May 29, 2023 • 29 mins
When I phoned Frank Gehry to ask him to do this podcast, he immediately said yes. And I’m not the only one Frank has said yes to. Ask around and the stories are the same—Frank giving a million dollars for an arts education in underserved communities along the Los Angeles River, or overseeing a program for mentoring children in underperforming elementary schools.
His philanthropy is based on personal relationships, and I think his architecture is, too. Every time a new Frank Gehry building opened, Richard and I would make a pilgrimage to visit them—the Disney center in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton building in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. But one summer, in 2008, all we had to do was walk 10 minutes from our house to Hyde Park, because he had built a temporary pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery. He designed the timber-and-glass structure with his son Sammy. For those few months, we met there almost daily, to watch the sunset, to listen to people play music, to eat, and drink. This brave and beautiful structure made the park a better park and, for the summer, London a better city. Today, I have traveled from London to Los Angeles, not to see a Frank Gehry building but to see my dear friend, Frank. Will we have a good time? As always with Frank Gehry, the answer is yes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamize Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When I phoned Frank Garry to ask him to do
this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time
a new Frank Gary building opened, Richard, my husband and
I would make a pilgrimage to visit the Disney Center
in Los Angeles, the Louis Vreton Foundation in Paris, the
(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 Hayde 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 Gary building,
(01:10):
but to see my much loved close friend Frank.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Six slices of presciutto or panseca. I really like that
one pheasant plucked and clean. Americans don't have ye.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, we don't have game.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
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 dore U.
(02:01):
It's wine.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's a fortified sweet wine rather like Marsala.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So you could use Marsala as well. But I love
the name Josephine Dorik or wine.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Okay, I like the name too. One hundred and seventy
five millimeter chicken stock, one hundred and twenty five milliters
of heavy cream. Place the prescudo or pancetta slices over
the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat the
olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant on
(02:33):
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, let it simmer and then season,
(02:54):
pour the juices over the pheasant and serve yum, yum.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's good, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I'm shocked you didn't bring me some.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I know it's not the right season.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There I would go with this interview.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Is can you imagine me getting into customs?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And I've got to me it would make the interview.
We could do that. We can do a replay.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Okay, we'll do it. Did you ever do the cooking?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I cook mots of brye?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
How do you? What is that?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
On Sunday mornings and I have lots of bride bakeoffs
with people. Mats of brie is unleavened bread that the
Jews crusted the desert with Moses a long time ago,
and it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover.
(03:46):
It's unleaven bread for Passover. I break it up underwater
and get it sort of moist. I salted and stuff,
and I take a bunch of eggs and I beat
them up and put them all over the matzabrie and
(04:09):
it absorbs the egg stuff and then I fry him.
That's called matzabrie.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So I grew up with that, Yeah, what did.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
You grow up? But tell me first, start from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Where were you born Toronto?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And where were your parents born?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
My mother Poland, my father New York and his father
and mother his father Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Russia, Poland, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Pince, I think my mother luds ldz.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, loves And what was their story?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
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. My grandfather, who
delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to Lootch
(05:07):
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 Camarade Film Festival
in Poland. And I went with David Lynch. David Lynch
and I went to Poland. I loved the people. And
(05:30):
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.
They found all my grandparents' families. They all of a
(05:55):
sudden became like to show me they really loved the Jews.
Blah blah blah, which was a bunch of bullshit, I guess.
But so I did get a pretty deep and I
found out my grandmother actually ran a foundry. There was
folklore about it when I was growing up, but it
(06:16):
was true.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
The grandmother did.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
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
(06:40):
get out of the car and walk across the bridge
and meet us on the other side because of this experience.
As I guess she was a nine year old or
six year old, I don't remember, but obviously they got here.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, they got to where did they learn to Canada?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And they landed that in Toronto. My grandfather got a
horse and buggy. He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff.
