Navigating Restaurant Legacies with Nancy Silverton: The Evolution of Dining and Social Media

0:00 I'm going to say the younger generation is food obsessed. I mean, you go out to eat and you kind of look around the room and I would say more than half of the room is actually barely eating, but they're posing with different plates for their Instagram. You know, nobody wants to be a food critic anymore. Everybody wants to be an Instagrammer. Sit back and grab a glass. It's Wine Talks with Paul Kaye. Hey, welcome to Wine Talks with Paul Kaye, and we are at an away game today in beautiful— what do they call this? Southern— that's not Southern California, but what part of town is this? Well, we're in Southern California. Well, that's true, but we're also in Los Angeles. I just say Hollywood because everybody knows where that is, and we're close enough. Look, if you go up Highland and all of a sudden you're at Hollywood Boulevard, that's it. It may have a name, you know. Oh, I know, guess what? If you look out across the street, there's some sort of like a green sign. Now you got to crank your head. And it says Media District. Oh, that's right. I like that. Well, this is— I'm going to read this ChatGPT introduction of you. Sure.

1:12 Let's hear it. Let's see if it's right. All right. Can I correct you if it's wrong? Please. I will. Okay. Nancy Silverton is a pioneering American chef, baker, and restaurateur known for reshaping the way Americans think about bread and Italian cuisine. She co-founded the La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, sparking an artisan bread revolution, and co-founded the beloved restaurant Campanile. Whose influence extends through their Mozza, where we're at today, restaurant, and her James Beard Award. Celebrated for her commitment to quality and flavor, she's inspired generations of chefs, home cooks alike, leaving an indelible mark on American dining. That's pretty accurate. That's pretty good. Oh, yeah, that's pretty good.

1:53 Well, actually, I'm going to tell you a story. The last time I was here, which we don't— we're on the west, east side of town, so we don't get down to the media district very often. But you were working the Buffalo Mozzarella Bar I went up, I didn't introduce myself, I just said, you know, you just inspired a young chef. This is many years ago. How old is Mozza? You know, it'll— well, pizzeria next door will be 20 years. Wow. This year, however, the Osteria where we're sitting right now, and that's where the mozzarella bar is, is one year behind. So it's 19 this year. Wow. That's amazing. Did you expect that? Never. You just— but see, I still think when someone asks me how old I am, I'm thinking I'm 50, and then I realize, oh no, I'm not, I'm 70. You know, I always reverse the numbers in Sam Dick's Lexicon. Yeah. So no, I didn't think. But you— I went to the bar and you were working very hard.

2:43 I said, you know, you inspired a young chef. And my daughter, who was with Jonathan Benno, she was the head baker of record when he earned his star at Benno. And then, you know, COVID came 30 days later, closed the whole place. But she had, she had worked the line at Lincoln. Where is she now? We need people. Well, she'd love to come. She's in Paris. What's she doing? Texas. Oh, I like the pause. What's she doing there? She's raising 4 kids. Why in Paris, Texas? Well, her husband's an Anglican priest and he got a church. Wow. Yeah. So it's been quite a ride. Yes. But they just found out— and there is a bakery in Paris, Texas.

3:24 It's called the Paris Bakery. It's very good. It's very French. And they just found out that she's a baker. So anyway, the story goes, she wanted to work the line. She did not tell Jonathan Benno that she was a baker by trade. And he found out, and he brought her to Benno. But he says, you're going to have to choose between savory and pastries and bakery. She goes, Nancy didn't. Oh, I love that story. So he looked at her like, oh, well, I guess you're right about that. So she was at Ysain-Jean. She was at the Landau-Castel School. She worked, baked in Paris. She came back, worked at Superba. She actually fixed some bread at Provisions, Daily Provisions in New York, and then had a kid.

4:13 And then another and another and another. Anyway, that's not about her. Yeah, no. But it's about your influence in this industry. And one of my questions was— and I got all these questions, but I'm not probably going to get to them because we're going to have a nice conversation, which is this restaurant's here now 19 years old. How many patrons come in here and know of this renaissance of food in the '80s that you created along with a host of other chefs? Well, I have to say only the older generation, certainly, because, you know, and this reminds me of, this was last year sometime, sometimes let's say celebrities that don't want to risk paparazzi finding them at the front door will ask to come through the kitchen. And about a year ago, a gentleman walks through— sorry, the back kitchen, so they avoid that front door— and walked through, and everybody on the line said, "Who was that?"

