January 23, 2023 • 37 mins
I'm often asked who inspired us when we opened The River Cafe in 1987. Wolfgang Puck is the one of the answers. A few months ago, he came to The River Cafe for dinner with his family, and to everyone working there it felt like a visit from the Gods. To me it was a visit from a mentor, a star, and a friend.
I went to speak with him at his restaurant at the Hotel Bel-Air in LA, where we ate pizza and talked about his life as a chef, his childhood memories and much more.
Join us for this episode of Ruthie’s Table 4: Wolfgang Puck.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and Adam I Studios. There are very few people who,
even if you rarely see them, stay close to your heart.
For me, it's Wolfgang Puck. I'm off in an ast
who inspired Rose and I when we opened the River Cafe,
(00:21):
and the answer is Wolfgang. Before he created Spago, the
choice for choosing a restaurant was eat delicious food, but
be sure to dress up and be prepared to feel
intimidated by the Somayer chef or just the atmosphere in
the room, or eat less well but go out and
have fun in a lively, exciting, friendly place. With Spago,
(00:41):
Wolfgang taught us we could do both, and he turned
the world upside down. He made Pizza's luxurious airport food,
delicious wood ovens for cooking, and took chefs out of
basement kitchens so diners could see them and they could
see the diners. Wolfgang is legendary for being generous with
his knowledge, teaching and spa airing, and mentoring young people
(01:02):
who wanted to be like him. A few months ago,
he came to the River Cafe for dinner with his
family to everyone working there it felt like a visit
from the gods. For me, it was a visit from
a man I love, but rarely see a man who
is close to my heart. Thank you. I have asked
(01:22):
everybody who's been on to read a recipe from a
River Cafe book that they like, but I would rather
read a recipe from your book. And that recipe is
for what we call chicken Spargo, and I think in
your cookbook you call it chicken with Carla can parsley?
Do you want to read this recipe? All right, go on,
let's go with our chicken with garlic and parsley. This
(01:43):
auntly has been on the man at Spargo since we opened.
It continues to be one of the favorites, and we
still make it for special people because as a souvenir. Really, okay,
take two whole chickens about two pounds each, two small
heads of garlic, separates into clothes and peeled, quart of
a couple of parsley leaves, salt, freshly ground white pepper, too,
(02:05):
tablespoon of unsalted butter, and the juice of a large
lemon half and bone. The chickens leaving the first wing
joined intact in a small saucepan. Plunge the garlic clothes
in boiling water for a minute. Cutgolic into paper tin slices,
Toss in a pool with parsley and season stuff. A
(02:26):
little of the garlic mixture in the pockets underneath the
skin of the chicken. Preast and tights transferred to a
large plate, Coba and chill until ready to use. Grill
the chickens seven to ten minutes per side, or just
until the pinkness disappears. Do not overcook. Hit the butter
in a sotape and in it gently. So the remaining
(02:47):
mixture of garlic, lemon and parsley, add lemon, juice and
season well. Nice. Nice. Do you remember writing it? I
remember when Night? Where You? Where are you? So it
was the first cookbook. It was her mom is own cookbook.
The second cookbook was up at Spargo. So I did
that and I think that was in eighties six or
(03:09):
something like that when I wrote it. And it was
interesting because when it came out, you know, people didn't
really know me that well. In l A. Yes, and
there was an agent named Michael Obits he founded YEAH,
And so he came with his wife and Michael Eisner
and Jane Is. Now. They came for dinner and I
(03:30):
think it was Judy Ovis's birthday, so I gave her
a cookbook and signed and said happy birthday, Judy. And
Mike said, Wolfgang, how come I don't know about that?
I said, Mike, you are a bigger age and you
represent Paul Newman and Barba Strikes and what you're gonna
know about the cookbook? He said, better you promote it.
I said, well, we did some shows like l A
(03:53):
in the morning show in l A. And some radio
shows and things like that, and he said, you have
to promote it nationally and I said yeah. They tried
to my pr pers and tried to get me on
Good Morning America or the Twodays show, and then they
said no, no, no, we have Julia Child's. We don't
need you. We don't need another cook on the show.
And he said, what, that's crazy? So he called up
(04:14):
the vice president from ABC. He flew up out. A
few days later, they came to the restaurant. I cooked
the menu for them. I cooked it dinner for them
on a little napkin, on a paper napkin. He signed
a contract with ABC, so I do once a month's
Good Morning America. So and from then on I was
on TV. That's the beginning. Yeah, you mentioned Julia Child.
(04:35):
Did you ever meet her child? Many times? She was
a very good friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, you know,
I really loved her and she was really funny. And
I told her that the story about you know, we
did a sympose him or something, and she said, you're
wolf going on? Since you on Nowaday, don't vote me anymore?
What did you do on the what did you did?
(04:55):
I made the most complete credit thing. We had a
producer on Good Morning America. Sonya said, we right an
English lady and she was very good friends with Julia,
and she actually didn't want me to feel on the
show or she wanted Julia. She wasn't very happy. And
I made crazy things like I made. I showed people
how to make a simple chocolate to play. But you
(05:17):
have to time it just perfectly, because you don't have
life on TV. You only have five minutes, so you
have to put it in the open at the right
time and then hopefully, you know everything goes well, you
take it out and it looks good and then the
segment Julia dropped famously dropped a chicken on the floor.
But did you have disasters or was it pretty? You know,
(05:39):
I never really had bad things happened. I just was
so nervous. At that time. They had David Houtman was
the host, you know, and he was like six ft
five tall and talked, what you're going to cook for
me today? And that's not that they're shaking. I was
nervous seeing all the cameras. I was already old. Yeah,
I had already Spargo was opening my service. Yeah, that's young.
(06:02):
That's young today for me. Yeah, going back to youth.
And you know, tell me about your family. Did you
grow up with good food? You know, it's very interesting.
My mother was a chef, a professional chef, but she
didn't own a restaurant. She worked for a small hotel
on a beautiful lake in Carinthia, which is the southern
part of Austria next to Italian Slovenia. And so she
(06:25):
was a good cook. And my stepfather was a coal
miner and totally crazy and alcoholic and everything, and my
mother was like an angel. I don't know how the
young and the younger together, but it's impossible. And so
I went to school and then the summer I went
to see my mother on the lake there and I
helped her in the kitchen sometimes. And then I went
(06:46):
swimming and I picked up tennis balls. There was a
little tennis club next to the hotel, and I made
a little money. And then when I was fourteen, I
had to decide what to do because because you're the
school finished at fourteen, I was finished with school, and uh,
we didn't have the money to go to Vienna to study.
I actually wanted to be an architect, did you yeah,
(07:09):
But then we didn't have the money to go. So
then my mother found me a job as an apprentice
in Phila. Can I just ask you about your father?
My father actually was very wealthy. My mother was working
for a doctor in a small town, but for a
small town here the mercedes like after the war, you know,
in nineteen eight fifty. So his mother, my father's mother,
(07:33):
told him he cannot marry my mother because my mother
came from a poor background. My my grandmother was working
in the fields for a farmer, you know. So he
didn't marry her. He never married her, never married her.
So my mother then went back started to work in restaurants.
And I was saying, and I was a little kid.
My grandmother was taking care of me. So then my
(07:58):
stepfather as I got and that you be yeah. Yeah.
My stepfather said cooking is not a profession for men,
that you should be a carpenter, or you should be amazing,
or you should be a mechanic or whatever. Cooking is
for women, and he said you're good for nothing. Because
I hated to help him and everything. So I still
remember when I left, which was fifty miles await where
(08:19):
I was starting my apprenticeship, but I was fourteen years old.
I went to the train station with a little and
then I take the train and as I was walking
out the house, he's like, oh, you're good for nothing.
