June 11, 2023 • 26 mins
Michael Elias is impressive. An actor, director of movies and television. A writer of novels and screenplays, a black belt in karate. He is generous, funny, has great ethics, and, he is a fantastic cook. They tell me that I fell in love with him the moment we met. Michael Elias is impressive, and Michael Elias is my brother.
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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
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Michael Elias is impressive, an actor, director of movies and television,
a writer of novels and screenplays, a black belt in karate.
He is generous, funny, he has great ethics, and he
is a fantastic cook. They tell me that I fell
in love with him the moment we met. Michael Elias
(00:27):
is impressive, and Michael Elias is my brother. Michael. The
recipe that you've chosen is ricotta alfhourno. Would you like
to read it?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Ricotta alfhourno and takes a handful of fresh mint leaves,
basil and parsley. You need five hundred grams of buffalo ricotta,
one hundred and twenty millileaters, double cream, two eggs, one
hundred fifty grams of parmesan, and black olives. Preheat the
oven to one hundred and ninety degrees centigrade. Coat the
(01:06):
bottom and sides of a round spring formed tin with
butter and parmesan. Put their herbs in a food processor
with half of the ricotta and cream, and you blend
until bright green. Add the remainder of the ricotta and cream.
Add the eggs one by one, season with sea salt
(01:27):
and black pepper. Finally, fold in the parmesan spoon into
the tin and spread the olives over the top. Bake
for twenty minutes the torch rise and have a brown crust,
but still be salt in the center.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I was very pleased that you chose this recipe, and
I checked today because I was one hundred percent sure.
But in nineteen eighty seven, the first day, September tenth,
that we opened the River Cafe, this recipe, this dish
we caught to Alfoorna, was on the menu. And so
it does take us right back to the history and
to the early days before we go into our childhood,
(02:18):
your childhood. Would you tell me about the first days
of the River Cafe.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, I remember the River Cafe as a place that
made great hamburgers.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Careful, I always tell Viva it was an Italian restaurant
from days.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh well, it evolved into an Italian restaurant, and it
had a sensibility in the beginning that was Italian that
only could be increased with the edition of Italian dishes.
So goodbye to the Hamburger. The croissants and the French
fries which I miss. I still miss. They were great.
(02:54):
So that was my introduction to the River Cafe and
probably the next time I came back was full blown Italian.
Was so wonderful to see all these this is for
the first time, and including the ricotta alfourna, which I
probably had at a family dinner that you cooked, and
here it was on the menu. And then the next
(03:15):
thing I know, it was on a recipe and I
could make it, and I made it all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think that Aken, you're being kind of modest, because
really your involvement in the River Cafe in the early
days was so supportive to rosen To myself. You made
baseball hats and T shirts from la You were constantly
on the phone sending people to this tiny little restaurant
in the middle of nowhere. I remember you wrote a
(03:41):
review of it. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Absolutely? And I remember the baseball caps and T shirts
that I had printed up with the menu, and I
would arrive in London with a steamer trunk full of
T shirts and baseball caps. I was the Willie Lowman
of the of the River Cafe. I saw it get
bigger and bigger. The food always was great, but it
(04:05):
was such an exciting place, and it was designed by
Richard Richard Rogers, so it was just stepping into a beautiful,
beautiful world of the most delicious food and wonderful people.
It was something to be supported, and not only in
our family but all our friends.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And you were actually also not just an amateur because
you were involved in restaurants in Los Angeles, weren't you,
with Mamaison and Spago and other restaurants.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Well, I invested in two restaurants in my life, one
financially Spargo and the other emotionally, The River Cafe, and
they both paid off until I found out that I
was the only investor in Spargo who didn't know that
you could eat there for free. So I eat all
my bills beautifully.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
We grew up in a town about as far away
from London or from Los Angeles or the glamour of
Spago or other restaurants. Where do you think that came from?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Can you describe the early memories you have of food
in our house.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Well, we grew up in the Catskill Mountains and we
had a family in New York City, and the food
in our families. Our grandparents was Kosher Eastern European Jewish food.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
They were Hungarian.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
They were Hungarian, Yeah, Rosy and Sam. She was a
great cook. She made these beautiful red stuffed cabbage and
roast chickens, and she ground all the meat for whatever
she was making herself. And my father had six sisters
and they all cooked. They made grandma's recipes, and so
(05:51):
everybody loved food, and we always had big family dinners
in the backyard under the trees. It was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Our grandmother's mother was a very passionate cook, wasn't she.