They lived in a little house, tiny house that just
got torn down.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
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
(07:37):
and so he managed the money for them. But he
read talmutd to me, that was interesting. You know. Talmud
starts with the word why. Yeah, curiosity, and curiosity is
the feeder for all all of our work, right, all
creativity is.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Somebody always asked me what I look for in a
new chef or anyone i'd take on it river cafe,
and I always say curiosity, Yeah, right, and that's where
I'm interested. And so you were You went to school
every day and you know you.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Look So we were in Toronto. I went to I
went to Blue Collegiate until forty seven and then we
but in between my family moved to Timmins, Ontario, five
hundred miles north of Toronto, and I lived there from
(08:29):
eight years old to thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
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 3 (08:47):
Yeah? It was, it was a small kitchen. It wasn't
She wasn't a great cook. Okay. Yeah. My grandmother made
on the cook stove, made all the to gel fill
to fish. And I used to watch. That's why everybody
says I do fish sculptures, because I used to go
(09:09):
pick up the live fish and put it in the bathtub,
and then at night I would I as a kid,
I would play with the fish in the bathtub, and
then the next day it was gone.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Would did you ever watch them kill the No?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I was at home.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I finally figured it out.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
But do you think there was? Because that is interesting
about why the fish? Because when did the image of
the fish begin?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
You know, that's a whole other story. Do you want
me to get into it that the fish?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You know. I was started practicing sixty four of my
own I'd worked on shopping centers with groon and stuff
like that. I got some houses to do. I did
some small buildings. Uh. And I got to know Peter
Eisen and your husband and Norman Foster and Michael Graves
(10:09):
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
(10:31):
coming around to my buildings and looking at my stuff
and inviting me for dinner. And the artist the artists
in la ed Ed Moses, Billy, Albankston, John Alton, Peter Alexander,
a lot of people, you know, became close friends and
(10:54):
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 boz Art and it was at
sixty sixty.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I think.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Everybody went to that show. I went to it. It
was a knockout. The Bose Art buildings, the models they
showed were so seductive, it was incredible everybody. It was
after that show that Philip put the top on at
and t Bright as a director at that show, and
(11:36):
Graves came out and Stern came out and they all okay,
So postmodernism became the siren song. And I remember I
was at a and I couldn't buy it. I wasn't
buying it, but I thought there was more to life
than copying the past. So I was at a conference
(12:01):
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? Can't there? Isn't there something new?
(12:22):
Isn't there any hope for the future. I forget what?
And I said, damn it. If 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 beautiful, and they suggest movement,
(12:44):
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 pups stuff fall around
with fishy. They're on those drawings too, So I started
(13:05):
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 went to China Chita and did a
(13:26):
drawing and they made it. I never saw it. In Turino,
they were just getting ready to open the 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 they gave me two galleries. In one gallery,
(13:49):
I put all my models and they said they had
something for the other gallery. They didn't tell me. What
I walked 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 was just freaked out that they were making
(14:11):
this part of my show. And standing beside me was
a guy from the Stedlic 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? She said, how'd you do it?
I want to talk to you. Then I realized what
(14:32):
he was talking about. The thing looked like it was moving.
This piece of egregious kitch had the movement that a
fish has, and.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
How they had made it in that way.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
They didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I didn't know. It was just an accident.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
This guy said, that's brilliant. How did you do that?
I said, it's pure, you know, I said, I told
him what. I was interested in the fish because of movement.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So what do you think that relates to the carp
in the bathtub?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Maybe maybe that a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
That image of the car, but I think that the
next thing I did was a show at the walker
and I cut the tail off the fish, the head
off the fish, and I made an abstract and it's
still moved. It still had the sense of movement. And
(15:31):
that's when I got hooked, hooked on the shape shaping
and using that to express to express an Yeah, the
image of so that I think that experience made made
Bill Bow. I'd love the food, and.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right
next to bill Bao, 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 3 (16:14):
It's the cod fish what do they call it?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, the bacola, baccala bala.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yes, you know, don't you? You're a cook anyway, Baola.
I love bacola and I loved the wine.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, you would go for these site meetings. And did
you spend a long time there?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Bill Bell reawakened my food whatever foody I was happened
there because that's what we did. We went out to
restaurants with them. The wine was special because.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Life that you're describing a working all day, whether you're
Cassavettis your friend, or actors or writers or artists in
their studios, there was a real momentum to go to
eat at the end of the day because the work
was solitary and so was that true here as well?
