537: The Father of California Cuisine Returns with Michael McCarty

29:36Oh, yeah. If you're just the guy in the front. I mean, the chef is running the food costs. Yes. tables in the back. One of the things I try to train all chefs that work for me is that, yes, you can use spreadsheets. Yes, you can do this and that, but you should be able to run a perfect food cost just by, as long as you're priced your food correctly, as long as you're not getting ripped off, and as long as you're not throwing anything out or being stolen from, you should be able to look in your walk-in and know exactly where you are. You see what I'm saying? And that is that sort of, again, with today's accounting world, people get lost into that.

30:13Yeah. I mean, there's, and the costs just escalate and quickly and then you're underwater. You're underwater. One more France question. So you're running the catering company, but I've read that you had - Just me. Just you. Yeah. You and I'm sure, maybe a little help or was it just, but like, let me read it. So last question about France. You're running this catering company solo. I've read that you had pop-ups. Yes. So tell – illegal pop-ups at times for – At the same time, I'm multitasking. I've gone to three schools at once. I'm doing the catering. I live on Ile Saint-Louis, which is this little village in those days.

30:54I mean – That's the island in the middle of there. the little island in Paris that is now completely overrun by art galleries and real estate offices. But in those days, it was a beautiful little village, you know, and you would have your, you would have all of the little, like I said at Leal, mini versions, you would have the produce, the cheese, the bread, the chicken, the pork, the fish, all right there within a two block area. And so my friend had a building and he had an old restaurant, formerly a restaurant in the downstairs on the ground level, tiny, literally as big as this room, sat 20 people max with a bar at the end.

31:35And so he said, why don't you just go in there? Totally illegal. You know, there was no permits or anything. And we just popped it open. And I would have my, I pre-order everything from the guys and the girls on the street. And I would, but the order was very simple. You know, I do 30 or 40 people a night. So give me whatever you've got that's fresh today, whatever it is. Sometimes it was a total surprise. And they just put it on my doorstep. Yeah. And then I'd get back and I had one dishwasher, a plonger, and one barman who took the orders. And by 7 o 'clock when I got home out of school, et cetera, everything was there.

32:16We prepped it all up. We opened about 8.30 or 9. I also got into that habit of people eating late. And that's sort of where I began to sort of make the what is my new American food. You know, I would take what I knew from the Escoffier. I'd see what I've been trying in all these restaurants that I've been going to as well with the modern stuff. You know, and the world was small in those days, so it was easy to get around. You're not talking about, like I said before, where you got to try out too many 300 restaurants to go to. No, there were like 15 or 20. And beginning to formulate what it is that could be produced that was fabulous and simple and fit within what I was talking about.

32:59And that was the menu that I opened with when I opened in Santa Monica in 79. So let me ask you about this, back to this restaurant. Just one more question. What's the name? Does it have a name? It was called Xavier, named after the cat, who was the security. The security. Yeah. And so that went, and then when I graduated, all three schools, spring of 74, I went with two of my other chef friends and another friend, and we went to treat ourselves in Lyon. And so we went to Paul Bocuse. We went to Trois Gros. We went to La Pyramide. And it was spectacular. And it was, again, to see all of that not in a big city like Paris.

33:43You know, you're talking about in the middle of a countryside where each one of these restaurants was in like a suburb or even, you know, outside of that. Yeah. Yeah. And yet there they were. And it was spectacular. Bocuse was over the top. There were only two other tables eating the day we were there for lunch. One of them was a single man, and he was the, turns out he was the head of the Paris Opera. And the other table. Standing rise, I'm sure. Yeah. And the other guy had his guest, and he had a case of wine on the floor, and he kept putting the bottles up on the table, and they kept putting them back in.

34:18They said, no, no, no, monsieur, c 'est pas possible, on fait passer ici. And it turned out he was Robert Mondavi and Margaret. this is 1974 and so um paul comes out and he was extremely gregarious in those days he says you all eat together oh so we all ate together and course after course after course after course it was spectacular wine after wine and uh and then then we went up to uh uh toagro and we stayed there which was great because we'd already had a huge lunch and then we had a huge this is the Same day, Michael. Same day. It's the same. You're doing the double with Bocuse and Tua Gros in 1974.

35:01Yeah, and both the brothers were there. Both of them were alive and they're lovely wives. And the next day, we went down to La Pyramide and Madame Point was still alive. What I really learned at La Pyramide, which I think traveled with me, was when we ordered the food, the wine guy came over and he looked like a big, hulking guy. guy he had thick fingers did not at all look like a sommelier kind of a guy and he had been in that cellar for i don't know 30 40 years louis and so i said to louis i said so louis you know we're having this food here and so select us a very nice white burgundy and a very nice red burgundy and he looked at me and he goes no no no no where you are here you need a local white and a local red.

35:53And he selected a Condrieu, never heard of it before, fabulous wine, still on my list, you know, 50 years later, and a Cote Roti. Oh, wow. And I'm sitting there going, my God, you know, because as I said before, learning everything at Stephen's Furrier's, at the time, they were focusing on Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne. Yeah, yeah. What is this going on down here? Yeah, down in Lyon, yeah, this the DOC that maybe no one outside of that region really is appreciating. And that, that I think was, that was a turning point for me. And then Madame Poin said, what are you going, where are you going next?

