Graydon Carter on the Vanity Fair Oscar party, banning people from his restaurant and profiling Trump

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1:00at washablesofas.com. Authors are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4, in partnership with Montclair. A few nights ago, we gave a party at home for Graydon Carter, celebrating the publication of his memoir, When the Going Was Good. It's not the easiest thing to give a toast about someone you love to people who love him, and this is what I said. Looking at all the work Graydon has done over the years, I wonder what it would be like to be one of his creations. Were I spy magazine, I'd be fearless and funny, ahead of my time, radical and brave.

1:36Were I vanity fair, I'd be glamorous and erudite with the best writers, photographers, cover to cover. Say I was his restaurant, the Waverly Inn, I'd be delicious, nestled in a beautiful corner of Greenwich Village and the place everybody wants to go to. As airmail, I would fly through the air every week telling everyone what they needed to know. And were I one of his five children or his beautiful wife Anna, I'd know what it feels like to be the focus of Graydon's life. As for the newly published memoir, I'd be unputdownable and number five on the New York Times bestseller list. But I'd trade any of these just to be Graydon's friend.

2:21And that is what I am. That is so sweet. It was sweet the other night. It was sweet this morning. I named it twice. That was a good party. It was a wonderful time. What did you like about it? It was just fun, and it was cozy and glamorous, and a lot of friends, and it encouraged me on my wife's quest to possibly resettle here. Yeah, but you like being guests. I like being a host better. Yeah, me too. Because I'm sort of in the service business. Who have your friends cooked really well? Do you have a friend that you know if you're going to their house really well? Bette Miller's husband, Martin, is a wonderful cook.

2:57Is he? I mean, world class. And my son, Spike, who lives here in London, and his wife, Pip, they spent a lot of the pandemic with us, and we ate so well because they're great chefs. Yeah. But most of my friends don't cook. It's just not a generational thing for me, for men. Yeah. James Fox cooks well. Oh, does he? Yes. I'm not surprised. Yep. But mostly if you meet your friends, you go out for dinner? No, well, they either come over or, yeah, we go out to dinner. And we go to the Waverly. The Waverly. Let's talk about the Waverly. So you did Vanity Fair. You've done Spy. But, you know, why a restaurant?

3:34Why? It was two doors down from our house in the village. And I was having dinner. And there was a for sale sign up on it. It had been around since the 1920s. So I was out to dinner at Elaine's one night with a friend, Roberto Benabib, who lived right around the corner from the Waverly. And we were drinking, and I said, it's for sale. And we thought, let's buy it. And so we did. And we brought in partners who had actually run restaurants, because neither of us had ever. I'd never been in a restaurant kitchen before. But we redid it, and I wanted, in those days. What did you want? What was your idea?

4:11Well, in those days, all the restaurants were, like, Italian. and we wanted American. What year was this? This is 19, it was 20 years, 2004. Yeah. We wanted red bank hats, red leather bank hats, good lighting, really soft good lighting. I wanted a mural to go around the entire restaurant and we wanted American food, American comfort food because you couldn't get that in the village at the time. There was a lot of Chinese, a lot of Italian. And so we had Basil Walter helped design it. And I had Ed Sorrell, who's the greatest magazine illustrator of the last 60 years. He did the mural of all the Greenwich Village greats over the past 70 years.

4:53It kind of gets you through dinner, too, because you just keep looking at it. It tells the story back to you as well. I love murals in restaurants. And anyway, we're probably in our 22nd year now, and it's done well. And at the top of the menu, it has a quote from Donald Trump. It says, worst food in the city. And that hasn't hurt business. Do you get involved in the food, though? Do you do tastings? We do tastings when we're about to hire a new chef, but I do the seating every night. Oh. Is it true? Is it an urban myth that people had to call you to get a table? People do. Yeah, me too, but you weren't the booking person.

5:30No, you didn't have to, but you could. Yeah. And so is it most nights you know people who are eating there? Is that why you... Yes. If you have strangers, how do you know where to put them? A lot of the strangers, the staff will know them. They'll know where to put them, roughly where they are, but there's usually a half dozen people I know and I just make sure they have a table roughly same as the table they had before. I like sitting at the same table that I go to. So where do you sit in the Waverly? It's the first banquette when you come in and this way I can keep an eye on everything and see who's coming in.

6:01Yeah, it's just quiet. When you go there, do you go table to table and say hello? No, that's not my thing. I'm too shy for that. It's very New York. It's like really not cool to go to say hello to somebody at a table, I think. It depends on the restaurant. And I remember Sherman Billingsley, who ran the Stork Club, he used to have his hand on the table when he was talking to somebody, when he joined somebody, and he had these finger gestures like this. And if the staff saw the fingers a certain way, they knew to come over and whisper in his ear to get him away from those people. But I see a lot of people coming through and I saw all stand up and say hi.

