September 8, 2025 • 29 mins
The architect describes keeping live carp in the bathtub for dinner, how fish influence his designs, and holding matzo brei 'bake-offs' with his friends. Originally recorded in 2023.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When I phoned Frank Gary to ask him to do
this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time
a new Frank Gary building opened, Richard, my husband and
I would make a pilgrimage to visit the Disney Center
in Los Angeles, the Louis Vreton Foundation in Paris, the
(00:28):
Guggenheim in Bilbao, and Moore. But one summer in two
thousand and eight, a spectacular Gary building came up to
us in Hyde Park, just ten minutes from our house.
It was a Serpentine pavilion, a temporary structure designed with
his son Sammy. For those few months, we met friends
(00:49):
there almost daily, watching the sun set, listening to people
play music, eating and drinking. This brave and beautiful structure
made Harde Park a better park and London a better city. Today,
I've made a pilgrimage on my own from London to
Los Angeles, not to see a new Frank Cary building,
(01:10):
but to see my much loved close friend Frank.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Six slices of presciutto or pancetta. I really like that
one pheasant plucked and clean. Americans don't have.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
No, we don't have game.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
They don't have pheasants Canada, but does Canada. But it's
a long time ago. I was in Canada. Half a
cup of olive oil. I like that. Three garlic cloves peels, yes,
I'm still in. Three fresh rosemary sprigs, great, five fresh
sage leaves. Great. Half a bottle of Josephine doressan Va.
(01:57):
It's wine.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's a fourty five sweet wine, rather like Marsala.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So you could use Marsala as well. But I love
the name Josephine door Go wine.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Okay, I like the name too. One hundred and seventy
five millimeter chicken stock, one hundred and twenty five milli
liters of heavy cream. Place the prescudo or pancetta slices
over the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat
the olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant
(02:29):
on all sides. Add the garlic and herbs. Cook over
a medium heat for about forty minutes. Adding the wine
and stock in stages. You do not want to boil
the bird, but braize it in the liquid. Remove the
bird and keep warm. Add the cream, lettuce, simmer, and
then season, pour the juices over the pheasant and serve. Yum, yum.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's good, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm shocked you didn't bring me some.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I know it's not the right season.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thereas I would go with this interview is.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Can you imagine me getting into customs and I've.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Got me It would make the interview. We could do that.
We can do a replay.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Okay, we'll do it. Did you ever do the cooking?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I cook mots of brye?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
How do you? What is that?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
On Sunday mornings and I have lots of brye bake
offs with people. Mats of brye is unleavened bread that
the Jews crossed the desert with Moses a long time ago,
and it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover.
(03:42):
It's unleaven bread for Passover. I break it up underwater
and get it sort of moist, I salted and stuff,
and I take a bunch of eggs and I beat
them up up and put them all over the manzabrie
(04:05):
and it absorbs the egg stuff and then I fry him.
That's called matzabrie. Okay, So I grew up with that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, what did you grow up? But tell me first,
start from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Where were you born Toronto?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And where were your parents born?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
My mother Poland, my father New York and his father
and mother his father Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Russia, Poland, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Pince, I think my mother luds lodz.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, loves And what was their story?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
They came in nineteen thirteen. I think there was a
pogram in Poland. I found out later that the Jews
were being rounded up and beaten up. And my grandfather,
who delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to
(05:02):
lunch and saw where the rail tracks were and where
he was, and when did you go? I was invited
to do a film festival and called the Camarage Film
Festival in Poland, and I went with David Lynch. David
Lynch and I went to Poland. I loved the people.
(05:25):
And I went to the city hall there and they
asked David and I to sign our names on the wall,
and I wrote, my grandfather left in nineteen thirteen. If
he hadn't left, I wouldn't be here. I was immediately
called by the mayor's office and they became very solicitous.
(05:45):
They found all my grandparents' families, they all of a
sudden became like to show me they really loved the
Jews and blah blah blah, which was a bunch of bullshit,
I guess. So I did get a pretty deep and
I found out my grandmother actually ran a foundry. There
(06:09):
was folklore about it when I was growing up, but
it was true.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The grandmother did.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
She ran a foundry in Poland. They came across on
a Dutch ship that got stalled mid ocean, which was
the reason my mother would never cross a bridge in
a car. She had a phobia for so she would
(06:36):
get out of the car and walk across the bridge
and meet us on the other side because of this
experience as a I guess she was a nine year
old or six year old, I don't remember, but obviously
they got here.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, they got to where did they learn to Canada?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Right? And they landed in Toronto. My grandfather got a
horse and buggy. He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff.
