December 2, 2024 • 39 mins
When Michael McCarty walks into The River Cafe, he immediately fills the room with his warmth and kindness. Restaurants are, of course, what he knows best.
He and his wife Kim opened Michael’s in Santa Monica in 1979, bringing Californian cuisine to the world; artichokes, asparagus, tomatoes and peaches, grown in the sun and eaten under the sun. Ten years later, California came to New York when they introduced Michael’s to midtown Manhattan.
Today, they are with me in London, bringing their warmth and kindness to Table 4.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Me+Em
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
the British modern luxury clothing label designed for busy women.
Founded and designed in London. Me and M is about
intelligence style. Much thought and care are put into the
design process, so every piece is flattering, functional and made
to last forever. Me and M is well known for
its trousers and how I got to know the brand.
(00:22):
It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough
to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and
in its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're
in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. There is one email I cannot wait
(00:46):
to receive each year, and it always starts like this, Ruthy,
Kim and I are coming to London. Can we have
a table at the River Cafe and will you be there?
Answer to the first is yes and to the second, well,
yeah yes. When Michael McCarty walks in, he immediately fills
the room with his warmth and his kindness. He knows
what working in a restaurant means introducing himself, recognizing staff
(01:10):
from his last visit, and checking out the customers. Sean Owen,
our executive chef, told me that on Monday night, he
walked up to her at the pass and praised in
detail the grouse he had just eaten. Restaurants are, of course,
but he knows best. When he and Kim opened Michaels
in Santa Monica in nineteen seventy nine, they brought California
(01:31):
cuisine to the world, artichokes, asparagus, tomatoes, and peaches grown
in the sun and eaten under the sun. Ten years later,
California came to New York when they opened Michael's in
Midtown Manhattan. When my brother Michael also and his wife
Bianca married in New York, there was only one restaurant
they wanted to celebrate in. We are family, And when
(01:54):
Michael and Kim leave, I'll say goodbye, knowing there will
be another email in a few months time, Ruthie, We're coming.
Will you be there, And the answer will be yes.
So here we are, here, we are You're here in
the River Cafe. The sun is coming. You broughtably. It
was gray and grim, So what we'll do, if you're
(02:16):
happy to do that, is start by reading the recipe
for the grouse that you ate the other night.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, the roast grouse. This has all of my favorite
ingredients in it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh good, What are they?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
The ponchetta, the time garlic butter, butter butter, four slices
thin panchetta, two large fresh time, one garlic clove, peeled
and chopped, twenty five grams of unsalted butter, two hundred
and fifty milli liters aletico dipuglia. One grouse, plucked and cleaned.
(02:53):
So you start preheat the oven to three hundred two
hundred and thirty degrees. We're in England, so it's the
pus it two thirty.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Place the times brig on the breast of the bird,
cover with puncetta slices and tie the legs together. Put
the grouse in a rusting tin and cook. Depending on
the size and how rare you like the grouse, we
serve them slightly pink. The easiest way to test for
dunness is to pull the leg away from the body
at the thigh.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
It's still blue. Cook for a little longer.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Grouse very in roasting time because they differ so much
in size.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Remove from the oven and leave to rest two to
three minutes and untie the string. Put over a medium
high heat, add the wine reduced by half, Return the
bird to the pan, and coat in the juices.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Den serve. This is delicious, served with cavello nero.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Do you serve game and michaels.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We serve quail, squab, but they're all arm raised, beautiful though. Duck,
of course, we have great duck, but our squab is spectacular.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Squab is appeasial.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Pigeon, Yeah, your pigeon here.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
And the quails are sensational. That's about it, you know.
To me, I find pheasant unless it's perfect, it is
too dry. I mean that grouse last night was spectacular.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So tell me about growing up the McCarty household. Was
eating important in your.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Yes, it was a very interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
We grew up in New York in the Hudson Valley,
in a little town called Briartliffe, Manor. My dad commuted
thirty years to New York. My mother he worked with
General Electric. He was the founder of the corporate communications
for Ge and the forty In the late forties, right
after the War, and he graduated from Michigan with my
(04:46):
mother and they moved to Schenectady, New York, which is
where he goes there. The building is still there, and
my father was put in a room and the guy
who hired him said, this is your this is going
to be your partner and doing this turned out it
was Kurt Vonnegut. So my father and Kurt spent five
years in that ge. Yeah, and they were there. If
(05:08):
you look at some of his beginning books there will
all take place in Connectedy. And then in about nineteen
fifty they he went on to become a full time writer,
and my dad moved to New York and City, but
we remained. They remained friends all the way up until
my father passed away. But yeah, at any rate, the
whole crowd of my parents' friends loved to party.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Party.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
They entertained all the time, all seasons. We had a
little beach shack in miss Carmiket, Rhode Islands. We were
there and in Vermont in the winter, and everywhere we went,
you know, we learned quickly, you know, what was growing
there and how to cook it, and what were the traditions.
And my mother and father, you know, It's not like
(05:54):
today wherebody telectrically talks about food.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
You know, it was more like this.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
This would have been in the fifties and the sixties. Yeah,
But the thing is, I really got into this because
of the The allure was the entertainment aspect.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So they would have fun.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
They had huge party, huge parties.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
One party called the ten to ten and there were
people that stayed from ten in the morning until ten
at night. And there were like five different menus throughout
that whole time.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We participating or did you sit on the steps and
watch both? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
After a while, I was in the kitchen with my
mother and she'd make her beef stragging off or she'd
make you know, my father would make these like really
good barbecue port tenderloins and grill them and you know, and.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
The whole thing. Again. It was always very simple.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, tell me about the house with the kitchen. Was
it a big kitchen?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, my father, working for GE, we every house, we
moved to the appliances. She'd tear out the garden and
she'd tear out the kitchen. Those are the two things. Yeah,
And so she always had the latest ge you know,
like I remember in New York at the one house
we lived in, she put in the beginning of the
modern sort of Jensen George Jensen super you know, modern
(07:08):
refrigerators hidden in this into that and always but they
always had a barbecue outside.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
She have a collection of cookbooks.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
She I gave her the Well she cooked basically from
the New York Times cookbook and book Oh very good.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Yeah, the sixties seventies. Yeah, that was that was the
good cookbook.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I introduced her to Julia Child after I got back
from France, and we got her the Double Whammy, you know,
the two cookbooks, and she poured over them.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
She passed away.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Recently, we got all the cookbooks the back. We have
them in a room in a box right now. We
went through them once. But yeah, a lot of mementos
before we leave home.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Tell me about your growing up in your house, kimed was.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
My household was very different because when I was born
in Los Angeles, but my parents were from Youngstown, Ohio.
We moved abroad to outside of Geneva, a little area
called Conche when I was five. My father said he
couldn't get a job anywhere. He was a chemical engineering
and he kind of figured out this paint company. So
he was a great salesman going around places. So we
(08:17):
my mother being from the Midwest, she saw, you know,
all this fresh salad in Geneva and all this.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Stuff, but it had bugs in it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And they were very post war, you know, fifties sixties,
so we had to go to like we were like
army brats. We went to the canteen and got chef's
boy ard and iceberg lettuce and American candies, and.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
That's what we would.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Eat fair enough. Yes, So she didn't know the place,
the language, probably, and so she looked for.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So we were always at the dentist because we had
so many cavities. And yes, it wasn't until much much
later that we realized that all the nutrients that were
in these you know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Food could cheese to be in.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Excellent, excellent And for the I mean I was there
from five to sixteen.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Was what did they entertain? They did?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
They did not that much, not that much because my
father was one of those men who were always traveling,
always traveling, so we did not. It was very, very
differct because Michael's family, Michael's family was all about food.
My family, I was a family of three girls, him
a family of four boys. So we always had to
(09:33):
be on diets, you know, because that my father is
very strict that way.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
They're pickers. They pick all day.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Oh I see little bit sol day.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Little bits all day.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Did you leave home at an age to go to college?
