Speaker 1 Well, my husband and
Speaker 2 I were the arts editors of Harper’s Bazaar when we were very young and the editor in chief there then
Speaker 3 was Barbara Goldsmith, who
Speaker 2 is terrific woman
Speaker 3 still.
Speaker 2 And as Art’s editors, you see, Michael always had a great interest in food.
Speaker 1 And we have written our book on
Speaker 2 the town in New York before we became art editors at Harper’s Bazaar. And we asked them if they would like us to be their food editors. Well, there were no food additives in those days.
Speaker 1 You see, that was
Speaker 3 what
Speaker 2 back in the late
Speaker 1 60s, early 70s, there was very little
Speaker 2 writing about food, much less than there is now. And Craig Claiborne has just got going. Gail Green had started writing about food in New York magazine. And that was quite considered quite of an innovation, really, to have a magazine with a regular food column. So it was really just starting then. And we did a few food pieces for Harper’s Bazaar, not that many, but they have always had the feeling that most of the readers were on diet. So I was always a little nervous. But we did a little food writing then in terms of magazines. But we’d
Speaker 1 already written
Speaker 3 our
Speaker 2 book on the town in New York, which was a history of New York seeing through eating and drinking.
Speaker 4 Tell us about how writing that book came about. How did you and your husband
Speaker 1 go about it? Well, you know, we both were brought up
Speaker 2 by parents who took us to wonderful restaurants all the time. We have that in common. And we both loved very good food. Mind you, my husband was a wonderful,
Speaker 3 wonderful
Speaker 2 chef, a wonderful cook.
Speaker 3 And I’m not at all
Speaker 2 he wouldn’t let me in his kitchen,
Speaker 3 but we were
Speaker 1 originally going to write a history of
Speaker 2 public dining, going back to the Roman Roman period. And we were going to write it with Hugh Johnson, who was a good friend of both of us, particularly was a friend of mine. We were all kids together. I was at Cambridge and so was Hugh, a little bit after me, but I knew his brother. We were all sort of young people who knew each other originally in England, although I’m American, but I took a degree at Cambridge.
Speaker 4 Was it inspired at all by the James Beard article? How to Eat It were eating out in New York. Did you read that article back in 1954?
Speaker 1 No. You know, I was not aware of Jim that early. I met Jim through Hugh Johnson.
Speaker 2 And as I said, you have this great passionate interest in in wine. And I think he’d gone to
Speaker 3 work
Speaker 2 for Alexis Flashin in France. And he came to visit me in New York and he said, oh, I had
Speaker 1 a friend I think you would enjoy knowing.
Speaker 2 And he invited me
Speaker 3 to
Speaker 1 go to
Speaker 2 Jim Beard’s house and he introduced me there. He took me as a date. This was before I married Michael
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 I met Jim,
Speaker 1 who was at that point not that well known, really. It was Hugh who told me about Jim, and he had
Speaker 2 his wonderful he already had his
Speaker 1 wonderful house, but I wasn’t that aware and this would be
Speaker 2 about nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 4 So was he at the house on was Tenth Street. Yes.
Speaker 2 West 10th Street.
Speaker 4 And so tell us about that. What were your impressions of
Speaker 1 him when you first met him? Well, you know, he was an overpowering personality. He was Hugh again. I was very, very young.
Speaker 3 He was huge and booming
Speaker 1 and full of very warm
Speaker 2 and welcoming and easy to know. And that was my original impression of him. I he didn’t seem to be particularly interested in talking about food. And I found out much later because he very often came to visit us. He came to our house for dinner. We went a few times to his, but he came often to our house for dinner. This was after Michael and I were married and Michael was a wonderful chef. In fact, he said Michael
Speaker 3 was the
Speaker 2 best chef he knew in America outside of a professional kitchen. So Michael was very flattered by that. And the thing is about Jim was that
Speaker 1 he he was brilliant and very wide ranging and his
Speaker 2 two passionate interests, I would have said. Terms of of conversation were the arts because, you know, he had been a an opera singer, so
Speaker 1 he loved to talk about
Speaker 2 the arts, he loved to talk about anything having to do with the
Speaker 1 arts. And the other thing was he was a very, very superlative role.
Speaker 2 He was he
Speaker 1 was very
Speaker 2 liberal in politics and very interested in politics and particularly liberal politics. And this was the age of the sort of red smears. And it was hard to be that liberal
Speaker 3 was
Speaker 1 quite, quite brave.
Speaker 2 I mean, he was an outspoken liberal.
Speaker 4 That’s so interesting. I don’t think anyone else is that nobody should.
Speaker 1 Would you like me to keep
Speaker 2 my glasses on or should I perhaps take them off?
Speaker 1 I think they look OK. They’re not
Speaker 2 shining and like, OK,
Speaker 4 something that you might want to keep in mind is to I know it’s strange, but try to avoid looking at the lens.
Speaker 3 Oh, look at me.
Speaker 2 Look at you. Yes, OK. I know he’s very handsome.
Speaker 1 Oh, yes. Yes, I know he was very, very
Speaker 2 passionately a liberal in politics and he was very discreet about his own private life. But I feel
Speaker 1 that
Speaker 2 he would have very much approved of recent legislation with regards to to gay rights and things like that. I’m sure he would have been very interested and he was interested in all the liberal causes.
Speaker 1 And as I say, politics, as
Speaker 2 I found one of his favorite topics of conversation, he definitely would rather talk about politics than food. Really. He rarely talked. I mean, he he would say something he was eating was delicious. He’d talk about some of his friends who he thought were great chefs when he traveled, he’d say, oh, he’s going to visit a friend out very often in the West
Speaker 3 who
Speaker 2 was a particularly good cook. And he was looking forward to dinner at her house.
Speaker 1 But otherwise, he he didn’t go on about restaurants and he did go on about food. His interests were much
Speaker 2 broader than that.
Speaker 1 And I think I think he would have liked to have a to be
Speaker 2 active in politics in some way. Have there been some organisations that would have appealed to him in those days? Ah, I don’t know that there were I don’t think he was a part of any action group,
Speaker 1 but I know
Speaker 2 he was passionately liberal.
Speaker 4 Was he out to his friends or. No, he said so you said he was discreet, so
Speaker 2 very discreet about his private life.
Speaker 3 But ah, but it was all aspects of liberal
Speaker 2 politics that interested him. He he believed very much in personal liberties. And as I said, he was he was a Democrat, I’m sure of that. And he was always opposed to to any sort of super conservative strictures of any sort.
Speaker 4 James Beard for president?
Speaker 1 Well, you know, I you know, I always have the feeling there were other careers that would have pleased him. Certainly as he started as an
Speaker 2 opera
Speaker 1 singer. I think he would. He always wanted to know, what have you seen in the theatre? What have you heard? You know, if he was a bolero man of the. Not that I’m not sure.
Speaker 2 Probably I don’t think so. He never talked about the ballet. They talked about music, a
Speaker 3 la
Speaker 2 classical music, though, exclusively. And I think he could have had a very happy career in the arts. Just as I say, he might have had an interesting career as an activist in politically.
Speaker 4 So let’s get back to dining with him. Yes, you said you’ve dined with him many times. What was it like to dine with James?
Speaker 1 Well, as I said, he came to our house
Speaker 2 all the time and he loved my husband’s cooking. And every once in a while, something extraordinary would happen. I remember once he was with us for lunch and friends arrived with a
Speaker 1 great crate of crawfish
Speaker 2 right from Louisiana, and he thought that was just the best thing, that
Speaker 1 bath. And he would talk. But he just one thing about having you talking
Speaker 2 to him over a meal was he wasn’t talking about
Speaker 3 food
Speaker 2 other than to say something was really delicious. I remember he looked at my husband stove and thought it was amazing that he produced what he did.
