The peculiarities of the Hollywood crowd confounded Chef Desi. One night Suzanne Pleshette (costar of The Bob Newhart Show), walked directly into the kitchen and personally took Desi aside to complain about a whiff of garlic in her dinner. The kitchen had to start her entire table all over again. She said she was allergic to garlic and could not be within smelling distance of it. Why she chose not to, discreetly, share that information with the waitstaff when placing her order is beyond me. This and other similar special requests slowed the kitchen down so much that, in the beginning, the service was erratic.
That went on for several weeks until my staff and I analyzed the situation and established the rules of the house with our dining guests. Most of our guests abided by our new policy and ordered from the menu because they wanted to be welcomed in the hottest spot in town. However, the kitchen was prepared to quickly make reasonable substitutions, when doable, for Barbra Streisand, Sharon Stone, or others at that level of fame. As we got to know the rules of the Hollywood pecking order, the kitchen got back on track.
It didn’t take long to figure out that the Beverly Hills-crowd didn’t spend money like New Yorkers, even though they had plenty of it. Big stars expected comps. Lesser stars wanted free desserts or a round of free drinks. And I soon discovered that people in LA didn’t drink nearly as much, usually nothing at lunch. So even though the downstairs restaurant was always packed, our check average was much lower than Tatou New York. We weren’t making the kind of profit we were accustomed to.
Before opening, I gave much thought to what kind of crowd we wanted to attract. Mimi and I had a number of meetings with industry movers and shakers like producer Keith Addis and record producer Richard Perry and others to help orchestrate the right Hollywood crowd. But in the end we were still a Beverly Hills clubhouse. The main restaurant attracted an older, wealthier, expensively dressed Beverly Hills crowd, including actor Red Buttons (Academy Award winner for the film Sayonara with Marlon Brando), Milton Berle (the baby boomers’ Uncle Milty), actor Cesar Romero (the baby boomers’ first Joker on TV’s Batman), comedian Sid Caesar, TV super-producer Aaron Spelling, Sid Luft (third husband of Judy Garland and father of Lorna Luft), and other wealthy entertainment industry old-timers. But it also brought a more current clientele, including Barbra Streisand, Cybill Shepherd, Mike Medavoy and Patricia Duff, Kirk Kerkorian, Hugh Hefner, Steve Wynn, James Coburn, Robin Leach, Leeza Gibbons, Vanna White, Suzanne Pleshette, and the dapper California Speaker of the House, Willie Brown.
However, the upstairs club (which Rudolf helped choreograph) attracted a young, hip crowd including Billy Idol, Madonna, Ali McGraw, Heather Locklear, and the bad girl of the original Beverly Hills, 90210, Shannen Doherty, who was often very rowdy. Most nights were jammed, with the exception of Tuesday, which was dead all over LA. However, Rudolf found two young promoters, Lee Main and Craig Katz, whom he called the “twits.” They ended up packing the place on Tuesdays with a very young, cool Hollywood and Beverly Hills crowd featuring loads of beautiful girls. Years later, Lee and Craig became extremely successful opening the Sushi Roku, Boa, and Katana restaurants.
The high-powered entertainment industry crowd came with a price—never-ending drama. It was always a challenge. For instance, one night Marvin Davis, the billionaire owner of 20th Century Fox, held an engagement party for his daughter, Nancy. Gloria Allred, the civil rights attorney, spied District Attorney Gil Garcetti and darted over to him and started quite a scene. Gil was the Los Angeles County district attorney and lead prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson trial, which many thought was being mishandled. Everyone in the room was stunned and speechless and then suddenly, they all looked at me—while pointing to Gil who was trying to fend Gloria off. Luckily, Gloria was petite and light, so I was able to disentangle them. Gil fled, and Gloria, who represented the Brown family, calmed down and the other guests carried on as if nothing had happened.
There was a steep learning curve on catering the private parties of the well-to-do crowd of Beverly Hills. I had heard that Barbara Davis, Marvin’s wife, always considered herself entitled to a 50-percent discount. Marvin Davis was one of the richest men in town and could easily afford the very best—which he still insisted upon receiving, knowing that his wife Barbara also insisted on the 50-percent discount. I vividly remember Barbara making her bejeweled fingers into a fist to describe the size of the “jumbo shrimp” she demanded be served at their party. She justified it by telling me that she was going to get me “tons of press by inviting loads of Hollywood stars.” In the end, I printed up a banquet menu and altered the prices for Barbara to select from, so we could cater the event without losing our shirts and still give her the 50-percent discount.