You went to Frost.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
I went to Frandsen as a junior in high school.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So I'm sixteen and I got accepted to this program
school year abroad. They had one in ren Brittany and
one in Barcelona, and fifty young kids eat from all
over and we would go and they put you in
a family and you spend the year there and then
you know, your brain is still clean, so you really
(10:11):
pick up the fluency of the language. But the night
before I got on the boat, my parents took me
to Laurent, which was one of the classic you know,
lives and lies in New York. And it looked like
Maxims and it was September, and it was everybody was stunning,
and everybody dressed up in those days, and they were
all tann and they were all eating and having a
(10:32):
big time, going, my god, this is just like my parents' parties.
About halfway through the meal, in walks the owner, and
the whole electricity level in the room ratcheted up like
there was no tomorrow. He started working the tables like
we do, you know, and you're greeting all your friends
and your guests, and you're meeting new people, and it's
a riot, and everybody's going crazy about the food and
(10:52):
all of that. And then at the end of the meal,
we had this glorious meal. And at the end of
the meal, you know, they bring a check. And I said, well,
now this makes sense because my father a businessman, you know,
I go back and forth, they go, wow, this is
a throw party, and then give everybody a check.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
You see, so it's a business.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The next day I get on the boat and it
is the SS Aurelia, which was his last voyage. But
it had fifteen hundred school year abroad students, most of
them except for the fifty of us were in college,
and it was run by the Italians. So and it
took eleven days to get to La Harvo.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
Eleven eleven. I was like, you do do do?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I went it was five?
Speaker 5 (11:33):
I think, yeah, no, no, this was a tanker. And
at any rate, you know, they had five.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Meals a day they had boothe Yeah, so it was
were sixteen. I was sixteen, Yeah, so it was pretty
rowdy eleven days. But then I landed in Laharvor and
I went to put in my family. And my family
was a very interesting Breton family, you know, classic folklore,
love Britney. Guess what they did all the time?
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Eat, party, party, eat.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
They had a house on the beach like we did.
They had one in the country. They had a nine
hundred year old chatteau that had never seen repairs and
maintenance for eight hundred and sixty of those years, and
broom one over. You know, I mean it was completely crazy.
But I'd go down and there'd be the person that
grew all the vegetables, the one who did the chickens,
the one who did the beef, the.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Pork, And that's who explained to me.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The Eeko hotelier, the French hotel and restaurant school if
you wanted to be a chef. We didn't have those
in America. So then I went back to Paris. Spent
the first half of the seventies in Paris, and that
did it.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
You just studied cooking there, Yes, I graduated.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Did you want to cook or did you want to
be an owner?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, I realized early on I wanted to have a restaurant,
and I realized early on that you had to be
a good chef, and.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
It helps, it helps.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, you know, you have the classic idea, you know,
your chef walks out of you on a Saturday night,
what happens. So it was sort of that ingrained in
the fact, but I really got into it, you know,
I mean living in Paris.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What year were you in Paris?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
It's seventy two three, and that's when I was there.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Were you, Yeah, because Richard was building the Pompadou That's
exactly when.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
That's exactly when it was happening.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, we were, we were, so we must have.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
Because Leo was still there, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
And where did you live in Paris?
Speaker 5 (13:15):
I lived in several places.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I lived right next to the rue uftaal the market, yeah,
the yeah, and then I lived on El San Luis
in the beginning, and it was.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
What were you doing? Did you work in restaurants?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I worked one night in the three star restaurant it
was less Air, yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Said that's on the on the right back, yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Yeah. And after working one day there. I said, this
is not for me.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
You know, I can learn more eating in this restaurant
in one meal than I can spending. You know, this
was still the old archaic way of running restaurants. What
was that, you know, where you are sentenced to the
potatoes for six months.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Yeah, and then they move on to the mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You know, it was still Remember this was the beginning
of the new bel cuisine revolution, and you had the
Gonemeo had just opened, and I was taught at the
Cold on Blue.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Which I went through for two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yea, oh yeah, and that's where I met Julia in
nineteen seventy two. Child, you know, she had come back
and Madame Brassal it was this little tiny owner.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
She said, Michael, I think you need to meet this lady.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So we went to lunch and it was at two
o'clock and by seven we finished lunch. So we became
pals for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And so you went the court of the You studied restaurant,
or did you I.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Studied that was cooking, that was entirely cooking. And then
at the Eco Hotel.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
You study in the three years you study all three
you studied cooking mostly, then management, and then dining room.
My first restaurant was actually in Anio, San Luis.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
It was a totally illegal I could have come.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It was as big as this room. It'st lit. Twenty people. Yeah,
and uh you know e Sel Louis was a different
town in those days. It was more like a village.
It had two fish guys three.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Weeks, oh fabulous, several Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Well, my cooking school got out at about seven every night,
so I would pre order the night before from everybody there. Wow,
and then they would it would be on my doorstep
when I got there, so I could cook for my
thirty or forty people.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
And what did you cook?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, that was the beginning of how I sort of
created what the modern American New American food again, like
you did last night with the with the grouse. You know,
you take a protein in the market. You got really
simple herbs, You use butter, you use salt and pepper,
and you accompany it with like a little pasta or
little little vegetables, you know, but very simple and stunning fish.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
You know. Everything we did all that, we began to
compose the South.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It was a good fish because we lived in the Mariy.
We lived on the Route Descent and then we lived
in the past and honestly, I used to get my
laundry done on the There was that launder maat and
I chose it because, you know, you crossed the sin
every day to get your laundry, and I thought, well
of the city with their baby, then you could cross
(16:11):
the scinde to have your you know, your sheets washed.
It was it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, that was that was an amazing the first half
of the seventies in Paris.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
How long was your How did your restaurant exist?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, it was totally illegal and a totally fake. It
was in the bottom floor of a friend's building, okay,
And I just ran at that one year and then
you came back to and then I graduated while I
was in school.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Once I graduated in seventy four, I came back and.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's sort of where I learned what it means to
run a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and cristata from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, I screamed hoops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates, Salumi, Misti, Mozzarella, busquetta,
(17:06):
red and yellow peppers, Fortello, Tonado and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book. See you here? Did Michael cook
for you? Well?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Actually, this is an interesting story if I can just
say that the first meal in my apartment, he said
he's going to bring me dinner.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
So I had a little cat.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
I was then, you know, doing my design projects all night,
and he comes and he knocks on the door and
he has two live pheasants and it's like what like
for live? And he lets them fly around the apartment
and there's like they're going nuts nuts. So I grabbed
my cat, I shut him and.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Lock him in the apartment and I fly You.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Left him in the part.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I was doing two ways of preparing them, but I
had to start with you know, part of the theory
was how do you how do you prepare them?
Speaker 5 (18:13):
She ate it when she came back. I did not
eat it. I did not.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Was there a dessert?
Speaker 5 (18:19):
No, No, the dessert was in.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
The dessert when we were in going to school on Boulder, Colorado,
and Michael was teaching French cooking and French. My roommate
who said for the final you know, they would be
bringing a raspberry soufle and then I was just in.
I was in.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Food is seduction. It is? It is. You know, so
many people can remember by our friends in his podcast
that he remembers cooking for Willow, the first thing he
cooked for her. And you know, there was Michael Kaine's
movie The Hip Cress File where he's you know, and
I think food for you know, male or female is
(18:58):
part of It's very seductive. Actually, I think for women
to have a man cook sexy, don't you think.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
But at that time, again just going back to forty
now forty eight years, no young college person was a cook.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Mail was a cook. So everybody it was an.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Extremely extremely suspicious my family.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
What chef?
Speaker 4 (19:22):
You're kidding? You know, Now it's very elevated.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Thanks. So we actually haven't started with Michaels because Michaels
was your first major.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Major restaurant.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
It's still there. Yeah, it's a restaurant that really brought
the world a kind of way of looking at a
restaurant which was could be delicious food, incredible ingredients and fun.