5:13 That was Mick Jagger, by the way. They had no idea who Mick Jagger was, right? That's crazy. So people definitely in the kitchen, if I asked every single one, Have you heard of— did you ever hear of Campanile, you know, which is the restaurant you're referring to? They never would say they did. Michael's? Uh-uh. Ken Frank? Absolutely not. Jonathan Waxman? No. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. And doesn't it feel— does it feel rewarding, or does it feel, well, maybe you understand this business finally, that you're able to transcend that? I mean, that's where you've made your mark, along with all those chefs you just mentioned. And here you are, you've superseded that into a generation that doesn't even know that that happened.

5:54 Yeah. And I don't— And I think, you know, today's social media helps that because I think today's generation of cooks is so caught up on Instagram, what's happening of the moment, and doesn't realize where food came from, right? That's a good point. And they don't, they don't realize the influence of sort of my generation. It is a generation where they can, well, we made, we're actually tonight, Because my kids live with me, one daughter and her husband and my 3 grandkids because of the fires in Alphadena. Didn't lose their house, just displaced for a while. Tonight's Nancy Silverton night.

6:37 Which means what? She's using the Mark Peel Nancy Silverton book to create dinner. Did you know? I mean, has she used it before? No, she bought it for me for Christmas. It's such a simple book to use, and it has just a wonderful variety and offering of food that you can actually cook at home. You know, a lot of these chefy cookbooks, including my own, really require a sous chef, a commis, probably a dishwasher, and more bowls than you may have at home. Right? And we write these cookbooks 'cause people want recipes from your restaurants. And yet, Are they really doable at home? No. But the one you got, which is called Mark Peel, Nancy Silverton. Yes. Cooking at Home or At Home, I think. Yeah. I don't remember the title because it was the second book that I did and it came out in the '90s. So that was post— Oh, I think it was Cooking for Friends and Family, something like that.

7:40 Yeah. But that was post-revolution. Let's go back to that second. I'm going to quote George Taylor from the Judgment of Paris show, event in Paris when the French lost to the American wine business. And what he said was, The revolution of wine in America, American wine in the world, would have happened, but maybe it would be 10 years delayed. And here you folks are, and I guess it's the late '70s, early '80s is when all this started. Do you think this would have happened? Do you think that this advancement of cuisine in America would have occurred just later if the scene hadn't arrived here? Yeah, eventually. Absolutely. But, you know, we were lucky enough to have enough and a scattering throughout the country of really talented young cooks that were able to— Where did they come from?

8:32 Where did they come from? Well, a lot of them came from their hometowns, right? Cooking with their mom or something. Cooking with their mom, a lot of them. And then there was the ones, the sort of the lucky ones that got to travel. That would be the Jeremiah Tower and the Alice Waters, right? That— during college or after college were lucky enough to go to Europe and eat food that they weren't used to eating when they were growing up. And they realized, wow, there's something there, right? And they were, you know, the rest is history. But certainly regionally, there were a lot of people, I think, you know, coming out of New Orleans, like I'm thinking of like the Paul Prudhomme. Do you remember that name?

9:23 That nobody would know. Certainly Commander's Palace and the Louis and a lot of that generation that actually I don't think were really appreciated until that American movement came about. Right. It's interesting, right? Because I was— Patrick Hugh of famed author, good friend. Yes. Runs the Strand House now at in Manhattan. His book about Le Pavillon, which is interesting. And I'm wondering why LA was his hotbed, because Joachim was also a good friend of mine. He came here from Nice. You were always here? I was born here. Oh, you were? Okay. And so I was born knowing about the Brown Derby and Chasen's and Scandia and those classic places. But we didn't have We didn't have the French influence like New York had as much, right? No, that's it. So it never really happened. And I was just, for some reason, I was on the web, it was on my phone probably, and I stumbled across the brochure for the 1939 World's Fair in New York where André Soulet came from, basically the star of the pavilion according to Patrick's book. And I'm thinking maybe New York was still that Frenchy influence, the way they serve food, the way they, you know, it was one seating basically for the whole night. And that did— that's— we transcended that. You, you guys bucked that

10:54 sort of spongy traditionalism. I think that LA as a whole did. I, you know, I think I, I just remember when, um, somebody was kind of comparing the New York kind of restaurant vibe versus the Los Angeles restaurant vibe, say. And New York was much more about finance and the stock market and that kind of— and LA was much more about laid-back Hollywood. And so that could be one of the reasons is the lifestyle. We're the beachy people. Right. The weather's good. We can surf and ski in the same day.

