May 1, 2020 • 46 mins
In this episode legendary writer, editor, critic and cook Ruth Reichl joins host Marc Murphy. Listen as they reminisce New York City’s restaurant scene in the early 90’s when he was a young chef and she was the New York Times restaurant critic. Ever wonder what it’s like to run one of the most influential food magazines? Ruth shares the rise and fall of Gourmet Magazine while she was Editor in Chief and how it inspired a character in her best selling novel: Delicious! Save room to hear what she has been up too during quarantine and how Covid-19 has impacted and unveiled the issues the American food system has faced and how it could change moving forward.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that serves up
some serious food for thought. I'm your host, Mark Murphy.
Today I want to welcome an icon in the culinary world.
And I'm also lucky enough to call her my friend,
Ruth Reichel. So first, I guess we're gonna do this officially.
We're gonna introduce Ruth Reichel, who is author, writer, editor, chef.
(00:24):
And now I'm lucky enough to call you my friend
as well. Well, I would make one change in that
I am not a chef. Well, I'm a cook. You're
a cook. Okay, we'll call you a cook, but you've
you're you're I I don't know. I feel like you're
so important in the chef world that we should give
you that title as well. Yeah, but then you can
(00:46):
laugh at met my knife skills. I mean, I'm just
a home cook. Okay. Well, but I'm very happy to
be your friend, I have to say, and I have
to say, you know, I we had met before, and
I know we had sat at certain like dinners. You're
in there and Ben knew of each other. I think
as the years went by in the in this industry.
But it was our trip to Israel. That really sealed
(01:08):
the deal for us to be able to really get
to know each other. That was that was such an
amazing trip. I mean it was. It was not only amazing,
it was amazing for me in a lot of ways. Well,
one was obviously seeing a beautiful country, which we've got
to experience together. But one was making new friends, really
making you know, solidifying some friendships. Yeah. And you know,
there's nothing like traveling with people. You get to know
people in a completely different way. I mean, you're in
(01:30):
this little bubble together for a week and you get
to know people in a way you would just never
if you just sort of, you know, met them. I mean,
spending twenty four hours a day together is uh, it's intense.
And you were Nancy so with his roommate for that trip,
who also is an amazing person. Yes she is. And
(01:52):
uh but I I knew Nancy really well going into that. So, um,
you know, Nancy and I have traveled together a lot,
We've shared hotel rooms a lot, I've lived at her
house for long periods of time. Okay, so there were
(02:13):
no revelations there, Okay, Well there you go. I mean
for me, it was a revelation, getting getting to know
the two of you. And it was great because you know,
whenever we sat down together, it was a bottle of
white wine and a bottle of the red wine, because
you each like your own colors of wine, which is
very funny. That's exactly right, it was. It was. I
finally got about halfway through the trip, when I knew
you guys were coming, I would or it. I was
(02:34):
like a glass of red and a glass of white.
This the ladies need their drinks because we've had a
long day. True. But I gotta say, the the the
the revolution of food in Israel, it was, I think
is just it's just beautiful. The the the the bounty
that was flourishing at the markets, the the the the
the melting pot of cultures coming together. Um, it was.
(02:55):
It was really it was eye opening for me. And
the products, I mean, the produce there is so amazing.
And we remember that day we went to Hitda's farm
and everything had come within from like within two miles
of where we were, and there was just this incredible spread.
There were like sixty dishes on the table and cheese
(03:17):
that they had made themselves, and fish from the local
stream and like every fruit and vegetable you can imagine.
Remember all those pickled that pickled fish that they made
as well, the smoke fish and the pickled Oh, it
was just it was all incredible. Yeah, and you thought, okay,
you know this was the Garden of Eden. Now I
get it exactly. So, you know, when I got back
(03:39):
from that trip, I i'm I have to admit I
don't read as much as I should. And as soon
as I got back, I think I went and bought
every one of your books. Uh, And I'm sorry I didn't.
I know, I know there's a lot of your books,
but I think the first one I dove into, um,
was probably Save Me the Plums, after the you know,
the whole story about being at Gourmet magazine, which I
(04:02):
found immensely Um. You know, I was around during that time.
I was a chef and a restaurant during that time,
and obviously read the magazine. I think was even reviewed
once in the magazine. U. And it was just so
amazing to read your story of of of your experience
and AND's and it was just, I don't know, it
(04:24):
was just very moving for me. Well, you know, I
mean for me more than anything. I mean There were
two things about that, and one is that those days
of those kinds of magazines are over. Um. It was
another world. I mean, I really had the good fortune
of working for the last publisher in America who really believed,
(04:46):
you know, if you give people the best journalism you
possibly can, they will pay for it. And so they
let us do anything we wanted. But it was also
other than this particular moment of time, the moment when
American food was really undergoing a lot of changes, and
(05:07):
we have to chronicle that, you know, which was wonderful.
Um and um, you know at that time is not
coming again. And it's it's interesting. I mean, I honestly
I feel like you you really stepped into that role
at the perfect time for you, probably in your career.
It was probably were so so much was going on.
(05:29):
I mean, having having something like that now obviously doesn't
even barely touches It doesn't scrape the surface of what's happening,
I think in the magazine world. I mean, what you
got you guys got to do it was pretty pretty
earth shattering, you know. Then I just said to them, look, um,
this is a moment of real change in American food,
and we should be chronicling that and just writing about,
(05:50):
you know, restaurants and recipes doesn't cut it anymore. People
want to know where, where does the food come from,
who's picking it? We want to talk about getting women
in restaurants. I'm not talking about gender. I don't mean
I honestly believe that food is kind of everything, you know.
I mean, if you don't pay attention to food, you're
(06:12):
not paying attention to the world, and that there's nothing
you can't write about through the lens of food. And
I just wanted to expand what a food magazine could be.
And you know, to my delight, they sort of said,
you go, girl, do whatever you want. Well that's kind
of funny because when I when I went to I
(06:33):
Heart Radio and I said I wanted to do a podcast.
I said, they said, well, what are the topics? I said, well, everything,
because everything touches food. I everybody hates it when I
use the example, but even the carting company is part
of the food chain because they got to get the
garbage from the waste of the restaurants. You have, the farmers,
you have, it's just you. You have the architects that
(06:54):
have to design the restaurants, so the flow and well,
I mean, obviously now all that's might may be changing
a little bit. Now, um, there's gonna be a lot
of changes. And I'm sure that you know we're going
to get back to normal. But yes, I think there's
You're absolutely right, everything touches food. The one thing that
I found most interesting during this whole, uh, you know,
this whole lockdown that's happened. I have a little garden
(07:14):
and I was gonna buy seeds. It's hard to find seeds.
And then I thought, hey, I'm gonna build a little
chicken coop. I have the time, I have nothing to do.
And then I read an article that they said, when
the stock market goes down, seeds and the hatcheries that
hatched the little chickens are the two things that sell
out the quickest. I was so amazed at this that
all of this is going on, and that was this
(07:35):
That was an article that I read about what was
going on. I was like, Wow, that's really weird. Well,
I mean, I actually think this is a moment of
the greatest change, certainly in my lifetime. I mean, I
don't think we're going back to normal. I don't think
normal is ever going to be the same. Um, I think,
you know, there were so many things that are wrong
(07:56):
with the way the food system was and this is
pointing it out, you know, I mean the um, you know,
wire restaurants having so much trouble, well because you know,
the entire American food system has run on the back
of undocumented people and that's not right. And um, you
(08:16):
know we're starting to see, you know, that farmers were
squeezed in ways that they shouldn't be that you know,
Americans are addicted to really cheap food. We have the
cheapest food in the world. We're addicted to it. But um,
that doesn't work in the long run. And that's what
we're seeing. Yeah, And I think Gabriella Hamilton's really I
(08:36):
think nailed it in that article she wrote in The
Times recently. I think that you know this, this was
kind of broken before this happened. And I know, I
mean I had I had five or six restaurants at
a moment and now I'm down to zero. I I
luckily got out of the business right before all this happened,
a couple of months before, and and I was seeing it.
I mean, I had restaurant, had a restaurant I was doing,
(08:57):
you know, twelve million dollars in sales, and there was
it's hard to find a profit at the end of
the day, like something's wrong here that I'm We're all
working this hard and not making a profit at the
end of the day. It's really difficult. And and it
came down to really looking at the model. It was
either you chain or handcuffed yourself to a little store
and you were the chef, the manager, the dishwasher, the
(09:17):
cook that everything you could make a living, or you
had to get involved in one of these huge chains
that had thirty or forty restaurants that then had this
sort of this cream on the top of their company,
that had all the lawyers and the and and the
legal and the beverage directors and all these other people
that would sort of run it all. And and it
was just it was sort of hard to find a
(09:38):
middle in between where it was comfortable to work right.
And then you you do that all the way down
the line, you know, I mean farmers are squeezed in
they same like fisherman I mean right now, fishermen are
in such trouble because of all the seafood in America
is sold in restaurants. People don't really cook fish at home.
So the fishermen are you know, they're there, boats are
(10:01):
sitting empty and they still got to pay the boats off.
And um, you know, nobody's buying lobsters and clams and
oysters right now. I know, and I've been seeing that,
and I've been meaning to order some oysters because I
love one of the things that I learned, one of
the first things I learned in the restaurant was how
to shuck an oyster. And I gotta tell you, I
loved it. It was just it was one of those
(10:22):
things like, wow, this is it's hard, but it's not
that hard, and you can do it. Once you learn
how to do it, it's it's easy. Yeah. Well, I
actually have oysters coming on trying. Well, lucky, how are
you make How are you making your oysters? Are you
just reading them raw? I just eat them raw. I
I'm real purest on that, you know. I mean, I
like my lobster just boiled. I don't like a lot
(10:45):
of stuff done to it. I like my oysters just
open them and eat them. Steam the clams. Um. You know,
when you get you got really great food, you really
don't want to mess with it too much. Yeah, I
like I like the product to tell me what I'm
gonna do with it. And sometimes it is just leave
me alone. That I have some clams coming actually, and
I'll tell you just steam those open with a little
(11:06):
white wine and some some some time or something like that,
and that's it. That in a crusty piece of bread.