It wasn't intimidating to make you feel stupid if you
didn't know the why. And so you did that at Michael's.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
And so called US California cuisine. Yes, really it was.
Calibarty was basically the first regional.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
American food, you know, which doesn't sound as sexy, but
that's what happened in California. That then moved to France,
that moved to Italy, and that moved to England where
instead of everybody cooking you know, remember I said, we've
taught at Scoffier cooking, but the new weal cuisine revolution
was going on, so you.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Could waiver back and forth.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And learning the Escofia method was extremely important to me
because that's the Latin of French cooking, and if you
learn that fluently, you can speak ten other languages.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
It's like knowing poetry before you write, for you verses exactly.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
And so that is what you know.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
When we we sourced everything, we had to convince probably
forty five different farmers to switch over to growing you know,
broad leave arugula. They didn't have basil, and you wanted spices.
In those days, you went to the supermarket, to the
dry spice rack.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
You know, there was nothing unless you grew a in
your house. But it you know again, and then that,
I mean, I remember the friend Chef's coming over and
they were going, you know what.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Nouvea because he sort of gave us to push, you know,
out of the nest. But now we're going to go
back and we're going to go back to our grandmother's food,
you know, and we're going to remember where we grew
up in Perry Gord or in Brittany or wherever, and
we're going to begin to go focus on that. I
remember Michel Garard. We're eating it the buttaufuk and he says,
I'm moving, yeah, And I said where you go? And
(21:30):
he says, my wife has this cool place down outside
of Bordeaux. He goes down there in the middle of nowhere.
It creates this whole thing based on that environment down there,
and it was just this beginning of that.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Did you find that it was tough in the beginning.
Did people come to the restaurant and say, Wow, this
is amazing or was it hard to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was people were surprised that it was so I
mean Michael was twenty five when we opened.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Did you have.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Investors who know?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
I mean spa loan?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Unfortunately things did not cost what the costs now to
build to build out a place. But also one thing
about Los Angeles and the way of dining is that
everything was very dark and dank used to be. It
was like the speakeasy feel that you would go to Dominic's.
So to have a restaurant that had a garden in
Los Angeles, whoa and then did not have the waiters
(22:27):
wear tuxedos. You know, I just were you know, Ralph
Lauren Polo.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I told Jerry Magden, who was in the food business,
in the art business and in the closes business, his
father owned magnets, and he's said, I'm not putting them
in tuxedos. Do you have a little young America? Everything
was about America. Do you have a young American designer
that we could utilize. His come over and he goes
see in the corner over there, that big that's that's
(22:55):
Ralph Lauren. He calls it Polo. I said, great, so
we we's still New York. In New York, use the
pink Polo shirt with the reptie and the khaki pants
and uh, and.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So your role in the restaurant was to be both
of you front of house and changed the menus.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Oh, I wrote the menus and then we had with
our original crew, we had like a stunning roster. And
Nancy Silverton, Yeah, she was the night cashier and she said,
I want to do that pastry prep thing, and so
she did that at night and then she came into
day and then I sent her to France to work
(23:36):
at Lenotre and plant and she came back and was
our pastry chef and she she fell in love with
the grill guy, Mark Peel, and they opened camp But
before that they they went and opened Spago for Wolfgang.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Then they opened Campani.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Wolfgang was amazing too.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
Oh yeah, you think that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I remember going to melt Maison and the I that
this French restaurant and you know that it was great
in the car park, wasn't it? But it was incredible,
was food and fun. But that you know, his next
restaurant was basically Pizzaza.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Pa was shocking, yeah, shocking.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, that was it and he did that and that
was we all friends.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
We you from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, John thing I think is that when you start
a restaurant, you know, everybody tells you how competitive that throat.
And what Rose and I found was people were so kind,
you know. And when Rose died, the place was full
of I think they were all calling each other and
saying you better get down there and help WOI but
I mean I never knew that. But I've never found
(24:42):
it that cut through. Maybe it's just the people that
we deal with, people that we like to be with
the kind.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Of restaurants we run.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I think it's a good group, don't you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Like For our sixteen for our forty fifth anniversary party,
I had sixteen of my former chef's come back and
cook and it was like, you know, five of the
Barbravos stars now and all this and that, and they
were all there and they had a blast, and we
had four hundred people and they ate everything under the sun.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think the values that what you learned in
those early early early days stayed with you?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Oh? Completely?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And what would what if you somebody was going to
say I'm going to open a little restaurant or a
big restaurant, was do you have some values that you
would say? I mean, I have some and I wonder
what yours might be.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, well, again, I think you have to be completely
clear on what your concept is and does anybody care
about that concept? You know, there's a lot of people
that randomly open places. You know, again, it's a combination
of your location and what you're trying to put in
that location. And today it's even it's the craziest I've
(25:47):
ever seen it. In the mid seventies, there were six
or seven restaurants in any major city in the United States.
Now there's like thirty in every neighborhood. I mean, you
come to la you can up believe it. And they
keep opening and they keep closing, which is something that's
always happened.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
No, the values are simple, you know. You you really
have to have your idea down. You got to understand
the market today worse than before. You could be much
more naive in the old days.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
And like labor cost, Yeah, labor is the worst, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And fortunately, our ability to buy ingredients, I mean, the
food we buy today is so unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I mean, you know, we started the Farmer's Market and
in Santa Monica forty years ago.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
And you say we started the Farmer's Market, who started.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
As the City of Santa Monica, gave us the space
as a community outreach, right, you know this It was
very early on. Yeah, and in Santa Monica was a
tough city. I was chairman of the Arts Foundation. We
did a lot of public art and they thought that
the idea of this would be good. We said, are
(26:56):
you kidding? And so they put it together and you know,
then we had to find Remember during seventy five to
when I opened seventy nine, half my battle was finding
farmers to grow the products that we wanted. And you know,
we brought all the seeds in for France. I flew
in duck eggs. We started a duck farm because that
(27:17):
was the one product that was not up to snuff.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
We'd go to the airport at two o'clock in the
morning to pick up fish and cheese.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
My big mistake was not founding fed eggs.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yea, we did.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
We.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I mean some time we didn't have to go probably
as far. But Rose and I used to bring back
cheeses from We'd go to Italy and bring back parmesand
you know, there's a famous story about Rose ordering to
bring back a huge pumpkin, and they wouldn't let her
put it in baggage. So she booked a seat for
the pumpkin. Yeah, she put a seat. And then it
(27:49):
turned out that that was the only seat. The head
was in club class. And so we always said the
pumpkin came back club, but we came back and I
love it. And you know one of but now, the
access to ingredients. I remember there was when we did
our first cookbook, Random House said that we had to trial.
Maybe it was in New York Times that a woman
who lived in Maine and she had to be able
(28:11):
for every recipe that was in the book, be able
to buy the ingredients within forty miles of our house.
Oh my god, you know, so forget salted anchovies, salted kickers,
or you know. But California, we always do think of
California as the farmland of oh yeah, of great.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Well, you know it was. It was a very interesting time.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I mean, Alice Waters in, Jeremiah Tower and Mark Miller
and Berkeley, and you know, they had a wonderful growing
regions around there. Plus they had the fish and us
down in southern California. We had a little country called
Mexico that had one of the greatest, greatest growing regions
and our own area vent Tour north of US is
(28:49):
called the ox Start Plains, one of the five biggest
best growing regions in the world. And you know, the
strawberries had come from there, Harry's berries everything.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
You know, it's tomatoes.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And you were involved in the restaurants from the very beginning.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, just by default. I mean I was in
design school. I always have always had an art practice.
But yes, fortunately, you know, it's a mixed thing because
with Michael having many different restaurants at some point someone
when in Denver, went in Detroit, Washington, d C.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
When he wasn't traveling.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I always felt the responsibility of having a presence there.
