[MUSIC PLAYING]
JUSTIN MANN: Thank you
all for joining us.
I'm here today with
Jeremiah Tower.
He has been called the king of
California cuisine, the winner
of Best Chef in America, and
he has opened restaurants
all over the world--
including, most notably,
Stars, here in San Francisco.
Welcome back.
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Thank you very much.
Wonderful to be back.
JUSTIN MANN: And I'm also
here at Lydia Tataglia.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Tenaglia.
JUSTIN MANN: Tenaglia, ahh--
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
You practiced this.
JEREMIAH TOWER:
We've practiced this.
My apologies.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Tenaglia.
JUSTIN MANN: Tenaglia.
Who has worked on shows such as
"No Reservations, with Anthony
Bourdain" and "Mind of
a Chef," and recently
has worked with Jeremiah Tower
with "The Last Magnificent."
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Mhm.
Yeah.
JUSTIN MANN: Welcome.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Thank you.
JUSTIN MANN: So first
question I have for you,
with all the names you have
given throughout your career--
JEREMIAH TOWER: [LAUGHS]
JUSTIN MANN: The
Last Magnificent,
the king of California
cuisine, some, I'm sure,
we can't repeat--
what would you say
is your favorite?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Most of them
you can't repeat, actually.
[LAUGHS] Well, I loved Godfather
because I loved the movies.
So Godfather of California
cuisine is a good one.
I'm not sure what it means,
but I like the sound of it
because the films were so great.
But my favorites are the
ones we can't mention here.
[LAUGHTER]
So therefore, I won't.
JUSTIN MANN: Could you describe
what California cuisine exactly
is in your mind?
JEREMIAH TOWER:
California cuisine?
Yes.
Beautifully said by Mario
Batali and Anthony Bourdain
in the film, you know, when
they're talking about it.
And I loved it when
Mario Batali was saying,
you know, before, a
serious restaurant,
was probably a
French restaurant,
and it had foie
gras, and Dover sole
and all that sort of thing--
of course the foie gras
came out of a can.
It was disgusting.
And Dover sole was frozen.
And he said that, what
happened in California--
he tributes me doing it,
which is very nice of him--
that we took petrale, we said,
look, we have petrale sole.
We're not going to fly in
frozen Dover sole, which is not
any good and very expensive.
We're going to concentrate
on petrale sole.
And then it goes on to
talk about the California
regional dinner, which was the
moment when America shifted.
And so I took Monterey
Bay smoked prawns,
goat cheeses from Sonoma, from
the goats that we had raised,
and the California farmers
market for all the dried fruit.
So that was the shift to
insisting on ingredients.
It starts with ingredients,
is about ingredients,
and finishes with ingredients.
And that's basically
local, sustainable,
fresh ingredients was the
message of California cuisine.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Which is so
ubiquitous now, but, back then,
it was not.
And so, you know,
it was really sort
of the first push
in that direction
when he wrote that
particular menu
and attributed all the
farms, and the farmers,
and where he had sourced
those particular ingredients.
And so know you
look at that now,
and you're like, that's
all over the country now.
But that was a first.
JEREMIAH TOWER:
I mean, it sounds
ridiculous to say
that now because there
are Whole Foods everywhere.
When we started, there
wasn't one Whole Foods,
and all the things in Whole
Foods were not available.
You know, for someone
your age, that
just sounds like a
ludicrous statement,
and an impossible
statement, but it was true.
Walking every morning
to [INAUDIBLE] to cook,
I would steal [INAUDIBLE]
and rosemary out
of people's gardens.
I mean, that's the only
place I could get them.
JUSTIN MANN: So
then, what gave you
the idea to actually
do this local cuisine?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well, you
know, to fill up Chez Panisse,
because, you know,
we had no money.
You know, I wanted to cook
veal occasionally instead
of chicken breast every day.
So I wanted to fill
up the restaurant,
so I started doing regions
of France festivals.
So once a month, we'd
do a different region.
Finally, we had done
them all, and Corsica
was the only one left.
And I didn't even know
where Corsica was, let alone
had a Corsican cookbook.
And for the first time,
I cooked a terrible meal.
So the next day I thought,
totally ashamed of myself,
and it was a horrible
experience for a chef
to serve something you know is
not very good, so I thought,
why am I doing this to myself?
I had been gathering
local ingredients
and pretending they were--
cooking them in the French way,
saying they were French.
And I thought that's
just ridiculous.
Why would I would I say
Monterey prawns are scampi?
They're not, and so that, it
was my road to Damascus moment.
And I thought, OK, so I made
a list of all the things I
could get together to make a
dinner, and did the dinner.
Wrote the menu in English
for the first time,
California wines only
for the first time,
and named the farmers and
the sources and everything.
Of course, that
sounds very grand,
but it was actually to
get a bit off the price
by naming everybody.
JUSTIN MANN: Is that where the
phrase "elegant simplicity"
comes in?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yes, absolutely.
So when you've got some
fantastic ingredients
like those Monterey Bay
prawns, do as little to them
as possible.
You buy them, you
store them properly,
because if you don't,
there's no point having
those perfect ingredients.
And then cook them as
simply as possible.
Let the ingredients be the
rock stars, not the chef.
For me to say that
sounds ludicrous,
but it's what I believe
and believed then.
JUSTIN MANN: So the
film, "Jeremiah Tower,
The Last Magnificent," where
did the idea for that come from?
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, I
mean the idea, you know,
I've been working with Anthony
Bourdain for many, many years.
And he read Jeremiah's memoir.
It's called "California Dish."