I am happy. I'm happy as a clam. Um. I
(11:30):
wanted to talk to you really quickly because I remember
I texted you after obviously we we we traveled in
Israel together. I went and I bought a bunch of
your books and I was devouring them, and your first
novel that you wrote, Delicious, which I don't remember now
if I read it before the one about Gourby. But
but it was so much wait, there was so many
(11:50):
things going on there, uh that I loved, and Lulu,
Billy and Sammy, the characters that you had, the description
of the the shop where she worked. I literally and
I think I went back to my text and I
looked at it. I said, I got up at five
o'clock in the morning to finish the book because I
was so I was so emotional about these characters in
(12:13):
this book, and I was literally weeping and getting a
little emotional now just talking about it with you. But
those characters were so well developed and so there was
such a beauty about every one of them, and that
whole story in the attic where they were locked, and
I was just, oh, my gosh, And have you are
you writing more novels or right? I am working on
(12:34):
a novel now. Actually it's set in Paris in the eighties,
but um, one of the characters is old and so
he remembers Paris in the twenties, So you know, I mean,
I just, uh, I sort of wanted to spend time
in the Paris past, so I decided to put myself there.
(12:58):
I mean, it was kind of like with Delicious, something
kind of magical happened for me, which was um. When
I after Gourmet closed, I I had to go on
book tour for the Gourmet Cookbook, which was very weird
because the magazine was closed. And there I am and
(13:18):
everybody's creeping about the end of the magazine and I
finally come back to the now completely empty Gourmet offices
and I have to pack up, and everybody's gone, and
it's it's It's a scene of utter devastation. And it
was so depressing that I ended up going into We
(13:40):
had a library, and I ended up going into the library, um,
just to sort of be among books and friends and
in a place that wasn't full of um broken chairs
and torn up photographs and um, I saw this. It
was a filing cabinet that I had never noticed in
(14:02):
their way in the back, and I went and I like, God,
you know, I wonder what's in there. And I went
in and it was like every letter that Gourmet had
ever gotten in its seventy years. And I thought, this
is a treasure troph It's going to be a great
history of American food. And of course what it was
was mostly complaints, you know, this recipe and work and
(14:27):
um and and recipes that people sent in. And I thought, God,
if I had time to go through this, these seventy
years of letters, I'm sure I would find great stuff.
But instead, and I will never know why I did this,
but I went back into my office and instead of packing,
I sat down at the computer and I started writing
(14:49):
the letters I wish I had found. And it was
like Lulu just came to me, and you know, James
Beard had worked at the at May and so I
had this, you know, little girl writing letters to James
Beard during World War Two about the food and trying
(15:09):
to learn to cook, and it just, I mean, it
really was you know, if you're very lucky as a writer,
sometimes you get this little magic thing that happens. And
so I wrote, um, like four years of letters from
Lulu to James Beard, just wishing if that's what I
(15:29):
found in that filing cabinet, and then I you know,
sent them off to myself and packed up my office
and left. And that became the basis for that book
because Lulu, I mean, she literally just appeared to me
this you know, this great little girl. Wow that that
(15:52):
that is amazing And I love that story, and I said,
I said, I love the book. I'm gonna have to
go back and read it again because it was just,
I don't know, I just got so hot up with
all those characters and everybody in it. It was really
really wonderful. But it was that that that's amazing. But
so now you're writing one about Paris in the eighties,
and now I'm just trying to think. I think maybe
it was I seventy m I might have been there.
(16:13):
I guess maybe it was late eighties. I was cooking.
I was cooking at a one star Mischiland restaurant in
Paris at that time. I was look cooking at a
place called Raville, and it was it was really interesting.
Was right behind right by the right behind the hotel Ville,
right near the point we Philippe and I had moved
to Paris. Uh and I had been working at Prefix
(16:35):
for Terence Brennan, and then I had packed my bags.
I was David pastor Nak was my sush chef, and
Joey for Tornado and David. At one point, after about
a year and a half, he says, you've learned everything
you need to learn here. You need to get out
and go work somewhere else. So I packed my bags
and I called a friend of mine who lives in Paris.
I have a French passport, so I thought I'm gonna
go work in Paris. I went and bought the Mischland Guide.
(16:56):
I started out at the Plus Devourge and knocked on
the door for Chef Paku at a loan at the
Loan boisl and I asked him for a job, and
he thought I was completely off my rocker. This American
kid who speaks French wants a job at my restaurant.
He said, The youngest cook in my rest in my
(17:16):
kitchen has been here for fourteen years. He goes, but
here's the names of some other people you should go
ask if for a job. And I ended up going
to work with this guy, Jeli Pierlle and Jean piell
Bol was the Sioux chef and I worked there for
almost a year and a half, almost two years that
I was gonna leave, and they asked, begged me to
stay because it was gonna be time to you know,
everybody's gonna take vacation. I was the only one who
(17:37):
knew the whole kitchen, the Sioux chef was taking off,
and it was. It was one of those magical times
in my life. I would walk to work. I was
paid I think five thousand francs a month. You only
get paid once a month back in the day in France,
that's the way it worked. And I still remember I
was living on my friend's couch. I finally had to
leave because he had a girlfriend moving in or something
(17:57):
like that. And I and I was very good friends
with Jerome Robbins, who's the choreographer, and he was doing
He had rented an apartment in Paris, but he had
a maid's room that was free on It was I
think a seven or eight floor walk up shown de Budd.
So I ended up he gave me the keys, and
I ended up going living up there. And that's where
(18:20):
I lived while I was a cook in Paris. And
I used to sit there and I never wrote anybody
it was, and I would. I was writing all my
relatives and old friends because I was so lonely by myself.
But the work was so amazing that I loved it. It
It was really really a fun time to be there.
And I mean, don't you think now, I mean, while
not right this moment, but the last like ten years,
all these people from all over the world, like you know,
(18:41):
Americans and Australians and people from New Zealand, they're all
sort of gone to Paris and they work in Paris,
and there's this whole sort of expat kitchen culture there
was when I was there as well, and I remember
because I spoke French, and they would be Americans sometimes
coming through asking to work for free. And I remember
(19:03):
this one kid who said he worked at Le Bernadine,
New York, and he was this and he was that,
and the chef said, you go take care of this kid.
He's gonna work with you down in the pastry. I
was doing pastry at the time, and I would speak
to him in French. He didn't know I was American,
and literally, I think like a couple of weeks into it,
I finally like I blew up at him. I'm like,
did you really work at Liberta? You suck, You're terrible
(19:26):
at this. And he looks at me, goes you speak English.
I'm like, yes, oh jeez, I forgot okay, whatever, just
can you please just do it right? I was like, oh,
this is terrible, but yeah, no, we used to get
a lot of those people coming through and trying to,
uh just work for free. But I wanted to I
wanted to go into talk a little bit about another
(19:47):
place where I worked in which you had a lot
of influence and and of course that's Les Cirque and
of course Siria Maconi who just passed. Uh. I worked
there for probably two and a half three years under
as a line cook. I was the primitier and I
was also the the Saucier for quite a while. But
you obviously reviewed that restaurant, and and and you have
(20:07):
memories of Syrio and and and probably in a different
way that I do. But yes, uh, well, you know,
when I first got to New York to be the
restaurant critic of the New York Times, um, there was
a new chef at and everyone said, you know, you've
got to You've got to go review this new chef.
And um. You know, for years I had been the
(20:29):
restaurant critic of the l A Times, And when I
went to New York, people had would say to me,
you know, will you take me to Lucert because I
had this endless expense account And I always said no
because I'm not known there. And it was like everybody
knew that they really it was like a private club,
and they were nice to people they knew, and they
weren't so nice to people they didn't know. And um,
(20:54):
so when I showed, I thought, well, I know that
they've got a picture of me in the kitchen, so
I'm to have to be in disguise. And I knew
they did exactly what I had always heard that they've done.
I mean, I'd actually never been there before. But I've
heard for years, and you know, they treated me like dirt,
(21:15):
especially because I was like in the guise of a
sort of midwestern middle aged woman, just not the kind
of person that Syria wanted in his dining room. So
as a critic, used to dress up. This is what
we're getting to, Yes, yes, um, And I mean I
had many disguises. I mean this was the first of
the many disguises was you know Molly Hollis, who was
(21:38):
based on my first mother in law, and um, she
was a very nice but timid midwestern woman. Um. And
I went with a friend of my mother's who was
a she was an acting coach, and she was the
one who got me the first disguise, and she really
made me practice. She wouldn't let me go out and
(21:59):
tell I really knew, I mean, I knew the back story.
I knew everything about this woman. She had her own
jewelry around, credit cards, her own clothes, um, and she
looked nothing at all like me. And so Claudie and
I just really got treated like dirt. I mean it's
like we walk in and those days they were still
smoking and non smoking. We'd asked for non smoking. They
(22:19):
made us wait in the bar for forty five minutes
with a reservation, and then finally seated us in then
smoking section. And when I said I didn't want to
be in the smoking section, guy laiter, it looks around
like this and you guys, do you see any seats?
And I mean, it was just it was a really
miserable experience. And I went back a few times in
(22:43):
disguise and it was always the same. And from my
last visit, I didn't wear a disguise, and it could
not have been a more different experience. And when I
walked in early for my reservation with my nephew who
was working on Wall Street, who had made the reservation,
he's quite elegant, and Syria parts all the waiting people
(23:05):
and takes my hand and leads me forward and says,
the King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but
your table is ready, and that is precious. And I
said to Johnny, oh, yeah, the King of Spain is
waiting in the bar. And Johnny turns around. He because
that is the King of Spain. He is where they
(23:28):
get in the bar, and then they dance around the
table and Cirio says, can I make a meal? For you,
and you know it's white truffles and black truffles and champagne.