36:30I said, we're going to Greece. She said, well, no, here's what you got to do. Go over the mountain into Switzerland and go see a friend of ours, who's a very great colleague, Freddy Girardet. Oh my gosh. And you got to go see him, even though he's Swiss. Yeah, yeah. There's a little caveat there. Yeah. And, and, but everybody loved him. And I continued to eat until he retired. Oh, my gosh. Every year I would go to. There's no larger fan to Freddy Gerardet than David Chang. Exactly. David Chang will not stop talking about Freddy Gerardet, which I think is very cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Listen, I mean, that's great that Chang knew, you know, knew the restaurant, knew what happened.

37:08And it's still a good restaurant, right? But when Freddy ran it, it was its own uniqueness. And that's what I'm saying. You know, like Madame Point, when Ferdinand Point, that was their thing. They ran the restaurant. Same with Beaucoup's, ran the restaurant. And Toi Gros and Freddie there, it's – that's sort of like they're so unique. They're one-of-a-kind kind of things. You really can't duplicate them. I want to fast forward to Santa Monica 1981, and really I have a very specific question. You know, you're, you know, opened Michaels a couple of years or previously. But in 1981, Santa Monica Farmer's Market opens.

37:53And to hear you talk about France and the way you went to Lael and all the markets, you clearly, when you see this market open near your restaurant, there must have been a rush of adrenaline hereby. Take me back to those first early visits to see the Santa Monica Farmer. Well, getting to L.A. in 1975, Christmas of 75, when I came back from France, I went to Cornell for the summer program that they had. Finishing school. Yeah. Well, it's like an American school. Yeah, of course. From cutting meat to business and tax laws. The difference. I mean, one of our greatest culinary schools in the country.

38:33Oh, yeah. And at the time, all of the students during the summer program were basically graduates from European hotel and restaurant schools that wanted to work in America. And it was a great one. Each class was one week. But one of the most important classes was a guy named Vance Christensen. Huge guy. Loved life. Just amazing. And he was fascinated with California wine. And so I didn't even know California. I didn't know California wine. Of course not. Had you been there? No, no, no, no. You know, all on the east side, the east coast. And so I learned of the revolution that was happening that began in the 60s and was, you know, mid 70s was beginning to really expand itself with, again, 12, 15, you know, mindset people.

39:30who love France, but knew they could do it here. Because remember, 90 % of the wine industry in California, Northern California, was all run by Italians because they all made wine in their backyard anyway. And so that was, if you go down, Sebastiani, Bondavi, Parducci, I mean, just all the names at the beginning. Bondavi, you know, I mean, it's - Your friend back from the restaurant. Yeah, yeah. He's running California at that time. He just couldn't believe it when I walked into his office in Napa in the beginning. He was hilarious. I went to grab him in 1980 to become a board member of the American Institute of Wine and Food, which was based in Santa Barbara, San Francisco.

40:11And it was sort of a pivotal moment of trying to get gastronomy out, which was a terrible name still, but get it out of home ec and put it into the arts divisions of colleges and schools. And it was an interesting time. But again, that's where I picked up the whole California thing. In that short session in Cornell, you meet this gentleman who's telling you about Napa. Yeah. Napa is a place. Yeah. Sonoma wasn't even Sonoma yet. And there's no Central Coast. No. Forget about that. No, no, no. It's Napa Valley. Napa was just sort of like epicenter thing. Yeah. So when I got to L.A., my parents had moved to L.A.

40:51So I said - Makes sense now. I came. I said, how did I get to L.A.? My parents moved there. I got finished with France. I was teaching French cooking in French at the university in Boulder. That was sort of my, after I left Cordell, I went to see my brother in Boulder, got Shanghai'd into teaching French cooking in French because my brother and I, you know, he went to the program in France before me. We were in experimental studies program that the French department would say, you know, Michael Tombow, you guys speak French like you're French. And I have students that have gone through all of high school.

41:30They went to France for three months. They went through college, et cetera. And they can read and write almost better than the French, but they don't have the gift of being French in terms of the way you speak. And so that's when I ended up teaching French cooking and French, just take the students' minds off of learning the language, but putting it to something practical. And the Episcopalian church gave me their kitchen and we had nine students and I did it for nine months, a year almost. And when it was over at my final exam, I went to California to see my parents who had subsequently moved out there.

42:02What were they doing out there? My father had retired from GE and in Briarcliff, you had a little college called Briarcliff Girls College and right up the street from us. And the president was a good friend of my dad's. And again, And they entertained all the time. So one day he says to my father, do you mind if I bring my friend? We have an association of sort of colleges of our size and ilk. And she says, sure. By the end of the night, my father had been shanghaied into going to Rockford, Illinois to revitalize and reimagine and reinvent a small girls college from the 1800s called Rockford College.

42:47I've been to Rockford. It's not Briacliff. It's not up there. What a place to end up. It was so weird. But he did this successfully. and then the lady who financed it was from California and she said all right JT we're done here do you want to move to LA I got another project for you which was turned out to be putting together the the the the uh Pepperdine oh in Malibu wow again the old Pepperdine was from the 1800s in the old Victorian village which is down very chic by the way uh uh down near USC A lot of cool restaurants are down in that area, Adams. And so that's how they got out to California.