I remember two stories. She came to see you for
her first grandson from New York, which is quite an
arduous trip, and she traveled and her mother put you
in the crib and put you in a beautiful little
outfit and everything. And when she rang the bell and
(06:19):
came in, our mother said to her mother in law,
would you like to come and see the baby? And
she said, apparently, let's eat first. So I think that
that was that one, and then the other one was
that she would bring her own rolling pin to roll
out the strudles.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I think what was different for us, at least was
that our father, Fred, who gone to medical school in
Europe in Germany and Switzerland, was actually rather sophisticated in
terms of food and came back with the European tastes.
I'm not saying he taught my mother these recipes. Could
barely boil water, but we had sour brotten, we had
(06:58):
kippers and eggs and onion and for a Sunday breakfast,
egg plant palmerjan. So we had really interesting food growing up,
and I think we all demanded it for the rest
of our lives. And I think he was an influence
in that.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
You've described cooking at home, the meals that you had
with our parents, the detail really of the kind of
food that our grandmother cooked, the experiences of eating in
her house. And when you left all this home life
that you had in Woodburn you went to college in Maryland.
(07:33):
What was it like leaving home and having to fend
for yourself food wise? Was it a segue into something
that was easier? Did you seek out food or did
you try different foods?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So Annapolis, Maryland was the home with the crab and
the oyster. You could go down to the docks and
eat both. Then moving to New York, I found out
I couldn't afford any of those things because I was
a struggling actor or the concept of restaurants. Most of
them were on afford and we depended on the kindness
of friends who were in the publishing business and they
(08:06):
had expense accounts and they would take us to lunch
and that was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
What year was this.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It was in the early mid sixties. I was working
in off off Broadway Theater, the Living Theater.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You were living in New York and you were acting
in New York, and then you went to Europe and
was that a revelation of what the food would be
like outside of the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Well, my first stop was London to see you and Richard,
and in those days, we of course had great meals
at your apartment. And I remember being introduced to Greek
food because you used to love to go to Soho
and you had favorite Greek restaurants.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
That's right, right, yeah, we did. Also it was what
we could afford in those days. I think it was
called Jimmy's. It was on Wader Streets, one of the
first restaurants which it took me to and he went
down these stairs and it was just incredibly noisy and fun.
It was a days when you could either eat fancy
British or French food, or you could go and have
(09:04):
a great time and noise and pay very little. But
it would be Greek or Italian or you know. And
then you went to that very foreign country called Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
The Living Theater went on to Paris, and I went
back to New York and resumed my life as an actor,
then eventually made my way to Los Angeles, where I
had a writing career.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Was that a big change in going from the food
of New York to the food of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I think I went in nineteen sixty nine, and yes,
it was very different. First of all, there were these
enormous supermarkets that were open twenty four hours a day,
and I had never seen so many fruits and vegetables,
and they were like giant warehouses, brightly lit, and you
(09:52):
going at four o'clock in the morning and buy food.
And then there were Mexican restaurants, and as I said,
you know, I met my first talk of the farmers
market with this wonderful Mexican restaurant, and that became my love,
I would say, Mexican food Mexican.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, I remember you took us to that place in
Santa Barbara that was a roadside super Rica, super Rika
super Rica, which.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Was made famous by Julia Child saying this is the
best Mexican restaurant on the West Coast, and she was right.
That was a fat day. Or because you get up
really early on Sunday morning, you drive to Tijuana, you
could drive to Rosa Rita Beach where they had a
little restaurant that served broiled quail and the most exquisite
(10:41):
baked potatoes.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I remember you took us there. Remember that when Richard
was teaching you see La, we drove down very well.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
There was a basque restaurant in Tijuana that was very famous,
and another one called Caesars, which where they invented caesar salad,
so they would make us caesar salad for you at
or at your table and then go home.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But you saw the evolution from probably sixty nine through
the eighties and nineties of the food scene in California,
whether it was San Francisco with Alice Walters or as
you said, La with Wolfgang Puck.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
That's the thing about Los Angeles food, and there are
chefs who bring in everything, and they're not afraid and
they figure out these incredible combinations. I think it was
Wolfgang Puck who changed the world. I mean he really
did to open a first class restaurant and serve pizza.
Not only that, it was revolutionary, and he was also
(11:39):
the first one to say I'm going to use Pacific
influences in the food. So all of a sudden you
got the Japanese influence and the Chinese and very subtle
into this what was basically an Italian restaurant. Also, I
think he was one of the first celebrity chefs. He
would bring you something or the waiter would say, Wolfgang
(12:00):
wants you to try this, and people would melt. You know,
movie stars and he never saw a movie.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
He was in the restaurant the other day. He came
after such a long time. He came in and we
were all so excited to have Wolfgang, who has restaurants
in every country and restaurants in every airport. And I
said to him, Wolfgang, I want to be like you.