Speaker 3 But food was
Speaker 1 not an obsession with him. It was a love, but it
Speaker 2 wasn’t an obsession. He was he had so many other interests.
Speaker 4 What are your memories of the house when he was in it? What was the house like?
Speaker 2 Well, the thing is, he told us his philosophy of entertaining.
Speaker 1 He loved
Speaker 2 to give. I remember only one small dinner party at his house. I think that was rare.
Speaker 1 He loved to give big cocktail parties and he
Speaker 2 hated little to dots.
Speaker 1 He could not bear little of the well. He was larger than life. I mean, a little order, which was really
Speaker 2 something he hardly noticed. He did not like little
Speaker 3 do
Speaker 2 as I said, he called them little dots, the dots, and he couldn’t bear them. He would always have a ham, always with all the trimmings and some bread so you could make yourself a sandwich. That was his idea of a fun way to entertain. But also he felt you should always
Speaker 1 have
Speaker 3 more
Speaker 2 guests than you can handle. He liked a house of a party that was packed to the rafters. He that was his idea of that was how he liked it.
Speaker 4 And they were some of the people that would be at least.
Speaker 1 Well, you know, there it’s hard. I don’t remember. He would have people
Speaker 2 like Helen McCully. He was very fond
Speaker 3 of
Speaker 1 all I trying to think who else was there. I don’t have that clear a vision.
Speaker 2 Now, as I said, I’m not that clear, except that it was
Speaker 1 a lot of people very
Speaker 2 as Michael and I
Speaker 1 were a much
Speaker 2 younger generation and I think it was sort of his and Helen McCully’s generation more than ours.
Speaker 1 There weren’t a lot of young
Speaker 2 people there and we were young
Speaker 4 and wonderful. Cheryl Crawford, did you ever meet Norman?
Speaker 1 I may have met Cheryl Crawford, I think on all the other places.
Speaker 2 I never met her at his house.
Speaker 3 No dear friends, no one.
Speaker 4 When did you realize you the first time that you met James Beard, you were the date of your friend?
Speaker 2 Yes. And then we saw him a lot. He got to know Michael as well. And after we were married is when we really spent the most time with him.
Speaker 4 How did that how did you start to spend more time with him? What were the.
Speaker 1 Well, the thing was this. We knew what we were doing and we were launching
Speaker 2 our career in the food
Speaker 1 world when he was very established and he was wonderfully supportive. I think one of the reasons he was so supportive was that he had great
Speaker 2 respect for Michael as a cook. He knew Michael really knew everything. In fact, he invited Michael
Speaker 3 to
Speaker 2 teach at his school at one point when somebody else had not worked out as a fill in. But he had great respect for Michael’s understanding of food. And he loved on the town in
Speaker 1 New York, which we’d already
Speaker 3 written, but we’d written it
Speaker 2 before we met him. But it hadn’t been published until well after we knew him. It wasn’t published in nineteen seventy four and we’d written it between nineteen sixty four and nineteen sixty eight. So while we were getting it published, he always encouraged us and then he put, you know, he read it and he gave us a blurb
Speaker 1 for the cover. And when we founded
Speaker 2 Food and Wine which took us it took us almost ten, seven years, about to raise the money with our partners
Speaker 3 for for
Speaker 2 food and wine. And he agreed immediately to be on our our masthead as an advisor. And he was as helpful as he possibly could be. I think we had an article about him in one of our first issues. He was always as encouraging as he could possibly be. He was marvelously encouraging.
Speaker 4 Should we have read his quote or, you know, it will probably end up putting it on the screen of what was his reaction when when he read the book immediately.
Speaker 2 He loved it. He said he loved it. And that’s why he said it was such fun, which I think, frankly, it
Speaker 3 was a fun book.
Speaker 2 And it’s it was it was a
Speaker 3 lot of original research.
Speaker 2 And he felt it was great as a reference book. And it’s been used by a lot of people as a reference book ever since it was republished about ten years ago. But he loved it.
Speaker 4 So maybe on that attack. Well, we’re here because, you know, love for you to be me. And I know I don’t know the last time you read your own book, but I kind of paint a little bit. A picture of kind of the restaurant scene in New York kind of starting at the turn of the century and how by the time you were writing this changed, he probably went to some restaurants in the early to mid 20s writing about.
Speaker 1 Well, the thing is, he was brought up, wasn’t he, on the West Coast? And I always felt his contact. I unless I’m mistaken, his mother had a boarding house and the chef was Chinese. And he always bore in mind that that Chinese influence. He had great respect
Speaker 2 for Asian food and
Speaker 1 he was very much a West Coast person.
Speaker 2 People don’t
Speaker 1 realize that he wasn’t somebody whose
Speaker 2 heart was in France.
Speaker 1 His heart really was global
Speaker 2 for the very reason that he was an American, but an American with Asian influence rather than the usual East Coast American with French or Italian influence.
Speaker 1 And I think that was, in my opinion, the key to why he became a great American leader of American America in our food revolution. I think it was because he was bi coastal. He wasn’t just bringing
Speaker 2 European food to America with so many others
Speaker 1 were. He really was. He thought globally.
Speaker 2 And that was unique in his generation about restaurants. It’s a long, long history,
Speaker 3 but
Speaker 2 people don’t realize that I can’t summarize our book, but people don’t realize that the Grand Hotel was born in America. And in the 19th century, though, the restaurant was created in France, first came here with the Delmonico’s in the middle of the 19th century. Now, about the restaurant scene in America in the 20th century that he may have known. Don’t forget, we
Speaker 1 had a very active
Speaker 2 restaurant scene on the East Coast. It was mostly European. All the great chefs, all the chefs were European, as were all the hoteliers on the West Coast. It was well, you had it was gold rush and you had a lot of luxury. You had a lot of oysters and so on and all. But I’m interested I have a feeling quite a lot of the chefs may have been Asian in, though, even in those days, because there were so many Chinese that came to the West Coast. So it was a whole other story. But of course, the disaster,
Speaker 1 the
Speaker 2 restaurant industry in America was prohibition. Which killed so many restaurants and in the 20s when perhaps Jim was young, what year was Jim born to go through? Yeah, in the 20s when Jim was a young man,
Speaker 1 he’d have had
Speaker 2 to be sneaking in and out
Speaker 3 of of
Speaker 2 speakeasies. Well, I don’t know what his feeling was about that. We never really discussed prohibition, but that had a huge effect.
Speaker 1 So it wasn’t till after prohibition
Speaker 2 that the restaurant industry was reborn, but it was sort of a weak rebirth because the next thing that happened was the Second World
Speaker 1 War. And of course, he lived through all of that. I don’t know exactly what he did. Was he in the army during the
Speaker 4 war in the sea of the Siemens? Siemens Association in Vienna, they built the canteens and things for the troops. So he was
Speaker 3 in Puerto Rico going South
Speaker 1 America. Oh, I didn’t know that. He never told us. I didn’t. But again, you see global. You see what I mean? Not not European tied. And I know he
Speaker 2 spent a lot of time in France and he was interested in and a Julia Child was a great friend of his. But that wasn’t his,
Speaker 1 if you ask me. His center. His center was America. And when he talked about the chefs he loved, it was he was really about restaurant chefs. He was usually talking
Speaker 2 about the people he loved
Speaker 3 who were one
Speaker 2 who cooked wonderfully well. They were inevitably women
Speaker 3 all over
Speaker 2 the map in the United States. He’d say, oh, I’m going to Louisville. I’m going to say with X, Y, Z.