43:29So your father, he's a brand guy. He's a PR guy. So he's going to these small schools and kind of rebranding them. Exactly. He's sort of doing the – He's a branding agency. He's doing what Elon Musk wants to do with the federal government. You go in and look at everything. Yeah. And you say, okay, what's the good? What's the bad? What's the ugly? What can we change? What should be changed? How does it fit within the new language? You're taking something that's ancient and you want to create something new, very similar to what I did with food. And so that's all going on. But when I got to L.A., the first thing I did in 1975 was call up Lois Dwan, who was the food critic for the L.A.

44:11Times. And I said, Lois, Michael, this is my background. Can I come and see you? Yes. So I went and met with her. And, you know, she was sort of the Craig Claiborne of the L.A. Times. What an instinctual move to go right to the critic, right to the most influential journalist in the city. I said, Lois, you got to tell me who knows the most about food and who knows the most about wine. And he said, Jean-Bertrandou at L 'Hermitage. And he was the first of the sort of guys who took the good stuff from Nouvelle Cuisine and the good stuff from Escoffier and created his own style, much like Girardet in a funny way.

44:55and Dennis Overstreet, he owned the wine merchant. And he was just beginning to realize that there was a culture there of extremely successful lawyers and doctors that had disposable income and Hollywood and Hollywood. Hermitage is like a legendary Hollywood place. So the wine pairing that we developed was in the basement of the wine merchant in Beverly Hills. And that was sort of, I would take the core group of people that were his wine people that were learning about wine that had disposable income, and I would teach them how to pair wine. So you moved much more evolved and advanced than white wine with fish and red wine with meat.

45:41And, you know, we've bone out ducks and this and that. But during that time, I also met with John Bertrandu's purveyors and said, and with John. And John and I opened a duck farm. We created a duck farm in Lancaster. Yes. And it was, again, why did we do that? Because they didn't have great ducks. And we wanted to create foie gras. We wanted to get the, that's a whole nother story about how that duck farm worked. But it was through a guy named Dennis Weiss had Northern Produce. I said, okay, so let's talk about what we got for ingredients here. And that's how I began to see who was farming, where they were farming, what they were growing, and what the possibilities were.

46:30And so, you know, remember when I opened, I was bringing in, as I always said this, I made the biggest mistake I ever made was not inventing FedEx because that's what I would do. By that, the L 'Eau had closed in Paris and my purveyors were all at Rungis. So I would call them on the phone and I would say, okay, this is what I want fish-wise. This is what I want cheese-wise. This is what I want poultry-wise. And the beef was exceptional here. the only thing they didn't do was age it and that was part of my went to my went back to your friend from the from ryan i said to bernie i want you to talk to my guy in kansas city uh and liberal actually they were in liberal kansas and um and begin to age your meat i said how long do you age your meat he said well we really don't it's whatever it takes to get the time it gets to get here and it hangs out.

47:23That's it. I said, no, we got to go 28 days. Oh, no, no. It costs too much. Nobody will buy it. It'll be reduced to waste and all. Yeah, they'll shrink. They'll shrink. And I said, look, let's just do this. And actually, we started out in a week. Then we went to two weeks. Then we went to three. And then at four, we realized that's the perfect one. That was the perfect. That was the moment. And the dry aging program in America is invented. There you go. You're humble. You're humble, Michael. No, no. It just absolutely stuns me when you talk about these broad terms of this and that. And it's like, this is dry aging program coming to America.

47:59Yeah. I mean, a program. Like, we use that in lexicon and jargon, but like, you created a program. Yeah. Well, it was, you needed people that were good like Bernie. Yeah. And superior. And, you know, you would drive down Pico Boulevard in Beverly Hills, drive down and you'd look into the window. of the, of his shop, and there would be half cows hanging in the window, you know, and enormous. And people were just, you know, people were beginning to get into that. To understand it. But at any rate, finding the produce, where the farming regions were, you know, we're right north of us is Oxnard and Ventura, two of the, Oxnard Plain being one of the five growing regions in the world.

48:42Imperial Valley, obviously. Guadalupe in Mexico, right across the border. And then you have the San Joaquin Valley, which was totally insane with growing. Lettuce. All the wrongs. Grapes and lettuce. Table grapes. So we began to import seeds. We'd get people growing. We'd do this and that. So when the farmer's market concept came up, it was a great collaboration. the city was really ahead of its game and allowing to take over three blocks. I mean, just to look at it spatially, it's like a jarring scene to take over a parking lot. Oh, yeah. Like that took some... Well, it's the whole street of Arizona.

49:27Yeah, right. Oh, yeah, it's the street. Arizona, the whole street, it's down three blocks long. And second, one block, this one block. That's right. And it's, that was sort of the whole thing. Now, getting all this produce grown and setting it up, again, bringing the products in from France, you had to have clients to pay for it. And I think the most important thing about getting the chefs, you know, through the duck farm, we met a lot of the chefs. And we shipped them to Le Francais. We shipped them to Becfin. We shipped them here to New York. Becfin in Philly. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Georges Plaghi.

