♪ >> anthony: hi, i'm anthony bourdain. for those of you tuning in to see "parts unknown," i've got something even better planned for you -- well, almost. a special film about the most important chef in america that maybe you never even heard of. he revolutionized the american restaurant experience. he was the uber celebrity chef, and then he disappeared. join me as we explore the life, times, milestones, and mysteries

of "jeremiah tower, the last magnificent."

>> jeremiah: i have to stay away from human beings because somehow i am not one. everything that is real for me is what is hallucination to others. the hardest thing about life is having to face the terrible reality that every day is not to be like one's dreams and hopes of what some future day might be. let the flesh grow old, crumble.

what are my great expectations and what have i done? >> martha: most people would not know who jeremiah tower is, and sadly. he certainly is considered, in my book anyway, a father of the american cuisine.

>> james: during the '80s and early '90s, jeremiah tower was one of the major names in this country. he was on the front of magazines. he was going all over europe. >> mario: the very first thing i heard about after i heard about chez panisse was jeremiah tower. he was the darling, the glamour puss, the sexy guy, the smart guy, and the innovative chef that became something that was what everyone wanted to know about. >> ruth: in the '70s, alice waters opened chez panisse. you cannot begin to understand the impact on the food landscape. >> anthony: 1972, jeremiah tower walks into chez panisse. everyone, reluctantly or not, would have to agree that he put the place on the map. jeremiah tower's menus made chez panisse the place that everybody wanted to go. >> anthony: a complete

reevaluation of not just american food and ingredients, but food. >> mario: but at the end of the day, he transcended that. he became something bigger than chez panisse, in my opinion. and god bless chez panisse's little heart, but stars was infinitely more important of a restaurant to me than chez panisse was. >> ruth: jeremiah, in many ways at stars, defined what a modern american restaurant could be. >> mario: that was when the restaurant tour became sexy. that's when the chef came out of the dining room. that's when the energy became as important as the food. >> martha: there weren't restaurants that looked like that before. >> ruth: it was a game changer. >> anthony: in my view, we should know who changed the world. we should know their names. >> regina: it was just odd that he sort of was so -- burned so bright, and then just

disappeared. you couldn't pick up a book at one point that wasn't a collection of great chefs of america, he was right there, and then he's gone. it's strange. >> john: all i knew about where he was or what he was doing was just hearsay. >> jonathan: jeremiah just left. it was like crumbs of this story of jeremiah everywhere. >> ken: i hadn't even thought about him in years and years and years. i'd heard stories about him living in mexico or something. >> wolfgang: did you hear from jeremiah? everybody said, "no, i didn't hear from him. i think he's in mexico. i think he's rebuilding houses, god knows what," except what he was supposed to do was run a restaurant being a chef. >> jonathan: who is the -- who is this person, this jeremiah person? >> james: i've known jeremiah 40 years. i'm one of his oldest friends, yet i don't know jeremiah. nobody knows jeremiah. >> anthony: you know, there's a

private room, there's a locked room inside jeremiah tower. i don't -- i sure haven't been there. i don't believe many people have. >> jeremiah: hallucinatory light. so the kind of day one cannot tell the past from the future. >> jeremiah: who said escape is not beneficial? there were several things that i fell in love with on that beach. that moment, that afternoon, i was completely free. there was no one to say no.

it was a family vacation in the great barrier reef. i had wandered off by myself. i saw this great big fisherman, so i went over and said hello. he made a fire. i remember sort of being fascinated, too, by the knife. i didn't wield the knife, but i sort of, you know, touched his hands while he was holding the knife, as he instructed me to. and we cooked the barracuda. i remember it was a very exotic smell, and the smoke from the fire and the sizzling skin on the barracuda. he'd taken some things from the jungle and rubbed them all over it. i don't know what. by that time it was night, and

when you're by yourself and you're 6 or whatever it was -- i don't think i'm making it up -- that i still remember thinking, "well, where are my parents and maybe i'll never see them again." and he was full of stories about aborigines and the jungle and the fish and the birds and everything. then it became sort of birds and bees. and then, he said, "and we're going to cook -- eat some lizard." at which point, he said, "and of course, you know, what about your little lizard?" and he took me into the bushes and showed me my little lizard and told me what they were for -- what it was for. so i said, "oh, lizard." and then he said, "we're going to eat some iguana.

you'll catch an iguana." and i'm thinking, "my little lizard? and we're going to eat an iguana?" i mean, it -- you know, in a 6-year-old brain, in some twisted way, it all became one. and it -- it was just like, you know, some big stamp on my brain. but then he took me back to the hotel where my parents were having cocktails. they were like, "oh, how charming. you know, he spent the day at the beach. thank you, nick, and all that." and i was just astonished that i could've been gone for all those hours, and that was the only comment. i suddenly went, "hey, wait a minute. you know, i'm on my own here. um, i better take care of myself." you know, the worst thing that ever happened to me was that i, you know, wasn't an orphan. >> gregg: there was a nerve that one couldn't touch with jeremiah. those sad places were places that he kept very well hidden. and some people who touched it lost him at that moment.