11:40 But this is intriguing to me. And it's happened in the wine world, the French come here to grow grapes in Oregon, they're in Napa, they're in, you know, all the Central Coast because the New World is the New World. You can do whatever you want. And I've always respected the idea that in Italy and in France, they protect their regions, they protect their food, their cheeses, they protect their dried meats, they protect their butter. And I'm jealous of that a little bit. But maybe that was the impetus for this movement that you could think outside the box a little bit. Right. There weren't those rules. And I, I'm with you. I really appreciate those guidelines. You know, the parameters that you have to work within to be recognized, whether you're making Parmesan. Yeah. Right. And you have to be in that region or balsamic vinegar. Do you think Americans Do you think now this generation understands? We talked about the fact that they probably don't understand the revolution, but do they understand the fine cuisine? The fact that, well, there's that video of you somewhere on the internet where you're rejecting a whole truck of vegetables. Yes.

12:50 I think that that educate. Yes. I think that food, I think universally, you know, I spend time, for instance, in Singapore because I have a restaurant there and I've had restaurant there for a long time. Wow. That, and I've spent time in Hong Kong. Champ didn't find that. They know that's funny. And I've spent time in Hong Kong for various reasons and little time in Japan. But it seems like those countries in particular, the, I'm going to say the younger generation is food obsessed. I mean, you go out to eat and you kind of, look around the room and I would say more than half of the table is— sorry, more than half of the room is actually barely eating, but they're posing with different plates for their Instagram. You know, nobody wants to be a food critic anymore. Everybody wants to be an Instagrammer. And interestingly enough, that the importance of an influencer has surpassed the clout of a food critic because an influencer has a lot more followers. And these days it's all about the following. You want to write a book, say a cookbook, first thing your potential

14:20 agent or publisher might say is, how many followers do you have? That's right. Not enough. You got to get those followers up. So I was lucky that I got into not only the restaurant business, business, but also the business of writing cookbooks way before that mattered. Because it's very difficult to get a cookbook these days. And you see that more and more of the ones that are coming out are ones that are coming out because they are, have an online presence or they have a TV show. So I don't know if we can call that a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, obviously the Elmer Dills. I'm going to say a bad thing. Okay. Because that would happen. The Elmer Dills and the Merle Schindlers of the world are no longer pertinent. I don't even know. Jonathan Gold passed away years ago, but he would have been because he was such a champion of restaurants that appeal to a much greater force. When we travel, and we just got back from The Paris, France, not— well, we were in Paris, Texas too, but we— I don't use any of those services, Yelp, Foursquare, because I don't know the people that are dining at those places understand what they're getting or if they care. Not that I'm an exquisite person. I'm with you on that. That's not the way to discover. So I use Michelin because at least it's a standardized judgment. Done by people that know food, right?

15:49 I agree. But, but, and word of mouth, right? You call me, you respect my palate maybe. And so you ask me what are my, you know, last 3 great meals in Paris and I would tell you, but I agree. I don't, you know, I think those are the worst platforms to go on to, to figure out where you want to eat. Do you have a social network group here? A marketing promo sort of group of people that worry about Nancy's followers? Yeah, they do because In today's world, you need it. So people will always say, oh, I follow you on Instagram now. I don't have an Instagram account. I don't even have it on my phone. When people send me stuff from Instagram and they send me something and I always press to open it up, I can never press open. I can never open it up because I don't have that app.

16:37 But yes, my quote unquote people take care of that world because you have to be a part of that world. For a business sake, not anything other than that. I'm going to dig into a little bit of digital marketing, which is what I did forever. I don't know if you know, I had the oldest wine club in America for 35 years, blah, blah, blah. We did all this, whatever. But one of the original premises of social networking, which was really to be social, it wasn't about this stuff. This is newer. Was the fact that a publicly facing company that was on Facebook, let's say Mozza, Astoria Mozza, could publicly address the group. Let's say somebody gave it a bad rating. Right. And you could go on and let everybody see how you would handle that rating. Yeah. It was a huge factor for restaurants. But then it turned into where restaurateurs are chasing those 5 stars and doing things that might not be ethical, literally buying people to do it or to take something bad down. Right. And so you can't even trust that either. Yeah. You can't trust it. You don't know how it got there. Let's go back to the old days for a minute just because they must have been crazy. I worked in corporate America in the '80s. It was nuts. Here in Southern California? Yeah. When did you know that this revolution was occurring or you just were having a ton of fun? And if you read Chef's Drugs and Rock and Roll, I mean, you