6:37Have you ever banned anybody? Strange enough, Alex Rodriguez was a huge Yankee star back in the day who lived a block down, and he would do a lot of this sort of thing at the restaurant, you know, flicking his fingers. But when we first opened it, I didn't want hedge fund people there because there are six guys and they have a big Jeroboam of expensive wine. So we tried not to take reservations from the 203 area code, which is Greenwich, Connecticut, which is where all the hedge funds were. so we'd make up some excuse why the restaurant had been shut down for the night. But is there something that would make you not go back to restaurants service-wise?

7:18I don't really meet that many rude waiters. It's rare, and I think I'm so appreciative. I'm a heavy tipper, and I'm so appreciative of the fact that you're going to a place, somebody's going to come, ask you what you want to drink, they're going to ask you what you want to eat, they're going to bring it to you, they're going to make it, they're going to bring it to you, and they're going to clean up afterwards. I mean, that is just like one of the miracles of the world. It's like when people are complaining, there's a comedian in America who says people complain about the seat on the airplane they're flying.

7:50They said, you're in a comfortable seat, 30 ,000 feet in the air, going 600 miles an hour. That's one of the most amazing things in human history. Yeah, I agree with you. I think if you go in thinking that you're going to be okay and that basically... If you're, let's say you move to a new area and you go to a restaurant, if you're really nice, just nice to the staff, you don't have to tip like crazy, if you're just really appreciative of the staff, they'll treat you well every time you go. What about you? Have you banned anybody? Yeah, I did once. Yeah, I did. He was a guy who worked in the music industry, and I was standing at the pass.

8:24Tommy Mottola, no. No, no, he won't. He was like nobody, but he turned, he said, Ruthie, he came up, he said, that was one of the best meals I've ever had. It was just amazing. It was fabulous. It was delicious. I loved it. And then he just turned to the waitress who was standing next to him, a French waitress, and he said, as for you, you're an idiot. And I was like, whoa. And so she turned around and he left. And I followed him down and I said, you know, Simon, I heard you say that. Oh, it's Simon somebody, aren't you? Okay. We're going to figure this out, okay? I said, you know. Yeah, okay.

9:03I said, I heard you say that, and you can't do that. He said, but she is. And I said, uh-uh-uh. And so I said, I guess I won't be seeing you for a long time. And he called up, and he said to the manager, he said, you know how much, I think Ruthie's just banned me. I think she just banned me. And he said, well, maybe she did. And he said, but you do understand how much money I spend in this restaurant? And that did not. And then he was really upset. He called me the next day and said, you know, he said, am I ever, ever going to be allowed to come back? I'm like, I don't think so. But, you know.

9:41Kick it down the road a bit. In 10 years, let's talk. I did. I said something like, should we give it a year? He said, you're putting me on the naughty step for a year? I mean, this became a huge thing, you know. But that was the only time. But, you know, those now. Well, we used to ban people from our parties if they were rude at all to the staff. Yeah, that's the thing. And Philip Green. Oh, yeah, maybe. The Sea Root? He was awful. And our fashion editor at the time had begged me to have him come to this thing. And against my better judgment, I said, yes, he was just, he was disgusting. Yeah.

10:15Well, yeah, my favorite story about Manning is about Damien Hirst and his best friend called Ant in the, like, 80s or 90s. They, you know, the Groucho Club, the Groucho Club. and they said like at 3 in the morning, they closed, everybody out, and Damien and his friend were completely God knows on what. So they found a ladder, and so they got a ladder from someplace in Soho and they climbed up to the balcony on the first floor and they broke a window and they went inside and then they threw up all over the pool table and then they went and they got some more alcohol out of the fridge and they drank that and then they went and they probably, you know, again threw up and they took more food in the kitchen and then they just broke another thing trying to get into it and they fell asleep, completely passed out on the floor and the manager came in the next morning, Marianne, and she looked at them and she said, you know, I could have you arrested for breaking an entry.

11:14I would have. I could have you arrested and throw you out for trashing my property. I could have you arrested because you fell asleep here and it could have been a fire. I could have you. She said, instead, you are banned for 24 hours.

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12:50Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off storewide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little... to your life. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Do you want to read your recipe? Beef carpaccio, serve six. For the beef, three-pound filet of beef, salt and black pepper.

13:34Trim every bit of fat from the beef, leaving a small cylinder of tender meat. Chill well. Using a razor-sharp knife, slice the meat paper-thin. Arrange the slices of meat on six small plates to cover the surface completely. Drizzle the sauce over the meat in ribbons. Serve immediately. For the sauce, one cup of homemade mayonnaise, a half teaspoon of Worcester sauce, one teaspoon fresh lemon juice, two tablespoons milk, salt and pepper. Put the mayonnaise in a bowl and whisk in the Worcester sauce and lemon juice. Add in enough milk to make a thin sauce that just coats the back of a wooden spoon.