I want to have forty restaurants. And he said, Ruthie,
I want to be like you. I want to have one.
(12:28):
And he was so so charming and He has been
a huge influence. And I remember eating with you at
mam Maison, which was a very fancy French restaurant, and
saying that his next one was going to be a
pizza place, and we were all completely mystified, but you
know he did it. When you moved to Los Angeles
(13:04):
and you described the foods markets and the Mexican food
and discovery of artichokes and avocados, and the sun and
the farms and the markets, what was your work like
and what were you doing there.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I was a comedy writer and I wrote a variety shows,
Glenn Campbell, The Mother's Brothers, Leslie ugham Is at the
same time writing sitcoms for All in the Family, Mary
Tyler Moore. I was a pretty busy fellow with my
partner at the time. At the same time, I was
writing television, which I considered a day job and I
loved it, but I always knew that I wanted to
(13:42):
do something by myself, so I started writing screenplays.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Can you tell us about the movies that you've made?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah. The first one was The Frisco Kid with Gene
Wilder and Harrison Ford, and it was about a young
rabbi who comes from Poland to America at the time
of the gold Rush, makes his way across the country
to San Francisco. And then I teamed up with Steve
Martin and we wrote The Jerk, and then my partner
and I, Rich Eustace, wrote Young Doctors in Love. And
(14:12):
then I had my passion project, as it were, which
was a movie, a screenplay about two jazz musicians, which
I wrote and insisted that I direct, and I attracted
Jeff Goldblum and Forrest Whitaker and made this movie called
Lush Life. We ate well from that point on. I mean,
there was no restaurant in LA that we couldn't afford.
(14:33):
But at the same time, eating in a restaurant for
me is I always ask the question could I make
this at home? And La has so many ethnic restaurants
now Cambodian, Laotian, Mexicans of every region, and Chinese and Japanese,
and that I can't make at home, and I wouldn't
even try. And that's the fun of going out in
(14:54):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
How did you handle food as a director?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
On one movie set, I insisted on we all eat together, director, writer,
all the crew, actors, and we talk about what we're doing,
and I think that communal experience is important in the creation.
I hate it when everybody goes off to their dressing
rooms and has their sandwiches or whatever they have. I
wrote a French film and visited the set and they
(15:20):
took a French lunch. They took two hours. Yeah, it
was great. At a certain point, I think I was
finished with television and I decided to write novels.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
You know, we talked about the way you ate when
you were making a television show, and we've spoken about
the way you prefer to eat when you're directing a movie,
all which involve a lot of people. You know, you're
feeding people, you're eating with people. But writing a novel
is a very solitary experience. Here it's you and your laptop.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Somebody asked me my writing schedule, and I say, it's
doing everything I can to avoid writing until there's nothing
left to do, and then I start writing. And I
put in three or four hours. And one of the
things that I like to do is shop for food,
cook and then write. So you're correct, writing is a
solitary thing. And if you write at home in a
(16:11):
home office, you're only a few a few feet from
the refrigerator. That's a place to go, and that's the
place to go when you can't think of the next sentence.
You can always find the next piece of cheese. So
it's for me, it's sometimes that's a distraction. So that's
that's my process.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Tell us about the books.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
My most recent book is about a young policewoman in
a queen's homicide detective trying to find the killer of
her father, who was an abortion provider and he was
assassinated by an anti abortion terrorist like other doctors, and
at the same time, she's investigating murders that may emanate
(16:51):
from a women's shelter, and somehow I managed to combine
the two. I like to write about what my characters eat.
I feel it's just as important as their size, the
color of their hair and eyes, and their character. So
I write a lot about food, and the writers who
write about food attract me. I think it's very important.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
So when you're writing a book and you're thinking about
the character and you're putting them through the day or
their work, and you have really interesting food scenes and
the way they seek food, is that important to you?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, If she goes to her boyfriend's house and he's
a cook, and I always say, well, what would I
cook from my girlfriend when she came over? What would
lead us? You know? Would we have a shower before
we cook? And so that's important. And I talk about
the lousy food she eats when she's has to be
on a steakout and she's got a foot long submarine
sandwich that she can only eat half of and a
(17:51):
lousy soda that's bubbling in her stomach. And so that's
important to me. I don't like it when I read
a novel and they say we stopped for dinner and
then moved on. Well, what did you have dinner? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Do you think that your parents understood you a passion
for food? I mean when you would go home having
been in Paris and London and la and cooked and
eaton and then you would go visit them at home.