18:09 realize what the environment what that environment was like. But it's a, I mean, it's a hard environment anyway. Yeah. And I, you know, it is a hard environment. And it's funny, when I decided that this was my profession or would be my profession, I had just been working in my college dormitory kitchen for about, you know, just only a couple months. I had never cooked before. I went out to, I lived in Sonoma County. I went to Sonoma State. Wow. Okay. You're in wine country. Yes. I was right there in the wine country. And I gotta tell you, The wine country then, and I'm talking, I went to school in 1974 and now, both in Sonoma County and Napa County, unrecognizable. No, totally. But working in a kitchen, and I didn't realize it, well, I didn't know it before I started to do it 'cause I hadn't cooked at home. It just checked all the boxes for me.

19:06 Yeah. The two most important boxes that I didn't realize it would check. One was using my hands, using my hands in a way that felt very comfortable to me. My mother always said, I think you, you are going to be an artist the way you use your hands. And I was so self-conscious about my art. And when I thought about art, it was, can I draw a person? Right? And I couldn't draw people. And so therefore I wasn't an artist. We're on the same page. And she said, I'm just going to tell you, you are gonna end up doing something with my hands. And just holding the raw ingredients in my hands and working with them gave me so much pleasure. And then that would be the cooking part. But what I didn't understand was the hospitality part, that when I would bring out the food that I would make and I would set it down and people would come over, 'cause I was cooking in my dormitory kitchen, and talk about how much they loved what I made the day before. Wow. It really touched my soul. That's great. And I thought, "Haha, this is my profession." But the way I saw my role in this profession was I wanna be a cook. I didn't think I wanna be a chef.

20:19 I never thought I wanna own a restaurant. I never thought I wanted to write cookbooks. That's where my fantasy stopped. I wanna cook, you know? And now you ask a young child, I mean, I was, okay, already, I don't know what, 19 or 18, you know, whatever, college, you know? Freshmen in colleges. But we all know in today's world with the TV Food Network and television shows and parents bringing their children on trips and exposing them to, you know, television chefs, there's so many 7-year-olds that I meet that want to be cooks, right? That I want to be a chef when I grow up kind of thing. So they know that at 7 or they think it at 7, but they're already thinking about their television show. Yes. Or they're thinking about the— how many varieties of tomato sauce they'll see on the shelf. You know, there's a lot more possibility in that world, but there's a lot more that they're exposed to. Mine was, I want to cook. And that's what I thought I would be, a cook for the rest of my life. Was there— I guess there was because of places like Le Pavillon, et cetera, that a chef-centric part of the business versus a cook. Did that really exist? Yeah, but I never— I don't know why. And it's funny because I also came from a household that was very not only supportive but encouraging to all of the females in the family. Right? I had very strong women as

21:52 great-aunts and very powerful politically. And so it wasn't like I thought I could only be a cook because I'm a woman. And I'll never wear a white toque, which I still don't wear, or a button-down jacket. I didn't think that. I just thought that that— I just never saw me as a cook. Just like if I was in college and I thought I'm going to be a lawyer, I probably never would have seen myself as a judge, which is sometimes the next step for a lot of lawyers. But was that received well in your home? It was. And shockingly, because of the year, 1974. Today, when that 7-year-old says they wanna be a cook, the parents are so excited.

22:39 Like, come meet my 7-year-old, or will you sign the cookbook as his first cookbook or her first cookbook? Because she wants, or he wants to be a chef when they grow up, you know? And today's world again is different. And I was shocked because, you know, I dropped outta school in my senior year. Second semester of senior year, I said, I'm not doing this anymore. I know I want to cook. And my father was a lawyer and my mother was a television writer and short story writer. And so they had all of the, sort of all of the credibility and the, you would have thought that they would have said, you cannot do this. You need to finish school or you have to have some sort of a backup or you need a real job. Up and then cook on the side. And they didn't. My father just said, how about if you sign up for the Cordon Bleu? Then I didn't even know what the Cordon Bleu was.