Chapter Thirty-Three:
Rodney Fires Up Tatou
On a very crowded evening, one of the funniest men in the world, Rodney Dangerfield, lit up a joint while sitting in a booth during dinner. I wish I had been there, but I wasn’t; I was in New York and Mimi was covering for me. The manager was too scared to just walk up to Rodney and ask him to “please put the joint out.” So he found Mimi and asked her to do it. But Mimi was clever enough to stay out of it, avoiding the drama and one-liners she would invite, knowing Rodney’s shtick. Can you imagine the material he would have hit her with in front of everyone? Some in the crowd were horrified at his audacity, while most got a chuckle out of it and laughed it off. It caused quite a commotion, but nothing compared to later that evening, when the voluptuous Mamie Van Doren flashed her breasts for a gang of paparazzi waiting outside.
Just another night out on the town in La La Land.
Aaron Tonken was another character at Tatou. He had started out in Hollywood by living with Zsa Zsa Gabor and befriending the older set. By the time I met him, he lived in an unfurnished studio apartment, drove an old car, and was looking for a gig. He had an amazing Rolodex, and I hired him part-time and gave him meals. He starting doing charity-oriented parties at Tatou, which were great for press.
Aaron introduced me to actor Charlton Heston (star of The Ten Commandments and winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in Ben-Hur), referred to as Chuck by his friends. Chuck’s wife, Lydia, a talented and very artistic professional photographer, asked me to arrange a showing of her rather extensive body of work in the Tony Curtis Gallery. For the opening night cocktail party, the Hestons invited many of their friends, including former President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan. Tony Curtis and his new wife, a young attorney whose most obvious attribute was her unusually large breasts, clearly wanted to be in as many of the pictures with the former president as possible. This seemed to disturb Nancy. She pulled “Ronnie” away, though he appeared to be totally amused by Tony’s antics—but not before it was all captured in several pictures, which typified the old Hollywood pecking order.
Aaron also introduced me to Olympic champion Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner and his new wife Kris, while Kris’s former husband Robert Kardashian, who represented O. J. Simpson, was having dinner on the other side of the restaurant.
I was beginning to see that Aaron had a problem with the truth, and he began to run up large tabs entertaining his celebrity friends. I remember one particularly large tab that Aaron signed for when he brought Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda to Tatou. In the case of Tommy Lasorda, I didn’t mind being stuck with the bill because I had been a devoted Brooklyn Dodger fan since I was a kid, taking the Long Island Railroad and the subway from Great Neck to Ebbet’s field in the early 1950s. The Brooklyn Dodgers brought my hero Jackie Robinson into the majors. Unfortunately, all the kids on my block loved the Yankees and I ended up getting punched around more than once for my loyalty to The Dodgers.
Aaron Tonken finally ended up in jail for skimming charity money, using Hillary and Bill Clinton as hooks. Aaron was conning Denise Rich, who convinced President Clinton to pardon her ex-husband Marc Rich as one of his last acts in office. Aaron recounted many of these stories in his book, King of Cons,
which he wrote in prison, including the story of Fabio and his manager Peter Paul, who wasn’t who we thought he was either. Unbeknownst to all of us at the time, Peter Paul was a former lawyer and entrepreneur who had been convicted of conspiracy and drug dealing and later for securities fraud in connection with his business dealings with Spider-Man cocreator Stan Lee, a regular Tatou guest. Peter Paul was also involved in the messy fundraising conspiracy with the Clintons in 2000, and is now serving a ten-year sentence in federal prison.
While all this madness was going on, the press raved about the food and ambiance at Tatou Beverly Hills.
On February 12, 1993, The Hollywood Reporter wrote an article titled, “Note-able Cuisine” with the quote: “Tatou evokes the past glamour of Ciro’s and The Cocoanut Grove. Chef Desi Szonntagh has created an eclectic menu that should please a sophisticated clientele of industry honchos and foreign fashion plates.”
