CHAPTER 3

THE WORLD IS A DINING ROOM

In 1949 my father decided to get rid of the family for a while and announced the rest of us were going around the world. “The world” was still a vague concept in my mind, but missing two months of school was splendidly unambiguous. With a delicious sense of living well as the best revenge, I announced to the school’s head priest that I was leaving for Ceylon, India, Yemen, the Red Sea, Egypt, Italy, New York, and San Francisco, before returning to Sydney.

The Italian ship was brand-new but would have made a fine steamer on Lake Como. Through the Great Australian Bight we hit a hurricane that nearly upended the ship. Many people were badly injured, the captain was seasick, and I begged for someone to kill me after smelling the banana oil used to clean up someone’s smashed bottle of nail polish in the corridor outside my cabin. (To this day I cannot go near banana flavoring or the smell of heating bananas, Mr. Foster’s delicious dessert notwithstanding.) Taking pity on me for the pounds I’d lost after three days of not eating, our stewardess, Maria (the one seen in the film The Last Magnificent), wheeled in a dish of eggs shirred in garlic and green Neapolitan olive oil. Green is what I turned. She took it personally when I threw up on the spot.

After these upheavals of every kind, all I could think of was cereal and cold milk. The only milk on board was canned unsweetened condensed milk, and after one taste of that on corn flakes, I gave up in disgust. It was a disappointment all the more felt because I loved sweetened canned milk, which at that point was the only thing I could cook by myself. Australian food lore, born out of deprivation, had designated sweetened condensed milk, cooked in boiling water while still in the can, a national delicacy. And it was, though one could hardly call the fabulous ensuing goo delicate. Now known as dulce de leche, then it was simply pudding and just what every kid begged for. Probably because it is as sweet as anything can be.

Pudding

14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

Do not open the can, but take off the label and put the can in a saucepan 4 inches deeper than the can is high.

Pour water in the saucepan to cover the can by 1 inch. Bring the water to a boil, and continue simmering for 2 hours, adding water when necessary to keep the can covered with boiling water.

Take the can out and let cool completely before opening it.

Eat with a spoon right out of the can if you are a kid, and if an adult, think of something else to do with it, like make ice cream, or pour it over vanilla ice cream, or, if you are a real adult genius, like the late George Lang, use it to dip pretzels into.

If my mother thought I had been a pest about fresh pineapple juice on our first plane to Australia, on board the ship she could have killed me over an all-day nag for fresh milk. In those days I didn’t know there is no point complaining about what you cannot change, so I begged and plotted. My mother and sister became alarmed when I insisted I’d find some in Bombay, our first port after two weeks out of Australia.

“Eat nothing from the vendors,” I was told.

When we docked and I peered over the rail at the forty or so vendor boats pressed against the ship’s hull, I saw a little canoe far beneath us selling fresh milk. Down went my money in a can on a string, up came the milk, and down my throat it went. It was tropically warm but, to me, ambrosial. Then it came up and kept on coming up, until the doctor, seeing that he could have put a pencil between my ribs and it wouldn’t have rolled away, gave me up for dead. My mother courageously washed me with cool, jasmine-scented towels and tried to fill me up with chilled Schweppes India tonic water, the only thing that had a prayer of staying down. Within a day or so I rallied, and to this day I am not sure which acts more as a tonic in difficult times, Schweppes and gin, or jasmine anything. Although my first brush with the “East” had nearly killed me, having been for the first time the center of so much attention I was now forever hooked on its flavors, smells, and unending exotica.

After Egypt and Port Said, we were soon headed up the Mediterranean and into Rome and my first truly grand hotel. While my mother went shopping I was left in the care of the hotel staff. They had been warned to make sure I touched no dairy. If I stole anything to drink, they were instructed, it had better be wine.

It was at this wonderful old hotel that I discovered room service, the kind that only great luxury hotels can give. The Quirinale was like the nearby presidential palace of the same name. And it had milk, which, despite my sister’s best efforts, I managed to order from room service and scarf down. Only minutes later was it on its way up again, and this time my family said, “Why not just let the little bugger die?” Quite rightly. But my second near-death experience left me surprisingly sanguine, as I could now luxuriate in heavy linen sheets and silk bedcovers and listen to the soothing clatter of horse carriages and the presidential guard outside the huge windows. From that week on, hotels like the Quirinale became an obsession and room service my favorite hobby.