23:41 Well, it's not around here anymore, but— Well, there is. Well, no, it wasn't past— they did have a couple branches. No, but they changed the name. So I think you're correct. There isn't a Cordon Bleu. But I went to the one in London. At that time, there was London or Paris. Yeah, that's right. And I didn't speak French. And so I chose London. This is interesting because it seems like that industry— we took our daughter around. We took her to the CIA at Greystone, and she was looking for— now, we required her to finish college. She went to USC and finished that, and then she wanted to go cook. And when I was having the conversation with Jonathan Waxman on the show, and by that time we'd established his Jewish heritage and his family. And when I told him about her being a baker, he said— he paused and he goes, you must be very proud. And I said, you know, Armenian community families are much like Jewish families in that they're supposed to be a doctor and a lawyer and, you know, something professional. And I said, I never thought I would have reacted the way I did. But there's something about the creativity and the soulfulness of cooking.

24:41 And for you, this tactile experience of cooking with your hands must have just really sunk home in your soul to do this. I mean, it's a hard road at that point. You don't make a lot of money, particularly as on the line. And it's no different today, right? Was it aspirations to own a restaurant at that point? No. Just to share your love of it? I think, you know, who knows what would've happened? I'll tell you. So I started working at Michael's in 1979 when I got, had finished the Cordon Bleu, and I worked there for about a year and a half, close to 2 years. And then I went over to work work, help. I was hired as the pastry chef at Spago, the original Spago in 1982 when it opened. The one on Sunset?

25:33 And I loved working for him. I loved working there. And I probably would still be there. Now I'm just saying that because I probably wouldn't, but I could have still been there to this day, right? I could have been one of those employees that said, I've been working here for 40 years. Because you certainly run into them at old school places, right? You walk into Langer's and a server there or a program like that. I've been there 40 years, or Cantor's, or, you know. But anyway, I was married at the time to the chef of Spago, Mark Peel, who I met over at Michael's. And after he and I were both sort of, we'll just say poached by a flamboyant restaurateur in New York, Warner LeRoy, to redo the menu at the infamous Maxwell's Plum. I wouldn't have gone, but again, my husband, who was under the, you know, kind of under the shadows of Wolfgang, thought that this was this great opportunity.

26:35 Wow, that's a big deal. So we did, and I went for him, um, still never thinking about having a restaurant, having a very, uh, not a great experience at Maxwell's Plum. And so it's like, now what do we do after a year, you know? And that's when it seemed like the only thing at that time was to open our own restaurant. Wow. But I don't know. I definitely wouldn't have done it then. I didn't feel ready. Would I have one today had I still been married or not married to him? But possibly. Or I could be one of those employees that worked for Wolfgang Puck for 40 years. Michael, when he was on the show— no, when I went to see Ken Frank at in Napa. Yeah.

27:21 Le Toucques. Yeah. Right. Which he had here, you know. Yes. The original Le Toucques. Oh, yeah. Wasn't like— Was on Sunset. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. He said something very funny. He goes, I don't think I ever saw Michael pick up a pan in the action. I thought, okay, that's hilarious. I won't bring that up when I talk to him. No. And there's another funny backstory is that I saw Chef Puck at a big event, and he came out and I went to sit with them. I said, you know, tell me about Kovkas. Yeah. And only because my ENT doctor is his grandson. Do you have a current ENT doctor? Yes. Someone here needs one. Oh, I'll give it to you. It's the owner of Kovkas's grandson.

28:06 And where is he? USC. Markarian. Okay. So Mr. Puck lit up because this old history, this person that wanted it, he goes, you know, I was in the kitchen and Miriam, the wife, was telling me, chef, you got to get me out of here because my son, my husband sits in the front house and he just talks to people and I'm back here cooking. And that's when they bought Kafka's to open the first part. Yeah, I got to see Kafka because of going to work there right when he had taken it over. Yeah, it was really— It was like, wow. That was still something. I don't know what your vision is, but this place needs a little love. You know, you said something interesting because, well, you know, that's interesting. You're talking about Singapore and I'm going to go to Shanghai just for a minute. There was a huge Armenian enclave in Shanghai during those years, and Kafka came from Shanghai originally.