The Los Angeles Times on March 7, 1993 said in a piece titled, “Such a Swell Party” by Ruth Reichl, who later became the food critic for The New York Times and editor of Gourmet magazine: “Eat, smoke, and be merry—it’s Tatou where the beautiful people never leave. Tatou is a new phenomenon in Los Angeles—and it’s already a hit.” In the April 1993 edition of Vanity Fair, in a piece titled, “The Club! The Club!” Ruth Reichl wrote: “This is an East Coast fantasy of La-La Land. We don’t mind. Here among the palm trees, we enjoy a good show.”
When Tatou Beverly Hills first opened, we featured great local blues bands, the same formula that made Tatou New York so successful. As time went by, many of the older crowd began complaining that the music was too loud. I figured it probably wasn’t their kind of music, and I started experimenting with other entertainment for the supper club. I started Monday Night Live, together with local singer-songwriter Carol Connors aka Annette Kleinbard, a two-time Oscar nominee best known for composing the theme song “Gonna Fly Now” for the film Rocky.
Carol was also well-known for having dated Elvis Presley, Robert Culp (I Spy), and David Janssen (The Fugitive) back in the day, and she sang lead vocals with the Teddy Bears on their 1958 smash hit “To Know Him Is To Love Him,” written and produced by Phil Spector who was also in the group. She knew everyone of a certain age in town and loved the attention Monday Night Live brought her way. We featured up-and-coming singers, hosted by a different celebrity guest host each week. We comped them and their friends for the evening in exchange for their hosting and giving short performances at no charge. They included comics Red Buttons, Fred Travalena, and Norm Crosby, and a host of singers including Freda Payne, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. of The Fifth Dimension, and Frank Sinatra Jr., who always received a standing ovation for his performance whenever he appeared. We also featured other personalities who just wanted to be on stage, such as “Worst Dressed” columnist Mr. (Richard) Blackwell and super-agent Jay Bernstein.
Whereas Monday evenings had been slow, now with Monday Night Live they became packed. It was a very successful promotion, but one that took an enormous amount of organization to pull off each week. A few months into it, I got a call from Alan (A.K.) Kaufman, one of the owners of the China Club in New York and Los Angeles, famous for its once-a-week LA Celebrity Rock Jams. He asked me if they could move the very hot Monday Night promotion at The China Club to Tatou. Monday at the China Club was the hottest scene in Hollywood, so of course I said yes. I figured they would start at 10:00 p.m. and I’d cut back Monday Night Live by half an hour, and Tatou would have two evening seatings.
It turned out that putting two concepts together on the same night was an impossibility. The patrons seated at dinner for the Monday Night Live show didn’t want to give up their tables once they saw the huge crowd from The China Club impatiently waiting. They sensed something cool was about to happen and wanted to be a part of it. The first night we tried it the celebrity guest host for the early evening show was actor /comic and brother of Michael Douglas, Eric Douglas. Eric refused to end his act at the agreed upon time and kept telling bad jokes. So A.K., the China Club’s engineer, cut Eric’s sound, and Eric created a scene, throwing a very public temper-tantrum in which he threatened to sue everyone within earshot. Eric appeared to be high and was totally out of control.
The new late-night rock concept with celebrity artists sitting in and performing was a huge success, and the following week I moved Monday Night Live to Tuesdays. From then on, the Monday China Club was not only the best night of the week but also the hottest night in Los Angeles. The coolest entertainment industry crowd fought for tables and, unbeknownst to me until I recently interviewed her, my reservationist the gorgeous blond bombshell, Gail Evertz, who ran the evening for me, made a fortune in tips doling out the key booths.
Besides the booths and tables, the bar scene was standing room only.
Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, a founding member of Steely Dan, put together a six-piece revolving band composed of some very well-known musicians and artists like Graham Nash, Billy Preston, Dave Mason, Gary Busey, Smokey Robinson, Tom Jones, Billy Idol, Lou Rawls, and many others over the years. In itself a great show, it read like a who’s who of the music industry. The club was always packed with major stars like Jack Nicholson, Sly Stallone, and Denzel Washington, agents, managers, and record label executives, including Interscope founders Ted Field and Jimmy Iovine. Anna Nicole Smith was known to leave her young son Daniel in the car with her chauffeur while she partied with Sly and others, which was disturbing to our hostesses. It was a major industry scene and everyone table-hopped until 2:00 a.m. when we had to make last call. The key bartender on Monday was Cher’s handsome young boyfriend, Rob Camilletti, and the girls flocked to him. Christa Miller and other future TV stars were often the door people designated to deal with potential troublemakers and to keep the wrong people out. The crowd was phenomenal.