You're gonna be back in the months, and then cry
for money and everything, and I said, I'm never coming
back at age four, at fourteen, yeah, And then I
(08:40):
go there I started my apprenticeship, and the chef there
was as crazy as my stepfather. So I went from
on to the next and you know what, what do
you do in the kitchen here in the kitchens? Yeah,
he was drunk all the time too, and screaming like crazy,
throwing things like crazy, like it happened the old time.
(09:00):
More than you think. Yeah. And so like three or
four weeks into my apprenticeship on a Sunday. Sunday lunch
was always the busy day, and I was doing the
potatoes and making the mashed potatoes. That was like my job,
and peeling onions and carrots, washing the spinach, and we
run out of mashed potatoes, we run out of potato potatoes.
At the end of the services, queened like crazy, you're
(09:24):
good from using We'll go back home. So he told me, okay,
you're fired, go back home to your mother. And I
was saying, I said, I cannot go back home, but
my especial with my stepfather. Yeah, So that was probably
there was day in my life. So I went on
the thing and I said I'm going to jump in
the river and killed myself. And I was fourteen years old.
You know, I did not say I said I cannot
(09:46):
go back home. So I was standing on the river
there looking down and say, what will happen if I die?
You know, what is happening or what is hell? Or what?
And it was all these thoughts were going through my head.
And then after a while, I said, you know what,
I'm just gonna go back to more and see what happened.
(10:06):
So I went back back to the restaurant. Back to
the restaurant, so I I bent. I couldn't sleep all night.
I went really early to the restaurant. Then the apprentice
who was it both me, came and saw me. Then
I said, oh, you're back. He was so happy. He said,
I don't have to build potatoes. So he hit me
down in the vegetable seller and I was peeling potatoes there.
And after a few weeks the chef comes down and
(10:27):
sees me down and start screaming what you're doing here?
He get out of your unscreamed and everything, and then
I said, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, and then
he called the owner. The owner was a little a
little more empathy and sent me to They had another
small hotel in town, and they said, maybe it goes
over there, and they had they had a lady who
(10:47):
was the chef, and she said, just do your job
and be quiet and don't do anything stupid and everything
would be fine and show enough. I stayed there for
three years, did my apprenticeship, and after that I left
for France. When when you think of your own children,
don't here we think about how we treat a fourteen
year old, how you treat your children. I saw you
(11:08):
the night you came in with your children, and I
saw the parenting, I saw the love, I saw the
kindness patients, and then you just think what you had
been through. You know, it's interesting. We had a young
woman who worked for a very famous restaurant in London
and she said that she was once taking sufflets out
of the oven and the chef came over and put
a frying pan over her head and said, if these
(11:30):
two flets don't rise, this frying pan is going to
be on your head. And I said, what you should
have done is put the soufles back in the oven,
going got your coat, left the restaurant and going to
the police. You should go to the police because that
is abuse. But you know, it's somehow, that idea that somehow,
because everybody's under pressure in a kitchen, it's okay, it's
(11:51):
not okay. It's an old fashioned and it's wrong. Yeah,
physical abuse, emotional abuse is totally wrong. And I think
one of the lessons I learned from them, I said,
I never want to be like my stepfather and I
never want to be like the first chef I worked for,
because I think they did the opposite. And I said,
you know, if somebody doesn't make a mistake, somebody does
(12:14):
something wrong, I'm gonna show them how to do it right.
And sometimes it takes more than once, but you want
to teach people. And I think for me that was
really an important part. And later on I opened at
cooking school, so I had to teach people. And so
you got on the train and you went to where
you went to France. So then I went on to France.
I went to Jean first and worked in a restaurant
(12:34):
called I was seventeen. Yeah, so I said, I have
a son now seventeen. I said, wow, if he would
go tell me to more. He's going to work in
Mexico City or somewhere. Let's say, I don't know, not
by yourself. I'm gonna they shout out for you. And
so I went to France and then I was working there,
and after like a year or so, I started to
(12:56):
speak French. I didn't speak it at the beginning. And
then we had a party at the restaurant and it
was because we got a style in the gid mich
Land and restaurant had a start, it just got a
new style. It didn't have one. And then I took
one of these red books, looked through and I said, oh,
shut that it's one star, two stars, three star restaurant.
(13:17):
So I said, I'm not going back to Australia. Before
I wouldn't work in at least in the two star,
hopefully in this three star. So I wrote to Bocus
to grow to La Clods famous three star restaurants. The
first one who said yes was Raymonduli at Bomania in Provence. Yeah,
it's an amazing restaurant. But he was, Yeah, he was
(13:38):
the most amazing personality. Not only he started cooking when
he was like fifty professional when he was fifty years old,
but he was so passionate about the ingredients. He had
a lot of land there too. He had six gardeners
who bought like the best cabaon melon or strawberries or
peace or green beans, really small, you know itself was
(13:59):
really an amazing experience to have somebody at that age.
He was already seventy years old, but he was so
passionate and uh, you know, going back and fourth in
the dining room. And then he used to come into
the kitchen with Elizabeth Taylor, and all of us young
guys looked at her and said, oh my god. At
one time he came in with Marcelo Mastroiani and Catherine
(14:21):
the Nerve, and I said, oh, Jesus Christ, I want
to feel like him. So I stayed there for two
and a half years. And he was the first person
actually who respected me and says, you know what. He
made me feel good, and I agreed the idea of
the whole of the ingredients of the farm, of the
taking the melon, the best melon. But I grew up
(14:43):
on the farm. Yeah, you know, in a village with
fifty people, with two farmers. Yeah, we two farmers next
to each other. We got the milk like in the morning.
I used to go with the can, go to the farmer.
They filled it up and we picked it up two
hours later. That's how we had the milk. We didn't
even have a refrigerator when I grew up. We didn't
have plumbing in our house. So the water we had
the spring outside. You had to pump it and get
(15:04):
the water pring it in. If we want to take
wash ourselves, my mother had to turn on the stove,
put charcoal in it or wood in it, heat up
the water and then we washed us. So when you
left Bowman, you went to Paris. So when I left here,
I went to Monaco and worked at Pine Monaco. They
speak ground hotel like in the old style, you know,
(15:24):
like every the console may and the onion soup and
the vegetable had old people perfectly turned and so on.
And then I went to see Mr Tulier and I said,
you know, I really don't like to work at there.
Maybe he can help me find another job, and he
said okay, and then he said I'm going to Paris.
He was good friends with the owners of Maxims at
that time, and then he found me work at Maxims
(15:48):
in Paris, which was his restyle restaurant at that time.
When you went in, what level were you? So I
went in like as a chef the party, and then
after a year or so, it's the night chef. So
I was responsible for the kitchen after from tensory to
one in the morning. So they kept cooking to one
in the morning because each time, I know, when there
(16:11):
was a show like the opera, they used to come
twenty thirty people after the opera, you know, all dressed
perfectly and have dinner at midnight. Basically this was in
the sixties, was it. That was in the early seventies,
early seven. Yeah. A friend of mine st you know,
(16:39):
if you want to make money, you have to go
to America. You know, in America you make a lot
of money, and uh this and that, and you know.
I was always fascinated by the movies, by the people
writing their big house and everything, and by John Wayne,
the cowboys and everything, so that I have to go
and see. And then at that time it started also
(16:59):
with the hip piece in San Francisco and everything. I said,
I whant I tried to smoke some marijuana and I
was and you couldn't find it in my village. So
I went to America, first to New York. And I
didn't like New York. I said, it's nothing like Paris
and so forth. And then a friend of mine who
owned the Charles Mason, who owned like Gnuis, found me
(17:19):
a job in Indianapolis. I love auto racing. I'm a
big fan of Formula one. So when they said Indianapolis
five miles of Indianapolis, the most famous race in the world,
and I said, I'm going to Indianapolis. So I had
almost no money in English a little bit, so I
took the greyhound pass from New York to Indianapolis. It
(17:41):
lasted like thirty hours or something like that. And I said, ship,
that's Indianapolis. It's nothing. I imagine it being something like Monaco,
maybe on the river or something really beautiful, you know.