How did that work?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Well? I think I'm undemanding as long as it's good.
And I think Sun returning home from college from Europe
from anywhere two daughters too. Parents want to make the
best food for them, and they and they did. And
the summers in Woodstock when we had fresh corn and
people would put the water on the stove and have
(18:43):
it boiling, so that when they came back from the
corn stand, which was at the edge of a corn field,
they would just tear off the cover and throw the
corn in. And they were almost like contests who could
have the freshest corn, and they were tomatoes and farm
stands with such a part of our life in the summer.
(19:05):
You took farm the table, That's what it was. We
never used the expression. And then they became. Then there
was a period when there were these kind of I
don't like the word boutique farmers who made the who
grew the vegetables for Wolfgang and the other restaurants that followed,
(19:27):
and of course everything was baby vegetables, baby carrots, baby asparagus,
baby ripped untimely from the soil. Who come to.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Your plate growing up in Woodstock were actually I probably
grew up more in Woodstock and you'd already left. But
when you came back you became very close to the
artist Philip Guston, and I know that he also loved
to eat, and a lot of his paintings reflect having
overeaten a kind of viver love of food, and he
(19:59):
loved and I was wondering whether you might describe eating,
or cooking or just being with Philip Guston in those days.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
He loved very simple food. He loved those big hamburgers
and fries, and he also loved some new sophisticated food.
The last time I saw him was in San Francisco
in nineteen eighty when they had a retrospective and I
went to San Francisco and there was a big dinner
for him and invited me to come to this. And
then he took me aside and he says, I'm coming
(20:29):
to La after this, and I want you to arrange
a dinner party for me. I said, I'm happy to.
He said just comedians. He said, no art critics please.
And Philip was a funny guy. Did well, you know
he died.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh before he came to before Yeah, he died actually tragically.
He died in our house having dinner, yeah, with our parents.
Something that I think our father really never recovered from that.
That Philip the heart attack.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah, well, our father was a doctor and it was
such a massive heart attack for eating, smoking, drinking hamburgers
and fries and everything else, and that he couldn't he
couldn't save his life. And it really affected him and
they were really close. I think that was that Fred,
our father, lost his best friend, So that was really sad.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Michael, you've talked about eating in restaurants, about eating in
our parents' house, but you really haven't talked about, as
I said in my n touch in the fact that
you are a really good cook, and so what is
cooking like for you at home?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I think what I like to cook is from you,
and it's a connection to you, which is risotto. And
I think I make really good risotto and it's from
your recipe. The Amarone risotto is my favorite, and it's
just connects us. It's about showing love for somebody you
(22:29):
love and feeling loved by somebody who cooks for you,
who loves you. And I've had those two experiences of
cooking for my son when I was a single father
and cooking the things that he loved, and marrying Bianca Roberts,
who is a great cook, and everything she cooks is
(22:51):
with love for me. She has the experience of living
in France and Switzerland, and she makes the best French dishes,
and her blanket a veal is something that is special
for me. So those are two things. So that's my
connection to food. And sometimes it doesn't matter what it is.
(23:11):
It's just a way of showing and getting the warmth
and comfort of somebody who you love.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
I think we've talked about food is a memory, food
is history, food is family, food is friends and travel,
Food is life, and food is death. Food is also comfort.
It is comfort is the comfort we have when we're alone,
or we're sad or in pain, or it's just been
(23:42):
as simple as a hard day of just a hard day,
or maybe even a hard couple of hours. And so
a question that I always ask everyone else, so I
would like to ask my brother is what would be
your comfort food? Michael Elias?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think my comfort food would be our aunt Florence's
cheese blintzes. What is a blinsa?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I know what a blinsa is, and you know, but
there might be a whole lot of people out there
that do not know what a blinsa is.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Oh, A blinca is a thin pancake stuffed with delicious
kind of sweetened cottage cheese and some sugar and then
fold it over and fried in butter, and you put
sour cream on it or apple sauce. To your taste.
I'm a sour cream guy. Our aunt Florence lived in
(24:36):
Stockton and periodically she would send me via a bus
a box of her frozen cheese Blinzers, and I would
eat them until there were no more, and then she
would send me another box. And the last box she
sent me she died while I was in the middle
of eating those cheese Blinzers, and I wanted to make
(24:57):
them last as long as I could. So whenever I'm
feeling when I need something that really connects me to
my family, our family, our heritage, the generosity and the
beauty of the women who cooked in our family, I
(25:17):
go and find somewhere a deli that I can get
cheese Blintzes.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Well, this is a connection. And I might not be
a Blins, but I am your sister, and I love you,
and I think we find comfort in each other, loving
each other, and I'm so happy we did this together.