They lived in a little house, tiny house that just
got torn down.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The Yeah, it was a Jewish community. My grandfather had
got went on to have a hardware store, which I
worked in as a kid with him, And he's the
one that got me to read Talmud. And he wasn't religious.
It was interesting. He was the head of his little
congregation because he took the He was a business guy
(07:33):
and so he managed the money for them. But he
read Talmud. To me, that was interesting. You know. Talmud
starts with the word why. Yeah, curiosity, and curiosity is
the theater for all all of our work, right, all
creativity is.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Somebody always asked me what I look for in a
new chef or anyone I've taken on at the River Cafe,
and I always say curiosity.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, right, And were interested?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And so you were You went to school every day.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And you know you So we were in Toronto. I
went to I went to Blue Collegiate until forty seven
and then we but in between my family moved to Timmins, Ontario,
five hundred miles north of Toronto, and I lived there
(08:25):
from eight years old to thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So you've sort of set up a picture of what
where you were if you were to kind of close
your eyes and remember the smells of your mother's kitchen
or the food in her kitchen. Can you visualize it?
What was it a big room? Was it a small kitchen?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, it was, it was a small kitchen. It wasn't
She wasn't a great cook. Yeah. My grandmother made on
the cook stove, made all the to get filled fish.
And I used to watch. That's why everybody says I
do fish sculptures because I used to go pick up
(09:06):
the live fish and put it in the bathtub, and
then at night I would I was as a kid.
I would play with the fish in the bathtub and
then the next day it was gone.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Did you ever watch them kill the.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
No, I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I was at home.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I finally figured it out.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
But do you think there was? Because that is interesting
about why the fish? Because when did the image of
the fish begin?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, that's a whole other story. Do you want
me to get into it that the fish?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
You know. I was started practicing sixty four with my
own I'd worked on shopping centers with groon and stuff
like that. I got some houses to do. I did
some small buildings. Uh. And I got to know Peter
Eisman and your husband and Norman Foster and Michael Graves
(10:05):
and Charlie Moore, and I wasn't a big force in architecture,
but I was. They sort of paid attention. I was
doing enough stuff they paid attention. From the very beginning,
I hung out with the artists because I always thought
of architecture as an art and I thought they were
(10:27):
coming around to my buildings and looking at my stuff
and inviting me for dinner.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
And the artists, the artists in la ed Ed Moses, Billy, Albankston,
John Alton, Peter Alexander, a lot of people, you know,
became close friends.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And I would go to their shows and they would
come to my At a point, Arthur Drexler do you
remember who that is? He was the architecture guy at
MoMA did a show called Bose Art and it was
at sixty R sixty. I think everybody went to that show.
(11:13):
I went to it. It was a knockout. The Bose
Art buildings, the models they showed were so seductive, it
was incredible everybody. It was after that show that Philip
put the top on at and t Bright as a
director at that show, and Graves came out and Stern
(11:34):
came out and they all okay, so postmodernism became the
siren song. And I remember I was at a and
I couldn't buy it. I wasn't buying it, but I
thought there was more to life than copying the past.
(11:55):
So I was at a conference with a lot of
those guys and I can't remember where, and when my
turn came to talk, which I never prepared talks, I
would get up and just do what I'll say what
was on my mind. I looked at them and said,
what the hell is there only one way to go backwards?
(12:16):
Can't do isn't there something new? Isn't there any hope
for the future. I forget what and I said, damn it.
If you got to go back, I mean you can
go back three hundred million years before man to fish,
I said, fish are very architectural and their movement is
(12:38):
beautiful and they suggest movement, and it goes with cars
and trains and planes and stuff. So just copy that.
I had no idea why I said that. After that,
I started to draw fish on all my little drawings.
I've got top stuff all around with fishy. They're on
(12:58):
those drawings too, So I started playing with it. I
was doing that project with Klaus Oldenburg in Venicia. The
sponsors were a fashion house in Florence asked me to
do a fish sculpture for their show, and so I
(13:20):
went to China Chita and did a drawing and they
made it. I never saw it in Tourno. They were
just getting ready to open the Costello de Rivoli as
a museum and they had their first show and they
invited me to be in the first show, and so
(13:41):
they gave me two galleries. In one gallery, I put
all my models and they said they had something for
the other gallery. They didn't tell me what I walk
in the other gallery was this wooden fish made for
the fashion show. It's the biggest piece of kitsch I've
ever seen. It was so embarrassing. I stood beside it
(14:04):
was just freaked out that they were making this part
of my show. And standing beside me was a guy
from the Stedliic Museum who had spoken ill of my
work many times before. He's standing beside me and he said,
how'd you do that? And I said what do you mean?
(14:24):
He said, how'd you do it? I want to talk
to you. Then I realized what he was talking about.