14:22Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning and add more Worcester sauce and or lemon juice to taste. There you go, simple. One take, one take. That's what they call me. They call me one take harder. So would you have ever had beef carpaccio in your house growing up? Do you remember when you had your first carpaccio? Oh, that was definitely in New York City. It was a big dish in the 1980s. Like around the time when Sambuca, remember? Sambuca was a thing with the three coffee beans in it. Anyways, in New York, I never had. Sambuca is one they like, right? Yes, it was so corny. But I never had raw food, knowingly, until I came to New York in the 1970s.

15:06What did you have at home? So there's you and your brother? Your brother and sister. My mother was, I can only say this now that she's dead, she wasn't the greatest cook. And I grew up in Ottawa, which is the capital city. Very cold. I mean, very, very cold. And a lot of snow. And there weren't a lot of fresh vegetables when I was growing up. I think it's probably a bit like London at the time. The train, that's what we have to talk about. Well, I think I've had one guest of 150 guests who actually worked as a lineman for the railroad. Who worked as a lineman for the railroad. Was that dangerous?

15:41Is it dangerous to work on the train? Yeah, I guess it could be. I mean, the mothers in those days and fathers, and especially among my friends, they sent their kids out to toughen them up out to west and to, you know, they didn't use that expression then, but to sort of character build. So I sent out, my aunt was the vice president of the railway, so she got me this job, and the thing was you got paid$2.80 an hour. What year are we in? 1970. $2.80 an hour. It's an hour to work as a lineman climbing the telegraph poles, and$2.20 an hour if you're a groundsman. So I signed out to be a groundsman.

16:21I thought, I'm not climbing telegraph poles. So we would get out there, and I wind up living in a boxcar with 11 other men, most of whom had criminal records. And they had a big sort of poster up on the wall, a sign, that showed what the railroad would pay if you lost a certain limb. So it would be$750 for a leg and$250 for an arm and like$75 for a foot. And these are in Canadian dollars. And then they teach you how to climb a telegraph pole. You have spikes in your shoes that are sort of manacled to the bottom part of your leg, and big gauntlet gloves, and you climb up. You basically walk up the thing, and you're holding onto the pole.

17:02There's no safety belt. And then you have to carry wire up the pole and take off the old wire. And this is like 30, 40 feet in the air. And then put the other wire up and then re-fasten it to these glass conductors. Did you go to college after that? So then I come back, I go to college, I was going to study political science. In Ottawa? In Ottawa. And I'm walking by this place with a big glass office with a bunch of people, typewriters, and young people. And so I stopped and I asked them what they were doing. And they said they were starting a magazine. So I said, oh, can you use an extra hand?

17:42And they said, well, we're looking for an art director. I said, well, I can draw. What was the magazine? It was called the Canadian Review, and it was a political literary magazine. It did nothing but lose money. It was sort of valiant but not very good, and it was put out by people who had never worked at a magazine before. But the magazine got me to New York, and it got me a job at Time magazine as a writer. And Time then was this sort of citadel of journalistic power. It had something like 800 employees at Time in those days. They had bureaus all over the world. The London bureau chief lived as well as the American ambassador almost here.

18:25And so... I remember one. He was called Eric Amphitheateroff. Did you ever know him? Yeah, definitely. He was a really elegant man. They all were. All of those timing guys were like movie stars. And as you're right, they lived in Thurlow Square. Yep, they lived well. Really smart, yeah. And time then was being restocked by this huge collection of brilliant 20-somethings, Walter Isakson was there, and Frank Rich, and Michiko Kakutani, who became the chief book critic of the New York Times. My partner at Airmail, Alessandro Stanley. This is 1978. My partner at Spy Magazine, Kurt Anderson. My best friend, Jim Kelly, who became the editor of Time.

19:07Maureen Dowd, who's the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Times. So it was just, there was about 12 of us, and we became, most of us became lifelong friends. And what did you do? What was your job? I was a writer. So you would write what? I was a floater. I sort of wrote business stories, show business stories, and just about, you know, press stories, just about anything they assigned to me. And was it social life? Social life was great. Was it? Tell me. That was New York in the 80s, early 80s. This is like New York, late 70s, early 80s. Before AIDS, right? Before AIDS. And it was, you know, you're young.