anyone who tried to delve deeper into those -- those sad places, those hurtful places was not welcome. i think it must've grown from that childhood experience, and maybe a sense of, uh, of rejection and sadness that he simply didn't want to face. >> jeremiah: somebody asked me, recently it was my father -- like i said, he was a prick. a complicated guy. basically, my father and i couldn't stand each other. it wasn't just the mistresses and all that sort of thing. i didn't like him because he put my mother down so much. he put her down tremendously. my mother was also a roaring alcoholic and she was a very talented, very artistic woman. a great cook, but you know,

destroyed herself with alcohol. >> alexandra: jeremiah and our dad came from a family of three. there was mary, the oldest sister, and then my father, jonathan, and then the youngest, jeremiah. >> peter: not super close. i think they were kinda spread out. >> alexandra: it was this fine line between deep respect for their parents, fear, and then sadness. their parents had a lifestyle and a way of doing things, and the children just were kind of brought into that. the grandness, grand palaces and grand hotels and servants and grand food and privilege. >> peter: elaborate, elegant trips that were long. the photo of them on the -- i think it was the "queen mary," looks like they're getting onto the "titanic" in the upper-class section. there was this air of fancy

trips that seem to have been lost in this day and age. >> jeremiah: it wasn't just the card with "master tower" on the deck chair that absolutely impressed me. apart from the rumble of the ships engines and the wind rushing by, that was about the only noise. the sound of the cup, as he put it on the saucer and handed it to me. and he said, "consumme?" and there i was, in the cold air, with this sort of ocean spray and the clouds ripping by, feeling a little queasy. and i drank this clean, meaty broth and felt absolutely a new

person. it made me fall in love immediately with first class. >> michael: well, the childhood was a fascinating one because they exposed him to culture around the world, to travel at a very high level, at a glamorous level. >> jeremiah: i've been a gypsy all my life. i mean, we -- i moved from the united states when i was 4 or 5, went to australia and then we went to england and i went to school in france, and then back to the united states. by the time the '50s came around, the early '50s, you know, i'd been in trains and cars and planes. i mean, my father was providing all this amazing travel, i mean, the kind of pan american flights, you know, first class. we got all dressed up.

all these ships going around the world. but when we were traveling, i s left by myself. >> jeremiah: there would be a whole section of cold food, cold salmon, cold partridge, cold pheasant, galantines of rabbit and on and on and on, almost anything in aspic. but of course, that was one of 10 or 12 sections on the menu. the rack of lamb called guards of honor. there was always lobster. i would sit there and i would order and i would eat. there was nothing else to do. i couldn't play shuffleboard. you know, running through a maze, that's what it was like to look at the menus. but off in the distance, i could see this great big, vast croquembouche, you know, profiteroles filled with caramel cream with spun sugar all over it. from early on, i think food was really my best pal, my

companion. >> james: what was missing, i think, was that link that a parent has got to have with a child, if the child is going to be what we call normal. and i don't think jeremiah ever had that. >> jeremiah: the night i went down to the dining room at the hyde park hotel, we'd been there a couple of months or something, and my parents, oddly enough, were in the dining room. and i sat down, and they sort of looked at me, and one of them said, "you know, what are you doing here?" and i said, "i live here." you know? and they looked at each other, and each thought the other one had put me in school. >> jeremiah: my parents were always doing something else, but the richness of what was put in its place, meaning spending three months in my own suite at the hyde park hotel, i much preferred the hotel room to my parents for sure, you know?

much. you are the king and you're in your own kingdom. lonely? no. alone? yes. the finest times in my life were in grand hotels. i wasn't allowed down in the bar and all that sort of thing, but the dining room and the upstairs and my room and the corridor, that was my dominion. you know, i was in charge. but what was really much more fascinating was going to the kitchen. all these pots and the heat and the steam and the smells. oh, what's that? what's that? what's that? you know, where's that coming from? it was exciting.

the staff adopted me. those were my favorite times. those were the favorite things in my life. before i read books, i read menus. now the radish -- the most beautiful radishes in the world. to me, menus are a language unto themselves. i've been collecting and reading them since i was 10, composing and acting them out since i was a teenager. they spoke to me as clearly as any childhood fantasy novel. [ jeremiah speaking spanish ] [ market seller speaking spanish ] >> jeremiah: reading an old menu slowly forms in my mind's eye its era, the sensibility of the restaurateur or the chef, even the physical details of the dining room. i can picture the guests, even when i don't know who they were.

sometimes, i can conjure up an entire evening, a three-act play, orchestrated around the food. and from my own past, it's the menus and the food that are the fixatives for the memories. when i think again about one of my mother's summer garden party menus, the whole day is conjured up. i can see everyone who is there. my mother loved, like all her friends, to drink. the martinis would start way before the food was finished. and at one point i'd realize, "uh-oh, mom's drunk." i thought, "oh my god, there are going to be 150 people here." and the food's not going to be ready.

so i would jump in. i'm 11 years old or 12 years old. i would jump in and finish off this grand display and a grand menu of food, the salmon, which have to be finished poaching and skinned and covered with mayonnaise and decorated, hulling the strawberries and tossing them in red currant jelly. and that was probably shame that started my cooking career, because i just couldn't conceive of that party going wrong. people got well fed. my mother, you know, was a hero again, a wonderful party. uh, i'd privately saved the day, which only the kitchen staff knew about. i'm not sure my mother even knew it, but she must've wondered where the food did come from eventually. >> sharon: i think perfection was something that he thought would bring him the love that i don't think he got from his parents.