Speaker 1 She’s a wonderful girl.
Speaker 2 She’s marvelous. And I’m going to be staying with her. Things like that
Speaker 3 are
Speaker 1 his references.
Speaker 2 His food references
Speaker 1 were American, as I
Speaker 3 remember, and or global.
Speaker 1 And but that’s where his heart was, which is why, as I say, I feel you are right. He was the first
Speaker 2 great American
Speaker 3 foodie
Speaker 4 he was. Can we talk also a little bit about. I’m sorry. Yeah, well, we’re talking about yeah. So of course, he went to the Thirty Nine World’s Fair, and I’m sure that he was introduced to, you know.
Speaker 2 Oh yes. He would talk
Speaker 4 a little bit about your own and why that was so special.
Speaker 2 Well the thing is, it was I one of the things that brought restaurant life
Speaker 1 restaurants back to
Speaker 2 life people don’t forget they really suffered a lot in in prohibition. One of the things that brought them back to life was the fact that those French chefs
Speaker 3 were were stuck
Speaker 2 in America because they couldn’t go back to France because of what was happening. So they the chefs who had come over for the pavilion for the Thirty Nine World’s
Speaker 1 Fair stayed
Speaker 3 not just not just
Speaker 2 the top people, but I think the whole staff stayed from the original
Speaker 3 Paval. And now
Speaker 2 what Jim’s reaction to that is, I’m not
Speaker 3 sure.
Speaker 2 But it was after
Speaker 3 the war
Speaker 2 for the Second World War that restaurants began to regenerate in the United States. But still, it was really the birth of the great interest in food, which happened in the 70s,
Speaker 3 that abroad
Speaker 2 resulted in the birth of more and more great restaurants in America and brought in Jim to the fore. And I tell
Speaker 1 you what I think actually happened. It was partly the result of the return to doing things with your hands that you had in the sixties. The sixties was a great
Speaker 2 transformative period, as we all know.
Speaker 1 But quite apart from
Speaker 2 what its effect on generally
Speaker 1 our social fabric, it had a great effect on young people and what they wanted to do. And more and more young people began
Speaker 3 to,
Speaker 2 especially young men, go into the kitchen. Women had gone into the kitchen because they had to suddenly everybody was burning bras and the girls didn’t want to go into the kitchen and the boys were taking walks with them to college.
Speaker 1 And all this happened in the sixties. And this passionate, sudden return to interest in actually making
Speaker 3 food and
Speaker 2 not just among women resulted in the rise of the interest in gym. But it
Speaker 1 also made it possible for us to find food and wine,
Speaker 2 because, as I said all during the 70s, we were raising money for food and wine and our
Speaker 1 competitor was Gourmet magazine. Now, Gourmet
Speaker 2 magazine was a wonderful magazine, but
Speaker 1 it was for a certain kind of lady
Speaker 2 was definitely for women. It was for a lady. And if you looked at the illustrations, there would be a picture of a dish, a little lace napkin next to it. And it was
Speaker 1 definitely
Speaker 2 for women to take into the kitchen young women who are a little more inventive about
Speaker 1 food or
Speaker 2 for the lady of the house to give to her
Speaker 3 cook,
Speaker 2 whereas we realised. All during the 70s that other people, and especially men, were beginning to be interested in food, and that’s why we ultimately our
Speaker 1 partner was
Speaker 2 Playboy magazine when we founded Food and Wine, which amazed us, but that was how we were able to raise money,
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 that was because young men were as interested in food as women. And so
Speaker 1 the thing is, all during that period, Jim’s
Speaker 2 reputation was growing
Speaker 1 because more and more people,
Speaker 2 and especially men, young men were interested in getting into the kitchen and experimenting.
Speaker 1 And there was, Jim,
Speaker 3 with all
Speaker 1 of this
Speaker 2 tremendous information
Speaker 1 there to respond to this sudden this sudden desire
Speaker 3 for
Speaker 1 recipes
Speaker 2 and information about cooking. Julia, the same thing
Speaker 1 that whole the 60s, not the 50s, the 60s gave rise to the whole revolution. And so it happened. Our own career
Speaker 2 sort of blossomed that we were of a younger generation just when Jim became so very famous, deservedly because he was sitting there with all of this passion and knowledge and information
Speaker 1 just when a whole new generation
Speaker 2 was interested in it.
Speaker 4 You mentioned how Jim was really supportive when you started. Yes, very on the masthead. Yeah. Tell us how in what ways he was supportive.
Speaker 1 Well, he just was every time he was always asking how we were going with whether
Speaker 2 we have as I say, it took us seven years to raise the money else and our
Speaker 1 partners. And he was just very hopeful,
Speaker 3 helpful to us and all.
Speaker 1 In fact, he he
Speaker 2 we listed the in our business proposal to raise money. We listed the authorities who were going to be
Speaker 1 on our masthead, and he let
Speaker 2 us use his name, say he was going to be on our masthead. And and so that in that way was very supportive. And then he was on our masthead and he was delighted to see us get going.
Speaker 4 Did he ever write for you?
Speaker 2 I think he did, yes. I think you have to look that up, but I’m pretty sure he did. But of course, he had much more important contracts elsewhere. And I know we had an article about him quite, very early on. Very early on. Yes, I know. Yeah, I have to find it.
Speaker 4 And then just back to dining with him. You died at each other’s homes. Did you dine out with him in New York restaurants? And if so, what were some of his favorite?
Speaker 1 Well, his favorite place. He had one place he liked
Speaker 2 the A down in the village one block from him. And it was not called the homestead.
Speaker 1 It was called the coach.
Speaker 2 The coach house. Yeah. That he took us there several times. That was his favorite because it was just his
Speaker 3 local out the door and
Speaker 1 but he was which made sense. You see,
Speaker 2 he was focused on home cooking. That was his passion. And he was a cook himself. So he
Speaker 1 admired chefs,
Speaker 2 I think. I’m sure he came. I know
Speaker 1 he came
Speaker 2 when we had our first anniversary for food and wine
Speaker 3 at
Speaker 2 Tavern on the Green. And we had
Speaker 3 Paul Prud’homme
Speaker 2 and Alice Waters and nobody’d heard of either of them at the time as American cooks there. And we also had some French and Italian. But I know he he came to
Speaker 3 our
Speaker 2 lunches and dinners.
Speaker 1 There he was. We always felt he
Speaker 2 was he was behind us
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 he died. Unfortunately, before we we
Speaker 3 founded Food Arts.
Speaker 1 What year did he die?
Speaker 4 Nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 That’s what I thought. Yeah.
Speaker 2 He we were raising money for for food arts at the time and he knew it was a magazine for chefs and restaurateurs. And he was very I remember among the last time we saw him, we talked to him about the magazine, tried to encourage us.
Speaker 1 He always
Speaker 2 encouraged us. He was he was so outgoing and wanting to help everybody who was active in the field. He wanted to help.
Speaker 1 But, you know, he had.
Speaker 2 Here’s a few people he didn’t get on with,
Speaker 3 very few, but on
Speaker 2 the whole, he was just a wonderful person with with everybody.
Speaker 4 You know, are you jealous? He didn’t get on?
Speaker 3 Well, I’d
Speaker 2 like to think of their names in a minute. I should I should have, you know, I didn’t know this question would come up, so I had. Oh, yeah, there were. But it wasn’t not anybody who’s famous. Today is the true
Speaker 4 type of personality that he clashed with,
Speaker 3 that he worked.