Thank you, Michael. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table
(25:47):
for would you please make sure to rate and review
the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
A
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Michael Elias is impressive, an actor, director of movies and television,
a writer of novels and screenplays, a black belt in karate.
He is generous, funny, he has great ethics, and he
is a fantastic cook. They tell me that I fell
in love with him the moment we met. Michael Elias
(00:27):
is impressive, and Michael Elias is my brother. Michael. The
recipe that you've chosen is ricotta alfhourno. Would you like
to read it?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Ricotta alfhourno and takes a handful of fresh mint leaves,
basil and parsley. You need five hundred grams of buffalo ricotta,
one hundred and twenty millileaters, double cream, two eggs, one
hundred fifty grams of parmesan, and black olives. Preheat the
oven to one hundred and ninety degrees centigrade. Coat the
(01:06):
bottom and sides of a round spring formed tin with
butter and parmesan. Put their herbs in a food processor
with half of the ricotta and cream, and you blend
until bright green. Add the remainder of the ricotta and cream.
Add the eggs one by one, season with sea salt
(01:27):
and black pepper. Finally, fold in the parmesan spoon into
the tin and spread the olives over the top. Bake
for twenty minutes the torch rise and have a brown crust,
but still be salt in the center.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I was very pleased that you chose this recipe, and
I checked today because I was one hundred percent sure.
But in nineteen eighty seven, the first day, September tenth,
that we opened the River Cafe, this recipe, this dish
we caught to Alfoorna, was on the menu. And so
it does take us right back to the history and
to the early days before we go into our childhood,
(02:18):
your childhood. Would you tell me about the first days
of the River Cafe.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, I remember the River Cafe as a place that
made great hamburgers.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Careful, I always tell Viva it was an Italian restaurant
from days.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh well, it evolved into an Italian restaurant, and it
had a sensibility in the beginning that was Italian that
only could be increased with the edition of Italian dishes.
So goodbye to the Hamburger. The croissants and the French
fries which I miss. I still miss. They were great.
(02:54):
So that was my introduction to the River Cafe and
probably the next time I came back was full blown Italian.
Was so wonderful to see all these this is for
the first time, and including the ricotta alfourna, which I
probably had at a family dinner that you cooked, and
here it was on the menu. And then the next
(03:15):
thing I know, it was on a recipe and I
could make it, and I made it all the time.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think that Aken, you're being kind of modest, because
really your involvement in the River Cafe in the early
days was so supportive to rosen To myself. You made
baseball hats and T shirts from la You were constantly
on the phone sending people to this tiny little restaurant
in the middle of nowhere. I remember you wrote a
(03:41):
review of it. Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Absolutely? And I remember the baseball caps and T shirts
that I had printed up with the menu, and I
would arrive in London with a steamer trunk full of
T shirts and baseball caps. I was the Willie Lowman
of the of the River Cafe. I saw it get
bigger and bigger. The food always was great, but it
(04:05):
was such an exciting place, and it was designed by
Richard Richard Rogers, so it was just stepping into a beautiful,
beautiful world of the most delicious food and wonderful people.
It was something to be supported, and not only in
our family but all our friends.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And you were actually also not just an amateur because
you were involved in restaurants in Los Angeles, weren't you,
with Mamaison and Spago and other restaurants.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Well, I invested in two restaurants in my life, one
financially Spargo and the other emotionally, The River Cafe, and
they both paid off until I found out that I
was the only investor in Spargo who didn't know that
you could eat there for free. So I eat all
my bills beautifully.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
We grew up in a town about as far away
from London or from Los Angeles or the glamour of
Spago or other restaurants. Where do you think that came from?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Can you describe the early memories you have of food
in our house.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Well, we grew up in the Catskill Mountains and we
had a family in New York City, and the food
in our families. Our grandparents was Kosher Eastern European Jewish food.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
They were Hungarian.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
They were Hungarian, Yeah, Rosy and Sam. She was a
great cook. She made these beautiful red stuffed cabbage and
roast chickens, and she ground all the meat for whatever
she was making herself. And my father had six sisters
and they all cooked. They made grandma's recipes, and so
(05:51):
everybody loved food, and we always had big family dinners
in the backyard under the trees. It was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Our grandmother's mother was a very passionate cook, wasn't she.