>> jeremiah: my whole life was a bit schizophrenic. you have to understand, my childhood was split between gulag, boarding school, camp and, you know, my mother's at home entertaining. winter in boarding school in england, there's no heat. the showers you take are cold. everything is gray. the only exotic experience you could possibly have was rubbing up against somebody else. everything is stripped of luxury or exoticness intentionally by the english in those days thought this built character. the whole english structure was about manners, and that's the

way my family was. but at the same time, i was the same person who was a complete outlaw. fear, nameless and gray, having no shape, since it is all encompassing, a ship in fog. the pain of realizing the need for secrecy, and that i was forever to live behind a wall, in a closet, doing wrong, but not wrong. >> michael: i knew he was gay when we started rooming together. those were days when you had to be very careful as a gay man. you had to be careful about the law and the police and disapproval in general. it was a complicated double life that most of the gay people i knew led. i said to him finally, "jeremiah, you don't need to be secretive with me." and i think that relieved an

enormous amount of tension between us. i don't know if anyone straight had ever addressed that with him before. >> john: well, the first impression one had of jeremiah was that he was one of the more glamorous people. he was avidly interested in food and cooking. and he was a very good cook. we learned that very early. he used to make things, even during freshman year out of a hot plate and his refrigerator in his dorm. >> jeremiah: looking back, my family's plan was that i would just end up at harvard because that was the answer to everything. "you're a harvard man." and for my grandfather, who went to harvard, and his father and my father all went to harvard. i thought, "well, i'll do architecture, maybe." it was really in senior year, when we moved off campus that i started seriously cooking for my friends.

i'd been reading, of course, escoffier since i was 16 or something. so i decided i'd just start at the beginning of "ma cuisine" and cook my way through it. this is the dried hibiscus blossoms, a typical drink of the yucatan. and i turn it into a sweet sauce for dessert. >> cathy: michael and jeremiah had no money. and therefore went shopping in kinds of things that i'd never eaten, like kidneys and hearts and things like that that were very cheap, and made the most fabulous meals. it was this world opening. >> michael: we improvised in the kitchen, which was -- had almost no equipment at all. with amazing guests, artists passing through cambridge. and i remember allen ginsberg and robert creeley and others. >> jeremiah: but i never cook for one person. i always cook for about ten.

why cook one little octopus when you can cook four and then have it for a few days? >> michael: remember, this were turbulent times. we were very, very alienated from the war mongering and the cultural heritage of the 1950s. that was represented to jeremiah by the food that was put in front of us in various institutions. >> jeremiah: it was the height of the student revolution, and all of my friends kept saying, "jeremiah, you know, one of these days, you have to get off your ass and become a revolutionary." and i said, "i'm too busy cooking." i spent a lot of time, between cooking, i was bailing them out of jail -- painters, dancers, sds. bringing them back to the apartment, what do i do?

open champagne and eat smoked salmon. that was my revolution. >> michael: to think back about jeremiah's company and these occasions, he was always interested in enhancing the moment, throwing the dice and saying, "well, if we're going to have this kind of an evening, let's make the company audacious. let's make the food audacious. let's make the conversation audacious." >> jeremiah: and the subject of molotov cocktails came up and i had said, "well, i know how to make one of those." we had dom perignon and we emptied the bottles and we filled them up with gasoline. and i tore up an old hermes scarf and stuffed it in the top. we put them in a tiffany's shopping bag, hauled them off to the architecture school. i threw one against the brick wall. it bounced and came right back at me. and you know, rolled down the street into the storm drain and exploded. and i said, "that's enough for me. let's go back to dinner." >> michael: i think the fact

that he could find salvific celebratory moments in his childhood, little memorable moments, when things would go right, and i think it was his urge always to try to recreate in the present, the feel of those moments, a kind of shangri-la that in his future life, he would always be looking for. he was always looking for some utopian possibility of living, because that's what kept the darkness away. >> jeremiah: somewhere in graduate school, my head went underwater and i was interested

in building underwater structures. >> cathy: jeremiah loved swimming, loved the water. jacques cousteau was one of his heroes. and so, his idea of building underwater was doing something that was radically new. >> michael: it was visionary fantasy, and in a way, it's very interesting, because he, i think, looked at the profession and said, "well, if i'm going to do this, it's got to be something unheard of." and -- >> cathy: and almost impossible. >> michael: and almost impossible. >> cathy: i think that's part of it. he did a sort of multimedia presentation, and then it completely fell on deaf ears. it was met with absolute, everything from scorn to boredom. it really was a flop. simon and garfunkel ]

the volkswagen atlas. with available pedestrian monitoring. life's as big as you make it.