50:05Yeah, what a legendary place. Fabulous. Anyway, they were the only guys, Jean Beauches and Wheeling outside of Chicago. But so that was the beginning of creating a market. Yeah. An economic market is developing that. Now, the other thing that worked really well with the farmers was that you would go to them and you'd say, okay, what are you growing? I said, we'd like you to grow these arico vera, for example. We'd like you to grow these strawberries, for example. You know, all from the seeds and things like that. and we'd say, how much do you make an acre now? And we'd quadruple it. Because what we did was the farmers were able, for the first time, all the produce would go downtown and that was it.

50:48They'd pay you your little stipend. Yeah, they'd be trucked out to whatever state, the 50 states, the 40 states. And then in downtown, you'd have the jobbers or you'd have the distributors. Very much like the wine business. Somebody makes it, somebody grows it, somebody makes it, somebody distributes it. And so all of a sudden the farmers were getting retail instead of really bad wholesale. So it made sense to them to do this. And again, that whole, I don't know how many farmers markets there are in California. I mean, in Southern California, but in LA, there's got to be 20 or 30. For sure. Absolutely.

51:23That are through the roof. And up north, Alice Waters was doing the same thing with Jeremiah Tower. You know, they were, again, because they were in this California lifestyle where the environment was so spectacular, the growing seasons were so long, that, you know, it just began. Were you in leadership at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market when they launched? Were you like part of the crew that started? The push. Yeah, the push. Yeah. As a chef. I was chairman of the Arts Foundation. Okay. Again, we always did not only food, wine, but art. And getting public art in Santa Monica was a big deal. For example, if you go to the Santa Monica Fibers Market today, you'll see six massive topiary brass, bronze dinosaurs done by the famous Lalanne couple in France.

52:16Their daughter lived there. And we would go off into their house. And they loved to cook. So it was always that. But again, we never could have happened without the city. Santa Monica was an interesting experiment in, let's call it socialism. It was very interesting. It was sort of a forgotten town. It's 80 % tenants. It was a big town. I don't know how many, 100 ,000 people, whatever. It's really a city by itself. It has its own mayor and city council. and they put a freeway through it, which sort of split the town, just like in classical cliche, you know, just divided the city and people stopped going to it because you could drive through it.

52:55It's like that funny movie Cars, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good reference. They put the freeway through and that was it. So they decided to, you know, really rethink their whole lifestyle as a city. And it's booming today, by the way. They revitalized all of downtown. town yeah that continued the third street promenade was built in the 50s and was a failure when i opened tumbleweeds yeah just empty nobody you walked down that today and it's it's one of the the most packed pedestrian plazas in southern california yeah yeah it but the market there on wednesdays and on saturdays is is really set the tone let's go back let's go let's head into the kitchen at michael's and and really i'm gonna end this chat because we we really have so much more to cover about new york but we're gonna do that another time okay because i feel like i i want you back to come back and share uh but you know you're putting the farmers on your menu and you're getting some side eye yeah you're you're like what does this guy think what does he think he's doing yeah tell me about that that like you forcing your customers to understand yes That there is a farmer behind your food.

54:06This is the revolution of you. This is the Michael, this is California cuisine. This is the link to the farm. Yes. And that was a riot when we did it. I don't know. I just came up with it because, for example, you know, California has, as I said before, the beautiful thing about California, Northern California, Southern California, everything in between, it's such a fabulous growing thing, region, you know, everywhere. So for example, like instead of the frise au lardon, which was on my menu from day one, it was the Watsonville salad with lardons and organic egg. It was the green salad, San Fernando Valley greens, you know, the beginning of a mesclun, getting somebody to grow mesclun.

54:50And then your customers, your Hollywood clientele, they're like San Fernando Valley salad. It grows things. They have a farm out there. Farm out in, you know. And so we did that with everything. Nantucket Bay scallops. Yeah. You know, Channel Island spiny lobsters in season. Name, you know, when you went to California in the 70s like that, you ordered oysters in San Francisco, anywhere in a restaurant. They were always called blue points. It didn't matter where you were, what the oyster was. It was, today we have blue points. It was like this. They're different sizes. All different. They're all the same thing.

55:27But Blue Point sold, you see. Yeah, yeah. So I had a guy, Bill Marinelli in San Francisco that I met, who single-handedly revitalized the West Coast oyster markets. Because like here, oysters grew everywhere, wild, et cetera. But there they had them too. And so he would go through. And now you have, it's like Maine. If you go to Maine, there's a restaurant called Roberts in Kittery. Yeah. And Roberts is, everything in Maine was fried in those days. You'd go there and there'd be oysters on the half shell. And then you'd look at the list and they were from 16 different coves in Maine, Massachusetts, even one in New Hampshire, that little bit of New Hampshire there.

56:07And, you know, that was the pride of place, so to speak. You know, it was showing that you were regional, showing that you were local, showing that you were supporting these farmers, these growers. and you know it was the same thing with everything whether you were buying Sonoma County goat cheese Laura Chanel in the beginning you know you just didn't want to put goat cheese on it you wanted you didn't want to just put Laura Chanel you wanted to put Laura Chanel Sonoma County goat cheese because that created this context of not only was fabulous cheese but it shows you that in Sonoma there's a girl named Laura Chanel who is growing goats and making goat cheese.