The pampering would continue on the vast American ship the SS Independence, which left Genoa for New York. Because she was completely modern, with identical stainless steel and pale enamel walls throughout the public areas, I was always hopelessly lost. I did remember the way from my cabin to the dining room, however, and decided to spend all my time in the latter. In those days the menus of luxury liners were enormous, with more than sixty items for breakfast alone. It was my first real encounter with American food, and the only impression I took away was of quantity. My brother ate pancakes, waffles, and French toast with maple syrup until he could no longer stand. I ate rafts of smoked salmon.

We landed in New York, settled into the Waldorf-Astoria, and hit the city’s restaurants: Cavanaugh’s, Lindy’s, Lüchow’s, and Schrafft’s, all of which had the same huge menus I’d seen on the ships. Certainly Lüchow’s dining room, “The Gourmets’ Rendezvous,” was the size of an ocean liner’s. Here I found fried Long Island scallops (a princely $2.35) and lobster Newburg, a favorite because it was served tableside by a maître d’, and everyone in the restaurant would turn and look. At Lindy’s I discovered Maryland lump crabmeat, and jumbo shrimp “cocktails,” and Welch’s Concord Grape Wine, a very grown-up moment since I couldn’t get the real thing. I loved Lindy’s menu because it was a voyage in itself, like the painting on the wall of American travel spots. There was Boston sole, Maine lobster, Nova Scotia salmon (my new favorite), Great Lakes sturgeon, Canadian bacon, Jersey pork chops, and California strawberries. I ate as much of it as I could. The only dud was the Cold California Fruit Salad, with Cottage Cheese and Raisin Bread, which put me off “California” food for years. As did the “Halekulani Salad” I had at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco on the way back to Sydney. It was a Fresh Half Pineapple, Papaya, Prunes, Banana, and Cottage Cheese. Suddenly full of nostalgia for Fiji and the Queensland pineapple fields, I ordered it, despite some misgivings now about bananas, let alone prunes. At its arrival I knew my experience at Lindy’s was true, and for the next several years whenever anyone in Australia or England asked me about food in California (the land of Hollywood to them), I told them it was all about canned fruit and cottage cheese, and to be avoided at all costs.

DELIGHTS AND PREJUDICES: AMERICA’S FOOD

In 1950 the news came that we were moving again, this time to England by way of the United States. My father felt we knew nothing of the heartland of our native country, so he decided to show it to us. His plan was to fly to California, purchase a car, drive leisurely across the country with stops at major landmarks, sell the car in New York, and board the HMS Queen Elizabeth for Southampton, England. My memories are of the restaurants on each coast, with something of a blank in between.

The highlight of our West Coast leg was a pair of trips with my grandfather in and around Carmel, California, where he had retired. The first was to a California Spanish hacienda restaurant on the Holman Ranch, an oasis at the center of hundreds of acres of sunburnt, golden brown hills. We sat on a raised terrace beside a courtyard where white-robed and red-sashed Mexican staff gathered around huge grills and spits. It was a series of firsts for me: Caesar salad tossed at the table, garlic bread in huge rustic slabs, wild boar sausages grilled over mesquite charcoal, avocado “pears,” and two-inch-thick T-bone steaks. The memory of a perfect evening lingered: the brown summer hills of California suffused in pink early evening light, an ambush of bougainvillea, the dense dark green of live oaks, the perfume of the fully flowering jasmine hedge mingling with the smells of charcoal-cooked wild boar, and my first taste of California wine. Later, as a professional chef in California, the place remained a benchmark of pleasure for me: simply grand food and perfect service in an unpretentious but beautiful setting. Let alone grilling.

The second excursion was to the Garrapata Trout Farm, located in one of those magical canyons off Big Sur. Catching fish in the pond was guaranteed, and we soon had enough to grill on open fires under huge overhanging California bay trees. Again the smells and aromas invaded and captured my brain: the summer-baked grass, the spice of the bay leaves, the charcoal smoke, the fish wrapped in sizzling bacon. The family was happy as a group, something rare enough in itself to incise this day into my memory. When I started working at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, live Garrapata trout were among the first resources to which I turned.