It's amazing. And all I did was say, you know,
it's a very different restaurant depending who you are. And
the bruhaha in New York was enormous, and I think
(23:52):
it was for many reasons. One, I think people were
paying good money. We're tired of being treated like dirt
and restaurants. I just you know, I mean, you're you're
paying a lot of money. You you want the illusion
of being somebody, and it ruined when that didn't happen.
And I think on top of it, it was like
I was announcing that I was a restaurant critic of
(24:16):
the New York Times who was on the side of
the diner. And I think up until then there had
always been this sort of notion of the critic was
kind of, you know, on the side of the restaurant her.
And I thought, you know, it's the people who were
going out to eat. We're paying like they're paying my salary,
and you know I'm writing for them. Well, you were,
(24:39):
You were extremely influential, and I think I mean, your
your your history, your background, coming from California, coming from
Berkeley and the way you got into this. I read
that whole your old story about that, which I think
is absolutely amazing. But what I found really really funny
as finally, when I became a chef, you reviewed me twice.
I think once at La Fochette, that once at Windows
in the World. But if I remember specifically at Lafourchette
(25:02):
when you reviewed me, you reviewed the chicken, and I
was in the kitchen going, this is gonna be great
because my food cost is gonna be wonderful. Because everybody
when they would read your reviews, everybody would come in
and order those dishes that you talked about, and it
was like, this is so funny. But and then obviously
it would it would you know, things would carry on
and it would become back to normal. But when you
(25:22):
did get reviewed, you always got that influx of the
dishes that you talked about, which I thought was so funny.
How people would literally sit at the table with the
review and look at the menu and order. He was like,
you couldn't take it off the menu once you mentioned it.
You know, nobody has ever told me that before. Everyone
thought about that, you know, absolutely, oh no, And you
know the chicken is the best food cost on the
(25:44):
usually on a menu right when you do except well
except for the pasta. I guess maybe maybe maybe that
was it, but I do remember that was very funny.
It's like, oh, well, we gotta order more of that
because it's in the paper, you know, but good chicken
is hard to come by. Truth be clean, no truth
be told. I'm pretty sure it was a check and
I have to go back and check. But yeah, no,
(26:04):
this was so being being a food critic was was
a big part of it. So and then you went
to Gormia magazine afterwards, and then yeah, and then I
went to and you know, and I had also when
I was in l A. I was the restaurant critic
and then after a while I became the food editor
as well. So it wasn't like I had no background
(26:24):
in doing that because the l A Times in the
eighties when I became the food editor, there was the
biggest food section in the country. We had a test
kitchen and a photo studio. Um, and it was sixty
pages every week. I mean, it was huge. That's pretty amazing.
That's every week putting that much material out and and
(26:46):
and you know, keeping up at the times. It was
mostly it was mostly as truth be told, it was.
It was a great cash cow for the newspaper. So
when you so, did you ever we spoke about that
the book that this guy Ronston wrote the most spectacular
Restaurant in the World. Did you read the book? Ever?
I haven't read the book. You haven't gotten through Okay, Well,
(27:07):
you know there's a lot of there's a lot of
books out there. But I was the chef at Seller
in the Sky, and I remember you reviewing me there,
which was always one of the most amazing sort of
things to me, and thinking it was all of a sudden,
I was a Sioux chef before that was the first restaurant.
I was a chef at and I was I was
at Leila, which I was the Sieux chef at Lealah
when you reviewed us, when Joey Fortunato was a chef
(27:28):
and it was drew near Prompts Restaurant, and then I
left and went to Windows in the World. But now
I would just say I was curious if you would
if you had read that book about about Windows and
Seller in the Sky, because to me, what happened to
me when I read the book was I was twenty six.
It was my first chefs job. I didn't know until
I read this book, The History of Joe Bomb. I
mean I knew he was important and he had come
(27:49):
from all these different areas of the restaurant industry and
he was really important. As a twenty six year old
young kid, I just liked him because he was He
was my He was like sort of my cheerleader. He
loved my food, and he was a funny guy, and
I got along with him. He was like my granddad
and I was like hanging out with him and he
was were We always got along and everybody was sort
of scared of him, and I didn't really care, and
I think he liked that. But um, hearing his history
(28:12):
was was just to me, uh, you know, amazing. We'll see.
I grew up on Joe Baum. I mean my mother,
who couldn't have cared less about food but loved restaurants,
went to every and we couldn't afford them, but she
followed Joe Baum's career because he changed restaurants. I mean,
he understood that restaurants or theater. And you know, my
(28:33):
mother was enthralled with the Forum of the twelve Caesars
and Majonda del Soul and the Four Seasons. I mean,
I remember her following the opening of the Four Seasons
and we went. We couldn't afford to eat there, but
we went for drinks, and then we went to Zoom Zoom,
which was another one of his places to actually eat dinner.
(28:53):
Um or maybe to the Automat, but um. So I
knew about Joe Baum, and then I did a piece
for Metropolitan Home about the when he reopened Windows of
the Rainbow Room and spent some time with him, and
I mean he was an amazing guy. I mean, he
(29:13):
really was an amazing guy. And so you know you
talk about Seller in the Sky. What a kind of
genius idea, right, you have a restaurant that everybody goes
to for the view, and then you say, okay, we're
gonna take the part of the restaurant that has no
view at all, and we're gonna make it so delicious
that people want to go there. I mean, it's like
(29:35):
the ultimate Siberia and you turn it into this little jewel.
I mean I was, I mean that was a real
Joe bound kind of idea. Right, Let's just I was.
I was lucky enough when they reopened windows as I
was there for the reopening, so I had windows in
my in my restaurant, but it faced it faced the
Veronzano Bridge, and it wasn't uptown Manhattan, which was the
(29:55):
more coveted view, right because I remember when it first opened,
I remember it being sort of like a sell literally
a seller it was. And that was in the first generation.
But after the first bombing um in when it was
at and then when we I reopened it, when it
was Joe bomb and David Emile and Arthur Emil who
did who did the reopening, I was working under them. Well,
(30:16):
I mean they were I mean one of the other
things you know Joe did was seasonal food. I mean
in the fifties, nobody in America, certainly nobody in New
York was thinking about seasonal food. And the whole idea
of the four seasons was literally, you know, why don't
we use the bounty the fresh food that we've got. Yeah,
(30:40):
there's there's actually a story in the book about in
the beginning when they first opened they wanted to do
remember that there's a thing called La tweet blue the
blue trout, and he wanted to have them and there
have to be alive when you get them before you
right before you cook them. So he wanted them to
brought up to the hundred and seventh floor alive, and
half of them would die from the pressure or something
bringing them up at that speed and then or something
(31:01):
like that. I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is
something nobody thought about. I guess Oh, I've never thought
about that me neither. It was in the book. I'm not.
I'm not might remember recalling it the best. But one
of my other great memories of Joe Bam was I
remember when we were sitting there and we're talking about
the holiday menus for the year Valentine's Day and all
these distances and and and there was other people. The
(31:24):
general manager like, well, we should charge more for this day,
and we should charge prefixed menus. And he looked at
everybody and goes, where, why don't we just let everybody
come and eat for free? Those days they come here
all the time they pay, we should give back to
them on that day. These people are nice. Why are
we trying to screw them on the holidays? And I
was like, you know, I sort of that's true. Why
(31:44):
why is it that all restaurants on Valentine's Day, make
you have a prefixed menu and make you buy a
bottle of champagne, and make you spend six hundred dollars.
And he was like, why are we doing that? Why
don't we just give him the regular menu and they
can spend more if they want, and they don't have
to spend more if they don't want. I was like,
I've sort of that philosophy when I had restaurants. I
never did I never did those gouge you on the
(32:05):
on the holiday menus because I just didn't like it.
I didn't like the idea of it. That's that's really nice.
I'll tell you another great Joe Bound thing. Barbakafka told
me this when she was consulting to Joe Bound, that
he would put what he called critic traps on the menus,
and he they would devise dishes that only a critic
(32:25):
would be stupid enough to order, you know, one of
those things no, no normal person would order. And that's
how she said, we put them on all the menus,
and that's how we figured out who the critics were.
You know, he said, anybody ordered the snails with blue cheese,
you know, we put a big X by their name
(32:46):
and say, you know, watch that table. I don't know
if that would work anymore today, because there's so many
foodies and so many people with opinions out there that
I remember. I mean, I had bone marrow on my
menu almost the whole time at Landmark, and we used
to sell a lot of bone marrow, which back in
the day, the bone marrow might have been the critics dish.
That's I mean, now people are definitely it's it's it's
(33:07):
it's a very different world now. I think I wonder
what it's like being a restaurant critic these days, because
back in the day, I think that your voice, or
restaurant critics voice held a lot a lot of of
cloud and the good ones that really understood food. But
now I feel like everybody's a critic, and everybody's on
Yelp and all these other mediums that you can get
(33:28):
a bad review and still get around and still get
around it these days. Well maybe not today, but before
all this happened, Yeah, no, I mean, the the job
of the critic became very different, and I think in
a good way, because you know, it was there was
a time when critics were basically just consumer reporters, and
they were telling you how to spend your money. And
(33:51):
I always thought I should write reviews for the people
who didn't go to the restaurants. I mean, I didn't
want to tell, you know, reach people what dishes they
should order. What I really want to do is try
and take the people wouldn't afford to go to the
restaurants to the restaurants with me, and try and make
the writing so delicious that, you know, people just enjoyed it,
because you know, most people who read the you know,
(34:13):
the million people who read the New York Times aren't
going to go to the very high end restaurants. Um.
And I always thought, you know, being a consumer reporter,
that part of being a critic was kind of boring.