56:53And that's what France was all about. Exactly. And linking it back to your time and seeing names of farms and producers on menus. In these early days, let's talk about your customers. Are there any customers of note who you felt got you right away, understood that you were doing something very different and we're going to give you money and go a lot. Go a lot. So then the last interview, that makes a good customer. You go a lot. Yes, you do. You become a regular. You become a regular. People say, how do you become a regular? I said, come a lot. Come. All you have to do is show up and just continue to come and then you get to know us and we get to know you.

57:35Yeah. But yeah, I mean, in those early days, it was fascinating because as I said, there were probably six or eight restaurants that people went to and they were old guard places like Chasen's, Perinos, which was like, you know, a continental Italian. And Scandia, which was this wild Scandinavian. Wow. Never heard of that reference. Oh my God. Scandia. What neighborhood was it in? It was in Hollywood. Yeah. Right up on the strip. Wow. What is now West Hollywood. Okay. There was Ma Maison. Patrick Terai's family owns the Tour d 'Argent and it was his uncle's. And he patiently waited to go back and run the Tour d 'Argent.

58:17But his father, when he was much older, had another child who actually runs it today. Wow. And Patrick continued to run Ma Maison, where Wolfgang got started. But there was sort of like a real interesting place of just a handful of restaurants. So when we opened, we were like this, whoa. Lois Dwan wrote this fabulous article. Ruth Reichel wrote this huge article in New West magazine that Coleman Andrews had. Hired her, yeah. Joe Armstrong was the publisher out there. And he hired Coleman, who hired Ruth, who was living on a commune in Berkeley, to go down and see what the fuss was all about. Yeah, he writes about it in his memoir in a really colorful way about, you know, sending this very inspired young writer down to Southern California to see what's going on.

59:12Oh, yeah. And she lived with us for like two weeks and wrote the whole story, how it opened, how it went before we opened. That's called like frontline reporting. Oh, yeah. Like embedding with – Yeah, she was embedded. Yeah. Yeah. But so the clients, again, the word of mouth got out, starting with the guys that were my customers at – that we did the little food and wine pairings at the wine merchant. It was a small world, food-wise, and people heard about it. This is before the internet. This is before social media. People heard about it. That's how my original chefs came to work for me. They all heard about it.

59:55They all came down to see what the festival was about. Back in 78, you know, this all sort of started to gel. I made it very clear that I had to have a restaurant that had a big garden. And that was very difficult to find. It was just by chance that I found the 1147 3rd Street. And it worked out because I lived in Malibu. I decided I'm going to live here. I'm not driving into Beverly Hills, which is where the restaurant row was. And that's why that whole thing. It became a destination in some way. It was a destination. And like we know in the history of modern American restaurants, the destination kills.

1:00:33I mean, look at Blue Hill. Oh, yeah. Like it's part of the trip. You got to make that little trip. You have to go there. Yeah, yeah. But all my clients in the beginning, you know, Francis Ford Coppola, they were big eaters. You know, Samuel Goldwyn, even the old guys, the old chasing guys like Lou Wasserman, they would come and check it out. But the most important thing that occurred, again, timing, was that when I opened in 1979, young Hollywood was beginning to take root. When I say young Hollywood, and they didn't live in Beverly Hills. They lived in Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, and Santa Monica because the old Hollywood all lived in Beverly Hills and Bel Air and Hobley Hills, et cetera.

1:01:14They wanted to be out, you know, they wanted to separate themselves. So when Steven Spielberg comes in, when Tom Hanks comes in, everybody in that whole, David Geffen comes in, Barry Diller comes in, Jane Eisner, Michael Eisner come in. They're all in their early 30s. You know what I'm saying? So they're sitting here going, and they didn't really have kids then. They said, okay, this is our place. Yeah. And so, again, I was very fortunate. And yet we would have a lot of the old guard, Jennifer Jones. She had a house in Malibu and every Friday she'd come for lunch. And she'd have Aubrey Hepburn.

1:01:56She'd have Loretta Young. You know, so it was this thing that sort of, again, word of mouth. I mean, the new guard, the Hanks and the Spielbergs, I would say, given that this is their new hang, to see some of the legends come in. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's part of that entertainment existence in L.A. Yes. You kind of want to bump into people at restaurants to have that intro of Wasserman's there. That's the party thing. It goes back to that Laurent experience and to my family's house. We created a party. I would say it all the time. One of my biggest slogans is great food, great wine, great people, great party.

1:02:36And the idea was that it was throwing a party every night. It was like Broadway. You'd have a show every night. And when, you know, you would have – lunch was always very minimal. But who ate lunch there almost three times a week? John Donne and Joan Didion. Yeah. And, you know, they would work until like 1 o 'clock. They'd come over. They'd have two martinis each, a couple of beers with lunch. uh dominic dunn and lenny they would they would come and they'd sit on the other side table even though they were estranged yeah that you know it was a it was again a development of all of that did you read griffin's book griffin dunn's memoir isn't i mean you're oh he would he'd bring his father in you know dominic was there all the time during the trials yeah yeah and and then when we opened here uh in 1989 10 years later i mean everybody who was from new york that came to la for business would eat in the restaurant back to the menu yeah we've you've got this clientele you clearly are inspiring um a community of conviviality but are are these folks would like looking at the menu and thinking about this goat farmer up you know 100 miles away i mean oh yeah So I would say we're talking about the early influencers without the internet.

