul. And I'm not talking about dope soul.
Speaker 3: But when food is really good, it serves more than
Speaker 3: just the belly and the hunger, and it serves the soul.
Speaker 3: And you should be very proud of yourself and the
Speaker 3: restaurant that that's one of the best restaurants.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 3: You bet.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
Speaker 1: It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
Speaker 1: from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
Speaker 1: delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
Speaker 1: River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
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