I remember two stories. She came to see you for
her first grandson from New York, which is quite an
arduous trip, and she traveled and her mother put you
in the crib and put you in a beautiful little
outfit and everything. And when she rang the bell and
(06:19):
came in, our mother said to her mother in law,
would you like to come and see the baby? And
she said, apparently, let's eat first. So I think that
that was that one, and then the other one was
that she would bring her own rolling pin to roll
out the strudles.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I think what was different for us, at least was
that our father, Fred, who gone to medical school in
Europe in Germany and Switzerland, was actually rather sophisticated in
terms of food and came back with the European tastes.
I'm not saying he taught my mother these recipes. Could
barely boil water, but we had sour brotten, we had
(06:58):
kippers and eggs and onion and for a Sunday breakfast,
egg plant palmerjan. So we had really interesting food growing up,
and I think we all demanded it for the rest
of our lives. And I think he was an influence
in that.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
You've described cooking at home, the meals that you had
with our parents, the detail really of the kind of
food that our grandmother cooked, the experiences of eating in
her house. And when you left all this home life
that you had in Woodburn you went to college in Maryland.
(07:33):
What was it like leaving home and having to fend
for yourself food wise? Was it a segue into something
that was easier? Did you seek out food or did
you try different foods?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So Annapolis, Maryland was the home with the crab and
the oyster. You could go down to the docks and
eat both. Then moving to New York, I found out
I couldn't afford any of those things because I was
a struggling actor or the concept of restaurants. Most of
them were on afford and we depended on the kindness
of friends who were in the publishing business and they
(08:06):
had expense accounts and they would take us to lunch
and that was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
What year was this.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It was in the early mid sixties. I was working
in off off Broadway Theater, the Living Theater.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You were living in New York and you were acting
in New York, and then you went to Europe and
was that a revelation of what the food would be
like outside of the United States.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Well, my first stop was London to see you and Richard,
and in those days, we of course had great meals
at your apartment. And I remember being introduced to Greek
food because you used to love to go to Soho
and you had favorite Greek restaurants.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
That's right, right, yeah, we did. Also it was what
we could afford in those days. I think it was
called Jimmy's. It was on Wader Streets, one of the
first restaurants which it took me to and he went
down these stairs and it was just incredibly noisy and fun.
It was a days when you could either eat fancy
British or French food, or you could go and have
(09:04):
a great time and noise and pay very little. But
it would be Greek or Italian or you know. And
then you went to that very foreign country called Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
The Living Theater went on to Paris, and I went
back to New York and resumed my life as an actor,
then eventually made my way to Los Angeles, where I
had a writing career.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Was that a big change in going from the food
of New York to the food of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I think I went in nineteen sixty nine, and yes,
it was very different. First of all, there were these
enormous supermarkets that were open twenty four hours a day,
and I had never seen so many fruits and vegetables,
and they were like giant warehouses, brightly lit, and you
(09:52):
going at four o'clock in the morning and buy food.
And then there were Mexican restaurants, and as I said,
you know, I met my first talk of the farmers
market with this wonderful Mexican restaurant, and that became my love,
I would say, Mexican food Mexican.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, I remember you took us to that place in
Santa Barbara that was a roadside super Rica, super Rika
super Rica, which.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Was made famous by Julia Child saying this is the
best Mexican restaurant on the West Coast, and she was right.
That was a fat day. Or because you get up
really early on Sunday morning, you drive to Tijuana, you
could drive to Rosa Rita Beach where they had a
little restaurant that served broiled quail and the most exquisite
(10:41):
baked potatoes.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I remember you took us there. Remember that when Richard
was teaching you see La, we drove down very well.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
There was a basque restaurant in Tijuana that was very famous,
and another one called Caesars, which where they invented caesar salad,
so they would make us caesar salad for you at
or at your table and then go home.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But you saw the evolution from probably sixty nine through
the eighties and nineties of the food scene in California,
whether it was San Francisco with Alice Walters or as
you said, La with Wolfgang Puck.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
That's the thing about Los Angeles food, and there are
chefs who bring in everything, and they're not afraid and
they figure out these incredible combinations. I think it was
Wolfgang Puck who changed the world. I mean he really
did to open a first class restaurant and serve pizza.
Not only that, it was revolutionary, and he was also
(11:39):
the first one to say I'm going to use Pacific
influences in the food. So all of a sudden you
got the Japanese influence and the Chinese and very subtle
into this what was basically an Italian restaurant. Also, I
think he was one of the first celebrity chefs. He
would bring you something or the waiter would say, Wolfgang
(12:00):
wants you to try this, and people would melt. You know,
movie stars and he never saw a movie.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
He was in the restaurant the other day. He came
after such a long time. He came in and we
were all so excited to have Wolfgang, who has restaurants
in every country and restaurants in every airport. And I
said to him, Wolfgang, I want to be like you.