Did you go out to restaurants all the time?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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 (17:18):
And there was one that somebody told me there was
one in like a train.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
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
(17:44):
see Spieler, he used to be there, and a lot
of Hollywood people, but they would come at six in
the morning for early breakfast, when nobody was there our
real late at night.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I think about a restaurant in a city is that
as we found out when restaurants were closed in London,
is that they do provide a social life to the city.
That you can go there and see people that you
didn't know were going to be there. There's a spontaneity
about meeting a friend or sitting there.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
For the Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't
go there to meet other people. It was the booths
were spread apart and it was never filled.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So you as a kid, did you ever go out
to a restaurant when you were a child.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out. Yeah.
I do remember going to restaurants with my father in
Toronto that had signs no Jews alone. No, I do
remember that really, And he always knew the owner because
he was a gregarious guy. So we would go in anyway.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So he would He would actually be friends with an
owner who actually had a sign on his door.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Saying he wasn't friendly with him, but he had he
had some kind of business relationship with him.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Was your father alive to understand your success?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
He died before my success. Now my mother did, did.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
She bask in the in the glow of your success?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
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
(19:44):
more like that? So I got it. I had a
bad time.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I think you had a bad time, And they had
a bad time leaving your country and having a ship
stold in the middle of the ocean and diving in
a city that you knew no one, And I mean
when you left your home and where did you go
to architecture school?
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Usc?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So you came to California.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
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
(20:35):
an old building downtown.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Sisters and brothers. Did you have sisters and brothers?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
She's sister. I got a job as a truck driver.
My father got a job as a truck driver. 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
(21:00):
to the end. For her, she were in the Broadway,
she ended up in the decorating department, and she was
selling draperies to Hollywood people.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So would she cooked? Would she come home and cook
for you?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Do you remember sitting very much?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Would sitting down to a meal in your house?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I would remember, but I can't. I don't remember that meals.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Family meals did not exciting. Now now everybody talks about,
you know how sad it is now that we don't
all gather around a table every night. But for some people,
quite a few people, it was quite and stressful to
have to sit around a table with your family. That's
what it was for you? Was it because he just.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Had a temper And I never knew couldn't control it.
Took it out on me because he saw me as
not understanding business. I was. I was the kind of
artsy type. Yeah, so he didn't understand that. And my
mother also supported that that I wasn't really interested in
(22:15):
I mean I was interested in going to the symphony
and going to art galleries, but not in things that
would make a living.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And so meal times for a kind of tyranny were
they of.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It was difficult.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And then when you went to architecture school and college
you kind offended for yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And yeah, then I got married.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, became domestic life.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
That that was domestic life kind of yeah. Yeah, well
this was the first marriage before birship.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria Forcaill New House,
did that make you think more about food or did you?
Was that about space? Was that where people could stop
working in the magazines and punt have a meal.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I did think about food because we did the cafe
Ta Park and we had to set up where you
go through the line of gage.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's a radical canteen. I mean there's no other space
like that to have as a place to eat when
you're working all day. It was the hottest ticket in
New York. It was invited to that, Yeah, to lunch.
Everybody was trying to figure out how they were.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, huge, everybody wanted to go there, you know. I
remember going with Victoria, took me and people friends of
mine call it friends of theirs who.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
They remodeled it. They've totally.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
What was SI life as a client? Was he the client?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
He was the client?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Did he know what he wanted?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Really did? I took him to the best thing I
did with Sai is I took him to Japan for
a week with Greg Wallace, who was my partner who
had spent a lot of his life in Japan. So
Greg knew Japan really fantastic, and Victoria and Ci and
(24:01):
Bert and I and Greg spent a week together and
so I ended up in the same little cafe with
typical Japanese there pork noodles or something, and that's what
he ordered every day, and he wanted to go back
to the same restaurant every day. No. Ci. Months before
(24:25):
he died, 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.
(24:47):
What he's in?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Oh boy, oh boy?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
What's your go to see?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
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 (25:14):
So sailing. Yeah, so sailing.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Now you're talking.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
And when you're on the boat, do you do you eat?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Do you have any we order sandwiches or something?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And drink wine?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Are you interested in the wine?