And that being said, I mean, as you know, in
the restaurant business, and a lot of the men that
own the restaurant businesses, they don't want their wives involved.
Michael is a very you know, he's a.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Generous person.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Because even though it was a lot of work on
my end, I was fortunate that I could actually be involved.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Were also what was also very important is that we
had such we were such a gathering place for all
the artists.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
It's anemonica Venice, tell me about the artists. Oh, listen,
I mean we had.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Deepencorn at Hockney. I mean Robert Graham who you know.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I mean that was really Venice was the kind of
hub then and also for the past since we opened,
we always had a space upstairs that I always put
up shows of all the arts coordinate, so like you know,
I even did shows of Ed Ruscha, the playwright, David
Mammott because.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
He's a photographer.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Photographer, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I used to teach I myself used to teach a
class for architects, so all the architects. I would do
a lot of shows for them, and it was so
charming because here there they were all competing on big projects.
These were all the LA architects.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
And then they'd have their painting on the wall and
they go, oh, I'm so nervous, I have my painting
on the wall.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
You know, it was like so personal for them.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. What about the move to New York.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Well that we did in nineteen eighty nine. Again, like
Kim was pointing out, those days of restaurants were totally dark. Yeah,
totally you know, what do you call the red velvet curtains.
You could be there at noon and it was like
you were there at midnight. And so we're sitting in
this dark bar. We walked through this dark, cavernous thing
and open up the back door and there's this huge
(31:29):
garden out in the back and I go back quietly
and I say, this is it. This is the place
I can tell I know exactly yet.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And what's the dress?
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Twenty four West fifty fifth.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So that's right in the theater.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Yeah, we're right just above, just above the.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Also in a lot of media television.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The whole media world was there. Everybody's still there. Yeah,
but all the italent.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
Agencies were there. You know, I seem was out the corner.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
William Morris, JA was the days of the three martini lunch?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Was that it was the beginning of the transition out
of that funny enough because and.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Women and women becoming major business women. Yeah, that was the.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Big changes thing. Well, tell me about the.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well I think that also, Well, since I've always been
a salad eater, you know, Michael started adding salads and
greens to and the men were being concerned about their
diets and how they were looking. But I think since
Michael and his staff were the first that really engaged
with the women that walked in the doors, and they
felt comfortable, they didn't feel like they were put upon,
(32:33):
you know, and they felt like they were given some
you know, gredence, and uh, they all just started to
come there. And then when all the women started, of
course all the men come too. And it's always felt.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
It was a very big literary Yes.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, always came always, yes, it always came yeah, my
brother Michael.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But all the agents from CM and CIA and William
Morris came, and most of.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
Them were women.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Remember something. We I found the place in nineteen seventy nine.
It took me until nineteen eighty nine to make the
deal with it.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Young we know, Wow, he was seventy eight to start,
seventy nine when you opened Michael's.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah in LA and we were supposed to open in
nineteen eighty and I was so wedded to this place
that I waited until nineteen eighty nine. He calls me
and he says, okay, So that was one of the
reasons we took off like a bat out of hell.
There was because during that entire ten year period, anybody
from New York that came to La eight in our restaurant,
So we had a complete list of people that knew
(33:36):
who we were when we opened, it just took off
like a bat.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
If you were thinking now about the changes, people always
say to me, I've never been interested in trends or
fashion or what's going to be the next big thing
at all. You know, I just say, we just try
and do better. You know, we try and do better.
But do you find that people who eat in the
restaurants now are a different kind of crowd. I kind
of think that here in love and they've become more
(34:01):
interested in food. They're really interested, you know, that's they're
more traveled, that they're interested about wine. Really and do
you think they've also become more more you find that
people are more demand they would eat off menu or you.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Know, Unfortunately, the kind of style of the cooking we
do is so accessible, and we made it that way,
you know, as Kim said, you know, we were in
the land of the bounty of the greens, and so
the vegetables and the nobody had a salad on their menu,
you know, you ordered to sell I be remember how
the French they would eat it after dinner.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Yes, you know, God forbid, they had cheese.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
But Coleman Andrews could never get over the fact that
we had this unbelievable dessert table that had a cheese
plate on it that was bigger than the desserts, and
that took a lot of getting people.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
Too used to it.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Americans. When I was growing up, you'd have cheese, like
with your drinks in the beginning.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Always always no.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But I mean I think that the explosion of the
different kinds of food or remember something. When I opened
its seventy nine, you wanted Italian food.
Speaker 5 (35:10):
There were two kinds. Northern Italian with the white sauce,
Southern Italian with the reds. That was it.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
There was none of this regional stuff, you know. I
mean it was there, but nobody ate it. And the
rest but Chinese food, same thing, fake Chinese food. This
is before the Japanese went nuts and the Thaie and
the Vietnamese and everything. I mean, it's so widespread now,
it's like, as I say, the revolution was televised.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
It's working, you know, it is exciting.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I think you know, as you say, there, it can
be difficult. We can say yeah, we try and say yes.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I think these days you say yes to everything.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Don't you think it makes.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Like yeah, the world, the restaurant world is definitely not
in a great place. It's especially in America. Least we
have a ton that are closing. You know, it is
so costly to operate in America today. People keep talking
about inflation in the cost of food. Is it that's expensive,
(36:05):
But it's not like labor costs.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
And you asked earlier about what kind of advice would
you get give to someone young wanting to open a restaurant,
I said, get a great least. That's the number one
reason why restaurants go out of business. They can't afford
you know, they got stars in their eyes and they go, yeah,
sure we'll sign that, you know, and you can't afford that.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
You know. It's fundamental rules.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
So food is you know, restaurants are all this excitement
and they're also fun and friendly, but they're also comfort
and so is food. Food is Letty thinks food is
something that you want to share or when you have
excitement because you're in a new city. But it's also comfort.
So if you had to go to food for comfort,
is there a food would you like to go for
(36:49):
a kid?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, I probably would always go for your stratch oftel
on ice cream?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Oh ours?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Oh, because actually my fond that it had to be
from the River Company. No, but I definitely because my
father who always felt that we ate too much, but
we would always give.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
We give him like leaders.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Buy them from you your strate to tell ice creams and.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
In the middle of the night we'd all go scoop and.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Skipping ice cream in the middle and it was just
would bring such joy.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It's an accurate statement from Kim because her favorite thing
in the world is dessert and ice cream in particular.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
She can dispense with the rest.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, I just have us. I love us. What would
your comfort food?
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Oh? I got too many.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I mean it's insane, you don't have rules.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I am a pork guy. I'm a consummate pork chops uh,
fresh time grilled, pan seared. I find the veal and
pork are best pants seared uh.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
And I'm a big fan of Bays English muffins.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You may not know them, but they are from Chicago
and they're particular that my mother. We they're they have
a certain baking soda taste to it. It's not sour though,
it's not white, it's not wheat and it is spectacular.
And I do that with Lando Lakes butter and chunky
(38:15):
peanut butter and Smuckers strawberry.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
More and more.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Yeah, and then I eat it with a slice of
thirty year old butter.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Peanut butter and strawberry and more butter on the top side,
more on top of the both both sides. You put
the butter on, Okay, then you put the Then you
put the peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Is it melted, So there's the butter. Is it hot?
Speaker 5 (38:36):
It's hot. Yeah, you toast it.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
You put that on it. Then you put the strawberry.
Then you put the top on it. And you eat
that with a big glass of milk and a side
of compete thirty year old compte.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That because it wasn't enough on it.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
No, No, it's the balance again, okay, the balance of that.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Could I have one of those at Michael's?