28:55 And so I didn't even know it was him. I thought it was Russian. Well, they started in Russia, in Moscow. Okay. And, and because I had these conversations sitting in the exam room with Dr. Markarian, he said, you know, he had to jump. The Bolsheviks were coming. And he was so well known because of his restaurant that the oligarchs gave him a pass to leave, a full train car to go into Siberia. They say it's leaving with this time of day, stuff it with people or furniture or whatever you want and get out. And that's why he ended up in Shanghai. But the recipe for her famous leg of lamb, which is, of course, a very Armenian dish, had soy sauce in it. And that's why. Yes. That's interesting.

29:36 Shanghai, right? Anyway. I want to touch on this to see if we can get your opinion. When you travel France and you go to, you know, Ferdinand Point and you go to the Troisgros brothers and you go to all these famous Michelin-starred restaurants, there seems to be a legacy of food and a legacy of family and a legacy. And they're still around 30, 40, 50 years later with the thing. And we don't really have that in America. Do we have that kind of lineage with restauranting? That you know of? I'm trying to think off the top of my head, and I wanted to say that there were possibly a few in New York. Like, I don't know if there's anybody around from Le Grand Oui, you know. Yeah, I was trying to think, but certainly not here, right? Yeah, it's just different because I guess a lot of kids, you know, well, like for instance, Emeril Lagasse's son, I think he's definitely under 25. Really?

30:42 And apparently he took over one of Emeril's restaurants and is getting just the highest praise. Wow, great. Yep. And Larry Forgione's son, these are people that kind of I grew up with in the restaurant world. They were a little bit before me a few years, but I would say that's kind of my generation. Larry Forgione's at least one son, super talented. Mark has a handful of restaurants in New York. He's gone on to work for his father. Charlie Palmer's sons are running the business. So there are— Charlie Trotter's son is going to restart.

31:23 Yeah. But I bet you most at least in this country, don't want— they see their parents and they may have seen them as working too hard. It took too much, demanding, maybe not rewarding enough. But I don't know that many generations of restaurant owners whose kids have followed except for the ones that I just named. I wonder why that is. And like you said, in Europe, it's very traditional. Very traditional. This environment now, speaking of your lineage and the clientele here, I'm wondering if that '80s, the audience of the '80s was being exposed to this new idea of— and Chef Joachim will tell you, like, we used to do that in Nice anyway. We went down to the market and bought our vegetables and we bought our fresh oysters. It was no big deal. We come to America, that's a fresh thing, a new idea. But how is, how has the complexion of of the clientele change besides the fact that they look at their phones and they rate everything? But is it an appreciation for these kinds of food? Well, you know what? Definitely an appreciation, but also more educated, much worldly. I mean, I don't know how you were when you were growing up, but myself growing up in the '60s, I was born in mid-'50s, but say growing up in the '60s, families didn't travel the way that they travel now. Right. We went locally. Like a vacation for us was going to Palm Springs or Santa Barbara. We didn't go to Europe. No, that's true. My kids have been to Europe more times than I can count

32:55 on 5 hands. Right. So I think there is that exposure that makes it very different. It's a— in Paul Friedman's book, The 10 Restaurants That Changed America, it's really interesting. He doesn't talk about McDonald's, that stuff. He talks about the Mandarin and he talks about— and I have a funny story about Pat Terry and Mama on its own. But because of the highways, it lost this regional character. Like, then you can get Texas chili in Manhattan, and you get Manhattan clam chowder in LA, and you can get, you know, Texas barbecue. And it goes back to the idea of this old, old country where those— you can still do that in France or Italy, but they're still pretty regional. Not so much.

33:44 You go to those regions. I know in my region, which is Umbria, Every single restaurant pretty much has the same menu. Really? Yeah. Unless you go to those few cutting-edge restaurants where the chefs are really trying to reach a little bit further in sort of an international cuisine, you see the same menus. It's regional, you know, the same pasta shapes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. The same sauces, the same cuts, the same proteins, things like that. You know, you don't see, you see lake fish in my area 'cause we, I'm right next to Lake Trasimeno. But you don't see freshwater fish or, you know, really seafood. It's interesting because I was— I had Pat Trey on the show. Let's go. Let's go to Mommy's Own. You were there for a while, right? No, I never— I worked at Michael's and then went to Spago. Mark worked at Mommy's Own, and that's what he knew Wolfgang from.