Actually, it's just
been re-released
as "Start the Fire."
And there's a lot of
new material in there,
and it's a great read.
It's full of incredible
stories, and it's also
full of a lot of characters
that I've certainly
come across and have
heard of and know
from my long journey working
in food and travel television.
So connected with a
lot of different chefs
and the culinary scene, so
I recognized all the names
in the book, but
I didn't recognize
the author who had written it.
And I thought that
was somewhat unusual.
So when Bourdain kind of
threw the book on my desk,
he said, read this.
He was really kind of coming
at it from a very strong sense
of, as he puts it,
his justice button,
wanting to right a wrong,
feeling that Jeremiah
had been written out
of an important piece
of American culinary history.
And when I read the
book, I certainly
had that question too.
Why haven't I heard of this guy?
But I was skeptical
about whether or not
it could actually be a film
until I met him in person.
And there was a sort
of preliminary period
where I did a kind
of initial interview
with him that I
thought would last you
know 30 minutes, 45 minutes.
Instead, we had a
five-hour conversation.
And it was really compelling.
And that's when I
really start to get
engaged in the idea of
turning it into a film.
Certainly to answer
this question, you know,
who is this guy,
and where is he?
But really to go another layer
or two deeper, which is who's--
it's a character driven story.
It's who's the character behind
all of these incredible things?
Where did he get his
memories, his impressions,
his formative experiences?
Why was he able to, without any
culinary training whatsoever,
never went to
cooking school, never
had stepped foot in a
professional kitchen before,
why was he able to suddenly
just apply himself in this way?
And that was fascinating.
And I said that was really sort
of the beginning of the journey
we took together.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Written of
the role of chance and chaos
in success.
JUSTIN MANN: Well,
in the film, you say,
"There's no excuse to not
endlessly continue to try
and make everything you want as
wonderful as you envisioned."
Do you think you achieved
this in this film?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well, I didn't.
Certainly, Lydia did.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes, it's a wonderful movie.
At the end of the
first showing, premiere
was at the Tribeca Film
Festival a year ago,
a woman came up to me and said,
you know, I loved the movie.
In fact, everybody
who has seen the movie
was telling us
that they loved it.
She said, I love the
movie, but you seem so sad.
I said, honey,
it's just a movie.
Do I look sad?
No, it's a wonderful movie.
I mean, I saw it for the
first time in a big theater,
dark huge theater
alone with Lydia.
At the end, she said, well,
are you going to hit me now?
I said, I don't know.
I don't know what I just saw.
I'm in shock.
So it was very odd
to see it, but I
realized that something
amazing had happened.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
Yeah, that screening
was two days before the
Tribeca Film Festival,
so he hadn't seen anything.
And it was, he and I were
sitting in a very big theater,
just the two of us.
My heart was racing and
there was a lot of things
that people that he didn't
know were in the film,
archival footage, which
we can get to in a minute,
that he didn't realize
was in the film.
And so I think it was a shocking
first presentation for him.
It's not what, perhaps,
he expected at all.
And we proceeded to sort of
stumble out of the theater
and into a bar across the
street, where you we had one
too many because he
just needed to come off
of the shock of that.
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Yes, it was a shock
to see my mother encased in
mink on "The Queen Mary."
It was a shock for me to see
me at 11 years old foxhunting
and with all my--
really, I hadn't seen that stuff
in 50 years, [? almost ?] 60.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: That was
an incredible serendipitous
finding in the film.
Because we were actually very
late in the editing process,
and we had shot all
the key interviews,
and we had shot the recreations
that you see in the earlier
part of the film
because I really
needed to bring to
life that kind of tone
and texture of
what he experienced
when he was so young.
And that was the
work around for that,
just those little tiny memories
of sitting alone in a big hotel
room by himself or on a ship.
And so that was the
material we had.
And then I got a
call from his nephew.
He was cleaning out
his mom's basement.
It was just one of those
things, and he called me,
and he said, yeah, you know,
this basement, dark closet, way
in the back, there was a box.
And in that box were
eight millimeter films.
And they were labeled "Tower
trip to Spain," "Young JT."
Are these useful to you at all?
And I was like, what
are you talking about?
I'm like, yeah, they're useful.
He sent them, and you
transfer the film,
and you see every
story, memory, even
the recreations we had done
corroborated in that footage.
Suddenly we had
that real element,
that real archival
material to deal with.
And it was, then, how
do we marry these two
elements together so that
they kind of work organically?
And I mean, I look
at the recreations,
I think some of them
work better than others.
They were shot on green
screen and in a black box,
and then we created
the backgrounds.
And some of those
backgrounds are
composited with real archival
footage from those films.
JEREMIAH TOWER: The
eight millimeter
on a huge screen with modern
sound, very interesting.
But my favorite recreation
is the little kid.
How old was he, Lydia?
LYDIA TENAGLIA: He was, I think,
seven or eight, the actor.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yeah, he
was sitting at this table
was a big croquembouche.
Croquembouche are
profiterole stuffed
with whatever, caramel
cream, in this case, covered
with spun sugar or caramel.
So about this tall.
And when you're a little
kid, as I well remember,
that thing seemed
eight feet tall.
And it's right in front of him.
And he looks at
it, and he starts
to pull out a profiterole.
And he pulls the caramel and
he's looking at his fingers,
and then he puts in his mouth.
And then he shoves a whole
one, and then he looks up
at the camera like that.
You know, as a wow.
That, for me, told
the whole story
of the first half of the film.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah.
Yeah, there is-- that
little boy we cast
was extremely adventuresome,
because we had him eating.