And it was flat and a few high rise buildings
in the center. And then I said, where is the race?
Where is the race? I went out to speedway and said,
oh my god, this is Indianapolis. So I had to
(18:02):
stay there. I had no more money left. You had
a job in a restaurant, Yeah, I had a job there.
I was a chef in the French restaurant. I still remember.
I told the manager from New York on the phone.
I said, I'm not cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. You
didn't have to yeah, no, he said, no, no, no, no.
We have a nice restaurant. We make Da Colora launch
and we make dobasol and stuff like that. So I said, okay,
I'm coming. So I stayed a year there. I got
(18:24):
my green cup there because nobody immigrants to Indiana, and
I was the only one at the immigration and then
from there I got a job out here in Los
Angeles in a restaurant downtown from the same company who
was running the restaurant in Indianapolis. Yeah, and then about
six months later I met Patrick ra He owned mamiz
(18:47):
Own and I started to work there in the morning
and worked at night downtown in the restaurant called Francois
and uh, because I wanted to make money to open
my own restaurant. And then after a while, Patrick said, oh,
why you don't come and be the chef at man's own.
So finally I said okay. I started there and I
(19:08):
get my first paycheck there and I got to the
banquet bounced. I said, oh my god. You know, I
had no idea about the business part. So I came back.
I said, there's no money in the bank. They can
pay me. You know. It was a lot of money,
a few hundred box And then he said, okay, I'll
make you a partner in the restaurant. So he gave
me like ten percent of the restaurant. It's like having
ten percent of nothing with the checked out. That's okay. Yeah,
(19:35):
So I said, okay. I started to buy food. I
went to see for some of the guy where who
prought us the fish? Everything was on CD. You had
to pay them cash when they brought the food. And
I said, where is your place? So I went downtown
to this fish place and I saw, for example, there
was a famous restaurant called scandi Are here. They used
to buy cooked lobster for their lobster cocktails. I used
(19:57):
to buy the lobster shells to make lobster stock or
make a lobster bisque and things like that. So I
had almost no money. So for ten dollars maybe I
made soup. I made the sauce, I made this, I
made that, and a little bit a little the restaurant
stuffs to get better awesome weirls. I remember was one
of my first guests. I always yeah, yeah, so and
(20:20):
I always used to He always used to come early
for lunch and say, so, what do you make today?
But did you make today? So? And I always try
to make new things, and he was like they gave
him a little taste, like at eleven or so and
then uh ah, he said, oh, you give me so
little only that's how you're gonna save it. I said, no,
I just give you a little taste. He said, well,
I want to see how the whole thing is, and
(20:41):
so I gave him a whole plate at eleven o'clock
and then he at lunch and twelve thirty with his guests.
So but then so little, by a little, all these
people came, like Billy Walder, you know, was Australian famous
director and Jack Lemon, and so I start to meet
old people and one of them my favorite ones who
just passed the way Sydney Pot whom I met and
(21:04):
I said, I met already some crazy people have Sydney
party wasn't crazy, but I remember Peter O'Toole. Yeah, he
drank a lot. Oh my god, he drank a lot.
And I had the little motor bike and Bomana. They
had like different villas. The people had rooms, and I
was they came him home to do his villa on
my little motor bike and he had his foot on
the ground and I said, hopefully I don't lose him money.
(21:27):
Right there. I think they're acting and actors and filmmakers
and people artists love food and they just and I
remember coming to Mamaison. It was amazing. My brother said,
I'm going to take you to the best restaurant in
the best restaurant ever. And we Wicher now we're visiting
here after he finished the Pompety Center and we went
and it was like, this is the restaurant was it was?
(21:50):
It was? Yeah, it used to be a parking lot. Yeah.
And so Patrick put a little fence around and put
like a tent on up and then I have asplet
and plastic jails like you would find in a little
cafe somewhere, you know, with no style at all. But
it became really famous. Yeah, I knew and was associated
(22:11):
with you. I mean it really even just in the
last few days that and I've been talking to mel Brooks,
and we've been talking to Michael Mann, and we've been
talking to before we talked to Michael Caine, and they
always describe restaurants once from the past, and they describe
it as a place where you went into, you saw
people you knew, you saw, you had incredible you know,
like seats, and you knew the waiters. But nobody talked
(22:33):
about the food. Nobody. They talked about restaurants as places
that were seen, but they didn't talk about good food.
And I think what you brought to l A was
from what everyone says to me, and I believe it myself,
is you brought good food, because I don't think that
going to a restaurant meant eating well, it meant doing
a deal, that meant being yeah, no, not totally. The
(22:54):
people didn't know. Like I used to make people an
omelet and you're an omelet the way I in France,
that is soft in the inside and cooked outside. They
used to send it back and said, that's not cooked.
That's oh. I used to drive me crazy. Yeah, and
often it happened like that. You know, like I like
to fish a little undercooked. Now people eat well fish
and everything in every restaurant, but I undercooked the salmon.
(23:17):
We got beautiful king salmon from from Alaska, and I
cooked the chest, so it's still a little undercooked in
the middle. I still remember one customer came with the
plate in the kitchen and said, my salmon is not cooked.
What's wrong with you? I just looked at them and said,
you know what I cook it for you well done.
(23:37):
You know. It's like I said, I cannot deal with
that with these people. So it was hard at the beginning.
The same way Indianapolis when I was there, you know,
every state had to be well done. I said, no,
I'm gonna cook it pinking the inside. I even turned
down the light in the in the dining rooms because
I think that when people go to Australia and they say,
you know, Melbourne or you know, London is such a
(23:59):
great city now for food, and they've got the culture food.
But you know, you go to Paris and you get
in a taxicab and the driver can tell you how
to cook at Sea Bass. You know, you go down
the street in the Marmarch which is you know this is,
and you can smell the bread. I think that's the
culture of food or not, not whether it's a great
food scene, but that it's in in Austry. You had that.
(24:21):
In Europe you haven't. I don't know why. You know,
I don't want to make Americans angry American, but there
is not that culture totally, not food totally, not because
unfortunately the immigrants came from England. The immigrants came from
Holland and from Germany. You know, in England, yeah, yeah,
(24:43):
London has great restaurants and everything. But in Holland or
in Germany maybe, but I think the whole culture is
different where you go and get the fresh spaghette in
the morning where you let the cheese stand outside so
not out of the refrigerator and so forth. So people
did know that, you know, and I think unfortunate that
what happened in America. You had small pockets, like in St. Louis,
(25:07):
you had a little reach and with Italians there, they
all were together. The belly spoke English, but they cooked
the way the food they cooked in southern Italy or
in the old time, even in New York. You know,
Little Italy used to be very traditional. Obviously it has
changed now, but I think you had little pockets with
immigrants where you actually could get good food and uh
(25:28):
you know, traditional food, not fancy food, no truffles off,
but really traditional home cooked food. So I sang. But
all in all, all over you know, like I was
in Indianapolis. I mean, it was like crazy, you could
didn't know where to go and eat. But now, I mean,
how do you find comparing l A now to l
A when you came. Do you think it is a
(25:49):
radical change? I think l A is one of the
most exciting thing. Is why because we have so many
parts of the cities like from a little Tokyo to
Korea Town, to China Town, to Little India to little
et Theopia, so you have, yeah, totally. It's not too
far actually from uh Are where you can get really
(26:11):
interesting food and you know, like going to U restaurants
in Monterey Park, you know, you feel like you're in
Hong Kong when you're going to Sunday Families out there
all pick tables and everything. They come around with them
some cards and everything. So it's so different, you know.
And I remember I went to one the first time.
We used to get bronze shrimps out there from the
(26:32):
island we called Santa Barbara from the Santa Barbara Island,
and I always just are gonna grill them, but sometimes
they get mushy. And then I went to a Chinese
restaurant and they made this drunk construnt where they just
dropped them in the in the soup or whatever and
with wine in it and uh uh cook them a
little bit. And I said, wow, they're crunchy, They're really good.