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah? I got a lot of it, but I don't.
One of my clients is the Southern wine and 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
(25:50):
like some of it. I pick stuff that I like
him and Berta likes some of it. But we're not wins.
Tequila has like we've been drinking a little bit, and
so we do tequila for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
And what are the sweets apart from the lemon drops.
Do you like chocolate, Frank, Oh, yeah, me too. Is
there something that when you're feeling kind of low or
kind of worried that you might reach for in terms
of food? But is there something that you would say this,
there's a kind of sense of comfort in some pint.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
I guess just plain pasta pasta.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, do you know? I asked this question to.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Everybody and they always end up with us.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Everybody loves a pasta. Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Well, it's uh, you don't have to eat a lot
of it, and it's kind of filling, yeah, and you
can drink some wine with it.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
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 (26:59):
Well, let's go next time I'm here. Are you going
to restaurants?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Are you avoiding them a little bit? I'm going to
come to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, Frank Garrey, you are invited to the River Cafe. Invited.
That means you don't have to pay anything. And by
the way, juice are allowed.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Oh my god, that's terrible, Well I will be.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And also, you know, food is a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
It's so good and it's so great thing to give
yourself and then just eat it and have deliciously.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Okay, So in the morning for breakfast, I make I
take toast and I fry an egg and I put
it on the toast. That's good, and that's what I
have egg.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
If the egg is good and the toast is good
and the butter is good and it's hot, then that's
a delicious meal. But you need to put a lot
of salt and pepper on it, and you need to
eat it pleasure with pleasure. Yeah, no idea food is
you know, it's simple. An artist and architects and designers.
(28:04):
Everyone is part of coming out. Okay, now it's coming out.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
It's not just the mos both that's my specialty.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
All right, I'm all right, thank you. Frank what's frank
Berry ice cream?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Frank Berry ice Cream.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Company named an ice cream? Is that right after you?
Did you know that?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah? I saw something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I think having an ice cream named after you is
pretty cool. I have to say, you know, I can
have a building named after you or.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You know, snicker doodle. I guess okay, well, maybe we'll.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Have to go get one.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
and online. It has over one hundred recipes beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photogher Matthew Donaldson. The book
has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks
(29:14):
of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of
iHeart Radio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamize Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
When I phoned Frank Garry to ask him to do
this podcast, he immediately said yes. For years, every time
a new Frank Gary building opened, Richard, my husband and
I would make a pilgrimage to visit the Disney Center
in Los Angeles, the Louis Vreton Foundation in Paris, the
(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 Hayde 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 Gary building,
(01:10):
but to see my much loved close friend Frank.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Six slices of presciutto or panseca. I really like that
one pheasant plucked and clean. Americans don't have ye.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, we don't have game.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
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 dore U.
(02:01):
It's wine.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's a fortified sweet wine rather like Marsala.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So you could use Marsala as well. But I love
the name Josephine Dorik or wine.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Okay, I like the name too. One hundred and seventy
five millimeter chicken stock, one hundred and twenty five milliters
of heavy cream. Place the prescudo or pancetta slices over
the pheasant and tie on with a string. Heat the
olive oil in a saucepan and brown the pheasant on
(02:33):
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, let it simmer and then season,
(02:54):
pour the juices over the pheasant and serve yum, yum.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's good, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
I'm shocked you didn't bring me some.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I know it's not the right season.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There I would go with this interview.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Is can you imagine me getting into customs?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And I've got to me it would make the interview.
We could do that. We can do a replay.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Okay, we'll do it. Did you ever do the cooking?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I cook mots of brye?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
How do you? What is that?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
On Sunday mornings and I have lots of bride bakeoffs
with people. Mats of brie is unleavened bread that the
Jews crusted the desert with Moses a long time ago,
and it's used for Passover. It's used mostly for Passover.
(03:46):
It's unleaven bread for Passover. I break it up underwater
and get it sort of moist. I salted and stuff,
and I take a bunch of eggs and I beat
them up and put them all over the matzabrie and
(04:09):
it absorbs the egg stuff and then I fry him.