If we had him eating like
eggs in aspic and all sorts
of things you'd find--
JEREMIAH TOWER: He
looked happy doing it.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: He did, he did
look very happy doing it, yeah.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Lobster
and artichokes with--
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah.
JUSTIN MANN: So with
that, how was it
going back and hearing
all those former friends,
coworkers, schoolmates
talking about you,
and how was it talking
with them, trying
to get them to be in this film?
JEREMIAH TOWER: They all think
they're psychoanalysts so they
blab it on and on and on.
But it was Lydia who did it,
so you should talk about that.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: He had left
San Francisco and just quite
frankly in very Greta Garbo-like
fashion, sort of left everyone
behind.
And those were very good
friends of his, particularly
the friends from Harvard.
And they hadn't
really seen or heard
from him in quite some time,
I mean, almost 20 years.
So they immediately
responded when I reached out
for their participation.
And then what became
very apparent,
the bulk of those early
acquaintances from Harvard,
they really missed him.
And it was so clear,
forget Chez Panisse,
forget Stars, forget all of
what he did very publicly.
His friends talked
so beautifully
about just the impression
he made on their lives, that
being in his company and
that time in their history
at Harvard in the '60s.
JEREMIAH TOWER: It's
because I cooked
them omelets every night.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah.
[LAUGHS] But I think
his friends Cathy
and Michael Palmer said
it, being in his company,
it was audacious.
There was an
audaciousness there,
that it was very compelling,
charismatic to be around.
They really, really,
really missed him.
They hadn't heard from
him in a long time.
So we just had a
screening the other night,
and I called all those people.
And they came, and it was this
fantastic emotional homecoming
of these old friends.
That was really
beautiful to see.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yes, friends
from 1961, for heaven's sakes.
Cathy Simon, who is a
San Francisco architect,
and Michael Palmer, famous poet.
But they were my roommates.
Well, Michael was my
roommate in Harvard College.
And I would cook, even
in my Adams House room,
there was a hotplate
in the closet.
And I would cook omelets
in there and chicken livers
in 100 year old Madeira, which
I got from my Russian uncle.
And Michael talks about
institutional food
and our reaction against it.
So we moved off campus
so we could cook.
And Cathy's a brilliant natural
cook, so we went for it.
I remember nights in Cambridge,
Massachusetts in June
just before school, college
was over, 90 degrees.
And so I cooked a goose.
We had cold goose
and Chateau d'Yquem.
Not bad.
So of course they remember me.
JUSTIN MANN: Well,
it's interesting,
because in that part where
you're talking about, back
in Harvard, you talked about
how your cooking was almost
like your revolution
against like everything
that was going on at that time.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well,
that was graduate school,
and I finally had a little
house in Somerville,
which was a dumpy
neighborhood in those days.
But I had a big kitchen,
so I could cook.
And as an antidote to graduate
school, that's what I did.
Then I had downstairs
some friends,
and then the revolution came
along, so I spent a lot of time
bailing SDS members and
revolutionaries out of jail.
And then we would go back to my
apartment and pour champagne.
They all said, Jeremiah,
you've got to get off your ass
and be a revolutionary.
You can't live like this in
the midst of a revolution.
I said, are you enjoying
your champagne and caviar?
[LAUGHTER]
And they kept coming back,
and then finally my apartment
was full of six or
eight people staying
there to evade the police
and the arrest warrants
while I cooked.
And then there was
that one moment
in the film when we talk
about the moment I did turn
into a revolutionary.
JUSTIN MANN: The
Molotov cocktail.
JEREMIAH TOWER: The
Molotov cocktail,
which we'd been
drinking Dom Perignon,
so we filled it up with
gasoline and put a rag in it.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: A rag, it was
an Hermes scarf, actually.
JEREMIAH TOWER: An
old Hermes scarf.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Not a rag.
It was an old Hermes scarf.
JEREMIAH TOWER: We got
in a friend's Porsche 911
and drove up to the
architectural school
with Margot Fonteyn, and
Richard [? Cragen ?] from--
LYDIA TENAGLIA: [? Krillya. ?]
JEREMIAH TOWER: And
[? Krillya ?] and I threw--
I though, OK, this is my moment.
I've really got to
be a revolutionary.
So I threw the bottle at the
architectural school, which
I thought was a very
cool thing to do.
And it bounced back because
it was a Dom Perignon bottle.
Never make a Molotov cocktail
in a champagne bottle.
That's my lesson.
And it bounced back at
me, and I jumped aside,
and it rolled down the street
in front of the Fogg Museum
and landed in a storm
drain and exploded.
And in the scene in the film,
I think, right, that's enough.
That's enough revolution.
Back to dinner.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
He was a royalist
amongst the revolution, I
think, is what it seems.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well, all
revolutions eventually,
you produce--
I mean, the French
Revolution in Talleyrand
who had the second or
first most famous chef ever
in the Western world.
Antonin Careme was his chef.
So one minute you're
storming the Bastille,
and the next minute you've
got a palace and the world's
most famous chef.
There's a little bit of
that in every revolution.
JUSTIN MANN: So
it's surprising it
didn't work because in
the film you come off
as a super professionist, so
what is professionalism to you,
if it's not making the
perfect Molotov cocktail?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well,
that's the same thing.
If you're going to make
a perfect Dover sole,
you might as well
make whatever you do,
try and do it
perfectly, otherwise
there's not much point.
So of course, I made the
perfect Molotov cocktail
even if it didn't work.
It was the perfect
looking Molotov cocktail.
JUSTIN MANN: So there's
also this big motif
in the film about you being
like a director of a play
at your restaurants
and all that stuff.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Right.