34:40 He's credited with— one of the things he's credited with— and we were just in Tour d'Argent, actually. I've heard that that's really come back, that it slept for a number of years. And it's really doing well. We were there in 1993 with my parents. So my dad was a French speaker. And so we went because he wanted to celebrate something. And I have a long story. I won't bore you with it now. But I decided to go back with my wife last time we were there. And we stayed. And it was really quite spectacular. The service, the hospitality concept was all there. The food, the wine, of course, was amazing. But they credit Pat Touré with bringing the back house to the front house. And bringing Wolfgang Puck out of the kitchen and onto the floor, which he still does daily, which you do. Is that accurate? That, that was sort of— Him? Yes. The idea of bringing— I didn't know, okay. You know, because it wasn't until Spago opened and Spago was one of the first, not the first, 'cause there was a couple in San Francisco restaurant that was built with an open kitchen. Mm-hmm.

35:46 Where Wolfgang was on stage there and the customers could see who that cook was, you know, as opposed to being behind a closed door. And also, we, you know, we certainly can credit Wolfgang with becoming the first really celebrity chef. There were a lot of popular cooks out there, but as far as a celeb, what we think of as a celebrity chef, that was really Wolfgang. So was it Patrick? Maybe he provided did the, um, the groundwork for that. I didn't really know who Wolfgang was. I knew that when I returned to Los Angeles and I worked at Michael's, and I didn't really know Wolfgang, I don't think.

36:33 I had heard of Mami Zone, and I went to eat there while I was working at Spago, but I'm not sure if I heard of, um— that's interesting. Mami's own, or if I heard of Wolfgang. Yeah, but Wolfgang may have come into the dining room, you know, shook hands and things like that. I would just take exception to that. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, because there was a restaurant in San Francisco called Omar Khayyam's, owned by a guy named George Mardikian, and he owned a big piece of property in the Napa Valley. Never grew grapes, but he grew vegetables for his restaurant, and he wouldn't let a patron leave— and they talk about the '40s and '50s— unless he had a chance to visit them on the way out the door. You're talking about 200-seat restaurant. But that period though, was it just fun and games, or were you guys thinking, I'm going to make change the world? And then baking became part of your thing. I was thinking about this tactile feeling idea of— and I watched my daughter knead bread and how I can't do it. I just can't do it. My hands are like rocks. I cannot knead a baguette to save my life. And she just is so natural. Right. When did the baking part of it become— when you were a pastry chef at Spago, but when did the, the love of baking— really, it happened while I was at Michael's. It was the only opportunity to be in the kitchen. The only opening was in the pastry department.

38:01 I was the second of two. Yeah, there was only two people in the department and then a plater at night. So there was really three people in the department, but that was the only opening. And so I looked at it as a way to get my foot in the door. And it ended up being something that I didn't leave for several years. Right. And not that I ever left it, but that became kind of my home in the kitchen was the pastry department. That wasn't what my favorite thing about cooking was. You know, when I went to cooking school at the Cordon Bleu, I, I, that was my least successful, really my least successful of the classes that I took.

38:45 How interesting is that? And now I definitely was much more, my, you know, ambition was to be a savory, uh, a savory chef, not. So then when, when did La Brea come around? That came around long time after. La Brea Bakery opened in 1989. Spago opened it in 1982. I was at Michael's in 1979, so. Wow. Well, that seems like recent history, 1989, really. Sorry, 30 years ago. But did it, what's the inspiration for that? Because sourdough. Well, the inspiration was really to have good bread at my restaurant. Wolfgang taught me early on that the two most important courses of a restaurant want is the bread, the first course, which is, well, let's— when you sit down, it was traditionally then to put a basket of bread on the table. So the bread and the dessert, it what draws them in and what a customer remembers when they leave. And so I was like the bookend. I did it both, you know, bread and pastry. Do you think it would— did you ever think in your wildest dreams back then that they would start charging for that basket of bread? Right. No. And I wonder, and I think about that now because there was a lot of money that went into that that bread. And it was slowly, that's only been recently, you know, and I think it definitely, 2020, it gave restaurants the opportunity that they've

40:17 wanted for a long time, but just couldn't really face their customers to either eliminate that from the table or charge it with an upcharge of homemade cultured butter or something like that. Because it really was a money loser. And that's why for so long, people or restaurants could get around using bad bread. But the more restaurants that had a bread program and had better bread on the table kind of exposed all the customers that it's still that way. I mean, you used to be able to— Yeah, like you don't accept bad bread when you go to a restaurant and it's terrible bread. It's like, well, it's just as easy to buy, if you're not going to make it, buy bad bread as it is to buy good bread. The complexion of hospitality has changed considerably, I think, post-COVID. You know that already. The people just getting people here, probably though, you must have a very loyal staff because of the way you run your business. But would you even recommend to anybody to try and open a restaurant right now with the way the government rules are and the cost and the minimum wage and all that? I would. But I would say that, you know, I find that what I'm seeing country-wise countrywide is people opening more modest restaurants that are geared towards their neighborhood, not geared towards a destination. And those, if you look around LA and you talk, look at the restaurants that people are really talking about, I don't mean the very expensive tasting