And what's happened with the Yelp review thing is that
those are the consumer reporters. Those are the people who are,
(34:34):
you know, telling you this is too expensive and this
is too much salt, and don't order this. And it
means that the burden for the people who are really
critics is much bigger. They have to be good writers,
they have to really know food, they have to put
it in context for you and they they have to
be much better than people of my time. Work. Well,
(34:55):
they gotta do it. They gotta do their homework, I
think is really what it comes down to it because
if they if they do miss or misquoted ingredient, I'm
sure that it would be it would be called out immediately. Well, yes, yes,
people would be laughed at and scorned as they should be,
as they should be. So one last thing. I mean,
(35:30):
so obviously you know we're we're in the midst right
now of of of this lockdown, and I think restaurants
are suffering terribly. I can't imagine the amount of people
that are out of work right now, and and and
so on and so forth. But uh, and I'm sure
you've gotten this question a million times because I certainly have.
Is like, what are the restaurants gonna look like when
this is all over? I'm I sort of shrugged my shoulders.
(35:50):
I have no idea where things are gonna go, where
they're gonna land, I'm not sure. But what do you
what is your what is your take? Um, you know,
I think we're gonna lose a lot of restaurants, But
I also think that you know, when this is all over,
we will have rethought how important restaurants. I mean, I
think people are really missing restaurants and understanding what it
(36:11):
is that they love a route restaurants, and it's much
more than food. I mean, they love being in those rooms. Um.
I think that you know, chefs and restaurateurs are going
to rethink, um, what they want their restaurants to be. Um.
I think, Um, you're probably going to see a real
(36:33):
generational change. Where As you know, young people are I
think they're dying to go back and um, you know,
I don't. I think they're willing to risk sitting across
a bar from a bartender. Um. Whereas I think older
people are going to be much slower to go back
to restaurants. So I think you're gonna see a real
shift in clientele um, which has real implications for fine
(36:57):
dining restaurants. For really, you know, I think the fine
dining restaurants are going to be the ones who suffer
the most, which is odd because they are probably the
ones that are gonna find it easier to have, you know,
social distance tables. Right right now, I'm I completely agree
(37:19):
with you about a lot of that, and mostly I
think is what I'm sort of I try to look
at the glass half full, and I think that there
will might be some good changes out of this. And
I think one of the biggest changes, as you sort
of mentioned, was the respect that all of the workers
that work in restaurants, the people that are the waiters,
the bus boys, I mean all the way down to
the people that are stalking the shelves at the rest
(37:39):
at the at the grocery store, and the farmers and
the fishermen and the cattlemen, and all of the people
have just their their level. I think in society has
just gone up so much for the for the true
work that they do. And I think that we we
as a society have to make sure we remember this
and remember how important they are to the food chain
(37:59):
and to the to this to our survival. I mean,
you know, you look at at a waiter who's immigrated
from another country or whatever, bus I mean, those people
are so important for us to be able to do
what we want to do. And I think everybody was
sort of taking everybody for granted for a little while.
And I think the other thing is, you know, Americans
are addicted to cheap food. We have the cheapest food
in the world. And there are real costs with that,
(38:22):
with that UM and we're seeing what those costs are UM.
And you know, the environment, people's health. You know, six
out of ten Americans have chronic illnesses. We've got diabetes. UM.
We you know, we're destroying the air and the the
land and UM. You know, I hope we come out
(38:42):
of this with the sense that, you know, maybe you
should pay more for your food, and maybe you don't
need ten pairs of blue jeans. You know. Yeah, I
think I think you're right. I think it's definitely you're
gonna have to and less food waste, I mean food
waste in this country. Tom Clicio did that that that
episode about you know, food waste, and you watch that
(39:02):
and you're just sitting there with your jaw dropped, like,
oh my gosh, this is what people are doing out there.
There's there's that much waste. I mean, we we in restaurants,
if we wasted food like that, wouldn't be open for
a week and they were closed, I mean wouldn't wouldn't
happen right well, And we wasted in the fields, I
mean we wasted everywhere. And you know, I think we're Americans.
I've never seen empty shells before you know, they go
(39:23):
into grocery stores and we're used to getting anything we
want at any time, and um, that isn't going to
be happening for a while. I mean, we're seeing real
disruptions in the supply chain. And I think you're right.
I think, you know, we're getting a real sense of
respect for the people who raise our food and how
hard it is, and um, and we should be paying
(39:45):
them what they're worth. I Also, one of the other
things that I'm hoping comes out of all of this, uh,
that that's all that all that's going on, is I
was about two years ago, I was in Sicily and
I was down there doing a ing and Saint Locapo,
you know whatever. I was there for about a week,
and you know, when you're in Italy, you drive around.
(40:07):
Everybody's got a little plot of land behind their house.
They got some lettuces growing, they got some tomatoes. And
then I remember coming back to America and I came
out to Long Island because my son was at a
baseball tournament, and I was determined to be like, Okay,
I'm not eating sandwiches from Delhi's with all the you know,
those meats, with the night trates in them and all
these I want to try to. I'm gonna I'm gonna
live healthy. I'm gonna pretend like I'm still in Italy
(40:29):
and I'm eating really healthy. I drove around, and I
drove around, and I drove around. First of all, it
was hard for me to find real food to buy.
I mean even even the grocery store. It was hard.
You know, everything is processed and and whatnot. But the
one thing that struck me was driving around Long Island.
It was a mid mid island, I think they call it.
All these big houses, all these homes and big green
lawns and big green lawns and big green lawns like so,
(40:52):
if you think about it, if every one of those
people grew a little bit of lettuce, grew a couple
of tomatoes, they wouldn't have the gas to go to
the store to buy those things. It's just about some
seeds and putting it in the ground and watching and
watering it. It's basically free food if you think about it.
And when you grow that us it just comes up.
And I was like, you know, I'm hoping that people
kind of get the get the presence of mind, is
(41:13):
you know, this beautiful lawn in my front yard could
actually be feeding my family. You know, Angelo Pellegrin wrote
an unprejudiced palate and that's what he said, tear up
your lawns. That's a waste grow food. In the amount
of money people spend to to manicure their lawns and
make sure there's no certain grasses, I'm like, oh my gosh,
(41:35):
you could have probably grown all of your tomato sauce
for the winter on that plot of land. Not to mention,
the fertilizer runs off into the water and they're there
in on Long Island. You've got a real problem with
all the people who are trying to do aquaculture with
the runoff from the fertilizer for the lawns. Well, look,
I think that you know, if if we can, if
(41:56):
we can just hopefully look at the glass half full
and just maybe you know, you being a big voice
in this industry and and reminding people that when this
is all over, that we need to take care of
the planet, We need to take care of each other.
It's thinking, it's something we all all need to sort
of just be mindful of in front of mine when
this is over, because who knows when it's going to
be over. But for now, I'm doing my podcasts from
(42:19):
my my my, my home and uh and not in
a studio. But it's we're all finding ways to make
things work. And I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, thankful
for the you know, the innovation I think and and
and learning new things. Yeah, me too. I mean, I'm
working on a documentary about what this is all doing
to the food landscape, and I'm doing it from my
(42:40):
home on zoom. I mean, it's crazy, but oh that's all.
That's great. I love that you're you're still you're still
take helping take care of the world and getting getting
that to have a word out. I was. I was
talking to a fellow colleague on the Food Network the
other day and they're shooting their show The Kitchen from
their own homes and he's like, Wow, this is difficult.
You gotta set up these cameras, you gotta do all
(43:01):
the prep, you gotta clean up. You got like we
were in the studio shooting TV shows where you've seen it,
You've been there, You've done them right. There's a p A,
there's this, there's that. But now we're doing everything ourselves
and it's kind of great. I mean, I feel like
I'm learning so much. You know, I'm reaching out to
people all over the country. I'm talking of fishermen and
farmers and ranchers and dairy people and chess and you know.
(43:25):
I mean it's like every day I learned a hundred
new things and try to figure out how to do
it all myself. But speaking of fishermen, have you have
you talked to anybody over at Green Wave about the production.
I am in love with Brent. I mean, Brent Smith
is one of my big heroes. Yes, you read his
book Like a Fish? Yes, Yes, that book just moved me.
(43:51):
It was amazing. And you know, actually I spent a
whole day with Melissa Clark after I read that book,
because she was going to do an article about KELP
and she did it already a while ago. We spent
a whole day in her kitchen just making recipes and
messing around with KELP. But nothing in the you know,
nothing like Chinese or Japanese. It was all like we did.
We did like a beans and scroll, but we took
(44:12):
the scroll out and we used KELP. We did a
roast chicken where I took carrots, onion, Celery laid the
whole bottom of the pan, put a chicken on top
of it, and then covered it and also and kelp
and roasted it. It was so good, it was really relazing.
Do you know what he's doing now? Actually they're making
face masks out of kelp. People who were making straws
(44:35):
out of kelp have pivoted to make face masks out
of kelp. Really, yeah, because I've been I followed them
on Instagram, a company called Lollyware. I think there they do,
I'll make all this stuff out of kelp. Oh, well,
you're right, you're you're you're on the pulse. You know,
you know what's going down. I he is. He is
truly a hero brand. I mean, he's just wonderful. You
(44:55):
know what he said about kelp? He said, you know
the problem was that everybody was trying to cook it.
We're fish cooks and they don't know anything about vegetables.
Said you know, um, you know, once you got chefs
who were not just you know, devoted to fish, people
who really knew how to work with vegetables, suddenly they
were making delicious things out of kelp. Yeah. No, it's
(45:16):
it's I think it's it's it's basically as I say
sometimes I think help is the new Kale, and I
think it's definitely it's it's worthy of that spot. I mean,
as you know, it can be used as fertilizer, you
can cook with it, you can feed it to and
it's it's so it's so versus out and so good
for the planet in the ocean. Yeah, exactly, here we go,
Help all the way, Ruth. Thank you so much for
(45:38):
for doing this. Is just making me miss you more. Well,
you know, we we tried to We tried lunch dates
what three or four times, and never happened. And this
is I just told this to somebody else too. I said,
you know, when when I'm not going to let life
get in the way of my lunch dates anymore, when
this gets back to normal because they're too important. I agree.