Speaker 4 What type of personality would he clash with?
Speaker 1 I don’t know how well he got on with Craig. They were so different. They were
Speaker 2 very, very
Speaker 3 they were sort of almost
Speaker 2 opposite personalities. Mike and I were very fond of both of them.
Speaker 1 Craig could be
Speaker 2 cutting. He wasn’t always kind and Jim, that wasn’t Jim’s
Speaker 3 spirit at all.
Speaker 1 And I’ll bet he respected Craig, I never heard him say anything negative, but I just never heard
Speaker 2 him say, oh, Craig’s coming over for dinner. That wasn’t they didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Speaker 1 I rivals not you know, I don’t think Jim was not the sort of let’s put it this way. Jim was not the sort of person who
Speaker 2 saw others as rivals. He might actually dislike somebody because they said something he felt was cruel or unfair,
Speaker 1 but he wasn’t
Speaker 2 competitive in that sense.
Speaker 1 And in a funny way, Craig wasn’t either. It’s just the Craig
Speaker 3 was much more.
Speaker 2 How can I say he’d love the witty twist? And if it wasn’t kind, it didn’t worry him. He didn’t worry about being kind all the time. And I would have said that Jim was never unkind. And the people he didn’t like, he didn’t like because he felt they were unkind. So that was
Speaker 1 they just had very different personalities.
Speaker 4 It’s interesting because what I’ve been reading in his letters in the 60s and the 60s, something must have happened with Greg that we cannot really figure out. It may have many years where they did dine together all the time. And Craig was coming over his house and he was going to Craig’s house. And then it seems like once we got into the 70s.
Speaker 1 My gut feeling is
Speaker 2 this, my gut feeling is that Craig may have said something cutting or unkind about not Jim because then Jim might have got really angry. No, no. But about somebody Jim liked or respected, it may have been
Speaker 1 that if you ask me to make a wild guess,
Speaker 2 I would have said,
Speaker 1 that’s it.
Speaker 2 I because Craig was getting more and
Speaker 1 more, he
Speaker 2 very often very funny. The things he said were very entertaining, but he’d say just something cunning about somebody. And I think he may have hurt the feelings of people who Jim cared about. So Jim would just have not said anything, but just stood aside that would much more his his way
Speaker 3 of of
Speaker 2 being cutting. He wasn’t cutting, but he he’d
Speaker 1 stand there were people from whom he stood aside.
Speaker 4 Back to Jim’s food writing. Yeah, did you feel that? How did you like his cookbooks? Did you use this?
Speaker 2 Well, Michael used to Michael felt that certain of his his big major books were the best, best there was. And I think Michael would have. Michael was my husband was one of those cooks who didn’t sit with a recipe and do it. But he loved to read cookbooks. And among the cookbooks, he loved to read with Jim’s. And he said Jim’s were the absolute best and the ones he really enjoyed reading. And then I think he might two months later have recreated some recipe he read in Jim’s in Jim’s book. But he didn’t sit down. My husband didn’t sit down and recreate recipes and Jim understood that.
Speaker 4 So what influence do you feel that James Beard had on the world of food writing that still resonates?
Speaker 1 Oh, I think
Speaker 2 everything he was kind of the original fountain
Speaker 3 of of
Speaker 2 the great, really wonderful, solid food writing. That’s a great appreciation.
Speaker 1 He was sort of the founding father. What can you say? And I think the very fact
Speaker 2 that he was inclusive made him somebody who could speak to everybody,
Speaker 3 you know,
Speaker 2 accessible. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 4 So what did it mean to you and Michael when you received the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award?
Speaker 1 Well, I’ll tell you, we were so thrilled because we thought,
Speaker 2 well, it was a thrill for us to receive it. Obviously, we were tremendously honored.
Speaker 1 But part of the thrill was the importance
Speaker 3 of
Speaker 1 the
Speaker 2 James Beard Foundation. I don’t think Jim ever
Speaker 1 foresaw that he would have such an afterlife. Really. I don’t think I know he left the house
Speaker 2 hoping that it would be used to promote good food in America.
Speaker 1 I don’t know if he had more hopes than that. He wasn’t a sort of he didn’t have one of those huge egos, because if he had, he’d been thrilled at what happened. But I don’t think he expected it. But I think he would have been just delighted, just delighted, because everything they do is
Speaker 2 is in promotion for
Speaker 3 of good
Speaker 2 food in
Speaker 1 America. And it’s all worked so well. And our food is extraordinary.
Speaker 2 And I was just in Europe and Europe is always wonderful. But the difference in terms of the quality of food in both restaurants and homes has disappeared. It’s disappeared. It’s different here than in Europe,
Speaker 1 but
Speaker 2 the quality and what with so
Speaker 3 much local
Speaker 2 food appreciated and grown and so much organic and so on, the differences that used to be so pronounced that he would have
Speaker 1 recognized have disappeared. I think his his objective in life has been achieved, and I think he had a hand in achieving it. But it wasn’t just Jim.
Speaker 2 He’d have been thrilled to see everybody else having a hand. I think in our own way. Michael and I had a hand in it and he helped us, which is what he wanted. He wanted to help people who would have a hand in making food in America.
Speaker 1 Wonderful. By the way, I there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you quickly. Do you have for your film that
Speaker 2 wonderful picture of Jim with his mother?
Speaker 4 When when he was a little boy, a little baby, a baby, we’re going to get it.
Speaker 1 You have to have that picture. To me, that sums it up. It’s a
Speaker 3 big, huge mother
Speaker 1 with a huge baby
Speaker 2 and she’s holding him. So she’s so proud of you. So happy.
Speaker 1 And it’s a wonderful picture. Just a wonderful picture and
Speaker 3 the sort of the hope and future of American
Speaker 1 food right in that picture. Because, you know, his mother
Speaker 2 was must have been very fussy about the food in her boarding house and food as a historian of food in
Speaker 3 America.
Speaker 2 I have to say boarding
Speaker 1 house food was very important in the 19th century. People don’t realize because the boarding house was where our our population was
Speaker 2 constantly on the move and
Speaker 1 boarding houses were where people lived. If you had just arrived from the east coast of the Middle West in California, you didn’t
Speaker 2 look for a hotel unless you were very wealthy and you were just going to stay for a few
Speaker 1 days. You said, OK, I’m here to live in San Francisco. I’ll find a good boarding house
Speaker 2 to stay in. And the quality of the food was so important
Speaker 1 because it replaced
Speaker 3 home food,
Speaker 2 you see for so many Americans. And it was
Speaker 1 true in New York, too. And and the critics would write about the
Speaker 2 food and boarding houses.
Speaker 1 There was a whole a whole lot
Speaker 3 of many
Speaker 2 articles in the 19th century writing when you people wrote about
Speaker 1 food, it was very often about the food in a boarding house.
Speaker 4 So interesting. So she actually tried to hire some French chefs and they would always stay a little while and go to San Francisco. And she finally said, enough, I’m going to I’m going to train these Chinese chefs and French me.
