Ruthie's Table 4: Frank Gehry

Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.

When I phoned Frank Garry to ask him to do this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time a new Frank Gary building opened, Richard, my husband and I would make a pilgrimage to visit the Disney Center in Los Angeles, the Louis Vreton Foundation in Paris, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and Moore. But one summer in two thousand and eight, a spectacular Gary building came up to us in Hyde Park, just ten minutes from our house.

Six slices of presciutto or pansetta. I really like that one pheasant plucked and clean. Americans don't have.

Ye No, we don't have game.

They don't have pheasants Canada, but does Canada. But it's a long time ago. I was in Canada. Half a cup of olive oil. I like that. Three garlic cloves peels, yes, I'm still in. Three fresh rosemary sprigs, great, five fresh sage leaves. Great. Half a bottle of Josephine dores u. It's wine.

It's a fortified sweet wine, rather like Marsala.

Uh huh.

So you could use Marsala as well. But I love the name Josephine Dorik or wine.

Okay, I like the name too. One hundred and seventy five millimeter chicken stock, one hundred and twenty five milliiters of heavy cream. Place the prescudo or pancetta slices over the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant on all sides. Add the garlic and herbs. Cook over a medium heat for about forty minutes. Adding the wine and stock in stages. You do not want to boil the bird, but braize it in the liquid. Remove the bird and

It's good, isn't it.

I'm shocked you didn't bring me some.

I know it's not the right season.

There I would go with this interview is.

Can you imagine me getting into customs?

And I've got to me it would make the interview. We could do that. We can do a replay.

Okay, we'll do it. Did you ever do the cooking?

I cook mots of brye?

How do you? What is that?

On Sunday mornings and I have lots of bride bakeoffs with people. Mats of brie is unleavened bread that the Jews crusted the desert with Moses a long time ago, and it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover. It's unleaven bread for Passover. I break it up underwater and get it sort of moist. I salted and stuff, and I take a bunch of eggs and I beat them up and put them all over the matzabrie and it absorbs the egg stuff and then I fry him.

You grow up? But tell me first start from the beginning.

Where were you born Toronto?

And where were your parents born?

My mother Poland, my father New York and his father and mother his father Russia.

Russia, Poland, Yeah.

Pince, I think my mother luds ldz.

Yeah, loves And what was their story?

They came in nineteen thirteen. I think there was a pogram in Poland. I found out later that the Jews were being rounded up and beaten up. And my grandfather, who delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to Lootch and saw where the rail tracks were and where he was and when did you I was invited to do a film festival and called the Camarade Film Festival in Poland. And I went with David Lynch. David Lynch

The grandmother did.

She ran a foundry in Poland. They came across on a Dutch ship that got stalled mid ocean, which was the reason my mother would never cross a bridge in a car. She had a phobia for so she would get out of the car and walk across the bridge and meet us on the other side because of this experience. As I guess she was a nine year old or six year old, I don't remember, but obviously they got here.

Yeah, they got to where did they learn to Canada?

Right?

And they land that in Toronto. My grandfather got a horse and buggy. He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff. They lived in a little house, tiny house that just got torn down.

Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within me?

Yeah, it was a Jewish community. My grandfather had got went on to have a hardware store, which I worked in as a kid with him, and he's the one that got me to read Talmud. And he wasn't religious. It was interesting. He was the head of his little congregation because he took the He was a business guy and so he managed the money for them. But he read Talmud. To me, that was interesting. You know. Talmud

Somebody always asked me what I look for in a new chef or anyone i'd take on it River Cafe, and I always say, curiosity.

Yeah, right, that's where I'm interested.

And so you were. You went to school every day.

And you know you look So we were in Toronto. I went to I went to Blue Collegiate until forty seven and then we but in between my family moved to Timmins, Ontario, five hundred miles north of Toronto, and I lived there from eight years old to thirteen years old.

So you've sort of set up a picture of what where you were. If you were to kind of close your eyes and remember the smells of your mother's kitchen or the food in her kitchen. Can you visualize it? What was it a big room? Was it a small kitchen?

Yeah, it was. It was a small kitchen. It wasn't She wasn't a great cook. Okay, Yeah. My grandmother made on the cook stove, made all the to gel fill to fish, and I used to watch. That's why everybody says I do fish sculptures because I used to go pick up the live fish and put it in the bathtub, and then at night I would I was as a kid. I would play with the fish in the bathtub and then the next day it was gone.

Would did you ever watch them kill the No?

I didn't know what happened was at home. I finally figured it out.

But do you think there was? Because that is interesting about why the fish? Because when did the image of the fish begin?