I agree, So lunch soon, Lunch soon. Bruth. Thank you
(46:02):
so much. I love you. H
Welcome to Food three sixty, the podcast that serves up
some serious food for thought. I'm your host, Mark Murphy.
Today I want to welcome an icon in the culinary world.
And I'm also lucky enough to call her my friend,
Ruth Reichel. So first, I guess we're gonna do this officially.
We're gonna introduce Ruth Reichel, who is author, writer, editor, chef.
(00:24):
And now I'm lucky enough to call you my friend
as well. Well, I would make one change in that
I am not a chef. Well, I'm a cook. You're
a cook. Okay, we'll call you a cook, but you've
you're you're I I don't know. I feel like you're
so important in the chef world that we should give
you that title as well. Yeah, but then you can
(00:46):
laugh at met my knife skills. I mean, I'm just
a home cook. Okay. Well, but I'm very happy to
be your friend, I have to say, and I have
to say, you know, I we had met before, and
I know we had sat at certain like dinners. You're
in there and Ben knew of each other. I think
as the years went by in the in this industry.
But it was our trip to Israel. That really sealed
(01:08):
the deal for us to be able to really get
to know each other. That was that was such an
amazing trip. I mean it was. It was not only amazing,
it was amazing for me in a lot of ways. Well,
one was obviously seeing a beautiful country, which we've got
to experience together. But one was making new friends, really
making you know, solidifying some friendships. Yeah. And you know,
there's nothing like traveling with people. You get to know
people in a completely different way. I mean, you're in
(01:30):
this little bubble together for a week and you get
to know people in a way you would just never
if you just sort of, you know, met them. I mean,
spending twenty four hours a day together is uh, it's intense.
And you were Nancy so with his roommate for that trip,
who also is an amazing person. Yes she is. And
(01:52):
uh but I I knew Nancy really well going into that. So, um,
you know, Nancy and I have traveled together a lot,
We've shared hotel rooms a lot, I've lived at her
house for long periods of time. Okay, so there were
(02:13):
no revelations there, Okay, Well there you go. I mean
for me, it was a revelation, getting getting to know
the two of you. And it was great because you know,
whenever we sat down together, it was a bottle of
white wine and a bottle of the red wine, because
you each like your own colors of wine, which is
very funny. That's exactly right, it was. It was. I
finally got about halfway through the trip, when I knew
you guys were coming, I would or it. I was
(02:34):
like a glass of red and a glass of white.
This the ladies need their drinks because we've had a
long day. True. But I gotta say, the the the
the revolution of food in Israel, it was, I think
is just it's just beautiful. The the the the bounty
that was flourishing at the markets, the the the the
the melting pot of cultures coming together. Um, it was.
(02:55):
It was really it was eye opening for me. And
the products, I mean, the produce there is so amazing.
And we remember that day we went to Hitda's farm
and everything had come within from like within two miles
of where we were, and there was just this incredible spread.
There were like sixty dishes on the table and cheese
(03:17):
that they had made themselves, and fish from the local
stream and like every fruit and vegetable you can imagine.
Remember all those pickled that pickled fish that they made
as well, the smoke fish and the pickled Oh, it
was just it was all incredible. Yeah, and you thought, okay,
you know this was the Garden of Eden. Now I
get it exactly. So, you know, when I got back
(03:39):
from that trip, I i'm I have to admit I
don't read as much as I should. And as soon
as I got back, I think I went and bought
every one of your books. Uh, And I'm sorry I didn't.
I know, I know there's a lot of your books,
but I think the first one I dove into, um,
was probably Save Me the Plums, after the you know,
the whole story about being at Gourmet magazine, which I
(04:02):
found immensely Um. You know, I was around during that time.
I was a chef and a restaurant during that time,
and obviously read the magazine. I think was even reviewed
once in the magazine. U. And it was just so
amazing to read your story of of of your experience
and AND's and it was just, I don't know, it
(04:24):
was just very moving for me. Well, you know, I
mean for me more than anything. I mean There were
two things about that, and one is that those days
of those kinds of magazines are over. Um. It was
another world. I mean, I really had the good fortune
of working for the last publisher in America who really believed,
(04:46):
you know, if you give people the best journalism you
possibly can, they will pay for it. And so they
let us do anything we wanted. But it was also
other than this particular moment of time, the moment when
American food was really undergoing a lot of changes, and
(05:07):
we have to chronicle that, you know, which was wonderful.
Um and um, you know at that time is not
coming again. And it's it's interesting. I mean, I honestly
I feel like you you really stepped into that role
at the perfect time for you, probably in your career.
It was probably were so so much was going on.
(05:29):
I mean, having having something like that now obviously doesn't
even barely touches It doesn't scrape the surface of what's happening,
I think in the magazine world. I mean, what you
got you guys got to do it was pretty pretty
earth shattering, you know. Then I just said to them, look, um,
this is a moment of real change in American food,
and we should be chronicling that and just writing about,
(05:50):
you know, restaurants and recipes doesn't cut it anymore. People
want to know where, where does the food come from,
who's picking it? We want to talk about getting women
in restaurants. I'm not talking about gender. I don't mean
I honestly believe that food is kind of everything, you know.
I mean, if you don't pay attention to food, you're
(06:12):
not paying attention to the world, and that there's nothing
you can't write about through the lens of food. And
I just wanted to expand what a food magazine could be.
And you know, to my delight, they sort of said,
you go, girl, do whatever you want. Well that's kind
of funny because when I when I went to I
(06:33):
Heart Radio and I said I wanted to do a podcast.
I said, they said, well, what are the topics? I said, well, everything,
because everything touches food. I everybody hates it when I
use the example, but even the carting company is part
of the food chain because they got to get the
garbage from the waste of the restaurants. You have, the farmers,
you have, it's just you. You have the architects that
(06:54):
have to design the restaurants, so the flow and well,
I mean, obviously now all that's might may be changing
a little bit. Now, um, there's gonna be a lot
of changes. And I'm sure that you know we're going
to get back to normal. But yes, I think there's
You're absolutely right, everything touches food. The one thing that
I found most interesting during this whole, uh, you know,
this whole lockdown that's happened. I have a little garden
(07:14):
and I was gonna buy seeds. It's hard to find seeds.
And then I thought, hey, I'm gonna build a little
chicken coop. I have the time, I have nothing to do.
And then I read an article that they said, when
the stock market goes down, seeds and the hatcheries that
hatched the little chickens are the two things that sell
out the quickest. I was so amazed at this that
all of this is going on, and that was this
(07:35):
That was an article that I read about what was
going on. I was like, Wow, that's really weird. Well,
I mean, I actually think this is a moment of
the greatest change, certainly in my lifetime. I mean, I
don't think we're going back to normal. I don't think
normal is ever going to be the same. Um, I think,
you know, there were so many things that are wrong
(07:56):
with the way the food system was and this is
pointing it out, you know, I mean the um, you know,
wire restaurants having so much trouble, well because you know,
the entire American food system has run on the back
of undocumented people and that's not right. And um, you
(08:16):
know we're starting to see, you know, that farmers were
squeezed in ways that they shouldn't be that you know,
Americans are addicted to really cheap food. We have the
cheapest food in the world. We're addicted to it. But um,
that doesn't work in the long run. And that's what
we're seeing. Yeah, And I think Gabriella Hamilton's really I
(08:36):
think nailed it in that article she wrote in The
Times recently. I think that you know this, this was
kind of broken before this happened. And I know, I
mean I had I had five or six restaurants at
a moment and now I'm down to zero. I I
luckily got out of the business right before all this happened,
a couple of months before, and and I was seeing it.
I mean, I had restaurant, had a restaurant I was doing,
(08:57):
you know, twelve million dollars in sales, and there was
it's hard to find a profit at the end of
the day, like something's wrong here that I'm We're all
working this hard and not making a profit at the
end of the day. It's really difficult. And and it
came down to really looking at the model. It was
either you chain or handcuffed yourself to a little store
and you were the chef, the manager, the dishwasher, the
(09:17):
cook that everything you could make a living, or you
had to get involved in one of these huge chains
that had thirty or forty restaurants that then had this
sort of this cream on the top of their company,
that had all the lawyers and the and and the
legal and the beverage directors and all these other people
that would sort of run it all. And and it
was just it was sort of hard to find a
(09:38):
middle in between where it was comfortable to work right.
And then you you do that all the way down
the line, you know, I mean farmers are squeezed in
they same like fisherman I mean right now, fishermen are
in such trouble because of all the seafood in America
is sold in restaurants. People don't really cook fish at home.
So the fishermen are you know, they're there, boats are
(10:01):
sitting empty and they still got to pay the boats off.
And um, you know, nobody's buying lobsters and clams and
oysters right now. I know, and I've been seeing that,
and I've been meaning to order some oysters because I
love one of the things that I learned, one of
the first things I learned in the restaurant was how
to shuck an oyster. And I gotta tell you, I
loved it. It was just it was one of those
(10:22):
things like, wow, this is it's hard, but it's not
that hard, and you can do it. Once you learn
how to do it, it's it's easy. Yeah. Well, I
actually have oysters coming on trying. Well, lucky, how are
you make How are you making your oysters? Are you
just reading them raw? I just eat them raw. I
I'm real purest on that, you know. I mean, I
like my lobster just boiled. I don't like a lot
(10:45):
of stuff done to it. I like my oysters just
open them and eat them. Steam the clams. Um. You know,
when you get you got really great food, you really
don't want to mess with it too much. Yeah, I
like I like the product to tell me what I'm
gonna do with it. And sometimes it is just leave
me alone. That I have some clams coming actually, and
I'll tell you just steam those open with a little
(11:06):
white wine and some some some time or something like that,
and that's it. That in a crusty piece of bread.