Speaker 1 Oh, is that what she did you say? Well, you see, a woman who was concentrating on good food, wanted to give her borders good food. You see, the whole concept of
Speaker 2 the boarding house doesn’t exist
Speaker 1 anymore. It’s like it’s only parallel today would be impossible in
Speaker 2 Italy or in someplace in France where they do exist. And when I was young and a student, you chose a pawnshop in
Speaker 3 Florence
Speaker 1 according to the food, you know, a room with a view, everybody looking for the view, but nobody mentions that the food that was served was very important. And if you heard that the
Speaker 2 food of a different policy was really better and you had not having a good meal every night, you’d
Speaker 1 think of moving on. But people don’t, as I say, is part of the history of American food, the importance of boarding houses and the importance of boarding house food. Because there aren’t that many people, you know, it was not we can all take apartments for granted, but
Speaker 2 apartments didn’t exist in the 19th century or even, you know, nineteen three very few apartment buildings on either coasts. There were a few in San Francisco. I don’t know if there were any and in Portland or anywhere,
Speaker 3 but
Speaker 1 you had to have your own house,
Speaker 2 which meant to were well established
Speaker 1 to have your own kitchen, you know, and that’s why restaurants, sort of
Speaker 3 little
Speaker 2 places that were sort of like chowder houses where you’d pick up a little
Speaker 3 food were
Speaker 2 so important.
Speaker 1 But boarding houses were a huge
Speaker 2 segment of the American population, actually a. Beautiful.
Speaker 4 Thank you so much. Let’s see, so why is a James Beard Foundation award important to the chefs and journalists and the
Speaker 1 people who receive? I think it has
Speaker 2 become actually the Oscars and any industry. I always feel an industry needs a publication. That’s why I have food arts to give it coherence. But it also needs an organization that recognizes excellent excellence
Speaker 1 to give a coherence.
Speaker 2 And I think that’s what the Oscars do for the movie industry. And it’s
Speaker 1 the restaurant industry showmanship,
Speaker 2 too. And there are awards for theater.
Speaker 1 Well, it’s
Speaker 2 entirely suitable that there should be awards
Speaker 3 for for,
Speaker 2 you know, the restaurant industry, for
Speaker 3 cookbooks, for
Speaker 2 all of that of that nature awards for cuisine in this country. Cause they can’t give awards to private people at home, but this is the next best.
Speaker 4 And on that note, do you think we’ve been asking people, is there an award that you think that you. I would like to see me given out, that’s not one would be a farmer’s farmer’s market.
Speaker 1 Well, you know. Jim loved great produce, but the whole farmer’s market thing and the whole thing of farming kind of has had it’s a it’s a great recognition after he died in the last 20 years, it sort of started in the 90s. It was after he died and he would just go to the local markets. But I don’t remember him talking much about farmers. In all fairness, farmers weren’t top of his mind.
Speaker 2 He would go to the markets. I go to the open markets. Absolutely. He’d try to find the best produce.
Speaker 1 But he I think he kind of took for granted are distribution channels.
Speaker 2 I he’d talk a lot about the markets down in the village that he’d like to go
Speaker 1 to, but he didn’t talk a lot about the farmers
Speaker 2 that provided for those markets. It wasn’t top of mind with him. Not be nice to say, because it’s fashionable now and people are thinking
Speaker 1 about it, but I don’t think he was thinking a lot about it.
Speaker 2 I don’t remember him ever discussing farmers.
Speaker 4 Well, it’s interesting that you say that, too, because I think that during that time, too, there was more of kind of a disconnect between there
Speaker 1 was and Jim was an urban person.
Speaker 3 He wasn’t brought up on a farm.
Speaker 2 He was brought up in town. And he loved to visit the country.
Speaker 1 But he was I never heard of him having a vegetable garden. He wasn’t a fingers in the soil person.
Speaker 2 I’m not saying today he might have been,
Speaker 3 but maybe a little
Speaker 4 your growing up. Yeah, his mother had an unbelievable car.
Speaker 1 Well, then he probably funny he didn’t talk about I remember him talking
Speaker 2 about his mother’s market,
Speaker 4 didn’t talk about his mother much.
Speaker 1 Well, he talked to
Speaker 2 we certainly knew that, you
Speaker 1 know, she’d had a boarding house. And, yes, he talked about his mother. Chef the Chinese. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 But he never mentioned his mother’s garden.
Speaker 1 I don’t know why maybe he considered that his mother’s domain. He never talked about growing
Speaker 2 things in his mother’s
Speaker 1 garden. I don’t know. I can’t explain that. But I as I say, I
Speaker 2 don’t remember him being a fingers in the soil person.
Speaker 4 As you know, they’re important now. They’re in the process of trying to
Speaker 3 build a public park.
Speaker 2 I know. I know he’d be thrilled.
Speaker 4 He would be through the whole market was there for three years. And apparently every farmer knew Mrs. Beer, that’s for sure.
Speaker 2 I’m not surprised.
Speaker 1 I funny, but I guess that wasn’t his focus. His focus was once you’re in the kitchen and in the market buying, but the actual growing I don’t know, I could be wrong. Maybe he’s if if it’s in maybe he wrote about it but did he.
Speaker 4 He wrote about it and delights in prejudice. Oh. His memoir. Which came out in the 60s.
Speaker 1 Yeah. You see. But he didn’t talk a lot about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 Yeah.
Speaker 1 But maybe I’m not but maybe because we weren’t people who
Speaker 2 had it, we didn’t have a place in the country. So the subject never may be
Speaker 1 perhaps the subject just never came up.
Speaker 4 Today we’re talk about like I saying it right now. There’s Al, I think, because he was in Paris in the 20s and.
Speaker 1 Oh, I don’t remember him talking, I don’t remember him talking a lot about France. It was more his focus
Speaker 2 was this country, you know, as I said, I remember how thrilled he was when our friends arrived with all the crawfish from Louisiana, and then he’d talk about the food in Louisiana. And he was just so thrilled to have Louisiana crawfish in New York.
Speaker 3 That was what got him excited.
Speaker 2 American things.
Speaker 4 Do you want to talk about some of the people here? Well, you did talk a little bit about Craig. Yeah, he did. You know Kormos?
Speaker 1 No, but I did know Helen
Speaker 2 McCully very well. And we had dinner at her house often.
Speaker 1 And she was a she was a kind
Speaker 2 of foodie that you don’t see that much of any more a sort of lady of a certain
Speaker 1 age who was of the I don’t know, did she write for Gourmet because she worked for McCall’s, you see, was the editor. Yes, you’re right. And you see, that was a whole other period. That was Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s
Speaker 2 Ladies magazine,
Speaker 3 food food articles.
Speaker 1 Now, I said before there weren’t a
Speaker 3 lot of food
Speaker 2 columns in magazines.
Speaker 1 That’s where I’m wrong.
Speaker 2 I probably my own subconscious
Speaker 1 and blocked out because it played so little role in
Speaker 2 my own
Speaker 1 private life,
Speaker 2 my own subconscious. You’ll have to forgive me. I had
Speaker 3 gone and blocked out all the ladies and when I was young, women told German Women’s Home Journal and McCall’s and so on were where there
Speaker 2 was magazine writing about food
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 1 she was a leader and that and they did a very good job. And it was it was of the School of Gourmet magazine.
Speaker 3 And ah,
Speaker 2 remember I said about Gourmet that they would have a
Speaker 3 picture of a
Speaker 2 little dish with a little lace napkin next to it. And when we founded Food and Wine magazine,
Speaker 3 our whole
Speaker 2 object was to get women out of the visuals there so we would have a lemon dessert and we would have lemons disappearing into the distance and then a lemon dessert arise, a rising as if it was a sudden rise, you know, so that people would say so that a man could have our magazine in his briefcase.