>> jeremiah: the last day of school, my allowance stopped. you know, i was 30 years old or 28, 29 years old, never worked. you know, so i was broke. july 5, 1970 -- trip across america.

america is proving too much for me, so i when i get a whiff of the west, i decide to take some drugs. 2:00 a.m. and approaching houston, full of mescalito and the stars are as fantastic. my imagination explodes, especially on hash. >> cathy: he really did not know what to do. and we had gotten to know alice waters. we were sitting around in our apartment, and jeremiah was there and saying, "i'm going to go to hawaii and maybe i'm going to go cut vines in the napa valley, do something." and i said, "you know, what you're really good at is cooking. why don't you just call alice? we know she's looking for someone to work with. just go over there." >> andrew: one of the things i think is really important to think about when talking about the '70s and '80s in this

country is how very disconnected, uh, what was happening in american restaurants was. a lot of the newspapers around the country did not have food sections. people were by and large very unaware of who the chefs were. there was no internet. there were not even fax machines at the beginning of this story. so, a lot of what happened in individual cities and individual areas was very self contained. and then, in the bay area, up in berkeley, was this little restaurant called chez panisse that opened in 1971. it had a bumpy road at the beginning, but over time, became, for a number of reasons, a very important restaurant in this country. >> jeremiah: i didn't really know anything about chez panisse in berkeley when michael palmer saw the ad in the newspaper.

he showed it to me and said, "go do it." well, if i hadn't been so broke, i would never have paid any attention. so when i landed in the entrance to the kitchen door, applied for a job at chez panisse in berkeley, it was alice waters' little dream restaurant. >> alice: it has to be a lot of fun, and that's why we always have had music and dancing and people eating with their hands and very -- a lot of informality. >> ken: a bunch of these berkeley students, kinda hippies, you know, it was a place for like, poetry readings. it was a coffee house, you know? there were no chefs involved early on. alice was -- her boyfriend was a film guy. and, you know, she'd been to france a couple of times. >> ruth: she had had this epiphany. she had been to france. she had eaten in all these little bistros. she had fallen in love with the food. basically, it was just, "i want to make this little restaurant for my friends." >> john: she was not a scholar of cooking in the way jeremiah

was. i mean, jeremiah used to love reading ancient cookbooks and treatises on food. alice was more of an instinctual cook. ♪ [ cheers and applause ] >> james: i don't think those people knew what they were doing. they were all on drugs. that scene is chez panisse, my impression of it was it was really nothing but a hippie, drug-ridden explosion in a playpen. >> ruth: we were just as politically earnest about food as people who had stopped the vietnam war could possibly be. and into this mix walks this incredibly handsome guy with a -- he's tall, he wea dramatic clothes. he has an english accent. he is the most romantic figure, whose attitude about food is "throw out the books, we can do anything. let's have a great time."

>> anthony: 1972, jeremiah tower walks into chez panisse. um, you know, it sounds like a joke, actually. >> alice: do you smell something burning? the usual restaurant nightmare. >> jeremiah: they said to me, when i got to the kitchen door, willy or somebody said, "no, come back tomorrow." so i went back and said, "no, i was supposed to be here at 6:00. you know, it's 6:10. i want my interview." and so, alice turned to me and said, "do something to this soup." and i tasted this -- it was a pot of soup like this, and i salted it and put some cream in it, and they were like, "wow. you better come back tomorrow." >> ruth: i mean, he became an accidental cook, really. um, he hadn't intended to be a chef, but sort of given the opportunity to walk into a kitchen and take it over, he kind of rolled up his sleeves

and said, "okay, i'm going to take all these memories that i have of eating in grand restaurants and try and translate it onto the plate." >> jeremiah: my first day on the job, i was left alone in the kitchen. there was no alice, nobody, except for this beatnik drummer, willy bishop. he knew all the levels, draw chalk on the soup, a huge pot of soup and say, you know, "make soup to here," that kind of thing. i also loved the food that chez panisse represented, which was a little local south of france bistro, you know, selling vermouth and roast chicken. so i -- that wasn't enough for me. endless inspirationally -- alice b. toklas cookbook. it also goes everywhere with me. an ancient version of it. very quickly at chez panisse, i realized that everything that had gone before in my life -- menus, all the experiences with food and hotels and travel,

cookbooks, my education -- were finally going to come into play. inspirational. >> michael: he began to mix and match from the different cultures he'd been exposed to, to make a kind of audacious experiment. >> jeremiah: i thought the food could be a little more dramatic, so i started doing special nights, special food, and making it more alluring, more dramatic, more theatrical. >> jean-pierre: right, the creation and the menu was a kind of theme. it was a, again, the french chefs on the -- escoffier. i mean, we did a week of escoffier, which was a nightmare in the kitchen. >> alice: hurry, hurry, hurry. not even to the entrée yet. >> jean-pierre: it was so hard, it was so complex, so difficult to execute that, you know, i remember at the end of the week i was completely wiped out. >> chef: uh, can we have the crudite? the crudite? >> jonathan: jeremiah imposed