I am happy. I'm happy as a clam. Um. I
(11:30):
wanted to talk to you really quickly because I remember
I texted you after obviously we we we traveled in
Israel together. I went and I bought a bunch of
your books and I was devouring them, and your first
novel that you wrote, Delicious, which I don't remember now
if I read it before the one about Gourby. But
but it was so much wait, there was so many
(11:50):
things going on there, uh that I loved, and Lulu,
Billy and Sammy, the characters that you had, the description
of the the shop where she worked. I literally and
I think I went back to my text and I
looked at it. I said, I got up at five
o'clock in the morning to finish the book because I
was so I was so emotional about these characters in
(12:13):
this book, and I was literally weeping and getting a
little emotional now just talking about it with you. But
those characters were so well developed and so there was
such a beauty about every one of them, and that
whole story in the attic where they were locked, and
I was just, oh, my gosh, And have you are
you writing more novels or right? I am working on
(12:34):
a novel now. Actually it's set in Paris in the eighties,
but um, one of the characters is old and so
he remembers Paris in the twenties, So you know, I mean,
I just, uh, I sort of wanted to spend time
in the Paris past, so I decided to put myself there.
(12:58):
I mean, it was kind of like with Delicious, something
kind of magical happened for me, which was um. When
I after Gourmet closed, I I had to go on
book tour for the Gourmet Cookbook, which was very weird
because the magazine was closed. And there I am and
(13:18):
everybody's creeping about the end of the magazine and I
finally come back to the now completely empty Gourmet offices
and I have to pack up, and everybody's gone, and
it's it's It's a scene of utter devastation. And it
was so depressing that I ended up going into We
(13:40):
had a library, and I ended up going into the library, um,
just to sort of be among books and friends and
in a place that wasn't full of um broken chairs
and torn up photographs and um, I saw this. It
was a filing cabinet that I had never noticed in
(14:02):
their way in the back, and I went and I like, God,
you know, I wonder what's in there. And I went
in and it was like every letter that Gourmet had
ever gotten in its seventy years. And I thought, this
is a treasure troph It's going to be a great
history of American food. And of course what it was
was mostly complaints, you know, this recipe and work and
(14:27):
um and and recipes that people sent in. And I thought, God,
if I had time to go through this, these seventy
years of letters, I'm sure I would find great stuff.
But instead, and I will never know why I did this,
but I went back into my office and instead of packing,
I sat down at the computer and I started writing
(14:49):
the letters I wish I had found. And it was
like Lulu just came to me, and you know, James
Beard had worked at the at May and so I
had this, you know, little girl writing letters to James
Beard during World War Two about the food and trying
(15:09):
to learn to cook, and it just, I mean, it
really was you know, if you're very lucky as a writer,
sometimes you get this little magic thing that happens. And
so I wrote, um, like four years of letters from
Lulu to James Beard, just wishing if that's what I
(15:29):
found in that filing cabinet, and then I you know,
sent them off to myself and packed up my office
and left. And that became the basis for that book
because Lulu, I mean, she literally just appeared to me
this you know, this great little girl. Wow that that
(15:52):
that is amazing And I love that story, and I said,
I said, I love the book. I'm gonna have to
go back and read it again because it was just,
I don't know, I just got so hot up with
all those characters and everybody in it. It was really
really wonderful. But it was that that that's amazing. But
so now you're writing one about Paris in the eighties,
and now I'm just trying to think. I think maybe
it was I seventy m I might have been there.
(16:13):
I guess maybe it was late eighties. I was cooking.
I was cooking at a one star Mischiland restaurant in
Paris at that time. I was look cooking at a
place called Raville, and it was it was really interesting.
Was right behind right by the right behind the hotel Ville,
right near the point we Philippe and I had moved
to Paris. Uh and I had been working at Prefix
(16:35):
for Terence Brennan, and then I had packed my bags.
I was David pastor Nak was my sush chef, and
Joey for Tornado and David. At one point, after about
a year and a half, he says, you've learned everything
you need to learn here. You need to get out
and go work somewhere else. So I packed my bags
and I called a friend of mine who lives in Paris.
I have a French passport, so I thought I'm gonna
go work in Paris. I went and bought the Mischland Guide.
(16:56):
I started out at the Plus Devourge and knocked on
the door for Chef Paku at a loan at the
Loan boisl and I asked him for a job, and
he thought I was completely off my rocker. This American
kid who speaks French wants a job at my restaurant.
He said, The youngest cook in my rest in my
(17:16):
kitchen has been here for fourteen years. He goes, but
here's the names of some other people you should go
ask if for a job. And I ended up going
to work with this guy, Jeli Pierlle and Jean piell
Bol was the Sioux chef and I worked there for
almost a year and a half, almost two years that
I was gonna leave, and they asked, begged me to
stay because it was gonna be time to you know,
everybody's gonna take vacation. I was the only one who
(17:37):
knew the whole kitchen, the Sioux chef was taking off,
and it was. It was one of those magical times
in my life. I would walk to work. I was
paid I think five thousand francs a month. You only
get paid once a month back in the day in France,
that's the way it worked. And I still remember I
was living on my friend's couch. I finally had to
leave because he had a girlfriend moving in or something
(17:57):
like that. And I and I was very good friends
with Jerome Robbins, who's the choreographer, and he was doing
He had rented an apartment in Paris, but he had
a maid's room that was free on It was I
think a seven or eight floor walk up shown de Budd.
So I ended up he gave me the keys, and
I ended up going living up there. And that's where
(18:20):
I lived while I was a cook in Paris. And
I used to sit there and I never wrote anybody
it was, and I would. I was writing all my
relatives and old friends because I was so lonely by myself.
But the work was so amazing that I loved it. It
It was really really a fun time to be there.
And I mean, don't you think now, I mean, while
not right this moment, but the last like ten years,
all these people from all over the world, like you know,
(18:41):
Americans and Australians and people from New Zealand, they're all
sort of gone to Paris and they work in Paris,
and there's this whole sort of expat kitchen culture there
was when I was there as well, and I remember
because I spoke French, and they would be Americans sometimes
coming through asking to work for free. And I remember
(19:03):
this one kid who said he worked at Le Bernadine,
New York, and he was this and he was that,
and the chef said, you go take care of this kid.
He's gonna work with you down in the pastry. I
was doing pastry at the time, and I would speak
to him in French. He didn't know I was American,
and literally, I think like a couple of weeks into it,
I finally like I blew up at him. I'm like,
did you really work at Liberta? You suck, You're terrible
(19:26):
at this. And he looks at me, goes you speak English.
I'm like, yes, oh jeez, I forgot okay, whatever, just
can you please just do it right? I was like, oh,
this is terrible, but yeah, no, we used to get
a lot of those people coming through and trying to,
uh just work for free. But I wanted to I
wanted to go into talk a little bit about another
(19:47):
place where I worked in which you had a lot
of influence and and of course that's Les Cirque and
of course Siria Maconi who just passed. Uh. I worked
there for probably two and a half three years under
as a line cook. I was the primitier and I
was also the the Saucier for quite a while. But
you obviously reviewed that restaurant, and and and you have
(20:07):
memories of Syrio and and and probably in a different
way that I do. But yes, uh, well, you know,
when I first got to New York to be the
restaurant critic of the New York Times, um, there was
a new chef at and everyone said, you know, you've
got to You've got to go review this new chef.
And um. You know, for years I had been the
(20:29):
restaurant critic of the l A Times, And when I
went to New York, people had would say to me,
you know, will you take me to Lucert because I
had this endless expense account And I always said no
because I'm not known there. And it was like everybody
knew that they really it was like a private club,
and they were nice to people they knew, and they
weren't so nice to people they didn't know. And um,
(20:54):
so when I showed, I thought, well, I know that
they've got a picture of me in the kitchen, so
I'm to have to be in disguise. And I knew
they did exactly what I had always heard that they've done.
I mean, I'd actually never been there before. But I've
heard for years, and you know, they treated me like dirt,
(21:15):
especially because I was like in the guise of a
sort of midwestern middle aged woman, just not the kind
of person that Syria wanted in his dining room. So
as a critic, used to dress up. This is what
we're getting to, Yes, yes, um, And I mean I
had many disguises. I mean this was the first of
the many disguises was you know Molly Hollis, who was
(21:38):
based on my first mother in law, and um, she
was a very nice but timid midwestern woman. Um. And
I went with a friend of my mother's who was
a she was an acting coach, and she was the
one who got me the first disguise, and she really
made me practice. She wouldn't let me go out and
(21:59):
tell I really knew, I mean, I knew the back story.
I knew everything about this woman. She had her own
jewelry around, credit cards, her own clothes, um, and she
looked nothing at all like me. And so Claudie and
I just really got treated like dirt. I mean it's
like we walk in and those days they were still
smoking and non smoking. We'd asked for non smoking. They
(22:19):
made us wait in the bar for forty five minutes
with a reservation, and then finally seated us in then
smoking section. And when I said I didn't want to
be in the smoking section, guy laiter, it looks around
like this and you guys, do you see any seats?
And I mean, it was just it was a really
miserable experience. And I went back a few times in
(22:43):
disguise and it was always the same. And from my
last visit, I didn't wear a disguise, and it could
not have been a more different experience. And when I
walked in early for my reservation with my nephew who
was working on Wall Street, who had made the reservation,
he's quite elegant, and Syria parts all the waiting people
(23:05):
and takes my hand and leads me forward and says,
the King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but
your table is ready, and that is precious. And I
said to Johnny, oh, yeah, the King of Spain is
waiting in the bar. And Johnny turns around. He because
that is the King of Spain. He is where they
(23:28):
get in the bar, and then they dance around the
table and Cirio says, can I make a meal? For you,
and you know it's white truffles and black truffles and champagne.