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Yeah, No, it's not on the menu in our brunch days.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It's so bad for you, It's okay.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Turkey BLTs is another one the day after Thanksgiving. Yeah,
we make turkey belts on those same English muffets with
a very thick tons of Helmans mayonnaise.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Okay, I'm coming home. Where does the mayonnaise go? This
isn't the BLT doesn't go on that other.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
No, no, Hello, my father was a peanut, butter and
mayonnaise guy.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So let's go have some food now and have some
fun and some hungry aleviation and comfort. Thank you very much,
thank you, thank you,
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
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It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough
to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and
in its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're
in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. There is one email I cannot wait
(00:46):
to receive each year, and it always starts like this, Ruthy,
Kim and I are coming to London. Can we have
a table at the River Cafe and will you be there?
Answer to the first is yes and to the second, well,
yeah yes. When Michael McCarty walks in, he immediately fills
the room with his warmth and his kindness. He knows
what working in a restaurant means introducing himself, recognizing staff
(01:10):
from his last visit, and checking out the customers. Sean Owen,
our executive chef, told me that on Monday night, he
walked up to her at the pass and praised in
detail the grouse he had just eaten. Restaurants are, of course,
but he knows best. When he and Kim opened Michaels
in Santa Monica in nineteen seventy nine, they brought California
(01:31):
cuisine to the world, artichokes, asparagus, tomatoes, and peaches grown
in the sun and eaten under the sun. Ten years later,
California came to New York when they opened Michael's in
Midtown Manhattan. When my brother Michael also and his wife
Bianca married in New York, there was only one restaurant
they wanted to celebrate in. We are family, And when
(01:54):
Michael and Kim leave, I'll say goodbye, knowing there will
be another email in a few months time, Ruthie, We're coming.
Will you be there, And the answer will be yes.
So here we are, here, we are You're here in
the River Cafe. The sun is coming. You broughtably. It
was gray and grim, So what we'll do, if you're
(02:16):
happy to do that, is start by reading the recipe
for the grouse that you ate the other night.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, the roast grouse. This has all of my favorite
ingredients in it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh good, What are they?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
The ponchetta, the time garlic butter, butter butter, four slices
thin panchetta, two large fresh time, one garlic clove, peeled
and chopped, twenty five grams of unsalted butter, two hundred
and fifty milli liters aletico dipuglia. One grouse, plucked and cleaned.
(02:53):
So you start preheat the oven to three hundred two
hundred and thirty degrees. We're in England, so it's the
pus it two thirty.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Place the times brig on the breast of the bird,
cover with puncetta slices and tie the legs together. Put
the grouse in a rusting tin and cook. Depending on
the size and how rare you like the grouse, we
serve them slightly pink. The easiest way to test for
dunness is to pull the leg away from the body
at the thigh.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
It's still blue. Cook for a little longer.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Grouse very in roasting time because they differ so much
in size.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Remove from the oven and leave to rest two to
three minutes and untie the string. Put over a medium
high heat, add the wine reduced by half, Return the
bird to the pan, and coat in the juices.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Den serve. This is delicious, served with cavello nero.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Do you serve game and michaels.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
We serve quail, squab, but they're all arm raised, beautiful though. Duck,
of course, we have great duck, but our squab is spectacular.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Squab is appeasial.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Pigeon, Yeah, your pigeon here.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
And the quails are sensational. That's about it, you know.
To me, I find pheasant unless it's perfect, it is
too dry. I mean that grouse last night was spectacular.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So tell me about growing up the McCarty household. Was
eating important in your.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Yes, it was a very interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
We grew up in New York in the Hudson Valley,
in a little town called Briartliffe, Manor. My dad commuted
thirty years to New York. My mother he worked with
General Electric. He was the founder of the corporate communications
for Ge and the forty In the late forties, right
after the War, and he graduated from Michigan with my
(04:46):
mother and they moved to Schenectady, New York, which is
where he goes there. The building is still there, and
my father was put in a room and the guy
who hired him said, this is your this is going
to be your partner and doing this turned out it
was Kurt Vonnegut. So my father and Kurt spent five
years in that ge. Yeah, and they were there. If
(05:08):
you look at some of his beginning books there will
all take place in Connectedy. And then in about nineteen
fifty they he went on to become a full time writer,
and my dad moved to New York and City, but
we remained. They remained friends all the way up until
my father passed away. But yeah, at any rate, the
whole crowd of my parents' friends loved to party.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Party.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
They entertained all the time, all seasons. We had a
little beach shack in miss Carmiket, Rhode Islands. We were
there and in Vermont in the winter, and everywhere we went,
you know, we learned quickly, you know, what was growing
there and how to cook it, and what were the traditions.
And my mother and father, you know, It's not like
(05:54):
today wherebody telectrically talks about food.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
You know, it was more like this.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
This would have been in the fifties and the sixties. Yeah,
But the thing is, I really got into this because
of the The allure was the entertainment aspect.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So they would have fun.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
They had huge party, huge parties.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
One party called the ten to ten and there were
people that stayed from ten in the morning until ten
at night. And there were like five different menus throughout
that whole time.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We participating or did you sit on the steps and
watch both? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (06:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
After a while, I was in the kitchen with my
mother and she'd make her beef stragging off or she'd
make you know, my father would make these like really
good barbecue port tenderloins and grill them and you know, and.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
The whole thing. Again. It was always very simple.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, tell me about the house with the kitchen. Was
it a big kitchen?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, my father, working for GE, we every house, we
moved to the appliances. She'd tear out the garden and
she'd tear out the kitchen. Those are the two things. Yeah,
And so she always had the latest ge you know,
like I remember in New York at the one house
we lived in, she put in the beginning of the
modern sort of Jensen George Jensen super you know, modern
(07:08):
refrigerators hidden in this into that and always but they
always had a barbecue outside.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
She have a collection of cookbooks.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
She I gave her the Well she cooked basically from
the New York Times cookbook and book Oh very good.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Yeah, the sixties seventies. Yeah, that was that was the
good cookbook.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I introduced her to Julia Child after I got back
from France, and we got her the Double Whammy, you know,
the two cookbooks, and she poured over them.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
She passed away.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Recently, we got all the cookbooks the back. We have
them in a room in a box right now. We
went through them once. But yeah, a lot of mementos
before we leave home.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Tell me about your growing up in your house, kimed was.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
My household was very different because when I was born
in Los Angeles, but my parents were from Youngstown, Ohio.
We moved abroad to outside of Geneva, a little area
called Conche when I was five. My father said he
couldn't get a job anywhere. He was a chemical engineering
and he kind of figured out this paint company. So
he was a great salesman going around places. So we
(08:17):
my mother being from the Midwest, she saw, you know,
all this fresh salad in Geneva and all this.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Stuff, but it had bugs in it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And they were very post war, you know, fifties sixties,
so we had to go to like we were like
army brats. We went to the canteen and got chef's
boy ard and iceberg lettuce and American candies, and.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
That's what we would.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Eat fair enough. Yes, So she didn't know the place,
the language, probably, and so she looked for.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So we were always at the dentist because we had
so many cavities. And yes, it wasn't until much much
later that we realized that all the nutrients that were
in these you know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Food could cheese to be in.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Excellent, excellent And for the I mean I was there
from five to sixteen.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Was what did they entertain? They did?
Speaker 3 (09:12):
They did not that much, not that much because my
father was one of those men who were always traveling,
always traveling, so we did not. It was very, very
differct because Michael's family, Michael's family was all about food.
My family, I was a family of three girls, him
a family of four boys. So we always had to
(09:33):
be on diets, you know, because that my father is
very strict that way.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
They're pickers. They pick all day.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Oh I see little bit sol day.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
Little bits all day.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Did you leave home at an age to go to college?
You went to Frost.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
I went to Frandsen as a junior in high school.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So I'm sixteen and I got accepted to this program
school year abroad. They had one in ren Brittany and
one in Barcelona, and fifty young kids eat from all
over and we would go and they put you in
a family and you spend the year there and then
you know, your brain is still clean, so you really
(10:11):
pick up the fluency of the language. But the night
before I got on the boat, my parents took me
to Laurent, which was one of the classic you know,
lives and lies in New York. And it looked like
Maxims and it was September, and it was everybody was stunning,
and everybody dressed up in those days, and they were
all tann and they were all eating and having a
(10:32):
big time, going, my god, this is just like my parents' parties.