(26:52):
Why do I try to grill them? And everything was
very how to keep them that film, you know, And
so I learned that when more to the restaurants on
my days off when I was at Mamizon or when
I opened Spargo, and that's also then one day I said,
you know what, I want to open a Chinese restaurant,
not a real Chinese restaurant, because I didn't even know
(27:14):
how to use a walk. So I said, I'm going
to open a restaurant and French techniques and Chinese ingredients.
So we opened China in three. I remember when you
(27:36):
opened Sparkled, how shocked everybody was that this French chef,
this man who came from Michelin start Restaurants, did Mason
and what's going to be Molfgang's next project a pizza.
It was really shocking, you know, it was you know,
I remember the editor in chief of Bonapeti magazine took
(27:58):
me for dinner and my then girlfriend really Barbara, my
ex wife, and uh, she tried to talk me out
of what A're gonna do. She said, how can you
be a chef like that working at Boumania at Maxims
and opening a pizza place. I said, you know what,
I'm going to open a restaurant. I want great ingredients,
(28:19):
but have fun. Have fun. That's the whole thing that
you don't have to the same thing in London when
we did the River Cafe. Yeah, and why can't you
you know, people come into I don't care what people
were in my restaurant. I couldn't care if they come
with their kids. I don't care if they come in jeans.
To you, it's just like you care. It's you come
here and we treat you well. And especially in Los Angeles,
(28:39):
you know we are it's warm, the climate is different.
You don't get old pankers. You've got to New York
close to Wall Street, you know, you have allD pankers.
They all have their suits on and everything. It's different here.
People are you know, in the movie business and the
record business. They come, you know, totally different. I remember
one time I was very friendly with David Arney. He
(29:00):
actually did the first cover of My cot Yeah, and
uh so he a friend of mine, opened a fancy
French restaurant, you know, one with the high chairs and
their fancy plates and that wizing, but you had to
wear a jacket. And David Harkney had the sweat home
or whatever he was in the summertime, and they didn't
let him in and he came after back to mom
(29:23):
and own and says, you know what just happened to me? Yeah,
I said what he said? They didn't let me in.
I said, should I call him back? He says no,
I would never go back there. Yeah, Richard, my husband
never wore a tie. He would take his children to
the corner to the carridges and they wouldn't let him in.
And one time a major d said, you know, Mr Rogers,
don't think that we're picking on you, because yesterday we
(29:44):
wouldn't let nerve and as if they were proud of it.
You know, even Nerve, we wouldn't let in. You know that.
But somebody, but my friend of mine had an assistant
who worked for you as a front of house manager,
and she said that people used to come in and say,
bring a bottle of champagne to the table, I'll pay
for it now, and say it's from Wolfgang that is
(30:08):
a big or seat me first before somebody else. We had.
It's crazy, it was crazy. The sitting like the old
Sparko was still important because we have this window seats
and everybody wanted to see it at the window seats.
I remember one time Sammy Count, who was a famous
song right was there and he was sitting in the
(30:29):
second row, not that the window, and next door was
the table with Alan and Merlyn Bergman who did all
the songs of Baba's Bryson. And Something calls me over
and says, Wolfgang, I want to ask because they don't
have any and how come I have to sit in
the second row? Said, you get this. I didn't know
that that this is the important part. So it's we
(30:52):
had people's storm out of the restaurant, some of them
if they didn't get the table they wanted. I mean
it was also difficult, you know, the people the insecurity.
And I was saying, and I remember, like we had
the head of MGM at that time was Daniel Melnick,
and they set him in the back and uh of
(31:12):
the restaurant. I was like, Siberia, and I go, then
you know what, we have a table up front. If
you want a better table up and he said, what
do you mean a better table? I said, yeah, well
on the window. He says, you know wherever. I said,
it's the best table. So I don't care how real
it is. I agree. I've seen that with people who
people come in sometimes and say I want the best table,
(31:32):
and I guess there is no best table, because you
know Lucy and Freud like that one, but then somebody
else like that one, and you know the idea. But
do you think it's better now? Do you think? I
think it's a little better. But there are still some
restaurants when you have boots and things like that where
they say, okay, I want the first boot, or I
want this and that, or like I remember one time
at ga I was the eighties too, when I had
(31:56):
Elizabeth Taylor came with some people and we had one
guest who come all the time, always sat on their
table too, and they saw Elizabeth Taylor like four tables down,
and then they came back the next day, the next time,
next week, we said them on the regular table. They said,
we don't want this table, we want the table. That's crazy.
(32:16):
So when you cook, you have a son who's a chef. Yeah,
so did he did? He become a chef because he
was influenced by your cooking at home? Do you cook
at home? Yeah? I cook at home. Let's now since
the kids are gone, really you know so? But Byron,
who is my second son, and he always was interested
(32:37):
in cooking, and even when he went to high school
here at Howard the West Lake. They had the chemistry class,
and he wanted to do a molecular gastronomy class with
the chemistry class. So he said, okay, we can do
different things, you know, learn chemistry, but with food. And
so he was really into this whole thing, you know,
like the stuff with all the things. So I think
(33:00):
I want him to hopefully take hold on one day
because it is like a family business, you know. Yeah,
but if you think about family and you think about food,
and you think about your mother being a pastry chef,
and and the suffering that you went through and you're
early daysm is, it's heart rendering when you think of
food is comfort? Is there food that you would reach
(33:21):
for com you know, it's often I reach for simple things,
you know, like if it's in the morning, it might
be just someone good oatmeal or something like that, you know.
And obviously sometimes I still feel like eating a ghula
from my childhood child. Yeah, and that's still popular. And
(33:42):
I think for me still, the simpler things are the
better bond. I love vegetables, I love fruits, So that's
why I still go to the farmer's market and so forth,
you know. So I think to me. Food is such
an important part of life because I think it's one
of the only time in this modern world where we
actually can sit together and talk and enjoy the time.
(34:03):
I think, enjoy the food, enjoy and have a good
time to meet the most important part. That's why I
think a restaurant should be fun. You know, a restaurant,
it should be a place you enjoy. If you want
to go to a church somewhere and pray, you go
to the church, you know, or if the chefs want
to impress you and says, how did I do? I said,
(34:23):
you know what, this thing is not about you. This
thing is about us. You know, this thing is about
the guests in the restaurant. So I think that's a
big difference. Mostly what I hear is the mail chefs
are really more egocentrics and they think it's about them,
the food whatever. How did they perform basically, you know,
(34:44):
and women chefs often will say, I hope you like
my food. I hope you enjoyed your time at the table,
you know, instead of feeling, oh it's about me. And
I always said, you know, to me, the most important
part is that the guests are happy when they leave.
They can't wait to come back, make a reservation, maybe
already on the way out. And I think that's why
we are in business for forty years. And like I
(35:06):
come here to the Belly Hotel, I know almost everybody.
I go to Spargo, I know the people, so I
think it's a nice way for me. I almost feel
like I'm going to a party every day. Yeah, we
have a great job, and I think that. I always
say I want people to feel better when they leave
them when they came in. And I certainly feel better
now leaving you than when I came in because we
(35:29):
had such a good talk. Thank you. We cannot eat
right now. No, okay, smoked Someone pizza for breakfast. We've
just been brought. Can you tell me what we've just
been brought? We have here a little smoked Someone pizza,
I think, which is a staple at Spargo too, and
everybody says, UH, have made it for them. One time
(35:52):
at Spargo we had smoked salmon and dill cream overever
like we had traditional the way. One day we ran
out of bread and then I said, what are gonna do?
And so I just cooked the pizza during the open,
cutted in slices and stuffed with the plate of smoked salmon.
And then I said, you know what, I'm just gonna
put it all together myself. So I cooked the pizza,
(36:13):
put the del creame on it, uh, put the smoked salmon,
and I put a little cave on top, and then
I cut it and I said, wow, this is really perfect.