Heading east in California we stopped in Needles, home of motels, pickup trucks, dust, and an enormous sign with thousands of lightbulbs flashing in sequence that read “The Cocky Cactus.” Bedazzled, I begged my parents to stop there for dinner. The decor was an original of the “family restaurant,” a prototype for copies that soon lined U.S. interstates before the industrial food complex took over. The menu was Pacific seafood, steaks, salads, and flaming desserts like hot plums ladled over a gigantic pile of coconut ice cream. I adored it. But what kept it in my mind was the birthday card the restaurant sent every year for at least the next decade. Years later, when I opened my restaurant Stars in San Francisco, I put two lessons from the Cocky Cactus at the top of my list of principles: a restaurant can be fairly humble and still feel world-class, and nothing will build loyalty like “loving” relationships with customers.

The dinner in that dusty town was the last thing I remember of the trip until our stop in Washington, D.C., except for an endless succession of stainless steel diners serving fresh pies and wonderful regional American food. In Washington we visited my aunt and Russian uncle. Both would come to play an enormous role in my culinary upbringing. My Auntie Mame was my mother’s sister, the eldest in a wealthy Irish Catholic family of thirteen kids. But she had been raised apart. Bedridden from a childhood illness, she was passed to my grandfather’s even wealthier brother and his wife, who brought her up as a debutante in opulent Philadelphia Main Line settings. Her first marriage, to a polo-playing prince of Philadelphia society, had ended after her husband’s alcoholism became more pronounced than his homosexuality.

The uncle I knew was her second husband and was my hero, a celebrated space travel scientist who, as an eighteen-year-old Russian naval cadet, had captured an imperial frigate in communist hands, and then as captain of the ship had sailed it to India to escape the revolution.

I loved my aunt’s meticulous sense of order, her beige, white, and navy blue wardrobe, her passion for galleries, Russian emeralds, a perfectly made-up face before lunch, old textiles, restaurants, and perfect, simple, cooking.

When I had told her that in New York we’d be dining at Lüchow’s and Lindy’s, she gave a shudder and handed me a small pad of English blue notepaper. “Write these down,” she commanded. “Delmonico’s, the Colony, and Le Pavillon.”

“Are those your favorites?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “Those would be Le Voisin, L’Escargot, and Maud ‘Chez Elle,’ but don’t write them down.”

I did. And when I showed the entire list to my mother, she swore to keep me away from my aunt forever. My father was impressed, but asked me who was paying.

I never made it to any of them, but they’ve been anchored in my mind ever since. Especially Delmonico’s, whose cookbook, The Epicurean, triggered the Chez Panisse California Regional Dinner in 1976. In 1985, after opening Stars, I tried to buy L’Escargot to have a Stars in New York. When that fell through I posted a 1953 menu of Le Pavillon in a place of honor above the Stars kitchen entrance and incorporated quotations from its imperious owner, Henri Soulé, into our training manuals.

Michael and Ariane Batterberry’s On the Town in New York says Soulé was “to French cuisine what de Gaulle was to the Third Republic,” but that his personality was closer to Napoleon’s. He was a martinet and a snob, but above all a perfectionist who lived for his art. Nothing compared to his mentor Fernand Point. According to George Lang, the first great promoter and manager of the Four Seasons in New York and later owner of Café des Artistes, Point once threw out a party of four at his restaurant La Pyramide because one of the men was holding his glass of champagne by the bowl instead of the stem, ruining the otherwise perfectly achieved temperature of the wine.

What would I have eaten if my parents had taken me to Le Pavillon? What would I eat now? There were eleven ways to start the meal, from smoked salmon to cherrystones to crabmeat (all in French of course). Following those were eggs (ten dishes), fish (eleven), plats du jour (fourteen), grillades (seven), cold plates (six), vegetables (nine), and desserts (eight). Traveling on ships and trains had made me fall in love with cold plates like York Ham and Tongue, but I would have mercy on my guests and not confuse the order of the meal by ordering them (since no one knew any longer where to put them in the order of dishes served).

I’d begin with the Bayonne ham with a glass of champagne for sure, most likely followed by the Goujonettes de Sole, Sauce Tartare. Then, though tempted by the kidneys from the grillades section, or the Rognons Maître d’Hôtel (with a simple unmelted butter mixed with parsley, salt, freshly ground pepper, and lemon juice), and wondering about the daring of featuring “Irish Stew,” I would have the Poached Chicken Bordelaise with fresh little peas steamed in lettuce. For dessert my eye would light upon the Désir du Roi as I looked on the Duke of Windsor or the Aga Khan across the dining room. Knowing that one of my companions would have a wild strawberry soufflé, I would order the Coupe aux Marrons, as I always did as a child. The cost for my meal would have been ten dollars.

Would anyone not want to join me?