I want to have forty restaurants. And he said, Ruthie,
I want to be like you. I want to have one.
(12:28):
And he was so so charming and He has been
a huge influence. And I remember eating with you at
mam Maison, which was a very fancy French restaurant, and
saying that his next one was going to be a
pizza place, and we were all completely mystified, but you
know he did it. When you moved to Los Angeles
(13:04):
and you described the foods markets and the Mexican food
and discovery of artichokes and avocados, and the sun and
the farms and the markets, what was your work like
and what were you doing there.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I was a comedy writer and I wrote a variety shows,
Glenn Campbell, The Mother's Brothers, Leslie ugham Is at the
same time writing sitcoms for All in the Family, Mary
Tyler Moore. I was a pretty busy fellow with my
partner at the time. At the same time, I was
writing television, which I considered a day job and I
loved it, but I always knew that I wanted to
(13:42):
do something by myself, so I started writing screenplays.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Can you tell us about the movies that you've made?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah. The first one was The Frisco Kid with Gene
Wilder and Harrison Ford, and it was about a young
rabbi who comes from Poland to America at the time
of the gold Rush, makes his way across the country
to San Francisco. And then I teamed up with Steve
Martin and we wrote The Jerk, and then my partner
and I, Rich Eustace, wrote Young Doctors in Love. And
(14:12):
then I had my passion project, as it were, which
was a movie, a screenplay about two jazz musicians, which
I wrote and insisted that I direct, and I attracted
Jeff Goldblum and Forrest Whitaker and made this movie called
Lush Life. We ate well from that point on. I mean,
there was no restaurant in LA that we couldn't afford.
(14:33):
But at the same time, eating in a restaurant for
me is I always ask the question could I make
this at home? And La has so many ethnic restaurants
now Cambodian, Laotian, Mexicans of every region, and Chinese and Japanese,
and that I can't make at home, and I wouldn't
even try. And that's the fun of going out in
(14:54):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
How did you handle food as a director?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
On one movie set, I insisted on we all eat together, director, writer,
all the crew, actors, and we talk about what we're doing,
and I think that communal experience is important in the creation.
I hate it when everybody goes off to their dressing
rooms and has their sandwiches or whatever they have. I
wrote a French film and visited the set and they
(15:20):
took a French lunch. They took two hours. Yeah, it
was great. At a certain point, I think I was
finished with television and I decided to write novels.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
You know, we talked about the way you ate when
you were making a television show, and we've spoken about
the way you prefer to eat when you're directing a movie,
all which involve a lot of people. You know, you're
feeding people, you're eating with people. But writing a novel
is a very solitary experience. Here it's you and your laptop.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Somebody asked me my writing schedule, and I say, it's
doing everything I can to avoid writing until there's nothing
left to do, and then I start writing. And I
put in three or four hours. And one of the
things that I like to do is shop for food,
cook and then write. So you're correct, writing is a
solitary thing. And if you write at home in a
(16:11):
home office, you're only a few a few feet from
the refrigerator. That's a place to go, and that's the
place to go when you can't think of the next sentence.
You can always find the next piece of cheese. So
it's for me, it's sometimes that's a distraction. So that's
that's my process.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Tell us about the books.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
My most recent book is about a young policewoman in
a queen's homicide detective trying to find the killer of
her father, who was an abortion provider and he was
assassinated by an anti abortion terrorist like other doctors, and
at the same time, she's investigating murders that may emanate
(16:51):
from a women's shelter, and somehow I managed to combine
the two. I like to write about what my characters eat.
I feel it's just as important as their size, the
color of their hair and eyes, and their character. So
I write a lot about food, and the writers who
write about food attract me. I think it's very important.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
So when you're writing a book and you're thinking about
the character and you're putting them through the day or
their work, and you have really interesting food scenes and
the way they seek food, is that important to you?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, If she goes to her boyfriend's house and he's
a cook, and I always say, well, what would I
cook from my girlfriend when she came over? What would
lead us? You know? Would we have a shower before
we cook? And so that's important. And I talk about
the lousy food she eats when she's has to be
on a steakout and she's got a foot long submarine
sandwich that she can only eat half of and a
(17:51):
lousy soda that's bubbling in her stomach. And so that's
important to me. I don't like it when I read
a novel and they say we stopped for dinner and
then moved on. Well, what did you have dinner? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Do you think that your parents understood you a passion
for food? I mean when you would go home having
been in Paris and London and la and cooked and
eaton and then you would go visit them at home.
How did that work?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Well? I think I'm undemanding as long as it's good.