It's like the crispy crust and it's warm, and there's
they smoked salmon on top. And I said, oh, I
need is a glass of champagne, and then I'm good.
The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
(36:36):
and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photographer 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 Look Book Recipes for
(36:56):
cooks of all ages. M H. Ruthie's Table four is
a production of I Heart Radio and atom I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and Adam I Studios. There are very few people who,
even if you rarely see them, stay close to your heart.
For me, it's Wolfgang Puck. I'm off in an ast
who inspired Rose and I when we opened the River Cafe,
(00:21):
and the answer is Wolfgang. Before he created Spago, the
choice for choosing a restaurant was eat delicious food, but
be sure to dress up and be prepared to feel
intimidated by the Somayer chef or just the atmosphere in
the room, or eat less well but go out and
have fun in a lively, exciting, friendly place. With Spago,
(00:41):
Wolfgang taught us we could do both, and he turned
the world upside down. He made Pizza's luxurious airport food,
delicious wood ovens for cooking, and took chefs out of
basement kitchens so diners could see them and they could
see the diners. Wolfgang is legendary for being generous with
his knowledge, teaching and spa airing, and mentoring young people
(01:02):
who wanted to be like him. A few months ago,
he came to the River Cafe for dinner with his
family to everyone working there it felt like a visit
from the gods. For me, it was a visit from
a man I love, but rarely see a man who
is close to my heart. Thank you. I have asked
(01:22):
everybody who's been on to read a recipe from a
River Cafe book that they like, but I would rather
read a recipe from your book. And that recipe is
for what we call chicken Spargo, and I think in
your cookbook you call it chicken with Carla can parsley?
Do you want to read this recipe? All right, go on,
let's go with our chicken with garlic and parsley. This
(01:43):
auntly has been on the man at Spargo since we opened.
It continues to be one of the favorites, and we
still make it for special people because as a souvenir. Really, okay,
take two whole chickens about two pounds each, two small
heads of garlic, separates into clothes and peeled, quart of
a couple of parsley leaves, salt, freshly ground white pepper, too,
(02:05):
tablespoon of unsalted butter, and the juice of a large
lemon half and bone. The chickens leaving the first wing
joined intact in a small saucepan. Plunge the garlic clothes
in boiling water for a minute. Cutgolic into paper tin slices,
Toss in a pool with parsley and season stuff. A
(02:26):
little of the garlic mixture in the pockets underneath the
skin of the chicken. Preast and tights transferred to a
large plate, Coba and chill until ready to use. Grill
the chickens seven to ten minutes per side, or just
until the pinkness disappears. Do not overcook. Hit the butter
in a sotape and in it gently. So the remaining
(02:47):
mixture of garlic, lemon and parsley, add lemon, juice and
season well. Nice. Nice. Do you remember writing it? I
remember when Night? Where You? Where are you? So it
was the first cookbook. It was her mom is own cookbook.
The second cookbook was up at Spargo. So I did
that and I think that was in eighties six or
(03:09):
something like that when I wrote it. And it was
interesting because when it came out, you know, people didn't
really know me that well. In l A. Yes, and
there was an agent named Michael Obits he founded YEAH,
And so he came with his wife and Michael Eisner
and Jane Is. Now. They came for dinner and I
(03:30):
think it was Judy Ovis's birthday, so I gave her
a cookbook and signed and said happy birthday, Judy. And
Mike said, Wolfgang, how come I don't know about that?
I said, Mike, you are a bigger age and you
represent Paul Newman and Barba Strikes and what you're gonna
know about the cookbook? He said, better you promote it.
I said, well, we did some shows like l A
(03:53):
in the morning show in l A. And some radio
shows and things like that, and he said, you have
to promote it nationally and I said yeah. They tried
to my pr pers and tried to get me on
Good Morning America or the Twodays show, and then they
said no, no, no, we have Julia Child's. We don't
need you. We don't need another cook on the show.
And he said, what, that's crazy? So he called up
(04:14):
the vice president from ABC. He flew up out. A
few days later, they came to the restaurant. I cooked
the menu for them. I cooked it dinner for them
on a little napkin, on a paper napkin. He signed
a contract with ABC, so I do once a month's
Good Morning America. So and from then on I was
on TV. That's the beginning. Yeah, you mentioned Julia Child.
(04:35):
Did you ever meet her child? Many times? She was
a very good friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, you know,
I really loved her and she was really funny. And
I told her that the story about you know, we
did a sympose him or something, and she said, you're
wolf going on? Since you on Nowaday, don't vote me anymore?
What did you do on the what did you did?
(04:55):
I made the most complete credit thing. We had a
producer on Good Morning America. Sonya said, we right an
English lady and she was very good friends with Julia,
and she actually didn't want me to feel on the
show or she wanted Julia. She wasn't very happy. And
I made crazy things like I made. I showed people
how to make a simple chocolate to play. But you
(05:17):
have to time it just perfectly, because you don't have
life on TV. You only have five minutes, so you
have to put it in the open at the right
time and then hopefully, you know everything goes well, you
take it out and it looks good and then the
segment Julia dropped famously dropped a chicken on the floor.
But did you have disasters or was it pretty? You know,
(05:39):
I never really had bad things happened. I just was
so nervous. At that time. They had David Houtman was
the host, you know, and he was like six ft
five tall and talked, what you're going to cook for
me today? And that's not that they're shaking. I was
nervous seeing all the cameras. I was already old. Yeah,
I had already Spargo was opening my service. Yeah, that's young.
(06:02):
That's young today for me. Yeah, going back to youth.
And you know, tell me about your family. Did you
grow up with good food? You know, it's very interesting.
My mother was a chef, a professional chef, but she
didn't own a restaurant. She worked for a small hotel
on a beautiful lake in Carinthia, which is the southern
part of Austria next to Italian Slovenia. And so she
(06:25):
was a good cook. And my stepfather was a coal
miner and totally crazy and alcoholic and everything, and my
mother was like an angel. I don't know how the
young and the younger together, but it's impossible. And so
I went to school and then the summer I went
to see my mother on the lake there and I
helped her in the kitchen sometimes. And then I went
(06:46):
swimming and I picked up tennis balls. There was a
little tennis club next to the hotel, and I made
a little money. And then when I was fourteen, I
had to decide what to do because because you're the
school finished at fourteen, I was finished with school, and uh,
we didn't have the money to go to Vienna to study.
I actually wanted to be an architect, did you yeah,
(07:09):
But then we didn't have the money to go. So
then my mother found me a job as an apprentice
in Phila. Can I just ask you about your father?
My father actually was very wealthy. My mother was working
for a doctor in a small town, but for a
small town here the mercedes like after the war, you know,
in nineteen eight fifty. So his mother, my father's mother,
(07:33):
told him he cannot marry my mother because my mother
came from a poor background. My my grandmother was working
in the fields for a farmer, you know. So he
didn't marry her. He never married her, never married her.
So my mother then went back started to work in restaurants.
And I was saying, and I was a little kid.
My grandmother was taking care of me. So then my
(07:58):
stepfather as I got and that you be yeah. Yeah.
My stepfather said cooking is not a profession for men,
that you should be a carpenter, or you should be amazing,
or you should be a mechanic or whatever. Cooking is
for women, and he said you're good for nothing. Because
I hated to help him and everything. So I still
remember when I left, which was fifty miles await where
(08:19):
I was starting my apprenticeship, but I was fourteen years old.
I went to the train station with a little and
then I take the train and as I was walking
out the house, he's like, oh, you're good for nothing.
You're gonna be back in the months, and then cry
for money and everything, and I said, I'm never coming
back at age four, at fourteen, yeah, And then I
(08:40):
go there I started my apprenticeship, and the chef there
was as crazy as my stepfather. So I went from
on to the next and you know what, what do
you do in the kitchen here in the kitchens? Yeah,
he was drunk all the time too, and screaming like crazy,
throwing things like crazy, like it happened the old time.