It's amazing. And all I did was say, you know,
it's a very different restaurant depending who you are. And
the bruhaha in New York was enormous, and I think
(23:52):
it was for many reasons. One, I think people were
paying good money. We're tired of being treated like dirt
and restaurants. I just you know, I mean, you're you're
paying a lot of money. You you want the illusion
of being somebody, and it ruined when that didn't happen.
And I think on top of it, it was like
I was announcing that I was a restaurant critic of
(24:16):
the New York Times who was on the side of
the diner. And I think up until then there had
always been this sort of notion of the critic was
kind of, you know, on the side of the restaurant her.
And I thought, you know, it's the people who were
going out to eat. We're paying like they're paying my salary,
and you know I'm writing for them. Well, you were,
(24:39):
You were extremely influential, and I think I mean, your
your your history, your background, coming from California, coming from
Berkeley and the way you got into this. I read
that whole your old story about that, which I think
is absolutely amazing. But what I found really really funny
as finally, when I became a chef, you reviewed me twice.
I think once at La Fochette, that once at Windows
in the World. But if I remember specifically at Lafourchette
(25:02):
when you reviewed me, you reviewed the chicken, and I
was in the kitchen going, this is gonna be great
because my food cost is gonna be wonderful. Because everybody
when they would read your reviews, everybody would come in
and order those dishes that you talked about, and it
was like, this is so funny. But and then obviously
it would it would you know, things would carry on
and it would become back to normal. But when you
(25:22):
did get reviewed, you always got that influx of the
dishes that you talked about, which I thought was so funny.
How people would literally sit at the table with the
review and look at the menu and order. He was like,
you couldn't take it off the menu once you mentioned it.
You know, nobody has ever told me that before. Everyone
thought about that, you know, absolutely, oh no, And you
know the chicken is the best food cost on the
(25:44):
usually on a menu right when you do except well
except for the pasta. I guess maybe maybe maybe that
was it, but I do remember that was very funny.
It's like, oh, well, we gotta order more of that
because it's in the paper, you know, but good chicken
is hard to come by. Truth be clean, no truth
be told. I'm pretty sure it was a check and
I have to go back and check. But yeah, no,
(26:04):
this was so being being a food critic was was
a big part of it. So and then you went
to Gormia magazine afterwards, and then yeah, and then I
went to and you know, and I had also when
I was in l A. I was the restaurant critic
and then after a while I became the food editor
as well. So it wasn't like I had no background
(26:24):
in doing that because the l A Times in the
eighties when I became the food editor, there was the
biggest food section in the country. We had a test
kitchen and a photo studio. Um, and it was sixty
pages every week. I mean, it was huge. That's pretty amazing.
That's every week putting that much material out and and
(26:46):
and you know, keeping up at the times. It was
mostly it was mostly as truth be told, it was.
It was a great cash cow for the newspaper. So
when you so, did you ever we spoke about that
the book that this guy Ronston wrote the most spectacular
Restaurant in the World. Did you read the book? Ever?
I haven't read the book. You haven't gotten through Okay, Well,
(27:07):
you know there's a lot of there's a lot of
books out there. But I was the chef at Seller
in the Sky, and I remember you reviewing me there,
which was always one of the most amazing sort of
things to me, and thinking it was all of a sudden,
I was a Sioux chef before that was the first restaurant.
I was a chef at and I was I was
at Leila, which I was the Sieux chef at Lealah
when you reviewed us, when Joey Fortunato was a chef
(27:28):
and it was drew near Prompts Restaurant, and then I
left and went to Windows in the World. But now
I would just say I was curious if you would
if you had read that book about about Windows and
Seller in the Sky, because to me, what happened to
me when I read the book was I was twenty six.
It was my first chefs job. I didn't know until
I read this book, The History of Joe Bomb. I
mean I knew he was important and he had come
(27:49):
from all these different areas of the restaurant industry and
he was really important. As a twenty six year old
young kid, I just liked him because he was He
was my He was like sort of my cheerleader. He
loved my food, and he was a funny guy, and
I got along with him. He was like my granddad
and I was like hanging out with him and he
was were We always got along and everybody was sort
of scared of him, and I didn't really care, and
I think he liked that. But um, hearing his history
(28:12):
was was just to me, uh, you know, amazing. We'll see.
I grew up on Joe Baum. I mean my mother,
who couldn't have cared less about food but loved restaurants,
went to every and we couldn't afford them, but she
followed Joe Baum's career because he changed restaurants. I mean,
he understood that restaurants or theater. And you know, my
(28:33):
mother was enthralled with the Forum of the twelve Caesars
and Majonda del Soul and the Four Seasons. I mean,
I remember her following the opening of the Four Seasons
and we went. We couldn't afford to eat there, but
we went for drinks, and then we went to Zoom Zoom,
which was another one of his places to actually eat dinner.
(28:53):
Um or maybe to the Automat, but um. So I
knew about Joe Baum, and then I did a piece
for Metropolitan Home about the when he reopened Windows of
the Rainbow Room and spent some time with him, and
I mean he was an amazing guy. I mean, he
(29:13):
really was an amazing guy. And so you know you
talk about Seller in the Sky. What a kind of
genius idea, right, you have a restaurant that everybody goes
to for the view, and then you say, okay, we're
gonna take the part of the restaurant that has no
view at all, and we're gonna make it so delicious
that people want to go there. I mean, it's like
(29:35):
the ultimate Siberia and you turn it into this little jewel.
I mean I was, I mean that was a real
Joe bound kind of idea. Right, Let's just I was.
I was lucky enough when they reopened windows as I
was there for the reopening, so I had windows in
my in my restaurant, but it faced it faced the
Veronzano Bridge, and it wasn't uptown Manhattan, which was the
(29:55):
more coveted view, right because I remember when it first opened,
I remember it being sort of like a sell literally
a seller it was. And that was in the first generation.
But after the first bombing um in when it was
at and then when we I reopened it, when it
was Joe bomb and David Emile and Arthur Emil who
did who did the reopening, I was working under them. Well,
(30:16):
I mean they were I mean one of the other
things you know Joe did was seasonal food. I mean
in the fifties, nobody in America, certainly nobody in New
York was thinking about seasonal food. And the whole idea
of the four seasons was literally, you know, why don't
we use the bounty the fresh food that we've got. Yeah,
(30:40):
there's there's actually a story in the book about in
the beginning when they first opened they wanted to do
remember that there's a thing called La tweet blue the
blue trout, and he wanted to have them and there
have to be alive when you get them before you
right before you cook them. So he wanted them to
brought up to the hundred and seventh floor alive, and
half of them would die from the pressure or something
bringing them up at that speed and then or something
(31:01):
like that. I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is
something nobody thought about. I guess Oh, I've never thought
about that me neither. It was in the book. I'm not.
I'm not might remember recalling it the best. But one
of my other great memories of Joe Bam was I
remember when we were sitting there and we're talking about
the holiday menus for the year Valentine's Day and all
these distances and and and there was other people. The
(31:24):
general manager like, well, we should charge more for this day,
and we should charge prefixed menus. And he looked at
everybody and goes, where, why don't we just let everybody
come and eat for free? Those days they come here
all the time they pay, we should give back to
them on that day. These people are nice. Why are
we trying to screw them on the holidays? And I
was like, you know, I sort of that's true. Why
(31:44):
why is it that all restaurants on Valentine's Day, make
you have a prefixed menu and make you buy a
bottle of champagne, and make you spend six hundred dollars.
And he was like, why are we doing that? Why
don't we just give him the regular menu and they
can spend more if they want, and they don't have
to spend more if they don't want. I was like,
I've sort of that philosophy when I had restaurants. I
never did I never did those gouge you on the
(32:05):
on the holiday menus because I just didn't like it.
I didn't like the idea of it. That's that's really nice.
I'll tell you another great Joe Bound thing. Barbakafka told
me this when she was consulting to Joe Bound, that
he would put what he called critic traps on the menus,
and he they would devise dishes that only a critic
(32:25):
would be stupid enough to order, you know, one of
those things no, no normal person would order. And that's
how she said, we put them on all the menus,
and that's how we figured out who the critics were.
You know, he said, anybody ordered the snails with blue cheese,
you know, we put a big X by their name
(32:46):
and say, you know, watch that table. I don't know
if that would work anymore today, because there's so many
foodies and so many people with opinions out there that
I remember. I mean, I had bone marrow on my
menu almost the whole time at Landmark, and we used
to sell a lot of bone marrow, which back in
the day, the bone marrow might have been the critics dish.
That's I mean, now people are definitely it's it's it's
(33:07):
it's a very different world now. I think I wonder
what it's like being a restaurant critic these days, because
back in the day, I think that your voice, or
restaurant critics voice held a lot a lot of of
cloud and the good ones that really understood food. But
now I feel like everybody's a critic, and everybody's on
Yelp and all these other mediums that you can get
(33:28):
a bad review and still get around and still get
around it these days. Well maybe not today, but before
all this happened, Yeah, no, I mean, the the job
of the critic became very different, and I think in
a good way, because you know, it was there was
a time when critics were basically just consumer reporters, and
they were telling you how to spend your money. And
(33:51):
I always thought I should write reviews for the people
who didn't go to the restaurants. I mean, I didn't
want to tell, you know, reach people what dishes they
should order. What I really want to do is try
and take the people wouldn't afford to go to the
restaurants to the restaurants with me, and try and make
the writing so delicious that, you know, people just enjoyed it,
because you know, most people who read the you know,
(34:13):
the million people who read the New York Times aren't
going to go to the very high end restaurants. Um.
And I always thought, you know, being a consumer reporter,
that part of being a critic was kind of boring.