And I think Sun returning home from college from Europe
from anywhere two daughters too. Parents want to make the
best food for them, and they and they did. And
the summers in Woodstock when we had fresh corn and
people would put the water on the stove and have
(18:43):
it boiling, so that when they came back from the
corn stand, which was at the edge of a corn field,
they would just tear off the cover and throw the
corn in. And they were almost like contests who could
have the freshest corn, and they were tomatoes and farm
stands with such a part of our life in the summer.
(19:05):
You took farm the table, That's what it was. We
never used the expression. And then they became. Then there
was a period when there were these kind of I
don't like the word boutique farmers who made the who
grew the vegetables for Wolfgang and the other restaurants that followed,
(19:27):
and of course everything was baby vegetables, baby carrots, baby asparagus,
baby ripped untimely from the soil. Who come to.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Your plate growing up in Woodstock were actually I probably
grew up more in Woodstock and you'd already left. But
when you came back you became very close to the
artist Philip Guston, and I know that he also loved
to eat, and a lot of his paintings reflect having
overeaten a kind of viver love of food, and he
(19:59):
loved and I was wondering whether you might describe eating,
or cooking or just being with Philip Guston in those days.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
He loved very simple food. He loved those big hamburgers
and fries, and he also loved some new sophisticated food.
The last time I saw him was in San Francisco
in nineteen eighty when they had a retrospective and I
went to San Francisco and there was a big dinner
for him and invited me to come to this. And
then he took me aside and he says, I'm coming
(20:29):
to La after this, and I want you to arrange
a dinner party for me. I said, I'm happy to.
He said just comedians. He said, no art critics please.
And Philip was a funny guy. Did well, you know
he died.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh before he came to before Yeah, he died actually tragically.
He died in our house having dinner, yeah, with our parents.
Something that I think our father really never recovered from that.
That Philip the heart attack.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah, well, our father was a doctor and it was
such a massive heart attack for eating, smoking, drinking hamburgers
and fries and everything else, and that he couldn't he
couldn't save his life. And it really affected him and
they were really close. I think that was that Fred,
our father, lost his best friend, So that was really sad.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Michael, you've talked about eating in restaurants, about eating in
our parents' house, but you really haven't talked about, as
I said in my n touch in the fact that
you are a really good cook, and so what is
cooking like for you at home?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I think what I like to cook is from you,
and it's a connection to you, which is risotto. And
I think I make really good risotto and it's from
your recipe. The Amarone risotto is my favorite, and it's
just connects us. It's about showing love for somebody you
(22:29):
love and feeling loved by somebody who cooks for you,
who loves you. And I've had those two experiences of
cooking for my son when I was a single father
and cooking the things that he loved, and marrying Bianca Roberts,
who is a great cook, and everything she cooks is
(22:51):
with love for me. She has the experience of living
in France and Switzerland, and she makes the best French dishes,
and her blanket a veal is something that is special
for me. So those are two things. So that's my
connection to food. And sometimes it doesn't matter what it is.
(23:11):
It's just a way of showing and getting the warmth
and comfort of somebody who you love.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
I think we've talked about food is a memory, food
is history, food is family, food is friends and travel,
Food is life, and food is death. Food is also comfort.
It is comfort is the comfort we have when we're alone,
or we're sad or in pain, or it's just been
(23:42):
as simple as a hard day of just a hard day,
or maybe even a hard couple of hours. And so
a question that I always ask everyone else, so I
would like to ask my brother is what would be
your comfort food? Michael Elias?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think my comfort food would be our aunt Florence's
cheese blintzes. What is a blinsa?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I know what a blinsa is, and you know, but
there might be a whole lot of people out there
that do not know what a blinsa is.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Oh, A blinca is a thin pancake stuffed with delicious
kind of sweetened cottage cheese and some sugar and then
fold it over and fried in butter, and you put
sour cream on it or apple sauce. To your taste.
I'm a sour cream guy. Our aunt Florence lived in
(24:36):
Stockton and periodically she would send me via a bus
a box of her frozen cheese Blinzers, and I would
eat them until there were no more, and then she
would send me another box. And the last box she
sent me she died while I was in the middle
of eating those cheese Blinzers, and I wanted to make
(24:57):
them last as long as I could. So whenever I'm
feeling when I need something that really connects me to
my family, our family, our heritage, the generosity and the
beauty of the women who cooked in our family, I
(25:17):
go and find somewhere a deli that I can get
cheese Blintzes.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Well, this is a connection. And I might not be
a Blins, but I am your sister, and I love you,
and I think we find comfort in each other, loving
each other, and I'm so happy we did this together.
Thank you, Michael. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table
(25:47):
for would you please make sure to rate and review
the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
A
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