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