The thing looked like it was moving, This piece of
egregious kitch had this the movement that a fish has.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And how they had made it in that way.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
They didn't know, they didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It was just an accident.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
This guy said, that's brilliant. How did you do that?
I said, it's pure, you know, I said, I told him, well,
I was interested in the fish because of movement.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So what do you think that relates to the carp
in the bathtub?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Maybe maybe that psychiatrist that image of the car, but
I think that the.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Next thing I did was a show at the walker
and I cut the tail off the fish, the head
off the fish, and I made an abstract and it's
still moved, it still had the sense of movement. And
that's when I got hooked, hooked on the shape shaping
and using that to express, to express an.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeh, the image of So that I think that.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Experience made made Bill bow. I'd love the food, and.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right
next to Bilbao, is a mecca for food. People go there.
The chefs are really interesting. So what when you say
you love the food of Bilbao, tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's the cod fish?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
What do they call it, Yeah, the bacola baccala bacala.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, you know, don't you? You're a cook anyway, Bachola.
I love bacchoala and I loved the wine.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you would go for these site meetings. And did
you spend a.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Long time there? Bill Bell reawakened my food? Whatever food
I was happened there because that's what we did. We
went out to restaurants with them. The wine was special because.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Life that you're describing, working all day, whether you're Cassavettis
your friend, or actors or writers or artists in their studios,
there was a real momentum to go out to eat
at the end of the day because the work was
solitary and so was that true here as well? Did
you go out to restaurants all the time?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And yeah, with Benny Gazar we used to go to
Italian restaurants. So we had a lot of pasta and
a lot of red wine.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And there was one that somebody told me there was
one in like a train.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Carriage, the Pacific Dining car. Is it still there downtown?
I think it's still there. It was in my neighborhood.
So we used to go there because it was around
the corner from where we lived, and you could. You
didn't need a reservation, you just walk in. Yeah, and
it was never filled. And I mean I used to
(17:40):
see Spieler, he used to be there, and a lot
of Hollywood people, but they would come at six in
the morning for early breakfast when nobody was there, or
real late at night.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I think about a restaurant in a city, is that
as we found out when restaurants were closed in London,
is that they do had a social life to the
city that you can go there and see people that
you didn't know were going to be there. There's a
spontaneity about meeting a friend or sitting there.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
The Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't go
there to meet other people. It was the booths were
spread apart and it was never filled.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So you as a kid, did you ever go out
to a restaurant when you were a child.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out. Yeah.
I do remember going to restaurants with my father in
Toronto that had signs no Jews allowed. No. I do
remember that really, And he always knew the owner because
he was a gregarious guy. So we would go in anyway,
(18:49):
so he would.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
He would actually be friends with an owner who actually
had a sign on his door.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Saying he wasn't friendly with him, but he had he
had some kind of business relationship.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Was your father alive to understand your success?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
He died before my success. Now my mother did, did.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
She bask in the in the glow of your success?
Speaker 1 (19:15):
She tried. But when I when she died, I found
a box with every article. Yeah, I didn't know she
was doing that, and it was from way back. But
she always used to compare me to other people's kids,
you know, like Hilda's son does. Why can't you be
(19:40):
more like that? So I got it. I had a
bad time.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think you had a bad time, and they had
a bad time leaving your country and having a ship
sold in the middle of the ocean and arriving in
a city that you knew no one. And I mean
when when you left your home? And where did you
go to architecture school?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
USC?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
So you came to California.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So my father lost everything, had a heart attack, had
to leave leave Toronto. He was penniless. His brother brought
him to California. My mother came, my sister came. We
lived in a two rooms the size of this in
(20:31):
an old building downtown.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Sisters and brothers? Did you have sisters and brothers?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Sister? Yeah, I got a job as a truck driver.
My father got a job as a truck caver. I
delivered breakfast, nooks and furniture. He was a soda pop delivery.
My mother got a job in the Broadway, Hollywood, in
the candy department, and she stayed there all the way
(20:56):
to the end. For her she in the Broadway, she
ended up in the decorating department, and she was selling
draperies to Hollywood people.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So would she cooked? Would she come home and cook
for you?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Do you remember sitting very much?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Would sitting down to a meal in your house?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I would probably remember, but I can't. I don't remember
that meals.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Family meals did not exciting. Now everybody talks about you
know how sad it is now that we don't all
gather around the table every night. But for some people,
quite a few people, it was quite very and stressful
to have to sit around a table with your family.
That's what it was for you? Was it because he.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Just had a temper and you never knew couldn't control it?
