Preface

WHEN I STARTED WRITING A Theatrical Feast of London, it was to describe the restaurants and writings of British theatre people, where they wined and dined, as well as the writers who wrote about these places. Graham Greene's favorite London restaurant was Rules in Covent Garden, for example, Noel Coward's was The Ivy, Ian Fleming's, Simpsons on the Strand. These are all still in business and fortunately still retain their unique ambiance. (As my London book was going to print, I discovered a bookful of these actor's favourite recipes: Terence Rattigan, John Gielgud, Rex Harrison and more, so I included them.)

Those writers often mentioned these places in their books, but not often did they write about the actual food! It is obvious they enjoyed the atmosphere and history of the places. In Paris there is a weekly brochure which lists interesting visits and "Conferences," as they are called, organized by guides who take a group to various restaurants, when these places are not busy, and tell you about the history, the chefs and the cuisine.

A Theatrical Feast of Paris and A Theatrical Feast of New York followed because the subject fascinated me: great actors, writers, artists in their favourite haunts, eating their favourite food. As a student I was so broke, dining in these places was a dream; then later, working in New York and Toronto, I didn't really have that much opportunity, so it wasn't until I started writing these books, interviewing the chefs, researching the histories, that I realized that dream.

This book is a part memoir of what came before writing these books, beginning in Tasmania, well before any chefs had discovered the place; then the experience of trying to become a concert pianist, then living in Toronto in the snow, working in The Bahamas in the winter and mainly searching for an interesting life.

New York introduced me to another world within the world of dining. I found I could combine my love of music with the love of food when I discovered the world of cabaret. Not only can you dine on gourmet food but afterwards you are also entertained by musicians who are usually masters of their art, especially in New York and now, miraculously, in Palm Beach. I think I was the first to open a Cabaret Room since World War II in London, which curiously was in the exact location of one of the top rooms now, Crazy Coqs in the Regent Palace Hotel, now no longer a hotel. Introducing Michael Law as a solo act, even though he had had his own Piccadilly Orchestra for many years. Ruth Leon is in charge of the room, and there has been an American invasion by New York performers gaining wonderful reviews there, singing among other songs, the great American songbook.

The crowned Prince of Cabaret in New York, Steve Ross, entered my life, and we worked together on anthologies that combined his wonderful talent at the piano with a narrative of the world of international artists. Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Irving Berlin---all the masters---KT Sullivan, the head of the Mabel Mercer Foundation, tirelessly works to preserve all the best music and the bests artists to perform in a yearly Cabaret Convention in New York.

Now in Palm Beach, as the Food and Entertainment Editor at the Palm Beach Society Magazine, I review cabaret artists appearing at the Royal Room in the legendary Colony Hotel at the top of Worth Avenue, run by the charismatic Robert Russell. This is the hotel where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor stayed and rumour had it that they didn't pay their bill. So, to confirm that they did, they framed their original cheque, which still hangs in the lobby.

But to go back to the beginning. A traumatic event happened in January, 2016 that suddenly shook my world because it immediately took me back to my childhood: the huge disastrous bush fires taking place, in Tasmania where I was born. I thought of my father, a conservationist and ornithologist, and his constant fight to save the great rain forests of the Island.

But two things happened shortly before this. A.A. Gill, the British writer and restaurant critic, wrote a review in the London Sunday Times about the Island and I suddenly discovered that my father's book, Stones of a Century, had been re-published after 60 years. How is it that when you are suddenly taken back to your early life, that all the memories surface?

I had loved Around the World in Eighty Days, but it took me much longer to get around the world. The following account is not how I didn't get to, or play Carnegie Hall as a concert pianist, but how I found some consolation or rather compensation for it. Who cares? I hear you say. And from Tasmania? Exactly. Well I felt vindicated after reading what A.A. Gill had to say about Hobart.

Standing on deck of an ocean going liner at sea reminds one of the first early explorers. Those brave sailors who gazed out to sea towards the distant horizon, perhaps terrified not knowing if and when they would ever see land again. Day after day the prospect of running out of food and water with no idea where they were heading, and perhaps when at last, they did see land, landing in a hostile environment. The same applies to life What is going to happen? Who is going to help you? The sea is always unpredictable, and so is life. We are at the mercy of circumstance.