JUSTIN MANN: And you
being the head of it,
pulling all the strings,
and also main character.
How did that make you feel?
Is that like the, I
guess, the high point
of just pulling all the strings,
being the puppet master?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Oh,
yeah, in a restaurant
like Stars, which will
see a Saturday night shown
in the film, when
it's all working,
it's a little taste
of what it must
be like to be Pavarotti
getting a 20-minute standing
ovation at "La Scala."
I mean, you just
get that high that--
no drugs can really approximate
that wonderful feeling.
Everything is
working, everything's
working in your
mind and your body
and your emotions
and your senses.
It's a very, very special
feeling when it's working.
Of course when it's not,
it's just the opposite.
So yes, I mean, Stars
had an open kitchen
and was across from the
bar and the dining room,
and you could see
everything happening.
So whether it was a naked
homeless person streaking
through the restaurant,
that would be a bad moment
for most restaurateurs.
I would go out and say, could
we have some applause please?
And so everyone was like,
wow, this is so exciting.
Or it was Nureyev coming
in after the "King and I"
and doing a grand leap in the
middle of the dining room,
then coming over
and bending me over,
and giving me a kiss
down to my tonsils.
That was special.
And everyone would
stand up and applaud.
So there were those
moments at Stars.
You'd turn everything
into theater.
JUSTIN MANN: In
"Table Manners," you
said that food is not the most
important part of the party.
So which-- you did
say that in your book.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yes,
yes, yes, and I'm right.
JUSTIN MANN: So what should we
expect when we go out and dine?
JEREMIAH TOWER: All
great dining experiences,
whether it's a hamburger
at Zuni or a pizza
or a four hour meal at your
favorite Michelin restaurant,
should be a balanced experience.
There's no point
having good food
if the service is no
good, and vice versa.
I mean, if the place
is incredibly hot,
who cares how good
everything is?
It all has to be the same.
The look, the lighting, the
flowers, if there are flowers.
The food and the service
should all be on one level,
whether it's a pizzeria or a
Korean BBQ joint on the corner
or in a place like
Stars, otherwise
it doesn't make much sense.
And so therefore there's
nothing pretentious
about a three-star
Michelin restaurant
if they get it right.
If they get it as right as
the Korean BBQ on the corner
that get it right.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: I
know he despises
all the psychoanalysis
in the film,
and his friends psychoanalyzing.
I mean, just from
my perspective--
and he's going to laugh
at this, I'm sure--
but I think there's a memory
that from very early on when
he was 11, 12 years old,
his mother would frequently
throw these sort of lavish
parties and cocktail gatherings
and garden parties
with lots of people.
JEREMIAH TOWER: In England.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
In England, yeah.
And she loved to
socialize in that way.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Drink.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Drink.
And so there was a lot of
heavy drinking going on.
His mother had a--
JEREMIAH TOWER: She was
a roaring alcoholic.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: She was
a roaring alcoholic.
So I think there's this memory
in the film, where she'd
have one of these parties,
and then of course,
have one too many.
And then the food, which she had
been overseeing up to a point,
sort of fell by the wayside.
And so that he jumped in,
and as he says in the film,
it was almost out of
shame, that he didn't
want the party to go awry.
He would leap in and help with
the food and the people who
were cooking back there,
and sort of finish off
the poached salmons, and make
sure that you didn't lose face.
I thought that was a very
important memory for the film.
It was almost like
from very early on,
there was this sense of
the show where go on,
or just kind of adopting the
central character of master
of ceremonies.
And it was sort of
ingrained in him
very early on, so that
when eventually he
did go to Chez Panisse and
then created Stars, which
was his own vision,
that sense of being
the kind of central character
pulling all the strings
and keeping it all together,
I think was very, very
ingrained in him from early on.
That's $100, please,
for that session.
JEREMIAH TOWER: I'll just
take the copyright, thank you.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: OK.
JUSTIN MANN: So a lot of the
film deals with your past
and Chez Panisse and Stars.
But the current
part is the filming
when you were at
Tavern on the Green.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Right.
JUSTIN MANN: What
was it like having
that filming going on while you
were the head chef over there?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well, to
have that filming going on,
it taught me patience
for the first time,
because Lydia's motto
is never give up.
And that's mine too, so there
were some interesting moments
about what had to be given up.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
Interesting moments.
There was a lot of hand
in the face at that point.
That Tavern chapter
happened after the fact.
I set out to shoot a film that
explored his early childhood,
Chez Panisse, and
Stars, and it was really
going to be bookended by Mexico.
And so the last
thing we had to shoot
for the film, because
everything else was shot,
was the four days in
Mexico, where I wanted
to get a sense of
his life there,
and what I call
self-imposed exile.
And that shoot was planned,
and we had bought the tickets,
and the scenes we were
going to shoot were set.
And then he emailed
me and said I'm
going to have to push
that by a couple of weeks
because something's come up.
And I said, OK,
what's the something?
He said something, I
have a schedule conflict.
Well, of course,
he didn't tell me
he had moved to New York,
gotten an apartment,
and he was starting a job
at Tavern on the Green
as executive chef.
And so I sort of discovered
with the rest of the world
because there are a lot
of headlines at that time
that he was coming in to take
over, that this had happened.
And then again, much like
the eight millimeter footage,
my stomach did a
somersault. What
do we do with this chapter?
Now, we've suddenly moving
into a kind of produced,
constructed, retrospective
into a different kind
of shooting paradigm,
which was follow doc,
I don't know what's
going to happen here.