Speaker 3 Well, Helen was of the school of your
Speaker 2 producing
Speaker 3 food or
Speaker 2 recipes and information for
Speaker 1 the terrified bride
Speaker 2 and then the woman who has to turn out a great meal for her family. And you talked about to a certain amount about products that you buy,
Speaker 3 but
Speaker 2 I’m afraid got a lot of those recipes, got some manufactured food included in there. You know, you take your can of onion soup for your can of
Speaker 3 you know, and this was
Speaker 2 something that Jim was kind of in rebellion against. And certainly my my husband was in rebellion against certainly we were
Speaker 3 not
Speaker 2 there, that a lot of that wasn’t
Speaker 3 good, but it
Speaker 1 it presupposed
Speaker 3 that you were a
Speaker 2 woman, you had nothing else to do but cook all day, and your job in life was to produce meals for your husband and children.
Speaker 1 And I
Speaker 2 think one of the reasons Jim was successful is I think his recipes don’t kind of suggest
Speaker 1 that in a way,
Speaker 2 I think they are recipes that because he was a man and he was writing for people like himself, which is to say men as well as women,
Speaker 3 the very
Speaker 2 fact of his being a man writing recipes, you see, was sort of in rebellion. Now, Helen McCully, we all loved because she was a terrific
Speaker 1 spirit, but she was part of that other world. Well, I don’t remember as clearly
Speaker 2 as all of that. And I think she served us want something, bless her soul, that was a little old and it sort of didn’t. It was a fish dish. And I don’t know,
Speaker 3 I,
Speaker 2 I don’t remember in enough detail to really tell you, except that I know in a certain way Jim and Love loved her food, but Jim’s food was just different and it was different because it was a man’s
Speaker 1 food. And I don’t know. But I before Jim, I don’t think in any of those women’s magazines, there were any men producing those recipes. And I don’t know about
Speaker 2 Gourmet magazine,
Speaker 3 whether
Speaker 1 though the editors were all
Speaker 2 women, the owner was a man,
Speaker 1 but the editors, there were all women and they were producing lady food, you know.
Speaker 2 And the thing is, Jim, suddenly and in the sixties when people weren’t looking for lady food, was producing food, that was
Speaker 3 not
Speaker 1 lady food, it was
Speaker 2 food. Anybody but, you know, a man, a chef, a woman,
Speaker 1 whoever would and
Speaker 2 as I say, gutsy food and big
Speaker 1 food with big flavours. You see, that’s why I think he was he was so successful. Is is it wasn’t the Ladies Home Journal any
Speaker 3 more, you know,
Speaker 4 on that
Speaker 3 it.
Speaker 2 Well, it wasn’t. You see, that was the big change.
Speaker 4 How about you? Did you know very well you talk a little bit about Joe.
Speaker 2 Oh, Joe was a great one of the great one of the great. Perfectionists and Jo, in a way, was for restaurants that what Jim was for the general public, which is to say he
Speaker 1 he had this passionate, interested, really great
Speaker 2 food, and he was going to bring it to America. And his various projects were full of imagination, like the Four Seasons. I mean, it was just and the food was gutsy and real and full of flavor. And he was, again, one of the great one of the creators of what is now great food in America. I’ll never forget. He showed us around Windows on the World. And I want to tell you something. He died shortly before 9/11, but 9/11 would have killed him.
Speaker 1 He that was his baby. And he showed us around. And he was so proud of everything. Every touch, every railing, the color of the carpet, the color of the chairs, the views. He he
Speaker 2 created that and then the
Speaker 3 food.
Speaker 2 And I’ll never forget,
Speaker 1 he was looking at something. He was showing us up a brass
Speaker 2 railing in Windows on the
Speaker 1 world. And he looked. And he looked more closely and on the side, you know, the side which is
Speaker 2 very narrow like that,
Speaker 1 right at the bottom, almost at the end, there was an imperceptible watch. Look at that, it’s scratched, he said,
Speaker 3 vandals, vandalism already,
Speaker 1 vandalism. This little teeny scrap. But to him
Speaker 3 it was vandalism and
Speaker 2 he was that much of a perfectionist. And every mouthful had to be wonderful. And and he and Jim would have been sublimates. I don’t know how close they were.
Speaker 3 Well, I’m not surprised.
Speaker 4 Jim actually did the original menu at the Four Seasons Yamhill did on the menu.
Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Well, that you see, as I said, it
Speaker 2 was Jim’s food.
Speaker 1 Was that was it. That was his
Speaker 2 vision. They have the same vision. But Jim was for a home and his for was for restaurants. And I
Speaker 1 don’t. Did Jim get involved in any of the restaurants?
Speaker 2 I don’t think so.
Speaker 4 Well, the newmaker.
Speaker 2 But I mean, anybody else is not.
Speaker 4 I think Bob
Speaker 1 Jones. Yeah. I think that would be it. And it was I remember thinking what a new novel idea. I remember now a novel
Speaker 2 idea that Jim should do the menu because Jim wasn’t a you know, he wasn’t your typical Escoffier
Speaker 3 trained
Speaker 2 chef. And in those days, most of the chefs were European and so on. And that so that was a big step. Having Jim do the menu. It was a big departure.
Speaker 3 Yes, so Barbara Kafka.
Speaker 1 Oh, I knew Barbara Kafka very well. How is how are you interviewing her?
Speaker 4 She’s not doing great. She doesn’t she can’t be on camera. And we’ve. Corresponded with her. We’re hoping that maybe we can use some of her interviews that she’d done in conjunction with the Fales Library.
Speaker 2 Oh, she’s not well, I know
Speaker 1 she’s had a lot
Speaker 2 of painful back trouble. And she is she pretty crippled up now?
Speaker 4 She’s in the last the last week correspondent, she was in Florida. She had been up in Vermont, and then she went down to Florida and
Speaker 1 was not well, even when she was
Speaker 2 teaching at gym, she was having trouble with her back and trouble moving. That doesn’t get better, I’m afraid.
Speaker 3 So, Barbara, why she was so
Speaker 1 well, she was
Speaker 2 not everybody loved Barbara and she could be difficult. And in fact, when Michael, this is just between us. But when Michael was invited by Jim to fill in for somebody, it was filling in for Barbara because there had been some disagreement somewhere with some of the students.
Speaker 1 But she had she was really
Speaker 2 very, extremely
Speaker 1 knowledgeable, extremely precise. And was she worked with Jim. She didn’t have Jim’s kind of spirit.
Speaker 2 She was different. But she was almost
Speaker 3 like a scholar, you know?
Speaker 2 And I think that was her role was to be scholarly and to be precise and to see that everything was just right.
Speaker 1 And she had wonderful taste
Speaker 2 and wonderful understanding of food. There’s no question. No question. And although she was a woman, it wasn’t lady food
Speaker 3 either, you know?
Speaker 4 So how would you describe the relationship between James Beard and Julia Child?
Speaker 2 Oh, I think very cordial, wonderful. Very respectful and very, very cordial. And they had great, great, great, as I say, respect for each other and affection, I think. Definitely, Julia was another kind of great character, both of them shared one thing, they both had enormous appetites,
Speaker 3 that
Speaker 2 they were both larger than life and they loved food and they both ate enormous amounts. And Jim loved the idea of being on any kind of diet. And I think Julia the same there. But I think just a wonderful relationship there.
Speaker 4 Did you ever visit him he was in the middle of the hospital.
Speaker 2 Yes, we went to see him in the hospital.
Speaker 3 Yeah.
Speaker 4 Can you talk about that? Because everyone says that. But he better than ever when he was actually
Speaker 2 in the wall. Yeah, I think we have brought him some food. I hope we did. I think Michael may have cooked something for I know everybody was bringing him food and I think Michael must have brought him something
Speaker 4 with
Speaker 1 the whiskey I don’t know about.