That's called matzabrie.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So I grew up with that, Yeah, what did.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
You grow up? But tell me first, start from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Where were you born Toronto?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And where were your parents born?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
My mother Poland, my father New York and his father
and mother his father Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Russia, Poland, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Pince, I think my mother luds ldz.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, loves And what was their story?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
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. My grandfather, who
delivered coal, he had a wagon. I went to Lootch
(05:07):
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 Camarade Film Festival
in Poland. And I went with David Lynch. David Lynch
and I went to Poland. I loved the people. And
(05:30):
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.
They found all my grandparents' families. They all of a
(05:55):
sudden became like to show me they really loved the Jews.
Blah blah blah, which was a bunch of bullshit, I guess.
But so I did get a pretty deep and I
found out my grandmother actually ran a foundry. There was
folklore about it when I was growing up, but it
(06:16):
was true.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
The grandmother did.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
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
(06:40):
get out of the car and walk across the bridge
and meet us on the other side because of this experience.
As I guess she was a nine year old or
six year old, I don't remember, but obviously they got here.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, they got to where did they learn to Canada?
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And they landed that in Toronto. My grandfather got a
horse and buggy. He was delivering bread, I think, and stuff.
They lived in a little house, tiny house that just
got torn down.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did it feel like they were a very Jewish community within.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
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
(07:37):
and so he managed the money for them. But he
read talmutd to me, that was interesting. You know. Talmud
starts with the word why. Yeah, curiosity, and curiosity is
the feeder for all all of our work, right, all
creativity is.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Somebody always asked me what I look for in a
new chef or anyone i'd take on it river cafe,
and I always say curiosity, Yeah, right, and that's where
I'm interested. And so you were You went to school
every day and you know you.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Look So we were in Toronto. I went to I
went to Blue Collegiate until forty seven and then we
but in between my family moved to Timmins, Ontario, five
hundred miles north of Toronto, and I lived there from
(08:29):
eight years old to thirteen years old.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
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 3 (08:47):
Yeah? It was, it was a small kitchen. It wasn't
She wasn't a great cook. Okay. Yeah. My grandmother made
on the cook stove, made all the to gel fill
to fish. And I used to watch. That's why everybody
says I do fish sculptures, because I used to go
(09:09):
pick up the live fish and put it in the bathtub,
and then at night I would I as a kid,
I would play with the fish in the bathtub, and
then the next day it was gone.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Would did you ever watch them kill the No?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
I was at home.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I finally figured it out.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
But do you think there was? Because that is interesting
about why the fish? Because when did the image of
the fish begin?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
You know, that's a whole other story. Do you want
me to get into it that the fish?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You know. I was started practicing sixty four of my
own I'd worked on shopping centers with groon and stuff
like that. I got some houses to do. I did
some small buildings. Uh. And I got to know Peter
Eisen and your husband and Norman Foster and Michael Graves
(10:09):
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
(10:31):
coming around to my buildings and looking at my stuff
and inviting me for dinner. And the artist the artists
in la ed Ed Moses, Billy, Albankston, John Alton, Peter Alexander,
a lot of people, you know, became close friends and
(10:54):
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 boz Art and it was at
sixty sixty.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I think.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Everybody went to that show. I went to it. It
was a knockout. The Bose Art buildings, the models they
showed were so seductive, it was incredible everybody. It was
after that show that Philip put the top on at
and t Bright as a director at that show, and
(11:36):
Graves came out and Stern came out and they all okay,
So postmodernism became the siren song. And I remember I
was at a and I couldn't buy it. I wasn't
buying it, but I thought there was more to life
than copying the past. So I was at a conference
(12:01):
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? Can't there? Isn't there something new?
(12:22):
Isn't there any hope for the future. I forget what?
And I said, damn it. If 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 beautiful, and they suggest movement,
(12:44):
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 pups stuff fall around
with fishy. They're on those drawings too, So I started
(13:05):
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 went to China Chita and did a
(13:26):
drawing and they made it. I never saw it. In Turino,
they were just getting ready to open the 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 they gave me two galleries. In one gallery,
(13:49):
I put all my models and they said they had
something for the other gallery. They didn't tell me. What
I walked 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 was just freaked out that they were making
(14:11):
this part of my show. And standing beside me was
a guy from the Stedlic 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? She said, how'd you do it?