Now, I'm suddenly
spontaneously following.
So that was a little
bit of a conundrum.
And I showed up on
day three of the job
at Tavern much to his dismay.
Because I think he thought that
we were finished at that point.
JEREMIAH TOWER: You just
admitted you were finished.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
We were finished.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Thank you.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: I
pushed my way in,
and I started
following him around.
And then I thought maybe
this could actually
be interesting to see him
coming out of the wood work
at such a--
JEREMIAH TOWER: Old age.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: --seemingly
late point in his career.
I think it was really
fascinating because I saw him.
He just rolled up his
sleeves, and he kind of
dove into the kitchen.
The kitchen was very green.
And he had a lot of
impediments, lot of challenges,
and he just got to work.
And you could see all the things
that were so present and strong
with him in all of
those different chapters
of his life being applied to
this particular situation.
Simultaneously, you could see
that there would eventually
be conflict because he was not
in control of all the strings.
He was the back of
the house and then
there was the
front of the house.
And so if there's
not synergy there,
there's going to be
conflict and chaos.
And I could see that
happening pretty early on.
So I stuck with it.
That was three months
worth of shooting
that could have been a whole
other film in and of itself.
And then once that kind
of ended the way it did,
which is, if you haven't seen
the film, it doesn't end well.
It was just trying to
figure out creatively
how the Tavern material
actually fits in.
then we sort of, after
many, many iterations, kind
of used it as a backdrop to tell
the ending of the Stars story.
So the different chapters of
why Stars eventually unraveled.
Tavern sort of just became
a kind of punctuation point
to tell that story.
And then at the end, he leaves
New York goes back to Mexico,
so then we shot Mexico, and
then the film was finished.
JEREMIAH TOWER: No
earthquake in New York
was Tavern as it
was here for Stars
and the closing of
the Civic Center,
which was very
difficult. But I love
the moment in the film at Tavern
about the cocktail napkins.
JUSTIN MANN: I was
going to say that.
That was the beginning of the
end, was the cocktail napkins.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yeah, I mean,
when I was complete 100% owner
and in charge of every
conceivable part of Stars,
I mean.
I bartended once
a week at lunch.
I did the flowers for six months
to find out what was involved
and how much it should cost,
et cetera, so I did everything.
And then one day at
Tavern, I realized
they weren't using
cocktail napkins.
And you know, a cocktail
napkin is not just convenient
for the customer to sign to
the managers and to the owners
or whoever is looking that the
customer is gotten service.
So cocktail waiter or waitress
goes over, takes an order.
You put down a cocktail
napkin, so if I'm
looking around the bar, and
I see someone without one,
I know that they
haven't had service yet.
So they're very useful that way.
And I realized that there
were no cocktail napkins,
and I went over to
the bar manager,
and said, where are
the cocktail napkins?
And he said, well, we have
to go to an op meeting, which
would be a week away,
then they'd discuss it
all at the operations meeting.
And then would go to committee,
then it would be a memoed out.
So we're talking 10
days away before you
serve fucking cocktail
napkin, as I say in the movie.
I said, get me the
cocktail napkins.
Do we have them?
Yes.
Well, get me the cocktail
napkins and use them now.
So that's what I was facing.
So at Stars, I would just say,
bring me the cocktail napkins,
and five minutes
later, they'd be there.
But 10 days away before they--
I didn't get that at all.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: It caused
tensions, to sum up.
JUSTIN MANN: Well, you
did get an amazing email
from one of the sous chefs
saying that you almost
did what you'd envisioned.
You were so close.
What was it that you
were envisioning?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Well, it
was like a big ocean liner,
speaking of psychoanalysis.
It was like turning "The
Queen Mary" back on course.
The metaphors are perfect
for a huge restaurant.
And we nearly did.
And as the sous chef
said, we were just
so close to pulling it off,
pulling the team together.
And there's the interview
with the office manager
who was so pleased
with the new menu,
and it's all coming
together finally.
And then we had the lamb
moment with the owners, who
had taken me out to dinner
to get to know me and talk
about the food.
And the chef member
of the partnership
said, is it true that lamb
has both white and dark meat?
And I said, well, only
if it has feathers.
And they got really pissed off.
I thought they were joking,
but they weren't joking.
So a week or 10 days later,
"The New York Times" review
came out, and it
was 50-50 at best.
And so they said they were
incredibly embarrassed by that,
because now they couldn't
really-- when they went
to school with
their children, what
would they tell the parents?
And I'm thinking,
wait a minute, we're
at a meeting to discuss
adding 300 more seats.
In one day, we'd add 300 more
seats for the summer season.
So I had done this
an enormous amount
of work with
schedules and budgets
and menus and everything.
And all they wanted
to talk about
was how embarrassed they are in
front of the parents at school.
And they said, so
what we're going to do
is take over the food to
make sure it quote unquote
"make sure it's perfect."
And I thought, white
meat in lamb, perfect?
I thought, uh oh.
They've got a real problem,
so I just took my files
and dumped them, and said, I'll
see you, I'm going to lunch.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: And
then he never came back.
JUSTIN MANN: There was a quote.
Somebody said it
was said by you,
but you actually never said it.
You long for the crowd, but you
know the guillotine is close.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Oh, right.
JUSTIN MANN: Yes.
Is that something you say and
something you think about?
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Well, I mean, you
work for one of the most
important company in the world.
You should know the guillotine
is out there, always
waiting to come down.
You're probably as safe
as anybody in the world,
working for Google.
But yeah, there's always
that because people--
anyone who is successful, there
are people trying to drag you.
It's like a basket
full of crabs.