(09:00):
More than you think. Yeah. And so like three or
four weeks into my apprenticeship on a Sunday. Sunday lunch
was always the busy day, and I was doing the
potatoes and making the mashed potatoes. That was like my job,
and peeling onions and carrots, washing the spinach, and we
run out of mashed potatoes, we run out of potato potatoes.
At the end of the services, queened like crazy, you're
(09:24):
good from using We'll go back home. So he told me, okay,
you're fired, go back home to your mother. And I
was saying, I said, I cannot go back home, but
my especial with my stepfather. Yeah, So that was probably
there was day in my life. So I went on
the thing and I said I'm going to jump in
the river and killed myself. And I was fourteen years old.
You know, I did not say I said I cannot
(09:46):
go back home. So I was standing on the river
there looking down and say, what will happen if I die?
You know, what is happening or what is hell? Or what?
And it was all these thoughts were going through my head.
And then after a while, I said, you know what,
I'm just gonna go back to more and see what happened.
(10:06):
So I went back back to the restaurant. Back to
the restaurant, so I I bent. I couldn't sleep all night.
I went really early to the restaurant. Then the apprentice
who was it both me, came and saw me. Then
I said, oh, you're back. He was so happy. He said,
I don't have to build potatoes. So he hit me
down in the vegetable seller and I was peeling potatoes there.
And after a few weeks the chef comes down and
(10:27):
sees me down and start screaming what you're doing here?
He get out of your unscreamed and everything, and then
I said, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, and then
he called the owner. The owner was a little a
little more empathy and sent me to They had another
small hotel in town, and they said, maybe it goes
over there, and they had they had a lady who
(10:47):
was the chef, and she said, just do your job
and be quiet and don't do anything stupid and everything
would be fine and show enough. I stayed there for
three years, did my apprenticeship, and after that I left
for France. When when you think of your own children,
don't here we think about how we treat a fourteen
year old, how you treat your children. I saw you
(11:08):
the night you came in with your children, and I
saw the parenting, I saw the love, I saw the
kindness patients, and then you just think what you had
been through. You know, it's interesting. We had a young
woman who worked for a very famous restaurant in London
and she said that she was once taking sufflets out
of the oven and the chef came over and put
a frying pan over her head and said, if these
(11:30):
two flets don't rise, this frying pan is going to
be on your head. And I said, what you should
have done is put the soufles back in the oven,
going got your coat, left the restaurant and going to
the police. You should go to the police because that
is abuse. But you know, it's somehow, that idea that somehow,
because everybody's under pressure in a kitchen, it's okay, it's
(11:51):
not okay. It's an old fashioned and it's wrong. Yeah,
physical abuse, emotional abuse is totally wrong. And I think
one of the lessons I learned from them, I said,
I never want to be like my stepfather and I
never want to be like the first chef I worked for,
because I think they did the opposite. And I said,
you know, if somebody doesn't make a mistake, somebody does
(12:14):
something wrong, I'm gonna show them how to do it right.
And sometimes it takes more than once, but you want
to teach people. And I think for me that was
really an important part. And later on I opened at
cooking school, so I had to teach people. And so
you got on the train and you went to where
you went to France. So then I went on to France.
I went to Jean first and worked in a restaurant
(12:34):
called I was seventeen. Yeah, so I said, I have
a son now seventeen. I said, wow, if he would
go tell me to more. He's going to work in
Mexico City or somewhere. Let's say, I don't know, not
by yourself. I'm gonna they shout out for you. And
so I went to France and then I was working there,
and after like a year or so, I started to
(12:56):
speak French. I didn't speak it at the beginning. And
then we had a party at the restaurant and it
was because we got a style in the gid mich
Land and restaurant had a start, it just got a
new style. It didn't have one. And then I took
one of these red books, looked through and I said, oh,
shut that it's one star, two stars, three star restaurant.
(13:17):
So I said, I'm not going back to Australia. Before
I wouldn't work in at least in the two star,
hopefully in this three star. So I wrote to Bocus
to grow to La Clods famous three star restaurants. The
first one who said yes was Raymonduli at Bomania in Provence. Yeah,
it's an amazing restaurant. But he was, Yeah, he was
(13:38):
the most amazing personality. Not only he started cooking when
he was like fifty professional when he was fifty years old,
but he was so passionate about the ingredients. He had
a lot of land there too. He had six gardeners
who bought like the best cabaon melon or strawberries or
peace or green beans, really small, you know itself was
(13:59):
really an amazing experience to have somebody at that age.
He was already seventy years old, but he was so
passionate and uh, you know, going back and fourth in
the dining room. And then he used to come into
the kitchen with Elizabeth Taylor, and all of us young
guys looked at her and said, oh my god. At
one time he came in with Marcelo Mastroiani and Catherine
(14:21):
the Nerve, and I said, oh, Jesus Christ, I want
to feel like him. So I stayed there for two
and a half years. And he was the first person
actually who respected me and says, you know what. He
made me feel good, and I agreed the idea of
the whole of the ingredients of the farm, of the
taking the melon, the best melon. But I grew up
(14:43):
on the farm. Yeah, you know, in a village with
fifty people, with two farmers. Yeah, we two farmers next
to each other. We got the milk like in the morning.
I used to go with the can, go to the farmer.
They filled it up and we picked it up two
hours later. That's how we had the milk. We didn't
even have a refrigerator when I grew up. We didn't
have plumbing in our house. So the water we had
the spring outside. You had to pump it and get
(15:04):
the water pring it in. If we want to take
wash ourselves, my mother had to turn on the stove,
put charcoal in it or wood in it, heat up
the water and then we washed us. So when you
left Bowman, you went to Paris. So when I left here,
I went to Monaco and worked at Pine Monaco. They
speak ground hotel like in the old style, you know,
(15:24):
like every the console may and the onion soup and
the vegetable had old people perfectly turned and so on.
And then I went to see Mr Tulier and I said,
you know, I really don't like to work at there.
Maybe he can help me find another job, and he
said okay, and then he said I'm going to Paris.
He was good friends with the owners of Maxims at
that time, and then he found me work at Maxims
(15:48):
in Paris, which was his restyle restaurant at that time.
When you went in, what level were you? So I
went in like as a chef the party, and then
after a year or so, it's the night chef. So
I was responsible for the kitchen after from tensory to
one in the morning. So they kept cooking to one
in the morning because each time, I know, when there
(16:11):
was a show like the opera, they used to come
twenty thirty people after the opera, you know, all dressed
perfectly and have dinner at midnight. Basically this was in
the sixties, was it. That was in the early seventies,
early seven. Yeah. A friend of mine st you know,
(16:39):
if you want to make money, you have to go
to America. You know, in America you make a lot
of money, and uh this and that, and you know.
I was always fascinated by the movies, by the people
writing their big house and everything, and by John Wayne,
the cowboys and everything, so that I have to go
and see. And then at that time it started also
(16:59):
with the hip piece in San Francisco and everything. I said,
I whant I tried to smoke some marijuana and I
was and you couldn't find it in my village. So
I went to America, first to New York. And I
didn't like New York. I said, it's nothing like Paris
and so forth. And then a friend of mine who
owned the Charles Mason, who owned like Gnuis, found me
(17:19):
a job in Indianapolis. I love auto racing. I'm a
big fan of Formula one. So when they said Indianapolis
five miles of Indianapolis, the most famous race in the world,
and I said, I'm going to Indianapolis. So I had
almost no money in English a little bit, so I
took the greyhound pass from New York to Indianapolis. It
(17:41):
lasted like thirty hours or something like that. And I said, ship,
that's Indianapolis. It's nothing. I imagine it being something like Monaco,
maybe on the river or something really beautiful, you know.
And it was flat and a few high rise buildings
in the center. And then I said, where is the race?
Where is the race? I went out to speedway and said,
oh my god, this is Indianapolis. So I had to
(18:02):
stay there. I had no more money left. You had
a job in a restaurant, Yeah, I had a job there.
I was a chef in the French restaurant. I still remember.
