by Ken Hom
In Berkeley, the kitchen walls at my home/cookery school were lined with shelves. Upon them were hundreds of bottled spices and dried ingredients (so many, I required an inventory). Chinese knives and cleavers were on a special wall-mounted rack, with the razor-sharp blades behind Plexiglass. The island in the middle housed a massive chopping board at one end and a pastry marble at the other. I bought a Hobart dishwasher which had a ninety-second cycle – one of my best-ever purchases.
* * *
OH, the twists and turns of life. One minute, I was being lined up for a lofty and intelligent career in the art world. The next, I was teaching hippies how to cook. Boy, it was a bargain for my pupils. I charged $10 a class so, when you think about it, they could just come and eat, if they wished, and it was still a fantastic deal because there was wine, too. But most of them wanted to learn how to cook, so I began each session with a masterclass and it ended with a mini feast.
I did not have a car and still don’t drive. There are too many crazy Chinese drivers on the road, and the world is a better place without having one more. So I would load my bicycle with two empty baskets, cycle to the Bart Station, which is the local underground, and head for Chinatown, where the good-quality ingredients were cheaper than elsewhere. Then I would return home with two full baskets and do all the prep. Pay someone to prep for me? No way.
JEREMIAH Tower was one of the pioneers of what we know as California cuisine. He was born in Connecticut and then well schooled (he crossed the Atlantic to be a pupil at Parkside in Cobham, Surrey). It wasn’t until the early ’70s, when he was about thirty, that he began his career. This happened after he ate a fruit tart at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters’s iconic restaurant. He was so taken by the taste of this solitary flan that decided he wanted to cook, and to cook in the kitchen of that particular restaurant.
He applied for a job, and when he went for the interview in the kitchen he was shown a pot of soup and asked how he would improve it. Casual and cool, but also skilful, he threw in wine, butter and plenty of herbs. It was fantastic. He got the job on the spot. Within a year, through talent, skill and hard work, Jeremiah had been made an equal partner in Alice’s restaurant.
The partnership survived about six years, during which time Jeremiah’s reputation flourished and the appropriately named chef became a tower, so to speak, within the area’s gastronomic evolution: someone to look up to.
Things soured, fruit tart-style, at Chez Panisse and the partnership came to an end. Jeremiah went briefly to London, to work with the fine cook and great food writer Richard Olney, who was editing the Time Life cookery books. They had a serious budget, some of which was spent on cases of red Burgundy; all in the name of research, of course. Jeremiah returned to California and that is when I met him. We were introduced by Vernon Rollins, a wine merchant and a popular man with the Chez Panisse crowd.
8
The Call and the Calling
JEREMIAH PHONED ONE morning in ’78 and said, ‘The dean of the California Culinary Academy wants to see you. Go see him.’ Jeremiah could be forceful.
The dean was Ron Batori, a young man who was in charge of this cookery school that taught and trained people to become professional chefs. About fifty students attended the Academy. I figured, Why not? I went to meet Ron. He was friendly and we took a stroll to a nearby bar. As we sat sharing a bottle of wine, Ron told me his story, which I found fascinating and which, if you don’t mind, I’ll share.
Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ron could not wait to leave home and the area. In fact, he went so far as to leave the country. He had gone to Britain to study at the London School of Economics. On graduating, he and a friend, Paul, decided to buy a boat. Their sole intention was to sail around the world. They set off from a harbour on the north-east coast of England and on day two they were about twenty knots south. This point marked the end of their round-the-world voyage.
Next, they sold the yacht and, with the money, moved from sailing into the hospitality industry, as you do. They opened a restaurant, the Tudor Rose, in the market town of Midhurst, in the county of West Sussex. There was a third partner in this venture, a man called Earhart, if I remember rightly.
Now, Ron had an interest in fine wines. It was a fast-developing passion, which had blossomed earlier when he lived in Paris for a year, before the boat episode. He was in the French capital to research the Yaoundé Convention, the first treaty between Europe, or the Common Market as it was called in those days, and former French West Africa.