this sort of almost traditional french classical identity to chez panisse. and i think jean-pierre, too, coming in at that time. the two of them together kind of pushed chez panisse up to this level, and then from there, it exploded. >> jean-pierre: that was an adventure. every night was an adventure. cooking with a full verdi or opera, you know, full blast in the kitchen and drinking champagne. i mean, it was so -- i mean, it was really -- i mean, far out. i mean, you know, it was trying a lot of experimenting, a lot of things. for me, it was really a revelation because i was cooking by the rules or with the rules and he told me how to just forget about the rules. >> jeremiah: did i ask them if they wanted to go that way? no. it's just, you know, i mean, we've got a few hours on sunday to come up with menus for five days, do the shopping list, make

the call. i was just doing what i thought we had to do. >> sharon: when he got his stride, i'd say, and he was doing these incredible dinners based on, you know, 100-year-old recipes, it was as if he appeared on the scene and sprung forth like, you know, from zeus' head or something, fully formed. >> jeremiah: may 5, 1974. feeling my powers at last, ones i have always known were there, but could never feel. i can spend them graciously now they are found.

pulling all the strings of those about me, a central giver and taker away. >> jonathan: alice had a knack of picking out people that were really amazing for chez panisse, and one of those amazing people was jeremiah. he happened to be heads above the rest of the crowd. she was willing to support him on anything he wanted to do. you know, alice, i think at that time, was in love with jeremiah. >> james: i will never fully understand their relationship. you know, they actually had an affair, which flummoxed me. i'd say, "jeremiah, why?" >> gregg: jeremiah was an irresistible person and had many affairs with people over the course of his life. >> ruth: i just remember thinking, "he is the coolest guy i've ever seen," and then looking around and realizing that virtually everyone in that room, male or female, wanted to sleep with him. you know what he was like? it's like everybody else in the room was gray and he was glowing red. i mean, he was just, just, uh, so juicy and sexy and

intriguing. >> clark: it was the early '70s and we were a little bit tipsy and a little bit high, you know what i mean? everybody's really cheery. and the restaurant at chez panisse was a very sexy place. i mean, people were flirting across a crowded prep table. >> ruth: a great line is just alice going, "i can't believe he doesn't like women." and i -- uh, she was not alone. i think there were a lot of women who couldn't believe he didn't like women. >> sharon: i think in the beginning alice thought if she could sleep with him, she'd make him straight. and the rest of us used to just laugh at the flirting. but then, the flirting would still go on and it would create this marvelous dynamic in the kitchen.

>> jeremiah: i was working 90 hours a week at chez panisse. you have no time to go out trolling for, you know, a sex partner, so you just sleep with each other. i mean, it's convenient. you've had a bottle of musigny, why not? >> cathy: willing to sleep with anybody, not just men. he was pretty open and pretty magnetic. the world's your oyster, you know? >> john: they would fight and bicker and then they would make up. >> jonathan: there's a muse situation here. it's a nebulous muse that might've transferred back and forth between the two of them, one feeding off the other kinda thing. >> clark: there was great sexual tension between them, and i do know from experience in restaurants that can be great, valuable fuel, unless it explodes. and i think that it did both of those things. that's right. t-mobile's got your netflix subscription covered... ...when you get a family plan with two or more lines. really? that's incredible. so go ahead and watch however you want. you're messing with me, right? all at no extra charge. this is awesome! another reason why t-mobile is america's best unlimited network.

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regions of france. and i had been doing festivals for brittany and champagne. and then it just suddenly made sense to me, um, to get rid of france. why don't we do a celebration of the region called california? so i wrote the menu, the california regional dinner. that was all in english, which was the first time. and we did california wines, which was the first time that we had focused on those completely and put on the dinner. >> jean-pierre: it was all local ingredients. i mean, it was starting to name the farm, starting to name the famers, and also using everything we could find. >> jeremiah: and the press jumped all over it and the "wine spectator" said that, "this was the match that started the fire of the revolution that then occurred in america called, you know, the new american

cuisine." >> mario: the first thing they did is celebrate local ingredients. that was, above all, the most important thing is to say, "listen, our scallops are better than the scallops in france. our oysters are at least as interesting as the oysters from wherever in france." and when you went to the fancy french restaurants in the '70s, you were still getting dover sole from dover. that was the most important thing. jeremiah brought petrale sole to the table with the same reverence and the same celebration of its unique location. and that's where the movement changed. that's when suddenly everyone realized, "we don't have to apologize that our artichokes come from castroville. we don't have to apologize that we're using dungeness crab. we actually should be celebrating them and high-fiving everybody." and that movement was exactly that. and it, to a certain extent, is still moving around the country