One tries to get out and
the others all haul it back.
There are always people who
would like to pull you down.
In fact, I had--
thank god, the chief of
police was my best pal
and had free lunch
every day at Stars
because there were
some incidents where
people were trying to get
at me in a very violent way.
So I know.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: I understand
the impulse, actually
to get at him in a
very violent way.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Who's
killing the great chefs when
it was on here, things
got sort of exciting.
First, [? Maus ?] had
died, was killed, murdered.
And then somebody near my
house wearing chef whites
had a chef's knife stuck
through the top of his head.
That's what Lydia
is talking about.
That's what she
wanted to do to me.
[LAUGHTER]
So successes can
be a rocky road.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: But he has
actually a really beautiful
motto about, that saying
that I think the measure,
and I love that.
JEREMIAH TOWER: The
measure of your life
are the risks you
take along the way.
I like that.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, and
I think he, in many ways,
his life and his career
is embodied by that motto,
or that motto embodies
that narrative for him,
because every step of the way,
he just kind of threw himself
in somewhat risky situations.
And you know, sometimes you
fail, sometimes you win and--
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Pick yourself up.
Last week, in New York, a young
culinary student talked to me.
He said, I'd like your advice.
I don't know whether
I'm going to go
to culinary school or medical
school or something else.
I said stop, stop right there.
Forget both.
Just look around you, be
open, and take the best thing
that you like that comes along.
Try it out.
If it doesn't work,
you pick yourself up
and do something else.
But if you really--
it's like a relationship.
You can't go to a
party, and say I'm
going to meet the person
I'm going to spend
the rest of my life with.
When you have that attitude,
everybody runs a mile.
And so that's what I meant
about that the role of chance
in success.
When you see something come by
and you really are interested,
but your mind say, oh, no, no,
that's too risky or something,
just grab it.
It'll drag you along.
It may dump you, or just
may take you to the top.
JUSTIN MANN: So going to
that, about the person who
is going to culinary school, you
had some amazing chefs at Stars
that went on to do so
many amazing things.
Took a 15-year sabbatical, went
back to Tavern on the Green.
What differences did you
notice in the newer generation,
the younger generation of chefs?
LYDIA TENAGLIA: That's
a great question.
JEREMIAH TOWER: It was
after I had left there
that Mario Batali
and Anthony Bourdain
and lots of other chefs said,
well, Jeremiah, you didn't have
any Mexicans in the kitchen.
Are you crazy?
I said, what?
What are you talking about?
I said, oh, I think I know
what you're talking about.
There was the 22-year-old
white suburban cook
who was about to plate
the fettuccine with cream
and everything, and if his phone
rang and he took his phone out,
it was on the line.
He was supposed
to plate the food.
I mean, the pasta's there dying,
and he pulled out his phones.
I walked up and said,
what are you doing?
Cook that again
quickly and plate it.
And he had his phone in his
hand, he looked at me like,
do you have a problem?
I said, yeah, you.
You and your work ethic.
So when I got to the
kitchen, I realized
that they didn't know how
to make chicken stock.
So that was a bit of a surprise.
And then I did get some Mexicans
in, legal ones, I have to say.
And then the kitchen
really came together,
started to come together,
because of the work ethic.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: I mean, Anthony
Bourdain, who I've worked with,
he's worked in so
many restaurants,
and he's written
about this extensively
and very beautifully
and poetically
that the entire, certainly
kitchen scene in Manhattan when
he was growing up, it was really
helmed by these incredibly
talented Mexican chefs, who
were more often than not
acknowledged as being the
real engine in the kitchen.
In fact, the last
restaurant he worked in
before he took off
as a television
personality, the
guy who took over
after him was his sort
of long time sous chef.
And he has written
about this guy,
and sort of written about
that whole scene, really
as a commentary towards
issues that we're
having with immigration.
I won't go there, but I
think it's a really, really
important point.
And I think to
Jeremiah's point, when
he made these critical
hires, you see people
with an incredibly strong work
ethic, who learn the job very
quickly, push the
whole agenda forward,
And it's a remarkable,
very talented workforce.
And I think when he
first got to Tavern,
it was a very,
very green kitchen.
And somewhat undisciplined
and all that.
So that was actually a
really critical turning point
when he made those hires,
because the whole kitchen
started to kind of coalesce
very, very strongly.
JEREMIAH TOWER: My opinion
about hiring people
is if people come to
the kitchen and say,
I've been a sous
chef at Le Bernardin,
or you should hire me, I'm
going to be your sous chef,
and I'll have a BMW,
thank you, in six months.
My point is, do you know
how to peel tomatoes?
Do you know how to make
chopped up tomatoes?
So the point is, if you
have the right attitude,
it doesn't matter you
don't know how to cook.
As long as you want
to do it, and you
have the right attitude, I
can teach you everything.
But if you've got
a bad attitude,
I don't care how
well you can cook,
you're just going to be a pain
in the ass in the kitchen.
So that's my approach
to hiring people.
And we had a woman downstairs
who did the lettuce every day
for five years, Tibetan.
And she just, there was
never a squeak out of her.
And so then, I said, OK,
you have to come upstairs
into the light and the fame.
Come upstairs, and she
said, no, I don't want to.
And then we had
a Chinese busboy,
from the whole time I
was at Stars, Chang, who
never said a word to
anybody and ended up
owning half of Chinatown.
I was really, I thought,
boy, I'm working my ass off,
and now you're
multimillionaire busboy.
So all of that makes
up a team that's
really sort of vibrant
and fun to work with.