Took it out on me because he saw me as
not understanding business. I was. I was the kind of
artsy type, so he didn't understand that. And my mother
(22:04):
also supported that that I wasn't really interested in I
mean I was interested in going to the symphony and
going to our galleries, but not in things that would
make a living.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And so meal times were a kind of tyranny, were
they of? It was difficult, And then when you went
to architecture school and college, you kind offended for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And yeah, then I got married.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, became domestic life.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That that was domestic life kind of Yeah. Yeah, well
this was the first marriage before birth.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria forcaill New House,
did that make you think more about food or did
was that about space? Was that where people could stop
working in the magazines and have a meal?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I did think about food because we did the cafeteria
park and we had to set up where you go
through the line, and yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
A radical cantem. I mean there's no other space like
that to have as a place to eat when you're
working all day. It was the hottest ticket in New York.
It was invited to that, Yeah, to lunch. Everybody was
trying to figure out how.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
They were I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh yeah, huge. Everybody wanted to go there, you know.
I remember going with Victoria, took me and people friends
of mine called friends of theirs.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Who they remodeled it. They've totally.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
What was Sife as a client? Was he the client?
Speaker 1 (23:32):
He was the client?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Did he know what he wanted?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Really did? Yeah? I took him to the best thing
I did with Sai is I took him to Japan
for a week with Greg Wallace, who as my partner,
who had spent a lot of his life in Japan.
So Greg knew Japan really fantastic. And Victoria and Ci
(23:57):
and Bert and I and Greg spent a week together
and so I ended up in the same little cafe
with typical Japanese pork noodles or something, and that's what
he ordered every day, and he wanted to go back
to the same restaurant everything. No. Si. Months before he died,
(24:21):
I was with him in Paris for the opening of
the Louisy Tom building. He called me over he was
sitting there kind of not totally with it, and he said, Frank,
the trip he took me on to Japan. I think
I'm going to cry, he said, was one of the
best ever. It was so sweet. What he's in?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Oh? Boy, oh boy?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
What's your too sweet?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
My friend Stephanie Barron makes the greatest lemon drops and
I invite her to go sailing, specifically because she brings
the lemon drums.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh so sailing.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, so sailing. Now you're talking.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And when you're on the boat. Do you do you eat?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Do you have any we order sandwiches or something?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And drink wine?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Are you interested in the wine?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah? I got a lot of it, but I don't.
One of my clients is the Southern wine spirits owner
from from from Vegas, and I did his little building
in Vegas, and so he sends us all the wine
and so I mean, I mean I get to like
(25:46):
some of it. I picked stuff that I like him
and Berta likes some of it. But we're not wins.
Tequila has We've been drinking tequila a little bit, and
so we do tequila for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And what are the sweets apart from the lemon drops?
Do you like chocolate? Frank?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Oh? Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Is there something that when you're feeling kind of low
or kind of worried that you might reach for in
terms of food? But is there something that you would
say this, there's a kind of sense of comfort in some.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
P I guess just plain pasta pasta.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, do you know? I asked this question to everybody.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And they always end up with us.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Everybody loves a pasta. Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, it's you don't have to eat a lot of it,
and it's kind of filling. Yeah, and you can drink
some wine with it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And then there's some such so many varieties of pasta
that that gets exciting, you know. But and when you
go to a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, the varieties are incredible.
So I like to try.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Let's go the next time I'm here. Are you going
to restaurants?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Are you avoiding them a little? I'm going to come
to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, Frank Garry, you are invited to the River Cafe. Invited.
That means you don't have to pay anything. And by
the way, jus are allowed.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Oh my god, that's terrible. Well, I will.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Become And also, you know, food is a pleasure, Yeah,
it is. It's so good and it's so great thing
to give yourself and then just eat it and have deliciously.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Okay. So in the morning for breakfast, I make I
take toast and I fry an egg and I put
it on the toast. That's good and that's what I have.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
If the egg is good and the toast is good,
and the butter is good and it's hot, then that's
a delicious meal. But you need to put a love
salt and pepper on it, and you need to eat
it with pleasure.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I know. Food is you know, it's important. And artists
and architects and designer is everyone's.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Part of right. I do make so eggs with coming out.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Okay, now it's coming out.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's not just the lots. I do both. Okay, that's
my specialty.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
All right, I'm coming all right, thank you. Frank. What's
frank Berry ice cream?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Frank Berry ice Cream company.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Named an ice cream? Is that right after you? Did
you know that?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, he saw something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I think having an ice cream named after you was
pretty cool. I say, you know, I can have a
building named after you, or.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
You know, snickerdoodle like it.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Frank Cary well, well, maybe we'll have to go get one.
I'm so excited to announce that we have a new book.