As an LSE student, Ron met the presidents of many of the West African countries – Léon M’ba from Gabon, Léopold Senghor from Senegal, Félix Houphouët-Boigny from the Ivory Coast, Ahmed Sékou Touré from Guinea. Along with a few fellow students, Ron was seconded to help the dignitaries. They all dined down in the Quai d’Orsay area, and inevitably ate and drank like kings, or even presidents.
When they were not talking politics, the francophone Africans pondered the beautiful produce of the grape. Actually, they spent more time talking wine than politics. The seed, you might say, was planted: Ron was intrigued. He had seen the enjoyment that wine brings to a meal.
‘And for that reason’, he told me, ‘I set my heart on having a fantastic wine list at the Tudor Rose.’
Ron went to Augustus Barnett and bought a dozen or so wines, at a discounted price because the high street wine merchant – or off licence or ‘offie’ – was eager to clear its shelves as it was going out of business. The majority of British drinkers had yet to acquire a palate for wine and discover that there were good ones.
Ron seemed transfixed by the memories alone, and he told me, ‘I had never seen a bottle of Mouton Rothschild before, or a Margaux ’66 … I’d never seen them. I just looked at them and fondled them … And then I bought them.’
On the restaurant’s second night of business, a Sunday, there was a grand total of four customers in the Tudor Rose. They included a certain Barry Phillips – distinguished by his long hair and velvet bow tie – and his wife Dot. Now, Barry owned the White Horse in Chilgrove, and he’d heard about this new place and come to check it out. They ordered steak and kidney pie, or whatever, and Barry took a look at the wine list and was astonished. In the quiet town of Midhurst he had unearthed some wondrous wines. There was the Mouton and there was the Margaux. When Ron came to the table to take the order, Barry said, ‘I think you’re interested in wine.’
And Ron said, ‘I think I am too.’
Barry invited Ron to join the Four Walls Wine Club – there were only six members, they were all gentlemen and they swore a pledge: anything that was said within those four walls would never leave those four walls. They drank great wines. Ron was flabbergasted when Barry produced, let’s say, a ’47 La Tâche. As wine prices dwindled, Ron was becoming even more enthusiastic about wine. He would go to London’s auction houses, buying up wines at a good price; wines which today would be worth a tidy sum, but then went into the tummies of the lucky guests at the Tudor Rose. And in those days he was buying them very, very cheap.
Ron also enjoyed reading the musings of wine connoisseur Harry Waugh, who travelled around the States, being fabulously entertained at every stop from Washington DC to California. Those who entertained him included a couple called Belle and Barney Rhodes. They featured prominently in Waugh’s memoirs because, unsurprisingly, they often treated him in Napa.
I listened, captivated by Ron’s excitement. Sure, I wondered where the story was heading, as you do now. So, anyway…
One day, Ron noticed an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, looking for a European-trained wine instructor at something called the California Culinary Academy, a school for people who wanted to be professional chefs. He thought, That’s me. I’m tired of what I’m doing.
The Academy had been started by Danielle Carlisle, a former Stanford biology research assistant (‘I gave up mice for mousse’) and there was a dean called Barry West, a Briton with City and Guilds qualifications. Ron applied for the
wine instructor job and was accepted. As he told me, ‘I thought to myself, I’ll be running this place in six months.’ Six months later, he was part owner. Ron and Barry bought out the man who originally had financed the school, who was an architect in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Soon Barry left and Ron became the new dean. This gave him considerable influence within the school, of course. The Academy had started with about twenty students but, as mentioned, had grown to around fifty when I met Ron.
So in ’78 – about a year after the Academy started – Ron got a phone call. ‘Hello, my name is Belle. I’d like to be able to use your school for a cooking demonstration with Marc Meneau.’ Monsieur Meneau being the chef-patron of L’Espérance, the three-star Michelin restaurant in Yonne in Burgundy.