JUSTIN MANN: So one
of the last things
that it said in the film
is, "Let the flesh grow old,
crumble.
What are my great expectations?
What have I done?"
What's next for you?
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Well, first of all,
I have to say that
was from my notebooks
when I was 19 and
full of Mescaline--
[LAUGHTER]
--looking out on a
winter day in Boston,
that seemed like a very
cool thing to write down.
But I gave those notebooks
to Lydia thinking,
oh, that's a nice thing to do.
I hadn't read them in 50 years.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: I did.
I read all of them,
and I highlighted.
I didn't mean to interrupt, but
at one point when the film was
coming together, I felt like
we needed his narrative voice
in there, but I
didn't want it to feel
like sort of
pedestrian narration
from one point to the other.
Let the other voices
we interviewed
kind of propel the actual nuts
and bolts of the story along,
but then when we heard from,
him it had to be something else.
And I would sort of struggle
with that for a while.
And then I remembered
these journals
that he handed them to me, it
was like maybe the second week
of our starting the process.
So I'd go back and
look at these journals,
and they were journals he
kept from the age of 18, 19.
JEREMIAH TOWER: From a
drug-ridden 19-year-old.
LYDIA TENAGLIA:
Yeah, and they were
full of existential
angst, and just
sort of memories about
that period in your life
where you're up against
trying to define who you are.
And there were just a lot
of lines in those journals
that I felt had relevance
to these story points.
And so I used those.
I remember the day we did
the narration session.
He was like, what
the fuck is this?
I'm like, those are your words.
You've got to--
JEREMIAH TOWER: You've
got to read them.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: You've
got to read them.
JEREMIAH TOWER: No, I'm
not going to read them.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah,
he's like, what?
JEREMIAH TOWER: But
that one's very cool
because it was written
when I was very young,
and now I'm very old.
And the cut in the film
is what have I done?
Yet is what I
should have written.
That's what it meant.
What have I done yet?
I've done nothing.
I'm 19, going crazy.
Mescaline is wonderful,
but what have I done?
And so the cut is then
straight to a shot
of the sign for Chez Panisse and
the Stars logo and everything,
so it was a brilliant placement.
And I haven't answered
your question.
JUSTIN MANN: No, you haven't.
JEREMIAH TOWER: No.
Well, let's see.
I'm working on--
"Table Manners" came out in
October, and "Start the Fire,"
basically the script for this
movie, "The Last Magnificent"
came out last week.
And I'm working on another
one called "Flavor of Taste"
which I'll probably
sell as an e-book
because it's a lot
of photography.
And I'm going to start
my speaking career.
Earlier this year, I
gave a talk to 100 CEOs
of the hospitality business
in the United States
in Las Vegas and Key West.
And it was all about
my story, but also
the role that chance and
chaos plays in big success
and how to do it.
And I got a standing
ovation for both of them.
I thought, wow, boy, Key
West and the Four Seasons,
I can do this.
[LAUGHTER]
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah,
and I know lots of people
have been coming to
him for consultancies.
And it's interesting
because he can sort of
go into a hotel or a restaurant
and sort of see immediately
what needs to be adjusted and
tweaked and shifted in order
to set the ship back on course.
JEREMIAH TOWER: I'm
not immediately--
10 minutes, give me 10 minutes.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah,
10 minutes, 10 minutes.
I'm not trying to be your
PR agent here or anything,
but I think he has that ability.
So I'm looking forward to seeing
what happens next in his story.
There's a lot percolating there
beneath the surface of that.
JEREMIAH TOWER:
It's interesting,
you working for Google,
because, I mean,
there's obviously
a culture here.
I mean, everyone in the world
talks about it all the time.
My point to the CEOs was,
you know, I can walk into--
I mean, I walked recently
into the little boutique hotel
here in San Francisco
that set the stage.
It was the first
perfect boutique hotel,
just off Union Square.
And I walked in and the
doorman was on his phone.
Fine, I can open my own
door, not a problem.
I walked past the concierge,
and he was on his phone,
never looked up.
So I thought, right,
I'm going to test this.
I walk past reception, the
two people were on the phone,
never looked up,
never said hello.
So I thought, right, OK,
how bad can this get?
I walk into the dining
room, down the steps,
and the waiters were in the
back talking to each other,
never looked my way.
And I thought, wow,
I mean, whoever
the owner is here is long gone.
And my point was, you
don't have to have the--
I can tell if there's
an owner in the hotel
or restaurant in minutes
because of the feeling.
But it's not just
the owner, it's
the owner who has imbued
the managers and the staff
with the culture of
excellence, or whatever it
is they're trying to achieve.
You guys are living
examples of it.
So that's what I'm saying.
That's what Lydia
is talking about.
And now especially in
places like Mexico,
where the young rich kids open
restaurants, and then go back
to the south of France, you can
tell that there's nobody there.
It's the waiters that are
running the restaurant.
So that's what
we're talking about.
So the big challenge is the
training to make a team.
Without a team, you
can't do anything.
You can be the most brilliant
chef, owner, whatever,
superstar chef in
the world, but if you
don't have a team who has
the same head as you do,
then it'll come to nothing.
Did that make any sense?
JUSTIN MANN: Sure does.
Thank you.
Well, that's all I have.
I was wondering if
anybody out there
has any questions for you guys,
if you're willing to take some.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yes, absolutely.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
JUSTIN MANN: Yes,
that's how would you
define your accomplishments
to a young chef starting out?
AUDIENCE: Or not even
accomplishments, but just
the legacy you'd like to leave?
JUSTIN MANN: Or your legacy.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Legacy is
a very interesting word
because I don't really
care about legacy much.