Squeeze Me has forty seven delicious lemon recipes from the
River Cafe, Beautiful full art by Ed Bouchet and words
(29:02):
by Heather Eyes.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Pre Order now
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When I phoned Frank Gary to ask him to do
this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time
a new Frank Gary building opened, Richard, my husband and
I would make a pilgrimage to visit the Disney Center
in Los Angeles, the Louis Vreton Foundation in Paris, the
(00:28):
Guggenheim in Bilbao, and Moore. But one summer in two
thousand and eight, a spectacular Gary building came up to
us in Hyde Park, just ten minutes from our house.
It was a Serpentine pavilion, a temporary structure designed with
his son Sammy. For those few months, we met friends
(00:49):
there almost daily, watching the sun set, listening to people
play music, eating and drinking. This brave and beautiful structure
made Harde Park a better park and London a better city. Today,
I've made a pilgrimage on my own from London to
Los Angeles, not to see a new Frank Cary building,
(01:10):
but to see my much loved close friend Frank.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Six slices of presciutto or pancetta. I really like that
one pheasant plucked and clean. Americans don't have.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
No, we don't have game.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
They don't have pheasants Canada, but does Canada. But it's
a long time ago. I was in Canada. Half a
cup of olive oil. I like that. Three garlic cloves peels, yes,
I'm still in. Three fresh rosemary sprigs, great, five fresh
sage leaves. Great. Half a bottle of Josephine doressan Va.
(01:57):
It's wine.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's a fourty five sweet wine, rather like Marsala.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So you could use Marsala as well. But I love
the name Josephine door Go wine.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Okay, I like the name too. One hundred and seventy
five millimeter chicken stock, one hundred and twenty five milli
liters of heavy cream. Place the prescudo or pancetta slices
over the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat
the olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant
(02:29):
on all sides. Add the garlic and herbs. Cook over
a medium heat for about forty minutes. Adding the wine
and stock in stages. You do not want to boil
the bird, but braize it in the liquid. Remove the
bird and keep warm. Add the cream, lettuce, simmer, and
then season, pour the juices over the pheasant and serve. Yum, yum.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's good, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm shocked you didn't bring me some.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I know it's not the right season.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thereas I would go with this interview is.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Can you imagine me getting into customs and I've.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Got me It would make the interview. We could do that.
We can do a replay.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Okay, we'll do it. Did you ever do the cooking?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I cook mots of brye?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
How do you? What is that?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
On Sunday mornings and I have lots of brye bake
offs with people. Mats of brye is unleavened bread that
the Jews crossed the desert with Moses a long time ago,
and it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover.
(03:42):
It's unleaven bread for Passover. I break it up underwater
and get it sort of moist, I salted and stuff,
and I take a bunch of eggs and I beat
them up up and put them all over the manzabrie
(04:05):
and it absorbs the egg stuff and then I fry him.
That's called matzabrie. Okay, So I grew up with that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, what did you grow up? But tell me first,
start from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Where were you born Toronto?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And where were your parents born?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
My mother Poland, my father New York and his father
and mother his father Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Russia, Poland, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Pince, I think my mother luds lodz.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, loves And what was their story?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
They came in nineteen thirteen. I think there was a
pogram in Poland. I found out later that the Jews
were being rounded up and beaten up. And my grandfather,
who delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to
(05:02):
lunch and saw where the rail tracks were and where
he was, and when did you go? I was invited
to do a film festival and called the Camarage Film
Festival in Poland, and I went with David Lynch. David
Lynch and I went to Poland. I loved the people.
(05:25):
And I went to the city hall there and they
asked David and I to sign our names on the wall,
and I wrote, my grandfather left in nineteen thirteen. If
he hadn't left, I wouldn't be here. I was immediately
called by the mayor's office and they became very solicitous.
(05:45):
They found all my grandparents' families, they all of a
sudden became like to show me they really loved the
Jews and blah blah blah, which was a bunch of bullshit,
I guess. So I did get a pretty deep and
I found out my grandmother actually ran a foundry. There
(06:09):
was folklore about it when I was growing up, but
it was true.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The grandmother did.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
She ran a foundry in Poland. They came across on
a Dutch ship that got stalled mid ocean, which was
the reason my mother would never cross a bridge in
a car. She had a phobia for so she would
(06:36):
get out of the car and walk across the bridge
and meet us on the other side because of this
experience as a I guess she was a nine year
old or six year old, I don't remember, but obviously
they got here.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, they got to where did they learn to Canada?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Right? And they landed in Toronto. My grandfather got a
horse and buggy. He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff.
They lived in a little house, tiny house that just
got torn down.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The Yeah, it was a Jewish community. My grandfather had
got went on to have a hardware store, which I
worked in as a kid with him, And he's the
one that got me to read Talmud. And he wasn't religious.