You know, that's a whole other story. Do you want me to get.

Into it about the fish? Yes?

You know. I was started practicing sixty four of my own I'd worked on shopping centers with groon and stuff like that. I got some houses to do. I did some small buildings. Uh. And I got to know Peter Eisen and your husband, and Norman Foster and Michael Graves and Charlie Moore, and I wasn't a big force in architecture, but I was. They sort of paid attention. I was

I think.

Everybody went to that show. I went to it. It was a knockout. The Bose Art buildings, the models they showed were so seductive, it was incredible everybody. It was after that show that Philip put the top on at and t Bright as a director at that show, and Graves came out and Stern came out and they all okay, so postmodernism became the Siren Song. And I remember I was at a and I couldn't buy it. I wasn't buying it, but I thought there was more to life

And how they had made it in that way.

They didn't know.

I didn't know. It was just an accident.

This guy said, that's brilliant. How did you do that? I said, it's pure, you know, I said, I told him, well, I was interested in the fish because of movement.

So what do you think that relates to the carp in the bathtub?

I don't know.

Maybe maybe that a psychiatrist that image of the car, but I.

Think that the next thing I did was a show at the walker and I cut the tail off the fish, the head off the fish, and I made an abstract and it's still moved, it still had the sense of movement. And that's when I got hooked, hooked on the shape shaping and using that to express to express.

An Yeah, the image of so that I think.

That experience made made Bill bow. I'd love the food, and.

Let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right next to Bilbao, is a mecca for food. People go there. The chefs are really interesting. So what when you say you love the food of Bilbao, tell me about it.

It's the cod fish. What do they call it.

Yeah, the bacola, baccala bala.

Yes, you know, don't you? You're a cook anyway, Baola. I love bacola and I loved the wine.

Yeah, you would go for these site meetings, and did you spend a long there?

Bill Bell reawakened my food whatever foody I was happened there because that's what we did. We went out to restaurants with them. The wine was special because.

Life that you're describing a working all day, whether you're Cassavettis your friend, or actors or writers or artists in their studios, there was a real momentum to go to eat at the end of the day because the work was solitary and so was that true here as well? Did you go out to restaurants all the time?

And yeah, with Benny Gazar we used to go to Italian restaurants. So we had a lot of pasta and a lot of red wine.

And there was one that somebody told me there was one in like a train.

Carriage, the Pacific Dining car. Is it still there downtown? I think it's still there. It was in my neighborhood, so we used to go there because it was around the corner from where we lived, and you could. You didn't need a reservation, you just walk in. Yeah, and it was never filled. And I mean I used to see Spieler, he used to be there, and a lot of Hollywood people, but they would come at six in the morning for early breakfast, when nobody was there our real late at night.

I think about a restaurant in a city is that, as we found out when restaurants were closed in London, is that they do provide a social life to the city that you can go there and see people that you didn't know were going to be there. There's a spontaneity about meeting a friend or sitting there.

For the Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't go there to meet other people. It was the booths were spread apart and it was never filled.

So you as a kid, did you ever go out to a restaurant when you were a child.

Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out. Yeah. I do remember going to restaurants with my father in Toronto that had signs no Jews alone. No, I do remember that really, And he always knew the owner because he was a gregarious guy. So we would go in anyway.

So he would He would actually be friends with an owner who actually had a sign on his door saying.

He wasn't friendly with him, but he had he had some kind of business relationship with him.

Was your father alive to understand your success?

He died before my success. Now my mother did, did.

She bask in the in the glow of your success?

She tried. But when I when she died, I found a box with every article. Yeah, I didn't know she was doing that, and it was from way back. But she always used to compare me to other people's kids, you know, like Hilda's son does. Why can't you be more like that? So I got it. I had a bad time.

I think you had a bad time, and they had a bad time leaving your country and having a ship stold in the middle of the ocean and living in a city that you knew no one, And I mean when you left your home and where did you go to architecture school?

USC?

So you came to California.

So my father lost everything, had a heart attack, had to leave leave Toronto. He was penniless. His brother brought him to California. My mother came, my sister came. We lived in a two rooms the size of this in an old building downtown.

Sisters and brothers? Did you have sisters and Brothers's sister.

I got a job as a truck driver. My father got a job as a truck can I delivered breakfast, nooks and furniture. He was a soda pop delivery. My mother got a job in the Broadway, Hollywood, in the candy department, and she stayed there all the way to the end. For her, she were in the Broadway, she ended up in the decorating department, and she was selling draperies to Hollywood people.

So would she cooked? Would she come home and cook for you? Do you remember sitting very much? Would sitting down to a meal in your house?