About halfway through the meal, in walks the owner, and
the whole electricity level in the room ratcheted up like
there was no tomorrow. He started working the tables like
we do, you know, and you're greeting all your friends
and your guests, and you're meeting new people, and it's
a riot, and everybody's going crazy about the food and
(10:52):
all of that. And then at the end of the meal,
we had this glorious meal. And at the end of
the meal, you know, they bring a check. And I said, well,
now this makes sense because my father a businessman, you know,
I go back and forth, they go, wow, this is
a throw party, and then give everybody a check.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
You see, so it's a business.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The next day I get on the boat and it
is the SS Aurelia, which was his last voyage. But
it had fifteen hundred school year abroad students, most of
them except for the fifty of us were in college,
and it was run by the Italians. So and it
took eleven days to get to La Harvo.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
Eleven eleven. I was like, you do do do?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I went it was five?
Speaker 5 (11:33):
I think, yeah, no, no, this was a tanker. And
at any rate, you know, they had five.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Meals a day they had boothe Yeah, so it was
were sixteen. I was sixteen, Yeah, so it was pretty
rowdy eleven days. But then I landed in Laharvor and
I went to put in my family. And my family
was a very interesting Breton family, you know, classic folklore,
love Britney. Guess what they did all the time?
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Eat, party, party, eat.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
They had a house on the beach like we did.
They had one in the country. They had a nine
hundred year old chatteau that had never seen repairs and
maintenance for eight hundred and sixty of those years, and
broom one over. You know, I mean it was completely crazy.
But I'd go down and there'd be the person that
grew all the vegetables, the one who did the chickens,
the one who did the beef, the.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
Pork, And that's who explained to me.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The Eeko hotelier, the French hotel and restaurant school if
you wanted to be a chef. We didn't have those
in America. So then I went back to Paris. Spent
the first half of the seventies in Paris, and that
did it.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
You just studied cooking there, Yes, I graduated.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Did you want to cook or did you want to
be an owner?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well, I realized early on I wanted to have a restaurant,
and I realized early on that you had to be
a good chef, and.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
It helps, it helps.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, you know, you have the classic idea, you know,
your chef walks out of you on a Saturday night,
what happens. So it was sort of that ingrained in
the fact, but I really got into it, you know,
I mean living in Paris.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What year were you in Paris?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
It's seventy two three, and that's when I was there.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Were you, Yeah, because Richard was building the Pompadou That's
exactly when.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
That's exactly when it was happening.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, we were, we were, so we must have.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
Because Leo was still there, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
And where did you live in Paris?
Speaker 5 (13:15):
I lived in several places.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I lived right next to the rue uftaal the market, yeah,
the yeah, and then I lived on El San Luis
in the beginning, and it was.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
What were you doing? Did you work in restaurants?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I worked one night in the three star restaurant it
was less Air, yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Said that's on the on the right back, yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
Yeah. And after working one day there. I said, this
is not for me.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
You know, I can learn more eating in this restaurant
in one meal than I can spending. You know, this
was still the old archaic way of running restaurants. What
was that, you know, where you are sentenced to the
potatoes for six months.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Yeah, and then they move on to the mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
You know, it was still Remember this was the beginning
of the new bel cuisine revolution, and you had the
Gonemeo had just opened, and I was taught at the
Cold on Blue.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Which I went through for two and a half years.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yea, oh yeah, and that's where I met Julia in
nineteen seventy two. Child, you know, she had come back
and Madame Brassal it was this little tiny owner.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
She said, Michael, I think you need to meet this lady.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
So we went to lunch and it was at two
o'clock and by seven we finished lunch. So we became
pals for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And so you went the court of the You studied restaurant,
or did you I.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Studied that was cooking, that was entirely cooking. And then
at the Eco Hotel.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
You study in the three years you study all three
you studied cooking mostly, then management, and then dining room.
My first restaurant was actually in Anio, San Luis.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
It was a totally illegal I could have come.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It was as big as this room. It'st lit. Twenty people. Yeah,
and uh you know e Sel Louis was a different
town in those days. It was more like a village.
It had two fish guys three.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
Weeks, oh fabulous, several Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Well, my cooking school got out at about seven every night,
so I would pre order the night before from everybody there. Wow,
and then they would it would be on my doorstep
when I got there, so I could cook for my
thirty or forty people.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
And what did you cook?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, that was the beginning of how I sort of
created what the modern American New American food again, like
you did last night with the with the grouse. You know,
you take a protein in the market. You got really
simple herbs, You use butter, you use salt and pepper,
and you accompany it with like a little pasta or
little little vegetables, you know, but very simple and stunning fish.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
You know. Everything we did all that, we began to
compose the South.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
It was a good fish because we lived in the Mariy.
We lived on the Route Descent and then we lived
in the past and honestly, I used to get my
laundry done on the There was that launder maat and
I chose it because, you know, you crossed the sin
every day to get your laundry, and I thought, well
of the city with their baby, then you could cross
(16:11):
the scinde to have your you know, your sheets washed.
It was it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, that was that was an amazing the first half
of the seventies in Paris.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
How long was your How did your restaurant exist?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, it was totally illegal and a totally fake. It
was in the bottom floor of a friend's building, okay,
And I just ran at that one year and then
you came back to and then I graduated while I
was in school.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Once I graduated in seventy four, I came back and.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
That's sort of where I learned what it means to
run a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and cristata from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, I screamed hoops and
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates, Salumi, Misti, Mozzarella, busquetta,
(17:06):
red and yellow peppers, Fortello, Tonado and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book. See you here? Did Michael cook
for you? Well?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Actually, this is an interesting story if I can just
say that the first meal in my apartment, he said
he's going to bring me dinner.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
So I had a little cat.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
I was then, you know, doing my design projects all night,
and he comes and he knocks on the door and
he has two live pheasants and it's like what like
for live? And he lets them fly around the apartment
and there's like they're going nuts nuts. So I grabbed
my cat, I shut him and.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Lock him in the apartment and I fly You.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Left him in the part.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I was doing two ways of preparing them, but I
had to start with you know, part of the theory
was how do you how do you prepare them?
Speaker 5 (18:13):
She ate it when she came back. I did not
eat it. I did not.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Was there a dessert?
Speaker 5 (18:19):
No, No, the dessert was in.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
The dessert when we were in going to school on Boulder, Colorado,
and Michael was teaching French cooking and French. My roommate
who said for the final you know, they would be
bringing a raspberry soufle and then I was just in.
I was in.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Food is seduction. It is? It is. You know, so
many people can remember by our friends in his podcast
that he remembers cooking for Willow, the first thing he
cooked for her. And you know, there was Michael Kaine's
movie The Hip Cress File where he's you know, and
I think food for you know, male or female is
(18:58):
part of It's very seductive. Actually, I think for women
to have a man cook sexy, don't you think.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
But at that time, again just going back to forty
now forty eight years, no young college person was a cook.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Mail was a cook. So everybody it was an.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Extremely extremely suspicious my family.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
What chef?
Speaker 4 (19:22):
You're kidding? You know, Now it's very elevated.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Thanks. So we actually haven't started with Michaels because Michaels
was your first major.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Major restaurant.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
It's still there. Yeah, it's a restaurant that really brought
the world a kind of way of looking at a
restaurant which was could be delicious food, incredible ingredients and fun.
It wasn't intimidating to make you feel stupid if you
didn't know the why. And so you did that at Michael's.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
And so called US California cuisine. Yes, really it was.