1:03:54Absolutely. Are they starting to realize that food is more than just food? It's culture. Yes. Like I'm collecting this farmer. Right. I'm collecting Michael. Michael's my place. Yes. And this is like the early moments of foodism, foodism. What do you want to say? I mean, are they really? I mean, you could also say on the flip side, like the cliche is that they're just there to eat salad and talk about work. Yeah. No, no, no. They were into it. In fact, one of the early decisions I made was to not be in the kitchen during the service hours because I was constantly having to go out and explain to people what arugula was, for example, or what Laura Chanel goat cheese was.

1:04:35Yeah, yeah. Or why you have a dayboat, what was a dayboat day? A scallop, a diver's scallop served raw, right? Like a crudo with a French olive oil, pureed organic beets, fabulous beets, chives, watercress. And, you know, to explain why you would eat that. And so that's when I started going and basically I would special every single table. Go to the table, go down the menu, say, this is what's this, this is what's that. Any questions, this and that. Then a waiter would be right behind me, take all the order, and I'd go on to the next one. And because it was a real thorough education time, and everybody was into it, and we created a service protocol where, for example, if you're a table of six or eight or four or two, all the food hit the table at once.

1:05:26So the first thing everybody did was look at everybody's plate. And yes, we had the big Villeux-en-Bosch white plates. I called them up when I knew them from France. They had the basket decor on them. And I said, listen, I don't want the basket decor. That's what everybody was using. I want it just the plain plate. Clean. And oh my God, that took, I had to go to Luxembourg to get them to do that. And, but it made sense. There you have it. and uh this is a modern plating technique that you would see at mamma mason you see at spago you see all the places that followed you yes and and that was the canvas my wife being a painter yeah yeah you know i understood what raw canvases looked like yeah gesso painted so i got a i didn't gesso the plate but it came that way white and you would put the color and the texture you know as i say i sort of created this concept of modern cooking that was green crunchy and acidic versus brown mushy and sweet because that's basically what was happening we were moving away from yeah it's french nouvelle but with california but california and and again expanded you know none of the little one one scallop on the plate program yeah you know but it was again it was the the it was a big education process and it worked really well and they were really into it.

1:06:49And I happened to have a brilliant wine guy. They didn't even have sommeliers in those days. Phil Reich was just brilliant. He ran the Liquor Mart in Boulder when I was doing my classes. I'd go to him and I'd say, okay, I have$25. I need five wines. We have five courses. He says, what are you cooking? And I would say this, that, this, that, and that. He'd go, okay, hey, we'll take this one, that one, this one, that one. Stunning wine store. And he, after I opened, or before I opened, I went and found him and he came and ran our wine program. We had a computerized wine list. Oh, wow. One font, one size, you know, on the paper with the holes on the side.

1:07:26Yeah, dot matrix. Yeah, dot matrix. Yeah, yeah. We had a computer that was four feet by four feet. Do you have those old menus in files? Yeah, I do. Do you have the actual menu? Yeah, I have the wine list in file, everything. That's incredible. At any rate, so creating the menu was, again, all the work that I'd learned in France at my little place and what we cooked and the classics my mother and my father and my friends cooked. And that was sort of the basis and the foundation. And then because I had this talented team of young chefs coming in, you know, Ken Frank, Jonathan Waxman, Mark Peel, Billy Flug, who was from Boston, he's passed away, Jimmy Brinkley, who had worked at Lermitage in the pastry department.

1:08:13And I said to Jimmy, I said, OK, Jimmy, all of these desserts, we're going to evolve into an American riff on them. So in other words, we're going to take out a lot of the sugar. We're going to take out the booze. We're going to beef them up. We're going to do this and that. You know, it was that kind of collaboration. And all my guys worked lunch and dinner. Oh, wow. And there was really no hierarchy because we didn't know who was good at what. It's the Chez Panisse model in some ways. Your version of that kind of flat. Everybody just do what they do and you rotate and you get good at all. Developed a cross-training program that became our sort of signature why people came to work at Michael's because you learned everything.

1:08:54You learned everything. And you moved up through the ranks and not spending one year peeling potatoes. Back to that you earned. Yeah. Well, I'm going to call this part one because we're going to end in 1985. Okay. And part two is we're going to pick it up in 1985 and we're going to talk about kind of your evolution through Santa Monica and then moving to New York. Right. I want to hear about Elaine Kaufman. I want to learn about your relationship with her. Michael, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. You're great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

1:09:36Ashok Selvam, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? I'm wonderful. How are you today? It's great to get to connect with you. We will do a longer episode because I want to hear all about your career. But I want to hear mostly about this piece you wrote in Eater. I read it right away and I was like, this is such an interesting plot twist for the Charlie Trotter saga. And you reported it really well. I'm linking to it in the show notes. First off, tell me a little bit about Charlie Trotter. Who was he and what did he mean to Chicago and really the global dining scene? Well, Charlie Trotter was 27 when he opened his restaurant in Lincoln Park.