Speaker 2 We didn’t bring that, but we brought the food. But yes. And he was sort of like Napoleon wasn’t he didn’t sleep a lot at night. He was sort of the Napoleon of food. And he used to say that he found that he felt just as well the next day if he ate a lot. And actually that scientifically, I think makes sense to a certain amount. If you’ve eaten a great deal, you can sleep a little bit less.
Speaker 3 And I
Speaker 2 and they said he’d get up at night, eat,
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 1 he slept well very little.
Speaker 2 And I think he himself felt that his eating made up for it
Speaker 4 and was a voracious reader.
Speaker 2 Read a lot. And yes, of course, he well, and he was a reader, apart from being a voracious eater. He was he that’s why I think he was a reader.
Speaker 1 Well, do you see this is why I said he was so interested in politics. You know, I don’t think
Speaker 2 his reading was about food. I think and I don’t know, he may have been a novel reader, my my suspicion was he was reading about what was happening in the world and he was and wanted to be involved in that.
Speaker 4 And where were you and Michael when he passed, how did you hear about the news?
Speaker 3 I don’t
Speaker 2 remember clearly. I honestly don’t because I know we knew he was not going to last much longer. What did he actually die of? I don’t think we
Speaker 4 worked
Speaker 2 hard to see the thing. Is this his. Yeah. And I think the doctors had told him he had to
Speaker 1 lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 2 And I think he was he did lose a lot of weight, but I think he was very unhappy having to do it. He was not a happy diet or he was not somebody who liked to talk to you about his diet. You know, I have so many friends will go on a diet. They’ll tell you about it by the hour, not gym. The diet was something he didn’t like doing. He’d tell you that, but he didn’t discuss what he did. But I know he lost weight. And I know he looked as if he’d lost a lot of
Speaker 3 weight and
Speaker 2 he wasn’t happy with that. I mean, he was happy losing weight, but he wasn’t happy on a diet.
Speaker 3 Not at all.
Speaker 4 Did you go to the auction, you know.
Speaker 1 After I think I did go to the auction, I don’t think
Speaker 2 we bought anything and I would have liked
Speaker 1 to I we went to the auction, I didn’t
Speaker 2 buy anything and then regretted it. That’s the truth. There was something I wanted to buy and I regretted. So there
Speaker 4 Marion Cunningham,
Speaker 3 Michael
Speaker 2 knew Marion Cunningham better than I did. Yeah, she was also, again, a terrific person. And Michael have great respect for her.
Speaker 3 Barry. Yeah.
Speaker 4 What about you said you had spent some time at the house. Did you ever meet Gino?
Speaker 2 Yes, I met Gino and I was upstairs
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 I remember the story. I don’t know if anybody ever told you the story about Gino and the and the egg whites.
Speaker 1 This is what happened, Jeno had
Speaker 2 was making Marang and he had a huge container of
Speaker 3 egg whites and it somehow fell over and coated the floor.
Speaker 2 And I remember hearing from Jim and everybody this horrible thing that had happened with Gino upstairs on the floor being coded. But we hadn’t had dinner with Gino a few times with Jim. Jim invited Gino. I remember the last time I think we went to the carriage house. He invited Gino along and then there was wonderful.
Speaker 3 The wonderful man who I can’t
Speaker 1 know who who kept and Clay
Speaker 2 Clay, we loved Clay. Clay was wonderful. And Clay would sort of look after Jim and see that everything was all right in his life and that he was properly fed. And so Clay was the ultimate majordomo, the best ever. Everybody should have a clay look after them. Really.
Speaker 4 We got to talk with him before he passed away.
Speaker 1 Did pass away. He lived to be very old. And how old was Clay?
Speaker 4 You lived to be about eighty six.
Speaker 1 I it was not that old. I thought he was in his nineties.
Speaker 2 I probably a clay was marvelous. Clay was marvelous. And he looked after Jim Wright and
Speaker 1 then he looked after the Beard Foundation.
Speaker 2 You go there and that would be Clay
Speaker 1 at the door which is wonderful.
Speaker 3 Wonderful.
Speaker 4 Peter. Come, Peter, come.
Speaker 2 Did people get on with Jim?
Speaker 4 He apparently started the foundation, really?
Speaker 1 But did they get along?
Speaker 4 I really don’t know.
Speaker 1 I liked Peter come. Michael got on with Peter. I had the feeling that maybe there was some division between Jim
Speaker 2 and Peter at a certain point. I don’t know, I have a feeling that there’s a story there that I don’t
Speaker 3 know, that’s Carolyn story.
Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I don’t know that
Speaker 2 at the end, Peter CompE and Jim got on all that well, and I could be wrong. But then, you know, Jim’s thing of standing aside. So I think he was at a point standing aside from Peter Culp. Oh, but I don’t I can’t tell you that. I really don’t know. That’s just I’m now trying to deal with memories that are not very clear, and I think what I just told you was something that was told to me by Michael that was because Michael was sort of more in touch with what was going on with the school and so on.
Speaker 3 I mean, you’re just.
Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I know I know a lot about the period and the people in the period, I wish I
Speaker 2 had more anecdotes to tell you about, Jim. I’m just trying to think of Carl.
Speaker 3 Jerome.
Speaker 1 Carl. Yeah. Carl worked in the school, too.
Speaker 2 Oh, yes. Yeah, yes. And he worked with Jim and.
Speaker 1 Yes, and I think he did. Oh yeah. He did some work with us at
Speaker 2 food and
Speaker 3 wine. Yes.
Speaker 2 And he was a chef
Speaker 1 and he worked with
Speaker 3 ya and
Speaker 2 Michael liked him. And he worked with us at Food and Wine and he did various projects with Jim.
Speaker 1 I don’t know that much. Is he still alive?
Speaker 3 I just found it. But you found it controlled
Speaker 1 the way he should. He should have. He’ll have a lot to tell you.
Speaker 4 Yeah. I don’t know that they left on the best of terms. I think he met. You know, they were together at one point.
Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I had a feeling, but personally
Speaker 4 and then Mr. Bush was in the hospital in San Francisco and Carl already met some other guy in London, I think. And and we left him in San Francisco. And I think he never
Speaker 3 forgave him for that.
Speaker 2 Oh, well, again, it would be somebody from whom Jim stood aside.
Speaker 3 You see, we
Speaker 2 never heard a negative thing from Jim about him, but I think Michael knew that. I think. Jim was always very discreet about his personal life, so what his relationship would have been, other than professional, he really didn’t share with us. But I think Michael knew and I think Michael knew that they were not friends at the end, but that was all.
Speaker 4 Oh, dear Lucas,
Speaker 2 oh, I, Dionte Lucas, I only met once she she was of an even older generation, you see. So in fact we had a pay a pen that had belonged that was given to Michael. I think that by Dionte Lucas. But that was when we were very young and we were just and I think we were was when we were writing about our history of dining in New York, that we ran into a not through Jim
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 Michael had a meeting with her, but we didn’t know her and we didn’t know her in relationship to Jim. Well.
Speaker 4 I’d like to know the layout. I’m going to be absolutely oh.
Speaker 2 Well, let’s see.
Speaker 1 Oh, Jim said, great fun and invaluable reference book.
Speaker 2 There we go. But we did, as I say, a huge amount of research. And Jebb realize there and I think he had fun reading it. I hope everybody reads it has fun. But that was that was what he said.