>> anthony: our stuff is good, too, and it deserves to be named and attributed and sourced in much the same way that they source and identify french cheeses, wines, or other products. he wrote menus that sold that notion, that confidently said, "american product, [ bleep ] yeah." >> jeremiah: that was so successful that, you know, i took the bit between my teeth and ran. >> sharon: it caused tension when jeremiah changed the type of food that was being served. yes, it did. it made him more in control of what was being served, and always, it was alice's restaurant. but he was the chef and it brought new people in. it brought reviews. >> jeremiah: the problem was, it wasn't making any money. i mean, it was broke. you need to fill the restaurant with people who wouldn't complain that a four-course menu costs $6.50. i have to find the public that understands. that was basically my feeling. and that's why, you know, i wrote to james beard and said, "you've got to come and see us."

and of course, he had huge press coverage, you know, with his syndicated newspaper columns. so he was very powerful. and he loved to help out young chefs. if they were male and cute, he liked to help even more. chez panisse became nationally famous because james beard said it was, of the four restaurants in america he loved, this new place called chez panisse was one of them. well, then all hell broke loose, you know? >> sharon: the restaurant changed from the berkeley people to the wine people, and then to, as someone said, the white patent-shoed people. >> andrew: it got a little bit away, i think, from what the original vision of that restaurant was for alice waters and a number of the other people involved with it. and it became a little grander, maybe for some of them, a little more intellectualized than they would've liked. it definitely became more expensive than they thought it would be. >> clark: alice and her egalitarian bohemia wanted to gather rosebuds as they lay and put them in a lovely dish and

drizzle some honey on it and eat it. and jeremiah tower wanted to put on whites, have a glass of champagne, have his nostrils flare, you know, and have the spoons and the whisks at the ready. >> alice: when people were flying in in learjets for chez panisse, i mean, it -- you knew that it'd gotten -- it was time to stop. it's one of those uncomfortable situations when you've asked people for help and they gave you too much help. >> james: i've often heard him say his philosophy is, "i aim for the crown, but i always know the guillotine is in sight." jeremiah left panisse and went on to create his new life. >> jeremiah: they needed a story, so they started to make a war between us in the press, but it just wasn't there, until she showed me the proofs, the galleys of the first book, "the chez panisse cookbook." and she had taken all my menus,

all the dinners, all the special events that i had dreamed up, written the menus for and cooked, and said that she did it. so my name was at the beginning of the book in the acknowledgments, "thank you, linda. thank you, jeremiah. thank you, jason. thank you." i can still feel the outrage, you know? what do you mean thanks to jeremiah tower? >> james: i did a piece in "town and country" called "american cuisine comes of age." and i wrote about chez panisse and what was happening, you know, with alice waters and so forth. and i get this scathing letter in the mail from jeremiah tower. >> jeremiah: "dear mr. villas, i noticed in your very interesting article that you mention me as her peripatetic disciple. the her, of course, referring to alice waters. if you had done your homework, you would know that you have fit the shoe on the wrong foot, as

it were. and whereas i do not object to a little scandal, i am considerably sobered by the thought of what goes down in history. yours sincerely, jeremiah tower." >> jean-pierre: a lot of people ask me the question, who is the father or the mother of california cuisine? the question is not that simple. i mean, it's not. it's more complicated than that. >> andrew: you know, where he began and ended and where alice began and ended, it's something i think that people will probably debate forever, to some extent. >> jeremiah: should i have swallowed my pride about the whole thing of becoming a footnote and alice becoming the joan of arc of american cuisine? um, yes, but the pride is too big to swallow, quite frankly. i mean, no, i'm not going to do that.

why should anyone get away with never giving credit when it's due? >> man: his public fights with alice in print, in public, really did him much more harm. >> jonathan: i think there was a real feeling in our community that you know what? jeremiah, just shut up. >> ken: i sort of agree with jonathan waxman. if he hadn't gone to chez panisse for that job, you know, i don't know where he would be. >> ruth: and part of what's remarkable about her is that she could have a jeremiah walk into her kitchen and enable him. not everybody would've done that. >> clerk: and, you know, maybe the reason that more people don't know who jeremiah tower is, is because he was eclipsed by a lot of other people, who

were mad at him because he pissed a lot of people off. and so, as this story got told and retold, he kind of got left out of it. and that was partly his own doing. >> ken: what it became suited everybody and helped to make alice what she is today, but the idea that he was wronged in some kind of way, i mean, again, he left. use an over-pronounced whwashing techniquesurgery, for dramatic effect.