I'm not sure.
I know what it means,
but I don't really care.
I know what I've done.
As you see it in the film
and read in the book,
"Start the Fire," I
know what I've done.
It was fun, and I'm going
to continue to have fun,
but legacy, I mean, she
just made the legacy.
So then I can relax
and forget about it.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: But I
would go back to the motto
because I think that was his
sort of defining philosophy.
The measure of your life is--
JEREMIAH TOWER: --the
chances you take.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: The
chances you take.
He, time and time again,
just sort of threw himself
in without any kind
of second guessing.
And to walk into a kitchen
and sort of sell yourself
as the executive
chef when you've not
gone to culinary school,
never worked in the kitchen
before, really his
experience came
from reading culinary tomes,
Escoffier, and Alice B. Toklas,
and he just went for it.
JEREMIAH TOWER: She's
talking about how
I got the job at
Chez Panisse, which
was because they were
desperate for somebody,
and I was desperately broke.
I had $25 left to my
name, and San Francisco
wasn't very expensive
in those days,
but still, I need more than
$25 to get through the day.
So I could have
thought, you know,
I can't, I don't know
anything about this,
turn around and leave.
And I didn't, and
that's what I mean
about just taking a chance.
You can always run for
it, sooner or later.
But when I sold Stars to a
Chinese group and then took off
I made a list, what are
all the things I wanted
to do that I had
never done, and what
is it that still scares
me as much as running
a restaurant, which
is pretty scary?
And the only thing
I could come up with
was sharks because of my
childhood in Australia
and some experiences
in the water with them.
So I said, OK, I'm
going to go scuba diving
and dive with
sharks, big sharks,
bigger than the
customers at Stars.
And so you'll see at the
end of the film diving
with that manta.
My girlfriend, who just
wouldn't-- days swimming out
on the Pacific, she
would follow me around.
And the whale shark was bigger
than this room, twice the size
of this room, swimming along.
I mean, yeah, the feeling
of your nether parts
rising and shrinking
is the same as opening
for the day in a
restaurant like Stars.
JUSTIN MANN: Has there
been a recreation
of Stars and that atmosphere
that you've been to any time
recently?
JEREMIAH TOWER: Yes,
recreation, certainly Balthazar
in New York, the Brasserie,
probably Mario's,
because Mario Batali work at
Stars, and it started there.
Del Posto in New York,
that great big restaurant.
Actually, it's Mario who says
every restaurant he's done
has a bit of Stars in it.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, Mario,
and I've worked with Mario, too,
for many years.
And we did a great
interview with him for this.
And as a young kind of
just starting out chef,
he would frequent Stars
all the time as a customer,
sit at the bar, et cetera.
That was a very incredibly
revealing comment that he made,
that in some way, shape, or form
all the restaurants that he's
created have been
modeled in some aspect
after his experience at
Stars, that that left such
a strong impression on him.
And last night there was
this kind of small screening,
and I think unbeknownst to
Jeremiah, the person that
organized it invited people
who were patrons there
and chefs that had worked with
him in the kitchen when they
were very young, and
Denise Hale showed up,
and it was sort of this
gathering of people.
And it was stuff that I
had heard along the way,
but it was concentrated
in one room last night.
And when they stood
up after the screening
and sort of made comments
about the incredibly strong
impression that that
restaurant and that experience
left on their lives, it
was so powerful to hear,
because Mark Franz, in the film,
says, when I think about it,
it doesn't even feel real to me.
It feels like I'm
replaying a movie.
It's so romantically placed
in my mind, the energy
and the confluence of different
tones and textures and energies
that happened in
that restaurant.
To answer your question
with my perspective,
I don't think that
really exists now.
I mean, what does
exist is we're all
familiar with the idea of
restaurants as the scene.
You know, you go and you
hang out at a restaurant,
and everybody's a foodie now.
And everyone's taking
pictures of their food.
And everyone knows where
the latest cool opening is.
So that's fairly ubiquitous.
But the energy that is described
from all those people, of Stars
at that time, from the
mixture of high-low
and just sort of a feeling
of like the entire experience
being one seamless burst
of incredible energy.
I don't know if that
really exists anymore.
There is a romantic--
certainly, the way
they describe it
is a very sort of romantic
remembering of that time.
JEREMIAH TOWER: But everyone
tells me in San Francisco
that there isn't a place like
it, but Balthazar in New York
probably gives that
kind of energy.
And I taught them a
little bit of Stars.
I said, I'm coming here
three days a week, four days
a week when I lived in New York.
And you know, I don't
want to wait in line.
Let me tell you what
we did at the Stars.
So when I'd come in
and they would see me,
and I would pretend to give my
name to the host or hostess.
And then I would walk around
the other side, go to the bar,
pick up a glass of
champagne, and the host
would walk around the other side
and meet me on the other side,
and miraculously
there was a table.
But it didn't look like I was
butting ahead in the line.
That was a very Stars thing.
JUSTIN MANN: It's a
very Godfather moment.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, totally.
JUSTIN MANN: I'd like to thank
you guys again for coming--
JEREMIAH TOWER: Thank you.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Yeah, thank you.
JUSTIN MANN: --and
making an amazing film--
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Thanks.
JUSTIN MANN: --that everyone
should definitely see--
JEREMIAH TOWER: Great.
JUSTIN MANN: --because it's so
much fun and so interesting.
Wonderful,
JEREMIAH TOWER:
Thank you very much.
LYDIA TENAGLIA: Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having
us, really appreciate it.
JEREMIAH TOWER: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