Calibarty was basically the first regional.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
American food, you know, which doesn't sound as sexy, but
that's what happened in California. That then moved to France,
that moved to Italy, and that moved to England where
instead of everybody cooking you know, remember I said, we've
taught at Scoffier cooking, but the new weal cuisine revolution
was going on, so you.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Could waiver back and forth.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And learning the Escofia method was extremely important to me
because that's the Latin of French cooking, and if you
learn that fluently, you can speak ten other languages.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
It's like knowing poetry before you write, for you verses exactly.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
And so that is what you know.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
When we we sourced everything, we had to convince probably
forty five different farmers to switch over to growing you know,
broad leave arugula. They didn't have basil, and you wanted spices.
In those days, you went to the supermarket, to the
dry spice rack.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
You know, there was nothing unless you grew a in
your house. But it you know again, and then that,
I mean, I remember the friend Chef's coming over and
they were going, you know what.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Nouvea because he sort of gave us to push, you know,
out of the nest. But now we're going to go
back and we're going to go back to our grandmother's food,
you know, and we're going to remember where we grew
up in Perry Gord or in Brittany or wherever, and
we're going to begin to go focus on that. I
remember Michel Garard. We're eating it the buttaufuk and he says,
I'm moving, yeah, And I said where you go? And
(21:30):
he says, my wife has this cool place down outside
of Bordeaux. He goes down there in the middle of nowhere.
It creates this whole thing based on that environment down there,
and it was just this beginning of that.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Did you find that it was tough in the beginning.
Did people come to the restaurant and say, Wow, this
is amazing or was it hard to get Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It was people were surprised that it was so I
mean Michael was twenty five when we opened.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Did you have.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Investors who know?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
I mean spa loan?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Unfortunately things did not cost what the costs now to
build to build out a place. But also one thing
about Los Angeles and the way of dining is that
everything was very dark and dank used to be. It
was like the speakeasy feel that you would go to Dominic's.
So to have a restaurant that had a garden in
Los Angeles, whoa and then did not have the waiters
(22:27):
wear tuxedos. You know, I just were you know, Ralph
Lauren Polo.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I told Jerry Magden, who was in the food business,
in the art business and in the closes business, his
father owned magnets, and he's said, I'm not putting them
in tuxedos. Do you have a little young America? Everything
was about America. Do you have a young American designer
that we could utilize. His come over and he goes
see in the corner over there, that big that's that's
(22:55):
Ralph Lauren. He calls it Polo. I said, great, so
we we's still New York. In New York, use the
pink Polo shirt with the reptie and the khaki pants
and uh, and.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So your role in the restaurant was to be both
of you front of house and changed the menus.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Oh, I wrote the menus and then we had with
our original crew, we had like a stunning roster. And
Nancy Silverton, Yeah, she was the night cashier and she said,
I want to do that pastry prep thing, and so
she did that at night and then she came into
day and then I sent her to France to work
(23:36):
at Lenotre and plant and she came back and was
our pastry chef and she she fell in love with
the grill guy, Mark Peel, and they opened camp But
before that they they went and opened Spago for Wolfgang.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Then they opened Campani.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Wolfgang was amazing too.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
Oh yeah, you think that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I remember going to melt Maison and the I that
this French restaurant and you know that it was great
in the car park, wasn't it? But it was incredible,
was food and fun. But that you know, his next
restaurant was basically Pizzaza.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Pa was shocking, yeah, shocking.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, that was it and he did that and that
was we all friends.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
We you from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, John thing I think is that when you start
a restaurant, you know, everybody tells you how competitive that throat.
And what Rose and I found was people were so kind,
you know. And when Rose died, the place was full
of I think they were all calling each other and
saying you better get down there and help WOI but
I mean I never knew that. But I've never found
(24:42):
it that cut through. Maybe it's just the people that
we deal with, people that we like to be with
the kind.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Of restaurants we run.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I think it's a good group, don't you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Like For our sixteen for our forty fifth anniversary party,
I had sixteen of my former chef's come back and
cook and it was like, you know, five of the
Barbravos stars now and all this and that, and they
were all there and they had a blast, and we
had four hundred people and they ate everything under the sun.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Do you think the values that what you learned in
those early early early days stayed with you?
Speaker 5 (25:13):
Oh? Completely?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
And what would what if you somebody was going to
say I'm going to open a little restaurant or a
big restaurant, was do you have some values that you
would say? I mean, I have some and I wonder
what yours might be.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, well, again, I think you have to be completely
clear on what your concept is and does anybody care
about that concept? You know, there's a lot of people
that randomly open places. You know, again, it's a combination
of your location and what you're trying to put in
that location. And today it's even it's the craziest I've
(25:47):
ever seen it. In the mid seventies, there were six
or seven restaurants in any major city in the United States.
Now there's like thirty in every neighborhood. I mean, you
come to la you can up believe it. And they
keep opening and they keep closing, which is something that's
always happened.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
No, the values are simple, you know. You you really
have to have your idea down. You got to understand
the market today worse than before. You could be much
more naive in the old days.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
And like labor cost, Yeah, labor is the worst, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And fortunately, our ability to buy ingredients, I mean, the
food we buy today is so unbelievable.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I mean, you know, we started the Farmer's Market and
in Santa Monica forty years ago.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
And you say we started the Farmer's Market, who started.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
As the City of Santa Monica, gave us the space
as a community outreach, right, you know this It was
very early on. Yeah, and in Santa Monica was a
tough city. I was chairman of the Arts Foundation. We
did a lot of public art and they thought that
the idea of this would be good. We said, are
(26:56):
you kidding? And so they put it together and you know,
then we had to find Remember during seventy five to
when I opened seventy nine, half my battle was finding
farmers to grow the products that we wanted. And you know,
we brought all the seeds in for France. I flew
in duck eggs. We started a duck farm because that
(27:17):
was the one product that was not up to snuff.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
We'd go to the airport at two o'clock in the
morning to pick up fish and cheese.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
My big mistake was not founding fed eggs.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yea, we did.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
We.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I mean some time we didn't have to go probably
as far. But Rose and I used to bring back
cheeses from We'd go to Italy and bring back parmesand
you know, there's a famous story about Rose ordering to
bring back a huge pumpkin, and they wouldn't let her
put it in baggage. So she booked a seat for
the pumpkin. Yeah, she put a seat. And then it
(27:49):
turned out that that was the only seat. The head
was in club class. And so we always said the
pumpkin came back club, but we came back and I
love it. And you know one of but now, the
access to ingredients. I remember there was when we did
our first cookbook, Random House said that we had to trial.
Maybe it was in New York Times that a woman
who lived in Maine and she had to be able
(28:11):
for every recipe that was in the book, be able
to buy the ingredients within forty miles of our house.
Oh my god, you know, so forget salted anchovies, salted kickers,
or you know. But California, we always do think of
California as the farmland of oh yeah, of great.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Well, you know it was. It was a very interesting time.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I mean, Alice Waters in, Jeremiah Tower and Mark Miller
and Berkeley, and you know, they had a wonderful growing
regions around there. Plus they had the fish and us
down in southern California. We had a little country called
Mexico that had one of the greatest, greatest growing regions
and our own area vent Tour north of US is
(28:49):
called the ox Start Plains, one of the five biggest
best growing regions in the world. And you know, the
strawberries had come from there, Harry's berries everything.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
You know, it's tomatoes.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
And you were involved in the restaurants from the very beginning.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, just by default. I mean I was in
design school. I always have always had an art practice.
But yes, fortunately, you know, it's a mixed thing because
with Michael having many different restaurants at some point someone
when in Denver, went in Detroit, Washington, d C.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
When he wasn't traveling.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I always felt the responsibility of having a presence there.
And that being said, I mean, as you know, in
the restaurant business, and a lot of the men that
own the restaurant businesses, they don't want their wives involved.