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>> anthony: welcome back. i'm anthony bourdain. tonight, instead of bringing you to "parts unknown," i'm introducing you to jeremiah tower -- the original celebrity chef who redefined not just america cuisine, but the entire american restaurant experience. everyone wanted to cook like jeremiah, be like him, sleep with him. so, why did he walk away from it all? and what happened when he tried to come back? stay with me for the remarkable conclusion of "jeremiah tower, the last magnificent." ♪ ♪ >> jeremiah: "if anything is worth doing," my hero lucius beebe once said, "it's worth doing in style and on your own terms, and nobody goddamn else's."

i want to be like him, the last magnificent, the randy and dandy boulevardier, the eminently polite, generous, witty and kind gentleman, who simply relished a civilized evening on the town over a hot bird and a cold bottle. >> james: lucius beebe was a very wealthy, uh, dandy from boston, kicked out of both yale and harvard, mainly for showing up dead drunk in the morning in a top hat and tails and a cane. went to new york and got a job as a journalist on the "new york herald tribune," i believe. and singlehandedly, that man created what was known as cafe society. >> jeremiah: his column in "gourmet magazine," called "along the boulevards,"

describes a life i want to recreate. i worship the photographs of gable, gary cooper, van heflin and jimmy stewart in white tie at romanoff's bar in los angeles. i want a place where the young princes of ken russell's "the music lovers" can rub elbows with bankers and dancers and musicians, where fur coats can be flung aside, with the seeming carelessness of dietrich onstage. in short, a place that is charming and perfect. >> james: jeremiah lives in a dream world. he lives in a pipe dream. he lives in an edwardian world. he lives, basically, in the 19th century. and this is part of that dream, i think that jeremiah had, that he created as a child. you know, having to protect himself and protect himself from life. that world of perfection that i think he came closest to

probably was stars. >> michael: stars, i think, was the embodiment of a vision that had been developing over time. very, very different from panisse. >> jeremiah: it reminds me of the first house i ever walked into in merida. well, this will be my sixth house, i think. and you can see it right away, exactly what you would do, because it's just telling you what to do. do a couple of renderings, put it on the market. >> john: at some point during the early '80s, jeremiah decided he wanted to open a restaurant in san francisco. and locating it in the civic center surprised me because it was a very long, drab, musty, horrible space. >> steven: stars was located in the middle of a block, right by city hall and right by where a lot of the city offices were. i remember him telling me that

he wanted people to go through this alley. and the alley was a mess. it was dirty. it was everything that the word alley means when you -- when you think of the word alley. there's people sleeping in the street. there's garbage blowing down it. it was -- it wasn't well lit. >> james: we all went over with these hard hats, you know, and go into this place. well, you wouldn't have believed it. there were rats, literally rats running around. and he had a cane, and i think bid was hitting a rat, you know? but i remember jeremiah with these investors, you know, and i remember him pulling out a piece of sample carpeting that had stars on it, you know? and pulling out some tablecloths and some napkins, match covers. he already had this going in his brain, in this place, and we were saying, "this'll never work. there's no way that anybody could ever transform this into a great restaurant." stars was surrounded by vulgarity. people urinating out in the alley, drug dealers still out there, and so it didn't bother jeremiah. inside his little palace, he was

building this thing. >> jeremiah: september 1983. my choice of site is thought to be downright suicidal, but when i look at the mess of construction every day, i remind myself of the wonderful dignity of trains like the 20th century from new york to chicago, of what it was like to dine in those mahogany and nickel cars, as they flashed through the countryside of the united states, and of all my travels. >> gregg: stars was the ocean liner that jeremiah traveled on, not that he did any of that consciously, but he, i think, was recreating a childhood vision of what a restaurant could be, what a place could be where people wanted to come and be and dine and have those perfect experiences. >> james: and, of course, you went board the ship and you moved into a dream world. you completely blocked out reality.

>> tony: people would pull up and it'd be kind of a neighborhood where you would second guess yourself walking down the street. you'd pull up to these doors that had beautiful brass handles, star on them. you couldn't see into the restaurant, but you walked up this stairway and the dining room would be revealed to you with each step you took. people were transported from this kind of dirty, dusty alley up to this incredible dining room that just seemed like you were on another planet all of a sudden. >> steven: bam, the room opened up. big, long 80-foot bar, i think it was, was on your left. on the right, you had the open kitchen, all this activity. and everyone could see everybody come in.

>> ken: you could see everybody from everywhere. you could see every seat from every seat. >> john: the different elevation in dining areas. it was like a stage. >> martha: high ceilings, white walls, um, bright light, very glamorous. >> mario: 100 yards away, you could smell the magnificent fragrance of the wood-burning stove and the wood-burning pizza oven. >> steven: and you just went, "i'm going to have a great time now." >> mario: stars was a theatrical experience. stars was at once the symphony, at once the ballet, at once the most delicious thing you've ever eaten. but there was an energy to it. there was an excitement to the meal that was way beyond the food. suddenly, you're in a place where you're dying to be there. you're -- you're happy to be there and you're ecstatic about everything else, including your plate, but not only what's on your plate. >> ruth: this notion of the rest

of the restaurant that you're -- you're a part of a play and they are the other players are at the tables around you. it's a different kind of idea of what a restaurant can be. >> steve: the open kitchen, this idea that the chef and the cooks are on stage was really revolutionary at the time. >> mario: now you know where -- was, now you know where saute is, you know where grill is, and you can have favorites. and you see mark franz off in saute, you're like, "i know that guy. mark franz is on the line. i know exactly what the dish is going to be," so it empowered the customer to love and know the chefs as, like, little rock stars. >> tony: people thought, "oh my god, you can actually have a blast eating out," and it can be your entertainment for the evening, instead of having dinner and then going to the movies. your entertainment is having