Speaker 3 And I just said, oh, I
Speaker 2 is Craig Claiborne’s quote.
Speaker 1 Now, this is typical of Craig,
Speaker 3 who I love
Speaker 1 to, but
Speaker 2 he would
Speaker 3 not like Jim. Oh, it was wonderful.
Speaker 1 Craig, the best book ever written on the subject, which Craig knew perfectly well.
Speaker 2 It was the only book ever written on the subject.
Speaker 1 So that was Craig’s little
Speaker 2 OK, it’s the best book
Speaker 3 on the subject.
Speaker 1 Typical, typical. Those two quotes are typical of Jim and typical of Craig. Kind of sums up the difference.
Speaker 4 MFK Fisher.
Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. Talk about her.
Speaker 2 Yes. We knew her very well
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 2 we used to go and visit her in her
Speaker 3 house on
Speaker 2 in the Valley of the Moon, you know, in California. And that was an extraordinary story right there. No. One, she was an amazing, warm and interesting person always again, a little bit like Jim in that she didn’t want to spend her life talking about food. So I think we always had a sort of wide ranging conversation. We’d go and visit her. I remember she served us lunch, which was
Speaker 1 quite wonderful because it was so sparse.
Speaker 2 It was toast with gentleman’s relish, which you may have heard of. It’s a sort of English relish that was
Speaker 3 just lunch
Speaker 2 toast with gentleman’s relish. And then we were in California. Don’t forget, nectarine baked nectarines with creme fresh and her baked nectarines with creme fresh. One of the best things I have ever eaten. So that was that was a and MFK Fisher lunch. That was just great. And I know not a lot of work. I didn’t say you’ve been laboring in the kitchen all day, but she knew how to do things that were so exquisite and elegant and just right and really just shopping because she wasn’t laboring away in the kitchen, but she lived in a
Speaker 1 little house that was on the property of a man named Bouvier. What was his first name? I’d forgotten. And he had a wonderful concept. He gave his houses to women who were great
Speaker 2 writers to live in in their old older age.
Speaker 1 And it was his way. He had the main house and it was his way
Speaker 3 of
Speaker 1 assuring that he’d always have good conversation
Speaker 2 because he didn’t invite them to come for lunch and dinner. And the conversation was always very good. And I remember she we went with her to dinner
Speaker 3 at
Speaker 2 Bouvier’s and we had dinner
Speaker 1 in the garden, but we were way in the middle of a garden. But there was a huge chandelier over the dining room table and then New Age music was being piped throughout the garden.
Speaker 2 So it was altogether an extraordinary experience. Obviously, a man he’d been an architect, a man of great imagination. And we came to see her one day and she said she’d been up all night, up all night.
Speaker 3 What had happened?
Speaker 1 Well, she said there was a field and there was a herd of cattle in the field. And she said the cattle had been licking her house all night. We could. And the reason was there must have been something in the whitewash on the house that the calf of lacked in their diet.
Speaker 2 So I think it’s interesting comment on food and diet.
Speaker 1 They licked her house, so they practically licked it clean. And then the mirror was covered with white patties
Speaker 3 because all this
Speaker 2 whitewash had gone right through their systems. But that was so she’d been up all night
Speaker 1 with the cows licking her house. This was very
Speaker 2 everything out there was in the valley of the moon. Is a little strange. Anyway, she was
Speaker 3 wonderful
Speaker 2 and had great admiration for Jim, and they were all all of them together, including Julia, they were the founding fathers of the great food I think we have in America today. Definitely. Definitely.
Speaker 4 But the writing style. Right. I mean, she wrote very passionately about how food made her feel.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, I suppose if you say, you know, it was similar in that it was really just kind of really good writing. It was really good writing. And it’s not that easy to find. I know here at Food Art, we try all the time to find really fine writers of that ilk. Oh, well, you’ll have to tell
Speaker 2 us and show us what
Speaker 3 you do, because
Speaker 2 it’s not that we do find some terrific writers and and now restaurateurs and
Speaker 1 chefs want to read great, you
Speaker 3 know, food
Speaker 2 writing. And it’s a wonderful tradition.
Speaker 1 But I don’t know that there are a lot of great writers out there now. There’s a lot more great food
Speaker 2 than there was
Speaker 3 before.
Speaker 1 I don’t know if there’s a
Speaker 3 lot more
Speaker 1 great food writing
Speaker 2 than there used to be. I don’t think that that Jim and Julians have been surpassed all that much or all that easily. No, they was a great foundation. But also they remain among the greats. There’s just no question.
Speaker 4 Do you think there’s a reason for that? I was going to ask about the Internet.
Speaker 1 I know well, the Internet’s a whole other thing.
Speaker 2 As I say,
Speaker 1 we get we get very good writers here at Food Arts. And I’m proud of that because there are not a lot out there
Speaker 3 and there are not a lot of
Speaker 2 other publications, specifically food publications
Speaker 3 that
Speaker 2 have you know, there are a few, but it’s not as if the field was suddenly full. And now that there’s less print publishing, I think
Speaker 1 that militates against terrific writing. Don’t forget, Jim wasn’t writing.
Speaker 2 They weren’t writing for the Internet. It flashes on and it flashes off.
Speaker 1 They Jim was writing books.
Speaker 2 So it was MFK Fisher, so was Julia. And I don’t know what’s going to happen when, you know, everybody and some quite talented people with some talent must be writing about food. Gail Green is now
Speaker 1 online, but her writing’s great and always it has been.
Speaker 3 But what
Speaker 1 the effect is going to have on actually food writing, I don’t know
Speaker 3 the
Speaker 1 quality
Speaker 2 of criticism. Again, I don’t know because everybody becomes a critic
Speaker 3 and
Speaker 1 I think
Speaker 2 the jury is very much still out. But I wish I was more optimistic I would be if there were more great and there are some great food books out there. There’s no question and some terrific food memoirs. Some people are very good. Calabro Song writes wonderful memoirs and things.
Speaker 3 But I worry
Speaker 2 with the problem with print and with print books. I really worry.
Speaker 3 I don’t worry
Speaker 2 at all
Speaker 3 about the future
Speaker 2 of terrific food in this country. It’s getting better and better. Terrific food writing is something else because these greats who were speaking up wrote for an era when you could get a really great book published. So that’s my worry. I don’t know what Jim would have thought of
Speaker 3 all of this.
Speaker 4 I mean, we’re fortunate we still have people like Judith Jones who are still around and.
Speaker 1 Well, is she, Judith?
Speaker 3 I haven’t spoken to her in
Speaker 2 a while, and I should. Michael and I wrote a history of food in America, which we just sort of was. I finished after Michael died and I was working with Judith on that.
Speaker 3 But, um, um.
Speaker 2 Generally speaking. I would like to feel that there was more of a future than I than there may be because of the whole upset in the book industry. But what’s important is Jim wasn’t writing. For in order to promote
Speaker 3 the future
Speaker 1 food writing, he was
Speaker 2 writing to promote the future of food in America and what he said he wanted to achieve, he achieved. And he and others, it’s. It’s wonderful now and he would love the food that we have here and he’d love to go to do what I do come from one terrific restaurant to another. He would have loved to. And I’m only heartbroken that he missed out on that. Well, there were a lot a lot of good restaurants when he was still alive, but he would have had been having the time of his life right now. He would just be having. Just be having the best time, so I regret his missing the fruit of all his his life, some of the fruit of a lot of the best fruit of his labors. But I think he had a lot of good food in his life. So I’m not too worried. I just know he would love what he he would love things today.