I told the manager from New York on the phone.
I said, I'm not cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. You
didn't have to yeah, no, he said, no, no, no, no.
We have a nice restaurant. We make Da Colora launch
and we make dobasol and stuff like that. So I said, okay,
I'm coming. So I stayed a year there. I got
(18:24):
my green cup there because nobody immigrants to Indiana, and
I was the only one at the immigration and then
from there I got a job out here in Los
Angeles in a restaurant downtown from the same company who
was running the restaurant in Indianapolis. Yeah, and then about
six months later I met Patrick ra He owned mamiz
(18:47):
Own and I started to work there in the morning
and worked at night downtown in the restaurant called Francois
and uh, because I wanted to make money to open
my own restaurant. And then after a while, Patrick said, oh,
why you don't come and be the chef at man's own.
So finally I said okay. I started there and I
(19:08):
get my first paycheck there and I got to the
banquet bounced. I said, oh my god. You know, I
had no idea about the business part. So I came back.
I said, there's no money in the bank. They can
pay me. You know. It was a lot of money,
a few hundred box And then he said, okay, I'll
make you a partner in the restaurant. So he gave
me like ten percent of the restaurant. It's like having
ten percent of nothing with the checked out. That's okay. Yeah,
(19:35):
So I said, okay. I started to buy food. I
went to see for some of the guy where who
prought us the fish? Everything was on CD. You had
to pay them cash when they brought the food. And
I said, where is your place? So I went downtown
to this fish place and I saw, for example, there
was a famous restaurant called scandi Are here. They used
to buy cooked lobster for their lobster cocktails. I used
(19:57):
to buy the lobster shells to make lobster stock or
make a lobster bisque and things like that. So I
had almost no money. So for ten dollars maybe I
made soup. I made the sauce, I made this, I
made that, and a little bit a little the restaurant
stuffs to get better awesome weirls. I remember was one
of my first guests. I always yeah, yeah, so and
(20:20):
I always used to He always used to come early
for lunch and say, so, what do you make today?
But did you make today? So? And I always try
to make new things, and he was like they gave
him a little taste, like at eleven or so and
then uh ah, he said, oh, you give me so
little only that's how you're gonna save it. I said, no,
I just give you a little taste. He said, well,
I want to see how the whole thing is, and
(20:41):
so I gave him a whole plate at eleven o'clock
and then he at lunch and twelve thirty with his guests.
So but then so little, by a little, all these
people came, like Billy Walder, you know, was Australian famous
director and Jack Lemon, and so I start to meet
old people and one of them my favorite ones who
just passed the way Sydney Pot whom I met and
(21:04):
I said, I met already some crazy people have Sydney
party wasn't crazy, but I remember Peter O'Toole. Yeah, he
drank a lot. Oh my god, he drank a lot.
And I had the little motor bike and Bomana. They
had like different villas. The people had rooms, and I
was they came him home to do his villa on
my little motor bike and he had his foot on
the ground and I said, hopefully I don't lose him money.
(21:27):
Right there. I think they're acting and actors and filmmakers
and people artists love food and they just and I
remember coming to Mamaison. It was amazing. My brother said,
I'm going to take you to the best restaurant in
the best restaurant ever. And we Wicher now we're visiting
here after he finished the Pompety Center and we went
and it was like, this is the restaurant was it was?
(21:50):
It was? Yeah, it used to be a parking lot. Yeah.
And so Patrick put a little fence around and put
like a tent on up and then I have asplet
and plastic jails like you would find in a little
cafe somewhere, you know, with no style at all. But
it became really famous. Yeah, I knew and was associated
(22:11):
with you. I mean it really even just in the
last few days that and I've been talking to mel Brooks,
and we've been talking to Michael Mann, and we've been
talking to before we talked to Michael Caine, and they
always describe restaurants once from the past, and they describe
it as a place where you went into, you saw
people you knew, you saw, you had incredible you know,
like seats, and you knew the waiters. But nobody talked
(22:33):
about the food. Nobody. They talked about restaurants as places
that were seen, but they didn't talk about good food.
And I think what you brought to l A was
from what everyone says to me, and I believe it myself,
is you brought good food, because I don't think that
going to a restaurant meant eating well, it meant doing
a deal, that meant being yeah, no, not totally. The
(22:54):
people didn't know. Like I used to make people an
omelet and you're an omelet the way I in France,
that is soft in the inside and cooked outside. They
used to send it back and said, that's not cooked.
That's oh. I used to drive me crazy. Yeah, and
often it happened like that. You know, like I like
to fish a little undercooked. Now people eat well fish
and everything in every restaurant, but I undercooked the salmon.
(23:17):
We got beautiful king salmon from from Alaska, and I
cooked the chest, so it's still a little undercooked in
the middle. I still remember one customer came with the
plate in the kitchen and said, my salmon is not cooked.
What's wrong with you? I just looked at them and said,
you know what I cook it for you well done.
(23:37):
You know. It's like I said, I cannot deal with
that with these people. So it was hard at the beginning.
The same way Indianapolis when I was there, you know,
every state had to be well done. I said, no,
I'm gonna cook it pinking the inside. I even turned
down the light in the in the dining rooms because
I think that when people go to Australia and they say,
you know, Melbourne or you know, London is such a
(23:59):
great city now for food, and they've got the culture food.
But you know, you go to Paris and you get
in a taxicab and the driver can tell you how
to cook at Sea Bass. You know, you go down
the street in the Marmarch which is you know this is,
and you can smell the bread. I think that's the
culture of food or not, not whether it's a great
food scene, but that it's in in Austry. You had that.
(24:21):
In Europe you haven't. I don't know why. You know,
I don't want to make Americans angry American, but there
is not that culture totally, not food totally, not because
unfortunately the immigrants came from England. The immigrants came from
Holland and from Germany. You know, in England, yeah, yeah,
(24:43):
London has great restaurants and everything. But in Holland or
in Germany maybe, but I think the whole culture is
different where you go and get the fresh spaghette in
the morning where you let the cheese stand outside so
not out of the refrigerator and so forth. So people
did know that, you know, and I think unfortunate that
what happened in America. You had small pockets, like in St. Louis,
(25:07):
you had a little reach and with Italians there, they
all were together. The belly spoke English, but they cooked
the way the food they cooked in southern Italy or
in the old time, even in New York. You know,
Little Italy used to be very traditional. Obviously it has
changed now, but I think you had little pockets with
immigrants where you actually could get good food and uh
(25:28):
you know, traditional food, not fancy food, no truffles off,
but really traditional home cooked food. So I sang. But
all in all, all over you know, like I was
in Indianapolis. I mean, it was like crazy, you could
didn't know where to go and eat. But now, I mean,
how do you find comparing l A now to l
A when you came. Do you think it is a
(25:49):
radical change? I think l A is one of the
most exciting thing. Is why because we have so many
parts of the cities like from a little Tokyo to
Korea Town, to China Town, to Little India to little
et Theopia, so you have, yeah, totally. It's not too
far actually from uh Are where you can get really
(26:11):
interesting food and you know, like going to U restaurants
in Monterey Park, you know, you feel like you're in
Hong Kong when you're going to Sunday Families out there
all pick tables and everything. They come around with them
some cards and everything. So it's so different, you know.
And I remember I went to one the first time.
We used to get bronze shrimps out there from the
(26:32):
island we called Santa Barbara from the Santa Barbara Island,
and I always just are gonna grill them, but sometimes
they get mushy. And then I went to a Chinese
restaurant and they made this drunk construnt where they just
dropped them in the in the soup or whatever and
with wine in it and uh uh cook them a
little bit. And I said, wow, they're crunchy, They're really good.
(26:52):
Why do I try to grill them? And everything was
very how to keep them that film, you know, And
so I learned that when more to the restaurants on
my days off when I was at Mamizon or when
I opened Spargo, and that's also then one day I said,
you know what, I want to open a Chinese restaurant,
not a real Chinese restaurant, because I didn't even know
(27:14):
how to use a walk. So I said, I'm going
to open a restaurant and French techniques and Chinese ingredients.