I want to talk to you. Then I realized what
(14:32):
he was talking about. The thing looked like it was moving.
This piece of egregious kitch had the movement that a
fish has, and.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
How they had made it in that way.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
They didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I didn't know. It was just an accident.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
This guy said, that's brilliant. How did you do that?
I said, it's pure, you know, I said, I told
him what. I was interested in the fish because of movement.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So what do you think that relates to the carp
in the bathtub?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Maybe maybe that a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
That image of the car, but I think that the
next thing I did was a show at the walker
and I cut the tail off the fish, the head
off the fish, and I made an abstract and it's
still moved. It still had the sense of movement. And
(15:31):
that's when I got hooked, hooked on the shape shaping
and using that to express to express an Yeah, the
image of so that I think that experience made made
Bill Bow. I'd love the food, and.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Let's talk about that because San Sebastian, which is right
next to bill Bao, 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 3 (16:14):
It's the cod fish what do they call it?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, the bacola, baccala bala.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yes, you know, don't you? You're a cook anyway, Baola.
I love bacola and I loved the wine.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, you would go for these site meetings. And did
you spend a long time there?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Bill Bell reawakened my food whatever foody I was happened
there because that's what we did. We went out to
restaurants with them. The wine was special because.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Life that you're describing a working all day, whether you're
Cassavettis your friend, or actors or writers or artists in
their studios, there was a real momentum to go to
eat at the end of the day because the work
was solitary and so was that true here as well?
Did you go out to restaurants all the time?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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 (17:18):
And there was one that somebody told me there was
one in like a train.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
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
(17:44):
see Spieler, he used to be there, and a lot
of Hollywood people, but they would come at six in
the morning for early breakfast, when nobody was there our
real late at night.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
I think about a restaurant in a city is that
as we found out when restaurants were closed in London,
is that they do provide a social life to the city.
That you can go there and see people that you
didn't know were going to be there. There's a spontaneity
about meeting a friend or sitting there.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
For the Pacific Dining Car was more private. People didn't
go there to meet other people. It was the booths
were spread apart and it was never filled.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So you as a kid, did you ever go out
to a restaurant when you were a child.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Not very much. They couldn't afford to go out. Yeah.
I do remember going to restaurants with my father in
Toronto that had signs no Jews alone. No, I do
remember that really, And he always knew the owner because
he was a gregarious guy. So we would go in anyway.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So he would He would actually be friends with an
owner who actually had a sign on his door.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Saying he wasn't friendly with him, but he had he
had some kind of business relationship with him.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Was your father alive to understand your success?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
He died before my success. Now my mother did, did.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
She bask in the in the glow of your success?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
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
(19:44):
more like that? So I got it. I had a
bad time.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I think you had a bad time, And they had
a bad time leaving your country and having a ship
stold in the middle of the ocean and diving in
a city that you knew no one, And I mean
when you left your home and where did you go
to architecture school?
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Usc?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So you came to California.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
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
(20:35):
an old building downtown.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Sisters and brothers. Did you have sisters and brothers?
Speaker 3 (20:40):
She's sister. I got a job as a truck driver.
My father got a job as a truck driver. 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
(21:00):
to the end. For her, she were in the Broadway,
she ended up in the decorating department, and she was
selling draperies to Hollywood people.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So would she cooked? Would she come home and cook
for you?
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Do you remember sitting very much?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Would sitting down to a meal in your house?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I would remember, but I can't. I don't remember that meals.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Family meals did not exciting. Now now everybody talks about,
you know how sad it is now that we don't
all gather around a table every night. But for some people,
quite a few people, it was quite and stressful to
have to sit around a table with your family. That's
what it was for you? Was it because he just.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Had a temper And I never knew couldn't control it.