It was interesting. He was the head of his little
congregation because he took the He was a business guy
(07:33):
and so he managed the money for them. But he
read Talmud. To me, that was interesting. You know. Talmud
starts with the word why. Yeah, curiosity, and curiosity is
the theater for all all of our work, right, all
creativity is.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Somebody always asked me what I look for in a
new chef or anyone I've taken on at the River Cafe,
and I always say curiosity.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, right, And were interested?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And so you were You went to school every day.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And you know you So we were in Toronto. I
went to I went to Blue Collegiate until forty seven
and then we but in between my family moved to Timmins, Ontario,
five hundred miles north of Toronto, and I lived there
(08:25):
from eight years old to thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So you've sort of set up a picture of what
where you were if you were to kind of close
your eyes and remember the smells of your mother's kitchen
or the food in her kitchen. Can you visualize it?
What was it a big room? Was it a small kitchen?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, it was, it was a small kitchen. It wasn't
She wasn't a great cook. Yeah. My grandmother made on
the cook stove, made all the to get filled fish.
And I used to watch. That's why everybody says I
do fish sculptures because I used to go pick up
(09:06):
the live fish and put it in the bathtub, and
then at night I would I was as a kid.
I would play with the fish in the bathtub and
then the next day it was gone.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Did you ever watch them kill the.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
No, I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I was at home.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I finally figured it out.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
But do you think there was? Because that is interesting
about why the fish? Because when did the image of
the fish begin?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, that's a whole other story. Do you want
me to get into it that the fish?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
You know. I was started practicing sixty four with my
own I'd worked on shopping centers with groon and stuff
like that. I got some houses to do. I did
some small buildings. Uh. And I got to know Peter
Eisman and your husband and Norman Foster and Michael Graves
(10:05):
and Charlie Moore, and I wasn't a big force in architecture,
but I was. They sort of paid attention. I was
doing enough stuff they paid attention. From the very beginning,
I hung out with the artists because I always thought
of architecture as an art and I thought they were
(10:27):
coming around to my buildings and looking at my stuff
and inviting me for dinner.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
And the artists, the artists in la ed Ed Moses, Billy, Albankston,
John Alton, Peter Alexander, a lot of people, you know,
became close friends.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And I would go to their shows and they would
come to my At a point, Arthur Drexler do you
remember who that is? He was the architecture guy at
MoMA did a show called Bose Art and it was
at sixty R sixty. I think everybody went to that show.
(11:13):
I went to it. It was a knockout. The Bose
Art buildings, the models they showed were so seductive, it
was incredible everybody. It was after that show that Philip
put the top on at and t Bright as a
director at that show, and Graves came out and Stern
(11:34):
came out and they all okay, so postmodernism became the
siren song. And I remember I was at a and
I couldn't buy it. I wasn't buying it, but I
thought there was more to life than copying the past.
(11:55):
So I was at a conference with a lot of
those guys and I can't remember where, and when my
turn came to talk, which I never prepared talks, I
would get up and just do what I'll say what
was on my mind. I looked at them and said,
what the hell is there only one way to go backwards?
(12:16):
Can't do isn't there something new? Isn't there any hope
for the future. I forget what and I said, damn it.
If you got to go back, I mean you can
go back three hundred million years before man to fish,
I said, fish are very architectural and their movement is
(12:38):
beautiful and they suggest movement, and it goes with cars
and trains and planes and stuff. So just copy that.
I had no idea why I said that. After that,
I started to draw fish on all my little drawings.
I've got top stuff all around with fishy. They're on
(12:58):
those drawings too, So I started playing with it. I
was doing that project with Klaus Oldenburg in Venicia. The
sponsors were a fashion house in Florence asked me to
do a fish sculpture for their show, and so I
(13:20):
went to China Chita and did a drawing and they
made it. I never saw it in Tourno. They were
just getting ready to open the Costello de Rivoli as
a museum and they had their first show and they
invited me to be in the first show, and so
(13:41):
they gave me two galleries. In one gallery, I put
all my models and they said they had something for
the other gallery. They didn't tell me what I walk
in the other gallery was this wooden fish made for
the fashion show. It's the biggest piece of kitsch I've
ever seen. It was so embarrassing. I stood beside it
(14:04):
was just freaked out that they were making this part
of my show. And standing beside me was a guy
from the Stedliic Museum who had spoken ill of my
work many times before. He's standing beside me and he said,
how'd you do that? And I said what do you mean?
(14:24):
He said, how'd you do it? I want to talk
to you. Then I realized what he was talking about.
The thing looked like it was moving, This piece of
egregious kitch had this the movement that a fish has.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And how they had made it in that way.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
They didn't know, they didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It was just an accident.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
This guy said, that's brilliant. How did you do that?