1:10:18And he was really attempting to do something that Chicago has never seen. He wanted to establish kind of that French brigade system. Chicago in the Midwest was known as a steak and potatoes town. And that was for a lot of diners. And it still is represents what fine dining, you know, represents is steak and potatoes. The the the, you know, Chicago has no shortage of that. And he had this idea of, I really like vegetables. I want to establish relationships with farmers. A lot of the things that we take for granted, no one was doing in the, well, not many people were doing in the 80s and 90s. And he created, he established this restaurant where it was the prime destination to celebrate.

1:11:12If you were at Trotter's, you had something to talk about around the water cooler. You had, you know, something that would, you know, make your neighbors envious. And he just wanted to combine flavors that weren't really presented in this way. Like he, it's cliched now, but he introduced a lot of Asian techniques and flavors, Japanese into like, you know, a traditional like kind of French setting. And it was blowing people away with the like, yeah, he was a perfectionist. And he was kind of a jerk too at times, you know. His quest for perfection rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Yeah, I mean, if you watch the documentary Love, Charlie, which is on Netflix, it's definitely worth checking out.

1:12:06And I think it's so cool to point out that, you know, he spent so much time in Europe and realized that there could be a vision or version of this restaurant that he staged in Europe in Chicago. And he kind of broke this barrier. And that film gets into like that progression. And the jerk element of it, it seems from your reporting in this piece, you know, of course, he had his moments and there was definitely some very bad behavior and lawsuits. And that's been well, well established. But I think on the other hand, in fairness, you reported that you spoke with some former staffers and there are folks who maybe don't agree with that narrative a little bit.

1:12:49Yeah, I mean, Dylan himself was saying that a lot of these headlines felt sensational to him. And he remembers the father he played ping pong with, the father he ran at Oz Park with and played with, who was really into charitable efforts. and he has spoken with some of his kitchen colleagues that worked with Charlie and asked them, hey, is this allegation? What was that like? And they seemed to say that it was fabricated. But when you are just pushing a standard that no one's ever seen, you sometimes are so driven that you're not exactly a people person. And the comparison, because it was in the 90s and when you're talking 90s in Chicago, you're always going to bring up Michael Jordan.

1:13:38And he was another person that loved perfection and wasn't the greatest teammate. And him and Trotter, they shared that DNA. So speaking of Dylan, tell me about Dylan Trotter and his future plans with the space. Well, Dylan Trotter is the only son of Charlie, the acclaimed chef who opened Charlie Trotter's back, I believe it was 1987. and Dylan was a very kind of reluctant restaurant worker. His first job in the restaurant world was 14 for his father's offshoot Trotters to Go, which was like kind of a gourmet bodega with Trotters name. And he kind of bounced around trying to find himself. He definitely hung out around the restaurant.

1:14:30He would often have to entertain guests. He would rather go to the movies, but then he would be caught in his father's tractor beams and say, hey, this diner, he's a real loyal guest. Can you entertain him a little bit? And he would don a sport coat and do that. But he was trying to find his way. He was actually the person that found his father unconscious, and he would later die of a stroke. So that obviously sticks with you, to put it mildly. And he's been kind of searching for his path. He's worked in L.A. He's worked in Hawaii. And this is from other folks that I talked to. He just never really felt super comfortable in the kitchen setting.

1:15:19And then all of a sudden, a couple years ago, he kind of gained control of the building where the restaurant was. It's a building that was put up in 1938. Last day of the restaurant was 2012. And so he's now the caretaker of that building. And he decided to move into the building. There's a restaurant is on one side and there's a residence on the other. And for the last couple months, he's been trying to plot out the future of the space. And he decided, like, I heard rumors back in, I guess it was late summer, that something was cooking at Trotters. And I didn't want to be invasive. And, you know, I started DMing him on Instagram.

1:16:09Actually, there's a park nearby, Oz Park, where they recently renovated and they carved family initials to who donated to the effort. And I saw I was sitting down with my three year old and all of a sudden I see Dylan and Charlie and his mother's names on the on the fence. So I DM him and we've been kind of keeping that channel open. But now it seems like the plans, something's going to happen in that space this this year under the Dylan Trotter brand. He's not sure of the name, but, you know, Dylan is a very thoughtful and deliberate person. He's taken to a real hands-on approach to restoring the restaurant.

1:16:53He is in no rush to do so. He cares a lot, so much about his legacy and his father's, but he's very protective. He doesn't want to sell off the building as an asset. He really wants this to reflect his family's name. So he's at the space now and it sounds like he's moved into an apartment that's adjacent to it. This is all happening while Grant Ackett's is is celebrating Trotter through through Next, his his famous rotating pop up restaurant that famously pays tribute to an era or a cuisine. And, of course, Grant Ackett's of Alinea fame worked at Charlie Trotter's briefly, is featured in the documentary and had a pretty complicated relationship or even no relationship, depending on who you speak with, with Charlie Trotter.