41:50 menus where people have on their bucket list to go try. I'm talking about the restaurants that are really being, you know, supported. They're the neighborhood restaurants that are modest with a— I shouldn't say an affordable price because it's not a quick-serve restaurant price. It's not cheap, but not doesn't break the bank kind of places. And those are the places that are really popular. You know, that's interesting because we live in East Pasadena, Arcadia, Sierra Madre. And that is the local Sierra Madre restaurants are the ones that we visit the most and frequent. And they're busy. They're busier. And we don't get in the car and drive very far.

42:30 But it's just so hard to do business today anyway. I didn't sell my company. Any kind of business, you know, I mean, difficult. Uh, in what— we were in France with a big huge wine show, Wine Paris, and everybody's singing the blues in the wine trade. No, I know that. My nephew is in it. Is he? Yeah, he has a label called, um, Fingers Crossed. Oh yeah, I know it is. Do you know? Yeah, that's my, my, um, nephew Nick Crankle, and his father was my ex-brother-in-law is why Nick is my nephew. Manfred Crankle. You got to bring him on the show. Yeah. Manfred Crankle. You should bring Nick on the show. Yeah, I should. He would love it. He loves to talk about wine. Yeah. He grew up from a California winemaker. Yeah. Right. Very successful one. So what's his— I mean, I'll relate it to what's happening here, Mutsa, but He's seen it, he's seen a dip, he's seen— oh, he's nervous because people aren't drinking wine like they used to. It's cocktails. What do you have here? We're selling a lot less wine than we've sold before, I'll tell you, a lot less. People are— there's a lot of people that aren't drinking anymore, but then those that are are not committing to whole bottles. They— yeah. And they're— you have a liquor license here too? Yeah, here we do. We do not have a liquor license, so beer and wine only at Kispah. The next door and beer and wine only at the pizzeria. We're applying for a full liquor license at

44:02 both only because— Good luck. Oh, yeah, I know it's hard, but only because there's such a draw and cocktail programs and people want to drink cocktails. Well, the pressures are a new prohibition movement, low sugar, low alcohol, no alcohol, ready to drink cocktails, cannabis. There's all kinds Gen Zs. Now, you said something, we have to wrap this up, we're already at the end of time here. But you just said something earlier I didn't jump on, I wanted to talk about just for a minute. I have 3 millennial daughters, one of them I've told you about. And that generation grew up much more, not depreciating, I saved for the Mustang or the hot rod, but this generation was much more used to spending $100 on a sushi plate not saving for the car or the house because experiential dining, experiential everything is part of their culture. And the Gen Zs tend to be, I don't want to be like my parents. You know, that's kind of what their attitude is.

45:04 What's the complexion here? Do you get a blending of these generations or? I think we do get a blending of the generations, but I still would say we don't, we do get a blending and I'm very happy about that. You don't walk into this restaurant and think this is an old folks home. Yes. Or you don't walk in walk in and think another hipster restaurant, right? So there really is a blending. But if I had, excuse me, to say overall, I think it is overall a more sophisticated crowd than just a hipster restaurant. How about that? Well, congratulations on this amazing success in 20 years because we know in the restaurateur business, this This is a long haul and it's a, that's legacy at this point. And maybe it was your reputation precedes you and that's what's happened, but it's probably because it's just really honest food. And I think it is honest food. Yeah. Because I have this pitch about honest wine.

46:03 Yeah. And that will transcend the rest of the industry. You know that they just put wine in a pouch, like a sippy pouch for a kid? Like you open up and put applesauce in it. Like who wants to drink that? Doesn't make sense to me. But anyway. Anyway, such a pleasure having the show, and thank you for having arranged. And tell my buddy Mike, I will. I, you know, I'm gonna go look because he— I needed a couple bunches of watercress. Thank you. He might be here, so he'll kick me, not literally, okay, if he knows you're here. And I did