So we opened China in three. I remember when you
(27:36):
opened Sparkled, how shocked everybody was that this French chef,
this man who came from Michelin start Restaurants, did Mason
and what's going to be Molfgang's next project a pizza.
It was really shocking, you know, it was you know,
I remember the editor in chief of Bonapeti magazine took
(27:58):
me for dinner and my then girlfriend really Barbara, my
ex wife, and uh, she tried to talk me out
of what A're gonna do. She said, how can you
be a chef like that working at Boumania at Maxims
and opening a pizza place. I said, you know what,
I'm going to open a restaurant. I want great ingredients,
(28:19):
but have fun. Have fun. That's the whole thing that
you don't have to the same thing in London when
we did the River Cafe. Yeah, and why can't you
you know, people come into I don't care what people
were in my restaurant. I couldn't care if they come
with their kids. I don't care if they come in jeans.
To you, it's just like you care. It's you come
here and we treat you well. And especially in Los Angeles,
(28:39):
you know we are it's warm, the climate is different.
You don't get old pankers. You've got to New York
close to Wall Street, you know, you have allD pankers.
They all have their suits on and everything. It's different here.
People are you know, in the movie business and the
record business. They come, you know, totally different. I remember
one time I was very friendly with David Arney. He
(29:00):
actually did the first cover of My cot Yeah, and
uh so he a friend of mine, opened a fancy
French restaurant, you know, one with the high chairs and
their fancy plates and that wizing, but you had to
wear a jacket. And David Harkney had the sweat home
or whatever he was in the summertime, and they didn't
let him in and he came after back to mom
(29:23):
and own and says, you know what just happened to me? Yeah,
I said what he said? They didn't let me in.
I said, should I call him back? He says no,
I would never go back there. Yeah, Richard, my husband
never wore a tie. He would take his children to
the corner to the carridges and they wouldn't let him in.
And one time a major d said, you know, Mr Rogers,
don't think that we're picking on you, because yesterday we
(29:44):
wouldn't let nerve and as if they were proud of it.
You know, even Nerve, we wouldn't let in. You know that.
But somebody, but my friend of mine had an assistant
who worked for you as a front of house manager,
and she said that people used to come in and say,
bring a bottle of champagne to the table, I'll pay
for it now, and say it's from Wolfgang that is
(30:08):
a big or seat me first before somebody else. We had.
It's crazy, it was crazy. The sitting like the old
Sparko was still important because we have this window seats
and everybody wanted to see it at the window seats.
I remember one time Sammy Count, who was a famous
song right was there and he was sitting in the
(30:29):
second row, not that the window, and next door was
the table with Alan and Merlyn Bergman who did all
the songs of Baba's Bryson. And Something calls me over
and says, Wolfgang, I want to ask because they don't
have any and how come I have to sit in
the second row? Said, you get this. I didn't know
that that this is the important part. So it's we
(30:52):
had people's storm out of the restaurant, some of them
if they didn't get the table they wanted. I mean
it was also difficult, you know, the people the insecurity.
And I was saying, and I remember, like we had
the head of MGM at that time was Daniel Melnick,
and they set him in the back and uh of
(31:12):
the restaurant. I was like, Siberia, and I go, then
you know what, we have a table up front. If
you want a better table up and he said, what
do you mean a better table? I said, yeah, well
on the window. He says, you know wherever. I said,
it's the best table. So I don't care how real
it is. I agree. I've seen that with people who
people come in sometimes and say I want the best table,
(31:32):
and I guess there is no best table, because you
know Lucy and Freud like that one, but then somebody
else like that one, and you know the idea. But
do you think it's better now? Do you think? I
think it's a little better. But there are still some
restaurants when you have boots and things like that where
they say, okay, I want the first boot, or I
want this and that, or like I remember one time
at ga I was the eighties too, when I had
(31:56):
Elizabeth Taylor came with some people and we had one
guest who come all the time, always sat on their
table too, and they saw Elizabeth Taylor like four tables down,
and then they came back the next day, the next time,
next week, we said them on the regular table. They said,
we don't want this table, we want the table. That's crazy.
(32:16):
So when you cook, you have a son who's a chef. Yeah,
so did he did? He become a chef because he
was influenced by your cooking at home? Do you cook
at home? Yeah? I cook at home. Let's now since
the kids are gone, really you know so? But Byron,
who is my second son, and he always was interested
(32:37):
in cooking, and even when he went to high school
here at Howard the West Lake. They had the chemistry class,
and he wanted to do a molecular gastronomy class with
the chemistry class. So he said, okay, we can do
different things, you know, learn chemistry, but with food. And
so he was really into this whole thing, you know,
like the stuff with all the things. So I think
(33:00):
I want him to hopefully take hold on one day
because it is like a family business, you know. Yeah,
but if you think about family and you think about food,
and you think about your mother being a pastry chef,
and and the suffering that you went through and you're
early daysm is, it's heart rendering when you think of
food is comfort? Is there food that you would reach
(33:21):
for com you know, it's often I reach for simple things,
you know, like if it's in the morning, it might
be just someone good oatmeal or something like that, you know.
And obviously sometimes I still feel like eating a ghula
from my childhood child. Yeah, and that's still popular. And
(33:42):
I think for me still, the simpler things are the
better bond. I love vegetables, I love fruits, So that's
why I still go to the farmer's market and so forth,
you know. So I think to me. Food is such
an important part of life because I think it's one
of the only time in this modern world where we
actually can sit together and talk and enjoy the time.
(34:03):
I think, enjoy the food, enjoy and have a good
time to meet the most important part. That's why I
think a restaurant should be fun. You know, a restaurant,
it should be a place you enjoy. If you want
to go to a church somewhere and pray, you go
to the church, you know, or if the chefs want
to impress you and says, how did I do? I said,
(34:23):
you know what, this thing is not about you. This
thing is about us. You know, this thing is about
the guests in the restaurant. So I think that's a
big difference. Mostly what I hear is the mail chefs
are really more egocentrics and they think it's about them,
the food whatever. How did they perform basically, you know,
(34:44):
and women chefs often will say, I hope you like
my food. I hope you enjoyed your time at the table,
you know, instead of feeling, oh it's about me. And
I always said, you know, to me, the most important
part is that the guests are happy when they leave.
They can't wait to come back, make a reservation, maybe
already on the way out. And I think that's why
we are in business for forty years. And like I
(35:06):
come here to the Belly Hotel, I know almost everybody.
I go to Spargo, I know the people, so I
think it's a nice way for me. I almost feel
like I'm going to a party every day. Yeah, we
have a great job, and I think that. I always
say I want people to feel better when they leave
them when they came in. And I certainly feel better
now leaving you than when I came in because we
(35:29):
had such a good talk. Thank you. We cannot eat
right now. No, okay, smoked Someone pizza for breakfast. We've
just been brought. Can you tell me what we've just
been brought? We have here a little smoked Someone pizza,
I think, which is a staple at Spargo too, and
everybody says, UH, have made it for them. One time
(35:52):
at Spargo we had smoked salmon and dill cream overever
like we had traditional the way. One day we ran
out of bread and then I said, what are gonna do?
And so I just cooked the pizza during the open,
cutted in slices and stuffed with the plate of smoked salmon.
And then I said, you know what, I'm just gonna
put it all together myself. So I cooked the pizza,
(36:13):
put the del creame on it, uh, put the smoked salmon,
and I put a little cave on top, and then
I cut it and I said, wow, this is really perfect.
It's like the crispy crust and it's warm, and there's
they smoked salmon on top. And I said, oh, I
need is a glass of champagne, and then I'm good.
The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
(36:36):
and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photographer 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 Look Book Recipes for
(36:56):
cooks of all ages. M H. Ruthie's Table four is
a production of I Heart Radio and atom I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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