And what's happened with the Yelp review thing is that
those are the consumer reporters. Those are the people who are,
(34:34):
you know, telling you this is too expensive and this
is too much salt, and don't order this. And it
means that the burden for the people who are really
critics is much bigger. They have to be good writers,
they have to really know food, they have to put
it in context for you and they they have to
be much better than people of my time. Work. Well,
(34:55):
they gotta do it. They gotta do their homework, I
think is really what it comes down to it because
if they if they do miss or misquoted ingredient, I'm
sure that it would be it would be called out immediately. Well, yes, yes,
people would be laughed at and scorned as they should be,
as they should be. So one last thing. I mean,
(35:30):
so obviously you know we're we're in the midst right
now of of of this lockdown, and I think restaurants
are suffering terribly. I can't imagine the amount of people
that are out of work right now, and and and
so on and so forth. But uh, and I'm sure
you've gotten this question a million times because I certainly have.
Is like, what are the restaurants gonna look like when
this is all over? I'm I sort of shrugged my shoulders.
(35:50):
I have no idea where things are gonna go, where
they're gonna land, I'm not sure. But what do you
what is your what is your take? Um, you know,
I think we're gonna lose a lot of restaurants, But
I also think that you know, when this is all over,
we will have rethought how important restaurants. I mean, I
think people are really missing restaurants and understanding what it
(36:11):
is that they love a route restaurants, and it's much
more than food. I mean, they love being in those rooms. Um.
I think that you know, chefs and restaurateurs are going
to rethink, um, what they want their restaurants to be. Um.
I think, Um, you're probably going to see a real
(36:33):
generational change. Where As you know, young people are I
think they're dying to go back and um, you know,
I don't. I think they're willing to risk sitting across
a bar from a bartender. Um. Whereas I think older
people are going to be much slower to go back
to restaurants. So I think you're gonna see a real
shift in clientele um, which has real implications for fine
(36:57):
dining restaurants. For really, you know, I think the fine
dining restaurants are going to be the ones who suffer
the most, which is odd because they are probably the
ones that are gonna find it easier to have, you know,
social distance tables. Right right now, I'm I completely agree
(37:19):
with you about a lot of that, and mostly I
think is what I'm sort of I try to look
at the glass half full, and I think that there
will might be some good changes out of this. And
I think one of the biggest changes, as you sort
of mentioned, was the respect that all of the workers
that work in restaurants, the people that are the waiters,
the bus boys, I mean all the way down to
the people that are stalking the shelves at the rest
(37:39):
at the at the grocery store, and the farmers and
the fishermen and the cattlemen, and all of the people
have just their their level. I think in society has
just gone up so much for the for the true
work that they do. And I think that we we
as a society have to make sure we remember this
and remember how important they are to the food chain
(37:59):
and to the to this to our survival. I mean,
you know, you look at at a waiter who's immigrated
from another country or whatever, bus I mean, those people
are so important for us to be able to do
what we want to do. And I think everybody was
sort of taking everybody for granted for a little while.
And I think the other thing is, you know, Americans
are addicted to cheap food. We have the cheapest food
in the world. And there are real costs with that,
(38:22):
with that UM and we're seeing what those costs are UM.
And you know, the environment, people's health. You know, six
out of ten Americans have chronic illnesses. We've got diabetes. UM.
We you know, we're destroying the air and the the
land and UM. You know, I hope we come out
(38:42):
of this with the sense that, you know, maybe you
should pay more for your food, and maybe you don't
need ten pairs of blue jeans. You know. Yeah, I
think I think you're right. I think it's definitely you're
gonna have to and less food waste, I mean food
waste in this country. Tom Clicio did that that that
episode about you know, food waste, and you watch that
(39:02):
and you're just sitting there with your jaw dropped, like,
oh my gosh, this is what people are doing out there.
There's there's that much waste. I mean, we we in restaurants,
if we wasted food like that, wouldn't be open for
a week and they were closed, I mean wouldn't wouldn't
happen right well, And we wasted in the fields, I
mean we wasted everywhere. And you know, I think we're Americans.
I've never seen empty shells before you know, they go
(39:23):
into grocery stores and we're used to getting anything we
want at any time, and um, that isn't going to
be happening for a while. I mean, we're seeing real
disruptions in the supply chain. And I think you're right.
I think, you know, we're getting a real sense of
respect for the people who raise our food and how
hard it is, and um, and we should be paying
(39:45):
them what they're worth. I Also, one of the other
things that I'm hoping comes out of all of this, uh,
that that's all that all that's going on, is I
was about two years ago, I was in Sicily and
I was down there doing a ing and Saint Locapo,
you know whatever. I was there for about a week,
and you know, when you're in Italy, you drive around.
(40:07):
Everybody's got a little plot of land behind their house.
They got some lettuces growing, they got some tomatoes. And
then I remember coming back to America and I came
out to Long Island because my son was at a
baseball tournament, and I was determined to be like, Okay,
I'm not eating sandwiches from Delhi's with all the you know,
those meats, with the night trates in them and all
these I want to try to. I'm gonna I'm gonna
live healthy. I'm gonna pretend like I'm still in Italy
(40:29):
and I'm eating really healthy. I drove around, and I
drove around, and I drove around. First of all, it
was hard for me to find real food to buy.
I mean even even the grocery store. It was hard.
You know, everything is processed and and whatnot. But the
one thing that struck me was driving around Long Island.
It was a mid mid island, I think they call it.
All these big houses, all these homes and big green
lawns and big green lawns and big green lawns like so,
(40:52):
if you think about it, if every one of those
people grew a little bit of lettuce, grew a couple
of tomatoes, they wouldn't have the gas to go to
the store to buy those things. It's just about some
seeds and putting it in the ground and watching and
watering it. It's basically free food if you think about it.
And when you grow that us it just comes up.
And I was like, you know, I'm hoping that people
kind of get the get the presence of mind, is
(41:13):
you know, this beautiful lawn in my front yard could
actually be feeding my family. You know, Angelo Pellegrin wrote
an unprejudiced palate and that's what he said, tear up
your lawns. That's a waste grow food. In the amount
of money people spend to to manicure their lawns and
make sure there's no certain grasses, I'm like, oh my gosh,
(41:35):
you could have probably grown all of your tomato sauce
for the winter on that plot of land. Not to mention,
the fertilizer runs off into the water and they're there
in on Long Island. You've got a real problem with
all the people who are trying to do aquaculture with
the runoff from the fertilizer for the lawns. Well, look,
I think that you know, if if we can, if
(41:56):
we can just hopefully look at the glass half full
and just maybe you know, you being a big voice
in this industry and and reminding people that when this
is all over, that we need to take care of
the planet, We need to take care of each other.
It's thinking, it's something we all all need to sort
of just be mindful of in front of mine when
this is over, because who knows when it's going to
be over. But for now, I'm doing my podcasts from
(42:19):
my my my, my home and uh and not in
a studio. But it's we're all finding ways to make
things work. And I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, thankful
for the you know, the innovation I think and and
and learning new things. Yeah, me too. I mean, I'm
working on a documentary about what this is all doing
to the food landscape, and I'm doing it from my
(42:40):
home on zoom. I mean, it's crazy, but oh that's all.
That's great. I love that you're you're still you're still
take helping take care of the world and getting getting
that to have a word out. I was. I was
talking to a fellow colleague on the Food Network the
other day and they're shooting their show The Kitchen from
their own homes and he's like, Wow, this is difficult.
You gotta set up these cameras, you gotta do all
(43:01):
the prep, you gotta clean up. You got like we
were in the studio shooting TV shows where you've seen it,
You've been there, You've done them right. There's a p A,
there's this, there's that. But now we're doing everything ourselves
and it's kind of great. I mean, I feel like
I'm learning so much. You know, I'm reaching out to
people all over the country. I'm talking of fishermen and
farmers and ranchers and dairy people and chess and you know.
(43:25):
I mean it's like every day I learned a hundred
new things and try to figure out how to do
it all myself. But speaking of fishermen, have you have
you talked to anybody over at Green Wave about the production.
I am in love with Brent. I mean, Brent Smith
is one of my big heroes. Yes, you read his
book Like a Fish? Yes, Yes, that book just moved me.
(43:51):
It was amazing. And you know, actually I spent a
whole day with Melissa Clark after I read that book,
because she was going to do an article about KELP
and she did it already a while ago. We spent
a whole day in her kitchen just making recipes and
messing around with KELP. But nothing in the you know,
nothing like Chinese or Japanese. It was all like we did.
We did like a beans and scroll, but we took
(44:12):
the scroll out and we used KELP. We did a
roast chicken where I took carrots, onion, Celery laid the
whole bottom of the pan, put a chicken on top
of it, and then covered it and also and kelp
and roasted it. It was so good, it was really relazing.
Do you know what he's doing now? Actually they're making
face masks out of kelp. People who were making straws
(44:35):
out of kelp have pivoted to make face masks out
of kelp. Really, yeah, because I've been I followed them
on Instagram, a company called Lollyware. I think there they do,
I'll make all this stuff out of kelp. Oh, well,
you're right, you're you're you're on the pulse. You know,
you know what's going down. I he is. He is
truly a hero brand. I mean, he's just wonderful. You
(44:55):
know what he said about kelp? He said, you know
the problem was that everybody was trying to cook it.
We're fish cooks and they don't know anything about vegetables.
Said you know, um, you know, once you got chefs
who were not just you know, devoted to fish, people
who really knew how to work with vegetables, suddenly they
were making delicious things out of kelp. Yeah. No, it's
(45:16):
it's I think it's it's it's basically as I say
sometimes I think help is the new Kale, and I
think it's definitely it's it's worthy of that spot. I mean,
as you know, it can be used as fertilizer, you
can cook with it, you can feed it to and
it's it's so it's so versus out and so good
for the planet in the ocean. Yeah, exactly, here we go,
Help all the way, Ruth. Thank you so much for
(45:38):
for doing this. Is just making me miss you more. Well,
you know, we we tried to We tried lunch dates
what three or four times, and never happened. And this
is I just told this to somebody else too. I said,
you know, when when I'm not going to let life
get in the way of my lunch dates anymore, when
this gets back to normal because they're too important. I agree.
I agree, So lunch soon, Lunch soon. Bruth. Thank you
(46:02):
so much. I love you. H
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