Michael is a very you know, he's a.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Generous person.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Because even though it was a lot of work on
my end, I was fortunate that I could actually be involved.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Were also what was also very important is that we
had such we were such a gathering place for all
the artists.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
It's anemonica Venice, tell me about the artists. Oh, listen,
I mean we had.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Deepencorn at Hockney. I mean Robert Graham who you know.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I mean that was really Venice was the kind of
hub then and also for the past since we opened,
we always had a space upstairs that I always put
up shows of all the arts coordinate, so like you know,
I even did shows of Ed Ruscha, the playwright, David
Mammott because.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
He's a photographer.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Photographer, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I used to teach I myself used to teach a
class for architects, so all the architects. I would do
a lot of shows for them, and it was so
charming because here there they were all competing on big projects.
These were all the LA architects.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
And then they'd have their painting on the wall and
they go, oh, I'm so nervous, I have my painting
on the wall.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
You know, it was like so personal for them.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. What about the move to New York.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Well that we did in nineteen eighty nine. Again, like
Kim was pointing out, those days of restaurants were totally dark. Yeah,
totally you know, what do you call the red velvet curtains.
You could be there at noon and it was like
you were there at midnight. And so we're sitting in
this dark bar. We walked through this dark, cavernous thing
and open up the back door and there's this huge
(31:29):
garden out in the back and I go back quietly
and I say, this is it. This is the place
I can tell I know exactly yet.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And what's the dress?
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Twenty four West fifty fifth.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So that's right in the theater.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Yeah, we're right just above, just above the.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Also in a lot of media television.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The whole media world was there. Everybody's still there. Yeah,
but all the italent.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
Agencies were there. You know, I seem was out the corner.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
William Morris, JA was the days of the three martini lunch?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Was that it was the beginning of the transition out
of that funny enough because and.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Women and women becoming major business women. Yeah, that was the.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Big changes thing. Well, tell me about the.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well I think that also, Well, since I've always been
a salad eater, you know, Michael started adding salads and
greens to and the men were being concerned about their
diets and how they were looking. But I think since
Michael and his staff were the first that really engaged
with the women that walked in the doors, and they
felt comfortable, they didn't feel like they were put upon,
(32:33):
you know, and they felt like they were given some
you know, gredence, and uh, they all just started to
come there. And then when all the women started, of
course all the men come too. And it's always felt.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
It was a very big literary Yes.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, always came always, yes, it always came yeah, my
brother Michael.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But all the agents from CM and CIA and William
Morris came, and most of.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
Them were women.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Remember something. We I found the place in nineteen seventy nine.
It took me until nineteen eighty nine to make the
deal with it.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Young we know, Wow, he was seventy eight to start,
seventy nine when you opened Michael's.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah in LA and we were supposed to open in
nineteen eighty and I was so wedded to this place
that I waited until nineteen eighty nine. He calls me
and he says, okay, So that was one of the
reasons we took off like a bat out of hell.
There was because during that entire ten year period, anybody
from New York that came to La eight in our restaurant,
So we had a complete list of people that knew
(33:36):
who we were when we opened, it just took off
like a bat.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
If you were thinking now about the changes, people always
say to me, I've never been interested in trends or
fashion or what's going to be the next big thing
at all. You know, I just say, we just try
and do better. You know, we try and do better.
But do you find that people who eat in the
restaurants now are a different kind of crowd. I kind
of think that here in love and they've become more
(34:01):
interested in food. They're really interested, you know, that's they're
more traveled, that they're interested about wine. Really and do
you think they've also become more more you find that
people are more demand they would eat off menu or you.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Know, Unfortunately, the kind of style of the cooking we
do is so accessible, and we made it that way,
you know, as Kim said, you know, we were in
the land of the bounty of the greens, and so
the vegetables and the nobody had a salad on their menu,
you know, you ordered to sell I be remember how
the French they would eat it after dinner.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Yes, you know, God forbid, they had cheese.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
But Coleman Andrews could never get over the fact that
we had this unbelievable dessert table that had a cheese
plate on it that was bigger than the desserts, and
that took a lot of getting people.
Speaker 5 (34:54):
Too used to it.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Americans. When I was growing up, you'd have cheese, like
with your drinks in the beginning.
Speaker 5 (34:59):
Always always no.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But I mean I think that the explosion of the
different kinds of food or remember something. When I opened
its seventy nine, you wanted Italian food.
Speaker 5 (35:10):
There were two kinds. Northern Italian with the white sauce,
Southern Italian with the reds. That was it.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
There was none of this regional stuff, you know. I
mean it was there, but nobody ate it. And the
rest but Chinese food, same thing, fake Chinese food. This
is before the Japanese went nuts and the Thaie and
the Vietnamese and everything. I mean, it's so widespread now,
it's like, as I say, the revolution was televised.
Speaker 5 (35:33):
It's working, you know, it is exciting.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
I think you know, as you say, there, it can
be difficult. We can say yeah, we try and say yes.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
I think these days you say yes to everything.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Don't you think it makes.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Like yeah, the world, the restaurant world is definitely not
in a great place. It's especially in America. Least we
have a ton that are closing. You know, it is
so costly to operate in America today. People keep talking
about inflation in the cost of food. Is it that's expensive,
(36:05):
But it's not like labor costs.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
And you asked earlier about what kind of advice would
you get give to someone young wanting to open a restaurant,
I said, get a great least. That's the number one
reason why restaurants go out of business. They can't afford
you know, they got stars in their eyes and they go, yeah,
sure we'll sign that, you know, and you can't afford that.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
You know. It's fundamental rules.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
So food is you know, restaurants are all this excitement
and they're also fun and friendly, but they're also comfort
and so is food. Food is Letty thinks food is
something that you want to share or when you have
excitement because you're in a new city. But it's also comfort.
So if you had to go to food for comfort,
is there a food would you like to go for
(36:49):
a kid?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, I probably would always go for your stratch oftel
on ice cream?
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Oh ours?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Oh, because actually my fond that it had to be
from the River Company. No, but I definitely because my
father who always felt that we ate too much, but
we would always give.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
We give him like leaders.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Buy them from you your strate to tell ice creams and.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
In the middle of the night we'd all go scoop and.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Skipping ice cream in the middle and it was just
would bring such joy.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
It's an accurate statement from Kim because her favorite thing
in the world is dessert and ice cream in particular.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
She can dispense with the rest.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, I just have us. I love us. What would
your comfort food?
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Oh? I got too many.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I mean it's insane, you don't have rules.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I am a pork guy. I'm a consummate pork chops uh,
fresh time grilled, pan seared. I find the veal and
pork are best pants seared uh.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
And I'm a big fan of Bays English muffins.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You may not know them, but they are from Chicago
and they're particular that my mother. We they're they have
a certain baking soda taste to it. It's not sour though,
it's not white, it's not wheat and it is spectacular.
And I do that with Lando Lakes butter and chunky
(38:15):
peanut butter and Smuckers strawberry.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
More and more.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Yeah, and then I eat it with a slice of
thirty year old butter.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Peanut butter and strawberry and more butter on the top side,
more on top of the both both sides. You put
the butter on, Okay, then you put the Then you
put the peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Is it melted, So there's the butter. Is it hot?
Speaker 5 (38:36):
It's hot. Yeah, you toast it.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
You put that on it. Then you put the strawberry.
Then you put the top on it. And you eat
that with a big glass of milk and a side
of compete thirty year old compte.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That because it wasn't enough on it.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
No, No, it's the balance again, okay, the balance of that.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Could I have one of those at Michael's?
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Yeah, No, it's not on the menu in our brunch days.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It's so bad for you, It's okay.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Turkey BLTs is another one the day after Thanksgiving. Yeah,
we make turkey belts on those same English muffets with
a very thick tons of Helmans mayonnaise.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Okay, I'm coming home. Where does the mayonnaise go? This
isn't the BLT doesn't go on that other.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
No, no, Hello, my father was a peanut, butter and
mayonnaise guy.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So let's go have some food now and have some
fun and some hungry aleviation and comfort. Thank you very much,
thank you, thank you,
Host
Ruth Rogers
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