19:42All of a sudden you have an expense account. Nobody had ever had an expense account before. and so you were eating out lunches, you were eating out dinners. Okay, let's talk about them. So what lunches? Okay, so most lunches, there was over in the West 50s in New York, there's a row of French restaurants. Some of them are still there. There was one called René Pujol, there was one called Tout va bien, and there was one called Chez Napoleon. And René Pujol was the Life magazine hangout, and Chez Napoleon was the Time magazine hangout. And you could go, and by this time I did drink, and so you could go and have two people for lunch with a bottle of wine for$25 of French food.

20:32I mean, it was red checker tablecloth. And that seemed really reasonable when you were there. Even then it seemed reasonable. Even if you got$750 for your leg. Yes, and then you could expense the lunch. Did you go to the Four Seasons? I went to the Four Seasons when I was at Time, and for some reason, it was like about eight months after I'd gotten there, and a friend took me, and I thought it was going to be old-fashioned, like the Oak Room at the Plaza. And I remember seeing it for the first time, and I felt, this feels a bit airport-y, like an airport. But then, you know, after sitting in there for 10, 15 minutes, you realize the brilliance of the whole thing.

21:10It just wasn't what I was expecting. But then I thought in time it was the most beautiful restaurant I'd ever been to. Did you ever have to fire anybody at a restaurant? Not at time. I was too low to fire anybody. I was the class that was fired. Not the firing class. But just thinking about it, later on in your career, have you ever? I fired probably four people in my whole career. Three of them in one week. But not at lunch. Not, I'm going to take you out to lunch and fire you. No, no, no, much to a coward for that. Did you use restaurants to hire people? Well, strange enough, I hired three people as assistants who were waiters for me.

21:52Did you? Yeah, if you can handle three tables of eight diners, you can handle anything on earth. Yeah. Those were the lunches. Were your friends, did you all kind of get together at night? Did people cook? No, we had dinner together almost every single night. Did you? And we expense those meals as well, often on really flimsy pre-tax. And then, you know, I went out with a rockette. I don't know, dating was wonderful. I mean, New York City, you know, American women were more interesting than what I'd been exposed to. What age were you then? You were in your 20s? I was in my late 20s. Yeah. I had a great apartment in the village.

22:34I was paying$200 a month. and had tall ceilings like this and a wall of leaded glass and opened up onto a garden. And that'd be like$5 ,000,$6 ,000 now. So this is the 80s. This is like 70s, 80s, yeah. 80s. So then you went from time. So then I was assigned to Life magazine. Oh, you did do Life. They had restarted Life in the 70s. They closed it for about six years and then restarted it. So I was assigned to Life magazine. As what? I was a writer-editor, and I was happy to be there because I had at least one child by then. I needed a job, and I had an H-1 visa, which was tied to employment. So if I lost my job, I'd lose my right to be in the United States.

23:23So I went to work at Life magazine. I could do my job in five hours out of a week. So Fred and I started plotting a magazine set in New York, a light private eye, but sort of glossier looking, called Spy Magazine that would be sort of fact-based, heavily reported, but funny magazine about New York and the people that were then sort of the defining characters of New York. People like Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley and anyway, so it was... How would you get your stories? You'd send people out to report on stories and then... Did they ever interview? So tell me, will you just stop and talk about the President of the United States?

24:13Well, that was me. I used to do a lot of writing on the side to make ends meet and I had been assigned by GQ magazine in 1983 to do a story on this up-and-coming real estate developer who was quite sort of flashy in the tabloids and his name was Donald Trump and I'd sort of read about him but I didn't really follow what he did. But it was his first national exposure so he allowed me to, he asked me to hang around with him for three weeks so I spent a lot of time with him. And I wrote the story and he hated it. Why? Because I portrayed him a slightly flashy, had a sort of mauve stretch limousine and I pointed out, there's one comment that I pointed out that his hands looked too small for his body.

25:00Uh-oh. He really hated that. So we get to spy, and we have funny, rude epithets for people. And Trump's epithet was, we called him a short-fingered Bulgarian, which just sort of caught on and stuck. He must have been quite young at that time, was he? He was what? He's four years older than I am. So this is in the 80s? This is in the mid-80s. And so anyway, Spy was actually a huge hit. But the trouble is our whole money was based on printing just 20, you know, enough for 25 ,000 circulation. We had to start, you know, spending a lot more money on printing. And so after five years, we'd run out of money and we sold it to Charles Saatchi and Johnny Pagazzi.

25:45Ah, yeah. And then I wanted to start a newspaper, a twice a week newspaper that would come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. and this man called Arthur Carter, no relation to me, he had this very sleepy newspaper on the Upper East Side called the New York Observer. And he said, why don't you learn the business doing my paper? So I said, okay. So I worked out a plan of six-month, 12-month, 18-month plan of how I'd change it. I'd go to work on this, and within six months, it had become sort of a thing. People were reading it, and it was sort of the local newspaper for the Upper East Side and Greenwich Village.