1:17:52And you report that they have actually had some some tribute meals in the historical space. Yeah, they just started that up in January. the agreement was finalized on New Year's Eve. And knowing that, you know, Dylan wanted to dip his feet back into the hospitality pool. It just made sense for what better way to celebrate as Jason Weingarten, the new Alinea group CEO, a magical dining experience than spending actually eating Charlie Trotter's food in that space. It is rickety. It is, you know, the lighting is a little dimmer than we would expect. But Grant has really prepared some of the dishes.

1:18:41There's this cold tomato soup that is just sensational that really, he says, that has personal meaning to him that he worked on. He cooked during his brief tenure at Trotters. So it is the pop-up. They're calling it a next extended pop-up. will go through February, but it kind of primes the space and it's giving Dylan Trotter the opportunity to work things out and to develop his vision for what he sees the restaurant could actually be. Well, it's a smart move by Dylan to kind of, you know, ease into reestablishing Charlie Trotter's as a full restaurant by having Grant, Grant Ackett's, you know, cook there and have this special pop up in the space.

1:19:25Have you been in the space personally? Have you seen what it's like. I mean, this has been dark since 2012. I mean, it's kind of remarkable that they never sold it. It was never remodeled. It kind of just sat there for 13 years. Yeah, the stretch of Armitage Avenue is the street that the restaurant sign. It kind of blends into kind of the posh boutiques along the stretch. And it just kind of, you know, you would still see the famous serif t uh trotters logo and i've been inside is rickety um i think i mentioned uh the lighting is a little dimmer at least to you know 2025 standards because you know there was no instagram you know they weren't people weren't snapping photos back then uh he made a couple of uh you know the carpet was torn out he it's still uh they got new carpet that matches.

1:20:18It's still red. He imported these sconces from Italy on the second floor. He calls the first floor Charlie's room, and he wants to kind of bring back the nostalgia of dining in the 90s to the first floor dining room. And the second floor, he's calling it Dylan's room. And he's not sure what the final product will look like, but he wants it to be more reflection of him as a 33-year-old. Well, it's really a great story, and I know, Ashok, you're going to stick with it, and we're going to check in with you again to see what happens in Chicago with the possible rebirth of Charlie Trotter's. Would you speculate anything, or do you have any additional reporting about who might take over the space as a chef, a concept?

1:21:05Is there any tell from Dylan Trotter about the future plans of the space? So even before he contacted Grant or Grant contacted him to get kind of the blessing to do the next pop-up, Dylan had started interviewing chefs and did five tastings at the residence next door. And there's a lot of speculation about Giuseppe Tentori, who worked at Trotters and worked with Boca, with GT Fish and Oyster. He says that he hasn't decided what he wants to do. He recently left Boca. But I genuinely believe Dylan isn't sure, and he wants to get it right. He did say that he wants – his dad was known for wine pairings.

1:21:52He's been sober for six years, and he really responds well to the non-alcoholic movement, and he wants to have great spirit-free drinks. So whatever it's going to be, it's going to be a bit more eclectic. It won't be a carbon copy. It won't be a cover song. It's going to be interesting to follow this story. What a historical name in space. And I'm really pulling for Dylan, whatever he decides on. And I hope to visit myself. Ashok, I have to ask you, you're on the horn and you covered the Chicago restaurant scene so well. I've enjoyed your work for years. Is there anything exciting you in particular about the Chicago dining scene to close?

1:22:27There are two great restaurants that I want to mention and plug. Carino in Uptown. It's a tasting menu that blends a lot of Latin American flavors. It presents these flavors in a way that we haven't really seen. And they have a late night, but they're calling it Taco Omicase. I went last night and the masa is just, it's wonderful. I highly recommend that. And then this is a restaurant that got into a rough start. It's called Feld. It's a 30, 20 to 30 course tasting menu. and it's by this young chef who is 32. He's a little older than when Charlie Trotter started, but he has created something so boldly unique and I'm really excited about Fine Dining's evolution in Chicago and seeing Trotter come back to the conversation.

1:23:21It was really indicative of the times in Chicago. Well, it sounds like you said Fell got off to a rough start. Was there just some early negative press and he's kind of riding the ship a bit? Yeah, I mean, anytime you have an inexperienced chef, you've got a lot of early reviews. You should see the Reddit thread on this. It was probably just bonkers with folks criticizing the plating. And probably it's the reason a lot of food critics wait a little bit before publishing a review or go multiple times. But they were pretty ugly. It was pretty ugly early in, and they didn't get a lot of spots. But now they had some Michelin consideration.

1:24:03There's a James Beards. They're on the long list for Beard. The Tribune ran a really positive review a couple weeks ago. So I think there's a lot of potential there. Sounds like a little bit of a redemption narrative. Sounds like a little TV show that might be based around chef life in Chicago. What do you think about that? Oh, you know. I was going to smack myself if I had to mention it. I know the bear, which is likely going into his final season. And I think locals have had their like I was talking to a chef. Anytime someone asked about the bear, they tell their diners, we only talk about it if you buy drinks, a shot for the whole staff.

1:24:45People have had their had their fill, even though we did a lot of positive things. Let's just hope this season four rebounds and we get the very the storybook ending that Carmi and company deserve. It sounds like this is backlash full stop, which is part of all media narratives. I love it. I'm so happy that was your response to the show. We're pulling for it as well. Hoping for a redemption. Ashok, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. You're welcome. Take care.

1:25:19This Is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.