Ron said, ‘Belle, are you by any chance Belle Rhodes? A friend of Harry Waugh?’
‘Yes.’
Then Ron said to Belle, sweetly, ‘I’ve had dinner with you lots of times already. But in my imagination.’ He explained to Belle how he had learnt of her unsurpassed entertaining from Harry Waugh’s books. Belle arrived at the Academy the following day with a bottle of Heitz Martha’s Vineyard and invited Ron to dinner – this time real rather than imaginary.
Come Thursday evening, the guests at that dinner table amounted to: Jeremiah Tower; Narsai David, who had a restaurant in Berkeley; the wine merchant Darrell Corti – he and Ron had gone to the same school but hadn’t seen each other in many years; and a neurologist, Dr Stanley Short. It was a proper gathering of aficionados of wine and food – an extremely small community in those days. When it came to the farewells, Jeremiah said, ‘Are you looking for a teacher?’
Ron: ‘Yes.’
Jeremiah said, ‘Well, I know the person. His name is Ken Hom.’
That’s how I came to be sitting in a bar, sharing a bottle of wine with Ron and listening to his fascinating story.
‘When can you start?’ said Ron.
I told him, ‘Any time you want.’
Ron flicked through a few documents, including the curriculum. He scribbled and muttered to himself. Then he looked up at me.
‘How about this?’ he said. ‘We could have Chinese Cookery with Ken Hom.’
I ordered another bottle.
BARNEY and Belle Rhodes were the king and queen of Napa Valley. They had one of the ten best wine cellars in the world.
To be invited to their home was an honour and always an experience, and would undoubtedly feature astounding wines. Barney’s palate was unbelievable. Belle was the great hostess; she looked like a former show girl, with her hair swept back, and was meticulous when it came to the art of entertaining at home.
Before arriving at their home, guests would receive a handwritten note from Belle: it was a short biography of each person who would be at the dinner. This meant you could identify common interests ahead of the gathering and would have no problems with conversation. If you and I had never met, I would already have a brief biography of you, and you would have a brief biography of me.
She wrote a separate page detailing the dishes that were to be served. The Rhodeses entertained on a grand scale and frequently. On each occasion she wrote these briefing notes for each guest.
9
The Academy
LET’S BE CLEAR about this. In the 1970s, most people did not aspire to be chefs. Most people aspired not to be chefs.
The Academy was a pioneering set-up, appealing to the small number who wanted to learn how to cook well. There were college graduates, though many of the students were professionals, with a bit of cash, but not happy with their careers. There were, for instance, actors, teachers, policemen, plumbers; all of them having left their jobs, searching for a new path. That path was drawing them towards the restaurant profession, which was becoming something other than just a place for cooks who had not done well at school.
In the States, the only other similar organisations were the newly opened National Cooking Institute in Denver, and the Culinary Institute of America, based in Hyde Park, New York. As it turns out, Ron and his team – ambitious but admittedly quite new to the game – copied just about everything from the Culinary Institute. They even copied its application form and its curriculum. In fact, they wanted to be similarly named, but when Ron suggested the California Culinary Institute, there was a swift retreat and a re-think after stern objections from the established Culinary Institute of America.
However, the new school rapidly became acknowledged as a place worthy of learning the culinary arts. Every aspect of cooking was taught, with Ron giving lessons in wine and tasting, too. There were plenty of endorsements from respected figures in the business. On graduation days, for instance, students got to shake the hands of esteemed guests of honour such as M. F. K. Fisher and James Beard. Julia Child was there two or three times. On her first visit, she said to Ron, ‘You know, the people who are here remind me of the kind of people who went into the peace corps during the Kennedy times. They’re idealists.’
It was a sixteen-month course: four terms, each of four months. Eventually there were 200 students, all of whom wanted to be professional chefs rather than excellent home cooks. They were fitted out with toques – tall white hats – and aprons. From day one they were called ‘chefs’ by the teachers. This was controversial, and criticised by ‘real’ chefs, mostly Europeans, based in California and San Francisco. ‘How dare they call themselves chefs! You’re not a chef until you’ve spent six months peeling potatoes every day!’ And so on.