Took it out on me because he saw me as
not understanding business. I was. I was the kind of
artsy type. Yeah, so he didn't understand that. And my
mother also supported that that I wasn't really interested in
(22:15):
I mean I was interested in going to the symphony
and going to art galleries, but not in things that
would make a living.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And so meal times for a kind of tyranny were
they of.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
It was difficult.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And then when you went to architecture school and college
you kind offended for yourself.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And yeah, then I got married.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, became domestic life.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
That that was domestic life kind of yeah. Yeah, well
this was the first marriage before birship.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
When you designed the canteen, the cafeteria Forcaill New House,
did that make you think more about food or did you?
Was that about space? Was that where people could stop
working in the magazines and punt have a meal.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I did think about food because we did the cafe
Ta Park and we had to set up where you
go through the line of gage.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That's a radical canteen. I mean there's no other space
like that to have as a place to eat when
you're working all day. It was the hottest ticket in
New York. It was invited to that, Yeah, to lunch.
Everybody was trying to figure out how they were.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, huge, everybody wanted to go there, you know. I
remember going with Victoria, took me and people friends of
mine call it friends of theirs who.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
They remodeled it. They've totally.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
What was SI life as a client? Was he the client?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
He was the client?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Did he know what he wanted?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Really did? I took him to the best thing I
did with Sai is I took him to Japan for
a week with Greg Wallace, who was my partner who
had spent a lot of his life in Japan. So
Greg knew Japan really fantastic, and Victoria and Ci and
(24:01):
Bert and I and Greg spent a week together and
so I ended up in the same little cafe with
typical Japanese there pork noodles or something, and that's what
he ordered every day, and he wanted to go back
to the same restaurant every day. No. Ci. Months before
(24:25):
he died, 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.
(24:47):
What he's in?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Do you like sugar? Do you like sweet food?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Oh boy, oh boy?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
What's your go to see?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
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 (25:14):
So sailing. Yeah, so sailing.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Now you're talking.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
And when you're on the boat, do you do you eat?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Do you have any we order sandwiches or something?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
And drink wine?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Are you interested in the wine?
Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah? I got a lot of it, but I don't.
One of my clients is the Southern wine and 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
(25:50):
like some of it. I pick stuff that I like
him and Berta likes some of it. But we're not wins.
Tequila has like we've been drinking a little bit, and
so we do tequila for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
And what are the sweets apart from the lemon drops.
Do you like chocolate, Frank, Oh, yeah, me too. Is
there something that when you're feeling kind of low or
kind of worried that you might reach for in terms
of food? But is there something that you would say this,
there's a kind of sense of comfort in some pint.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
I guess just plain pasta pasta.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, do you know? I asked this question to.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Everybody and they always end up with us.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Everybody loves a pasta. Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Well, it's uh, you don't have to eat a lot
of it, and it's kind of filling, yeah, and you
can drink some wine with it.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
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 (26:59):
Well, let's go next time I'm here. Are you going
to restaurants?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Are you avoiding them a little bit? I'm going to
come to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, Frank Garrey, you are invited to the River Cafe. Invited.
That means you don't have to pay anything. And by
the way, juice are allowed.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Oh my god, that's terrible, Well I will be.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And also, you know, food is a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
It's so good and it's so great thing to give
yourself and then just eat it and have deliciously.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Okay, So in the morning for breakfast, I make I
take toast and I fry an egg and I put
it on the toast. That's good, and that's what I
have egg.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
If the egg is good and the toast is good
and the butter is good and it's hot, then that's
a delicious meal. But you need to put a lot
of salt and pepper on it, and you need to
eat it pleasure with pleasure. Yeah, no idea food is
you know, it's simple. An artist and architects and designers.
(28:04):
Everyone is part of coming out. Okay, now it's coming out.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
It's not just the mos both that's my specialty.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
All right, I'm all right, thank you. Frank what's frank
Berry ice cream?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Frank Berry ice Cream.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Company named an ice cream? Is that right after you?
Did you know that?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yeah? I saw something like that.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I think having an ice cream named after you is
pretty cool. I have to say, you know, I can
have a building named after you or.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You know, snicker doodle. I guess okay, well, maybe we'll.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Have to go get one.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
and online. It has over one hundred recipes beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photogher Matthew Donaldson. The book
has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks
(29:14):
of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of
iHeart Radio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.