The green room where the artists hung out in preparation for their performance was sometimes a crazy drug scene, with A.K. from the China Club providing coke and Tatou providing plenty of free alcohol. On one occasion, it got out of control when Billy Idol exposed himself, threw up, and passed out, forcing us to call the paramedics.
During the other two weeknights I created a number of Las Vegas-type shows, including a Brazilian Samba Revue called the “Girls from Ipanema” starring Christiane Callil. She was surrounded by five hot half-naked girls and two guys, all dancing and wearing vibrant costumes and feathers. On the weekends we continued to have the best in blues bands attended by a very upscale Los Angeles crowd. Tatou remained the most popular place in town until we moved to larger facility in 1995.
Me (right) with Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, at Tatou Los Angeles.
My life, though interesting and exciting, soon became an exhausting commute with a week in Los Angeles followed by a week in New York at Tatou. However, even when I was in New York, which was more or less running itself with my brother Alan watching the purchasing and the money, I was being harassed by the Beverly Hills patrons. At around 9:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, I would get frantic calls about who should get which booth. Reservationist Gail Evertz, who has gone on to become a vice president at Guggenheim Partners in New York, organized who got what tables during the day. She was smart, tough, and knew how to handle Wendy Stark, Victoria McMahon, Barbara Davis, and others of the like. But they could be unrelenting.
People threw the weight of their clients, famous parents, spouses, or exes around to get their way.
I had left Mimi in charge of these social matters, but she was too easily intimidated to deal with it, so I ended up settling petty disputes on the phone from New York most nights. Mimi would call me in New York, desperately trying to head off the clashes that came with Hollywood egos. Among others, Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee used to push Mimi around, using the Hollywood/Beverly Hills mantra, “Don’t you know who I am?” Having the “right” booth at Tatou became a nightly issue of critical importance. This is what I ha
d to hear in the nightly phone calls from LA: “Victoria McMahon has a booth but Barbra Streisand wants it. I could ask John Paul DeJoria to move, but he’s bringing Wolfgang Puck. Desi’s in the kitchen drinking because Suzanne Pleshette accused him of putting garlic in her food again.” I would respond, “I don’t care if Desi does have a ten-percent interest in Tatou...he knows not to put garlic in Suzanne Pleshette’s food!” It went on and on—night after night.
Finally, I had some of the banquettes torn out and added five booths so we had nine in total, which solved the key problem of where VIPs were seated. This went on for over a year until I finally decided I couldn’t be in both places full-time and keep my sanity. When it came to New York, I’d been there, done that. In the thirty years that I spent in New York as an adult, I did everything one could do—owned every kind of club, every kind of restaurant, been to every kind of show, opera, museum, ballgame, every kind of everything! LA was a new adventure and it wasn’t like moving to a small town. To me, LA felt like a West Coast–version of New York. The buildings weren’t as tall and there weren’t as many of them, but it called to me as it did to many back in the day when the saying went: “Go west, young man, go west.”
Chapter Thirty-Four:
The Next Episode
I moved to Los Angeles. I wanted to be with Mimi full-time, and I was hooked on the outdoor lifestyle. In support of that lifestyle, Mimi and I bought a home in the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu at the center of a system of hiking trails called “The Backbone.” We took in a loveable female wolf-shepherd in hopes of keeping the coyotes at bay. We named her Harper after actress Tess Haprer, who originally found the dog. Unfortunately, predators got our two cats before Harper took over.
A Japanese investment group had become so taken with Tatou in New York and Los Angeles that they flew Mimi and me out for a weeklong stay at the elegant Okura Hotel in Tokyo to discuss arrangements for opening a Tatou in the Roppongi neighborhood. Tatou Tokyo opened in 1994 and was successful for more than twenty years and described as “the hot spot for the young and hip. A restaurant that changes into a bar each night at 10:00 p.m.”
Inside Studio 54 Page 32