I would remember, but I can't.

I don't remember that meals, family meals did not exciting. Now now everybody talks about you know how sad it is now that we don't all gather around a table every night. But for some people, quite a few people, it was quite and stressful to have to sit around a table with your family. That's what it was for you? Was it because he just.

Had a temper and you never knew couldn't control it. Took it out on me because he saw me as not understanding business. I was. I was the kind of artsy type. Yeah, so he didn't understand that. And my mother also supported that that I wasn't really interested in I mean I was interested in going to the symphony and going to art galleries, but not in things that would make a living.

And some meal times for a kind of tyranny were they of.

It was difficult.

And then when you went to architecture school and college you kind offended for yourself.

And yeah, then I got married.

Yeah, became domestic life.

That was domestic life kind of yeah. Yeah, well this was the first marriage before birship.

When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria Forcaill New House, did that make you think more about food or did Was that about space? Was that where people could stop working in the magazines and punt have a meal.

I did think about food because we did the cafe Ta Park and we had to set up where you go through the line of gage.

But that's a radical canteen. I mean there's no other space like that to have as a place to eat when you're working all day. It was the hottest ticket in New York. It was invited to that, Yeah, to lunch. Everybody was trying to figure out how.

They were I didn't know.

Oh yeah, huge. Everybody wanted to go there, you know. I remember going with Victoria, took me and people friends of mine, call up friends of theirs.

Who they remodeled it. They've totally.

What was SI life as a client? Was he the client?

He was the client?

Did you know what he wanted?

Really? Did? I took him to the best thing I did with Sai is I took him to Japan for a week with Greg Wallace, who was my partner who had spent a lot of his life in Japan. So Greg knew Japan really fantastic, and Victoria and Ci and Bert and I and Greg spent a week together and so I ended up in the same little cafe with typical Japanese there pork noodles or something, and that's what he ordered every day, and he wanted to go back

Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food?

Oh?

Boy, oh boy? What's your go to see?

My friend Stephanie Barron makes the greatest lemon drops and I invite her to go sailing, specifically because she brings the lemon drums.

So sailing. Yeah, so sailing.

Now you're talking.

And when you're on the boat, do you do you eat?

Do you have any we order sandwiches or something?

Yeah?

And drink wine?

Are you interested in the wine?

Yeah? I got a lot of it, but I don't. One of my clients is the Southern wine spirits owner from from from Vegas, and I did his little building in Vegas, and so he sends us all the wine and so I mean, I mean, I get to like some of it. I pick stuff that I like him and Berta likes some of it. But we're not wins. Tequila has We've been drinking a little bit and so we do tequila for dinner.

And what are the sweets apart from the lemon drops? Do you like chocolate? Frank, Oh, yeah, me too. Is there something that when you're feeling kind of low or kind of worried that you might reach for in terms of food? But is there something that you would say this, there's a kind of sense of comfort in some pint.

I guess just plain pasta pasta.

Yeah, do you know? I asked this question to.

Everybody and they always end up with us.

Everybody loves a pasta. Yeah, I think it is.

Well, it's uh, you don't have to eat a lot of it, and it's kind of filling. Yeah, and you can drink some wine with it.

Yeah.

And then there's some such so many varieties of pasta that that gets exciting, you know. But and when you go to a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, the varieties are incredible. So I like to try.

Well, let's go next time I'm here. Are you going to restaurants?

Are you avoiding them a little bit? I'm going to come to the River Cafe.

Yeah, Frank Garrey, you are invited to the River Cafe. Invited. That means you don't have to pay anything. And by the way, juice are allowed.

Oh my god, that's terrible. Well, I will be.

And also you know, food is a pleasure.

Yeah it is.

It's so good and it's so great thing to give yourself and then just eat it and havept deliciously.

Okay. So in the morning for breakfast, I make I take toast and I fry an egg and I put it on the toast. That's good, and that's what I have egg.

If the egg is good and the toast is good, and the butter is good and it's hot, then that's a delicious meal. But you need to put a lot of salt and pepper on it, and you need to eat it pleasure with pleasure. Yeah, no idea food is you know, it's simple. An artist and architects and designers. Everyone is part of coming out. Okay, now it's coming out.

It's not just the mos both that's my specialty.

All right, I'm all right, thank you. Frank what's frank Berry ice cream?

Frank Berry ice Cream.

Company named an ice cream? Is that right after you? Did you know that?

Yeah? I saw something like that.

I think having an ice cream named after you is pretty cool. I have to say, you know, I can have a building named after you or.

You know, snicker doodle.

I guess Okay, Well, maybe we'll have to go get one.

The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photogher Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of