I had rented a house in Sea Ranch on the Mendocino coast north of San Francisco for a much-needed week away from everyone. I had been there an hour and had just popped an ounce of beluga in my mouth to chase a large shot of bison-grass vodka when the phone rang. I thought of not answering, but it had to be Stars since no one else knew where l was. I looked at my watch. It was 5:19 P.M. It was Stars’ chef, Mark Franz.
“J.T.—there’s been an earthquake.”
THE EARTH QUAKES
It had happened fifteen minutes before.
“Stars seems fine, and the windows are still in Speedo [my new restaurant around the corner from Stars]. At a fast look it seems we have lost only a few bottles of liquor. But the power is out, and everyone wants to know what to do.” I told them to turn off the gas and water, lock up, and leave. That was my first mistake. There was no earthquake business interruption insurance then, so we should have left the gas on. We did have fire insurance. My second mistake was trying to get on my motorbike after two vodkas, thinking that the bike would be fastest not only on the winding coast road back to San Francisco but through any backed-up traffic leading into the city. After the first hairpin turn along the Highway 1 coast road, however, I went back to the house for the 750 Beemer. I told it gently that somehow it had to get me back to San Francisco in record time and in one piece.
I set off with visions of a Beirut-like scenario of fires in the city and police barricades at the Golden Gate Bridge but not a patrol car was in sight. Now quite sobered with adrenaline and fear of what I would find (the radio did not work on that mountainous coastal road), I arrived on the bridge to see that there was nothing out of the ordinary except for a total lack of traffic. And a plume of smoke over the Marina area at the San Francisco end of the bridge.
The Marina itself was blocked off with motorcycle cops, so I drove up into Pacific Heights and down into the Civic Center. On the way the only people I saw were gathered at corners, just standing in silence. I stopped the car for a minute and listened; the city was totally quiet except for distant sirens. After the telephone call, it was not a surprise that the huge storefront windows on my restaurant Speedo 690 were intact when I passed it around the corner from Stars, but it was a relief nonetheless. I had expected the sights we had all seen from Afghanistan, or China, or South America, with buildings down everywhere and bodies in the debris. It all looked normal, though the silence was powerfully eerie.
I tiptoed gingerly into Stars, and sure enough, there were the five broken liquor bottles on the bar with a note to me saying that everything else was intact. Incredibly relieved but somehow still very worried, I went over to Speedo 690 to find some gathered managers waiting for me with cold champagne. At least the ice hasn’t melted yet, was the first in-shock thought that came to mind. We laid out a plan of action for the next day and went to our apartments to see what was left of them.
My house, even the dining room’s painted ceiling, was intact, although Barbara Stanwyck’s already lined face had a few more cracks. As I looked at the newspaper I saw it was October 17, and at the irony of having opened Speedo 690 five months earlier to the day, I felt superstition sliding into my unease. Every day closed would cost Stars thousands of dollars in profits, and I wondered how much we were going to lose. I knew Speedo’s infant but successful cash flow could not take a big hit.
Nineteen eighty-nine had been normal until that day in October. We poured the new slab for Speedo on April 1. We had picked up our usual awards from the San Francisco magazine; we had already served about 150,000 meals at Stars, including hosting several winemakers, like Masteroberadino, Gaja, Maurizio Zanella of Ca’ del Bosco, Jordan, Bernard Hine, Pierre Lanson; had hosted an Open Hand charity dinner; had greeted the usual Australians like top food journalists Jill Dupleix and her husband, Terry Durack, who flew in for the night from Sydney for Jill’s birthday; had hosted Condé Nast, the Gunds, Bronfmans, Sotheby’s, Newsweek, Vogue’s Grace Mirabella, legendary Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré, and Rose Marie Bravo for Saks Fifth Avenue; the Kirov Ballet and its KGB shadow; Vanity Fair’s editor Carter Brown; Liza Minnelli, Danielle Steel, and Watergate chef Jean-Louis Palladin.
I had finished a two-year court case brought by a cocktail waitress who allegedly misserved some customers and then sued me and Stars; had ended up in court with the Speedo corporation when they sued me for using a diver logo for our new restaurant’s, Speedo 690, with Bondi Beach and surfer theme decor; had survived Denise Hale’s birthday week of at least twelve parties; had seen Stars on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; had snuck the annual case of Stoli to top columnist Herb Caen for his birthday; had attended world championship boxing with San Francisco’s mayor; had cooked at the Meals-on-Wheels in Los Angeles again.
I had got a call from Hong Kong saying we had very surprisingly won the government lease tender for the old Peak Cafe (and had started commuting there in late July); had made a video of life at Stars; had taken a private jet to Bangkok with the Hales; had yet again fought off rumors that I had AIDS when Philip Core, my great college pal and painter of my dining room and the 150-foot “beach” canvas at Speedo, had died of AIDS; had done a photo shoot at Denise Hale’s for the Tiffany Entertaining book. All of this before the earth quaked in the longest ten seconds anyone could remember.
At 5:04 on that Tuesday, the city had shut down.
SAN FRANCISCO UNHINGED
I had a gut feeling that for a while nothing was going to be normal. Had I known then that those few minutes would end up costing me a million in expenses and nearly $12 million in lost sales, I would have taken that match down into the basement of Stars during the aftershocks and happily gone up with it to more heavenly stars. All I knew then was that the city was without electricity, that the gas was off, and that the president of the utilities company, a great customer of Stars for whom I had done favors, was not taking my calls. We had Paul Bocuse coming in for dinner in a few days, the Aída cast party on Sunday, the Special Olympics dinner on Monday, a Cook’s magazine shoot on Tuesday, a Nissan convertible commercial on Wednesday, a trip to Hong Kong Thursday, and an International Wine & Food Society dinner at the Hong Kong Hilton and press lunch at the Regent Hotel a few days after that.
By the next day it was clear that when we would have utilities again was quite unclear, so we took the perishable food down to the Red Cross and Open Hand headquarters in the Marina Middle School. Finally the PG&E president took my call, and four days later we were up and running again. Before most. My purchasing agent stopped me on the kitchen stairs and asked me if I wanted anything special since Julia Child was coming in the first day.
“We’re open, that’s enough,” was all I could say. And open just in time to greet Julia and serve Bocuse his usual meal of steak tartare and large New York strip steak.
Stars recovered, but we did have to close Speedo a year later, since pouring more capital into damaged San Francisco seemed not a very good idea to my investors, who had all seen the endless television coverage of the fires and broken bridges. The Civic Center damage doomed it, its cash flow a year later not enough for its payables. I fire-sold my shares in the young but fabulously cash successful Peak Cafe for $500,000.
Now that I was without the restaurant where I could cook using the new fresh Asian and Indian ingredients, I was tempted to change the food at Stars. I did replace the pizza oven with a tandoor, but other experiments just confused the public. It was time to take stock of what kind of restaurant we were going to be in the nineties. As the decade opened, America was still looking back at Chez Panisse and California for clues.