I said, it's pure, you know, I said, I told him, well,
I was interested in the fish because of movement.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So what do you think that relates to the carp
in the bathtub?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Maybe maybe that psychiatrist that image of the car, but
I think that the.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Next thing I did was a show at the walker
and I cut the tail off the fish, the head
off the fish, and I made an abstract and it's
still moved, it still had the sense of movement. And
that's when I got hooked, hooked on the shape shaping
and using that to express, to express an.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeh, the image of So that I think that.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Experience made made Bill bow. I'd love the food, and.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right
next to Bilbao, is a mecca for food. People go there.
The chefs are really interesting. So what when you say
you love the food of Bilbao, tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It's the cod fish?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
What do they call it, Yeah, the bacola baccala bacala.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, you know, don't you? You're a cook anyway, Bachola.
I love bacchoala and I loved the wine.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you would go for these site meetings. And did
you spend a.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Long time there? Bill Bell reawakened my food? Whatever food
I was happened there because that's what we did. We
went out to restaurants with them. The wine was special because.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Life that you're describing, working all day, whether you're Cassavettis
your friend, or actors or writers or artists in their studios,
there was a real momentum to go out to eat
at the end of the day because the work was
solitary and so was that true here as well? Did
you go out to restaurants all the time?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And yeah, with Benny Gazar we used to go to
Italian restaurants. So we had a lot of pasta and
a lot of red wine.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And there was one that somebody told me there was
one in like a train.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Carriage, the Pacific Dining car. Is it still there downtown?
I think it's still there. It was in my neighborhood.
So we used to go there because it was around
the corner from where we lived, and you could. You
didn't need a reservation, you just walk in. Yeah, and
it was never filled. And I mean I used to
(17:40):
see Spieler, he used to be there, and a lot
of Hollywood people, but they would come at six in
the morning for early breakfast when nobody was there, or
real late at night.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I think about a restaurant in a city, is that
as we found out when restaurants were closed in London,
is that they do had a social life to the
city that you can go there and see people that
you didn't know were going to be there. There's a
spontaneity about meeting a friend or sitting there.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
The Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't go
there to meet other people. It was the booths were
spread apart and it was never filled.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So you as a kid, did you ever go out
to a restaurant when you were a child.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out. Yeah.
I do remember going to restaurants with my father in
Toronto that had signs no Jews allowed. No. I do
remember that really, And he always knew the owner because
he was a gregarious guy. So we would go in anyway,
(18:49):
so he would.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
He would actually be friends with an owner who actually
had a sign on his door.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Saying he wasn't friendly with him, but he had he
had some kind of business relationship.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Was your father alive to understand your success?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
He died before my success. Now my mother did, did.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
She bask in the in the glow of your success?
Speaker 1 (19:15):
She tried. But when I when she died, I found
a box with every article. Yeah, I didn't know she
was doing that, and it was from way back. But
she always used to compare me to other people's kids,
you know, like Hilda's son does. Why can't you be
(19:40):
more like that? So I got it. I had a
bad time.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think you had a bad time, and they had
a bad time leaving your country and having a ship
sold in the middle of the ocean and arriving in
a city that you knew no one. And I mean
when when you left your home? And where did you
go to architecture school?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
USC?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
So you came to California.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So my father lost everything, had a heart attack, had
to leave leave Toronto. He was penniless. His brother brought
him to California. My mother came, my sister came. We
lived in a two rooms the size of this in
(20:31):
an old building downtown.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Sisters and brothers? Did you have sisters and brothers?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Sister? Yeah, I got a job as a truck driver.
My father got a job as a truck caver. I
delivered breakfast, nooks and furniture. He was a soda pop delivery.
My mother got a job in the Broadway, Hollywood, in
the candy department, and she stayed there all the way
(20:56):
to the end. For her she in the Broadway, she
ended up in the decorating department, and she was selling
draperies to Hollywood people.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So would she cooked? Would she come home and cook
for you?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Do you remember sitting very much?
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Would sitting down to a meal in your house?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I would probably remember, but I can't. I don't remember
that meals.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Family meals did not exciting. Now everybody talks about you
know how sad it is now that we don't all
gather around the table every night. But for some people,
quite a few people, it was quite very and stressful
to have to sit around a table with your family.
That's what it was for you? Was it because he.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Just had a temper and you never knew couldn't control it?