But the Academy was marketed very much as a solid foundation of culinary learning. Upon leaving, you would be an excellent cook, and recognised as a chef. You would easily find a job in a professional kitchen or have the nous to set up your own restaurant or catering business.
Before enrolling on the course, students paid a fee of about $8,000. Not a small sum in those days; they were a committed band ready to invest in their futures. The hours were pretty intense. The first shift began at 7 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m. The second shift lasted from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. There were four kitchens and a large dining room, where, on Friday nights, local residents came to enjoy the students’ food at a buffet.
That buffet was much-adored and well-priced, which meant the locals got a cheap meal. Often, they were out to get the most for their money. The ladies found one way of achieving this: they arrived with large but empty handbags and at the buffet they filled the bags with cream-filled pastries. This infuriated Carl, the maître d’, who liked to spot the pastry thieves, dash over and bump into them. ‘Oops, I’m sorry,’ he would say, apologetic but quietly confident that he had crushed the pastries in their handbags. ‘Ken,’ he said to me one evening after I spotted him bag crushing, ‘if they’re gonna steal pastries, I wanna make sure those pastries are all smashed up.’
THE teachers included experienced and highly skilled chefs, although the pastry chefs caused headaches for Ron and his team. There was a belief at the school that pastry chefs were either flirty or thirsty.
Pastry chefs are frequently regarded by the rest of the brigade as the eccentric characters. The pastry part of a professional kitchen is usually hidden away from the other sections, with no windows; so no natural light. Days without natural light might affect the mind. They are also exposed to liqueurs, so the booze is there if they want to indulge.
They could be boastful, and would stand in front of the class, reminding students, ‘I made Elvis Presley’s wedding cake,’ or something similar.
There was one pastry chef-teacher, Denis Martig, who was Swiss. Come to think of it, he had made the wedding cake when Elvis Presley married Priscilla in 1967. Denis would cheerfully tell interested students – or indeed anyone else who was interested – about the extravagant cake: six tiers of sponge, filled twice with apricot marmalade and kirsch-flavoured Bavarian cream; the layers were glazed with kirsch-flavoured fondant icing and decorated with royal icing and marzipan roses.
One of the pastry chefs made petits fours which had the most spectacular
sheen to their surface. When asked by a student how he achieved the gleam, the chef said, ‘That’s my little secret.’ This response startled Ron and the other bosses, who found it bizarre. The chef, after all, was being paid to share his secrets with the students, who were, let’s face it, paying his salary.
He would arrive very early in the morning, so that he could create his petits fours without anyone spotting his glaze tricks. Then the students would arrive and finish off, though mystified about the secret. One day, Ron took him to one side. ‘That gleam on the petits fours – how do you do it?’
The chef replied, ‘My little secret.’
Ron tried to explain. ‘These students are paying $8,000. You’re supposed to tell them how to do it.’ The chef wouldn’t budge.
There were other anxieties for Ron. He became concerned about the ever-increasing pastry bills – not for butter, flour, cream and sugar. But for booze. Crème de menthe, sherry and Grand Marnier were legitimate ingredients for cakes and desserts, but not in the swimming-pool quantities that were being shipped into the Academy. There were a couple of chefs who walked with the sort of wobble you would only want to see on an underdone crème brûlée or, indeed, a perfect British jelly. There was gossip that the drink, inevitably, led to passes from the chefs to the pupils.
MY role was to teach Chinese cuisine in five days, the length of time the students spent with me while they were on the course. I put together a curriculum, which I love to do, selecting certain dishes that would illustrate the simplicity and complexities of Chinese cooking. Into the curriculum, I weaved the history of the food – why we cook the way we cook – and would try to make it relevant for chefs. In other words, I was conscious that people would say, ‘I’m not here to study Chinese,’ but I wanted them to discover the skills and applications that would help with other cuisines.