Took it out on me because he saw me as
not understanding business. I was. I was the kind of
artsy type, so he didn't understand that. And my mother
(22:04):
also supported that that I wasn't really interested in I
mean I was interested in going to the symphony and
going to our galleries, but not in things that would
make a living.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And so meal times were a kind of tyranny, were
they of? It was difficult, And then when you went
to architecture school and college, you kind offended for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And yeah, then I got married.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, became domestic life.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
That that was domestic life kind of Yeah. Yeah, well
this was the first marriage before birth.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria forcaill New House,
did that make you think more about food or did
was that about space? Was that where people could stop
working in the magazines and have a meal?
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I did think about food because we did the cafeteria
park and we had to set up where you go
through the line, and yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
A radical cantem. I mean there's no other space like
that to have as a place to eat when you're
working all day. It was the hottest ticket in New York.
It was invited to that, Yeah, to lunch. Everybody was
trying to figure out how.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
They were I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh yeah, huge. Everybody wanted to go there, you know.
I remember going with Victoria, took me and people friends
of mine called friends of theirs.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Who they remodeled it. They've totally.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
What was Sife as a client? Was he the client?
Speaker 1 (23:32):
He was the client?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Did he know what he wanted?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Really did? Yeah? I took him to the best thing
I did with Sai is I took him to Japan
for a week with Greg Wallace, who as my partner,
who had spent a lot of his life in Japan.
So Greg knew Japan really fantastic. And Victoria and Ci
(23:57):
and Bert and I and Greg spent a week together
and so I ended up in the same little cafe
with typical Japanese pork noodles or something, and that's what
he ordered every day, and he wanted to go back
to the same restaurant everything. No. Si. Months before he died,
(24:21):
I was with him in Paris for the opening of
the Louisy Tom building. He called me over he was
sitting there kind of not totally with it, and he said, Frank,
the trip he took me on to Japan. I think
I'm going to cry, he said, was one of the
best ever. It was so sweet. What he's in?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food?
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Oh? Boy, oh boy?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
What's your too sweet?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
My friend Stephanie Barron makes the greatest lemon drops and
I invite her to go sailing, specifically because she brings
the lemon drums.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh so sailing.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, so sailing. Now you're talking.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And when you're on the boat. Do you do you eat?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Do you have any we order sandwiches or something?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And drink wine?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Are you interested in the wine?
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah? I got a lot of it, but I don't.
One of my clients is the Southern wine spirits owner
from from from Vegas, and I did his little building
in Vegas, and so he sends us all the wine
and so I mean, I mean I get to like
(25:46):
some of it. I picked stuff that I like him
and Berta likes some of it. But we're not wins.
Tequila has We've been drinking tequila a little bit, and
so we do tequila for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And what are the sweets apart from the lemon drops?
Do you like chocolate? Frank?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Oh? Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Is there something that when you're feeling kind of low
or kind of worried that you might reach for in
terms of food? But is there something that you would
say this, there's a kind of sense of comfort in some.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
P I guess just plain pasta pasta.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, do you know? I asked this question to everybody.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And they always end up with us.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Everybody loves a pasta. Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, it's you don't have to eat a lot of it,
and it's kind of filling. Yeah, and you can drink
some wine with it.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
And then there's some such so many varieties of pasta
that that gets exciting, you know. But and when you
go to a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, the varieties are incredible.
So I like to try.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Let's go the next time I'm here. Are you going
to restaurants?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Are you avoiding them a little? I'm going to come
to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, Frank Garry, you are invited to the River Cafe. Invited.
That means you don't have to pay anything. And by
the way, jus are allowed.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Oh my god, that's terrible. Well, I will.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Become And also, you know, food is a pleasure, Yeah,
it is. It's so good and it's so great thing
to give yourself and then just eat it and have deliciously.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Okay. So in the morning for breakfast, I make I
take toast and I fry an egg and I put
it on the toast. That's good and that's what I have.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
If the egg is good and the toast is good,
and the butter is good and it's hot, then that's
a delicious meal. But you need to put a love
salt and pepper on it, and you need to eat
it with pleasure.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I know. Food is you know, it's important. And artists
and architects and designer is everyone's.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Part of right. I do make so eggs with coming out.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Okay, now it's coming out.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's not just the lots. I do both. Okay, that's
my specialty.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
All right, I'm coming all right, thank you. Frank. What's
frank Berry ice cream?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Frank Berry ice Cream company.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Named an ice cream? Is that right after you? Did
you know that?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, he saw something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I think having an ice cream named after you was
pretty cool. I say, you know, I can have a
building named after you, or.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
You know, snickerdoodle like it.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Frank Cary well, well, maybe we'll have to go get one.
I'm so excited to announce that we have a new book.
Squeeze Me has forty seven delicious lemon recipes from the
River Cafe, Beautiful full art by Ed Bouchet and words
(29:02):
by Heather Eyes.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Pre Order now
Host
Ruth Rogers
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