dinner. >> mario: and watching the excitement of new dishes come on and watching whether they were complicated and had five different farms on one list or whether they were just one brush stroke that was something so remarkable and simple that it defied you in its purity. the language was very clear. the font was very straightforward and the menu was a pure inspiration. >> mark: it was always looking for that, but we always called it the note. we would go on trips and we would say, "have you heard, you know, have you, have you felt, have you tasted that note?" that's why chefs cook, is for that. >> mario: as a cook, he was a creator and a leader, but as an overall package, he was someone that so thoroughly understood and probably still understands the nature of the exchange between the restaurant and the customer. >> wolfgang: he knew every socialite in san francisco, everybody who was somebody who

came to san francisco had to go to stars. and jeremiah knew all of them. >> james: the great socialite, denise hale, was throwing incredible parties there, i mean, very highfalutin fancy dinner parties, night after night after night. >> mike: but of course, she brought in a large amount of business because if denise was there every night, everybody else had to be there every night. the countess of yugoslavia, baryshnikov. >> james: sophia loren was there, pavarotti was there, all the people in the opera world. >> steven: a lot of the politicians would come over from city hall, the chief of police, and they would be there at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning having a beer. >> mark: gorbachev. i cooked dinner for gorbachev. >> tony: run dmc and the beastie boys and their entourage come in and had everybody just going crazy. we didn't mind having punk rockers there. we didn't mind having spiked-haired people there. we didn't mind having, you know, the elite of the elite there

because everybody had their position in the restaurant. >> james: you know the ocean liners, you always had first class and cabin class. the thing about stars, it was just like that. >> tony: the socialites could look around and go, "oh look at, i'm mingling with regular people." and these edgy people could go, "oh look, i'm as comfortable in this environment as anybody else is." >> anthony: it mattered who else was there, what might be happening, what might happen. the restaurant as seen. >> mario: whereas the restaurants of the '50s and '60s, the bar was just a place where you had to wait. by the time stars became what it was, the bar was the central organism that emanated all the heat. >> tony: no matter who you were, you could see mayor willie brown at the bar. you could see a number of people at the bar. and then, regular joes sitting dispersed in between them. >> steven: after a while, when the regulars got really regular and everyone would have their

own seat at the bar, we started putting brass nameplates. >> jerry: my usual bar stool there was my brass plate. i go, "what the hell is this?" jeremiah was around with that little smirk. he was having his fun. uh, there, jerry matters. >> tony: one of the most fun times of the year was halloween at stars. literally the dining room was packed with people who knew that every drag queen in san francisco was going to walk through the dining room at stars and show off their outfit. >> ken: and it was dangerous and it was sexy and there was -- there were drugs around. and watching him night after night, stars was his kind of place. he was hosting a party and he was really damn good at it. >> clark: it was a party, but it was also a kind of hilarious ode to jeremiah by jeremiah. ♪

♪ >> john: he was the master of ceremonies. he was the ring master, and he enjoyed being someone who could play host to the gathering of rich and powerful and important or self-important people. >> jerry: i'm most amazed me that i know he spent a lot of time in the kitchen, and he got splattered with some food, he'd go down and change, because he'd come walking out around the crowd shaking hands, saying hello, being jeremiah. and, uh, always just looking so pristine. >> martha: totally in control. and you, of course, you loved that. you wanted to see him. you wanted to see who was touching your food, who was making it, and who was directing the rest of the guys in the kitchen. i think jeremiah was a celebrity chef. he was one of the first. >> alexandra: it was like a

conductor walking through with an orchestra, and that's what he would do. and he usually had a glass of champagne in his hand, and if he didn't, somebody brought it. literally was watching a superstar in his stature, in how he spoke with people and i just remember globs of people that wanted to try and get to him, you know, and then he would disappear into the kitchen, and then you kind of saw him doing this and doing that. >> clark: he was the first kind of chef in america to do something truly flat out self promotional. he was a part of that dewar's ad. he was a dewar's profile. this is about fabulous people and their fabulous lives and this is their scotch. and this was a chef? before this, you know, if you were a chef, your mom didn't tell anybody. >> ruth: it's the place where the chef and the restaurateur start trading places. >> anthony: you know, in the old days, you didn't know who the chef was. the chef was a servant. >> john: he was becoming a really well-known personality.

>> ken: i think what he really got was the idea that a restaurant is a work of art. it's a piece of art. it's an extension of yourself, of himself. >> jeremiah: obviously, i was drawing on all of my experiences over the world growing up. all had to be one experience. stars was like a rowboat. and the whole staff was in the boat. we're all pulling together. we're all going in the same direction. you knew exactly which direction you were going in and no one had to say anything. we had amazing teamwork, which meant that, you know, i could push it obsessively to the edge all the time.

you have to be a little bit obsessive to be a successful restaurateur, and i was as obsessive as anyone. >> james: i can see him night after night, always standing at the corner of the kitchen, like a great impresario, watching everything, every dish that came out of there, he'd see. every dish. >> mike: he had this air of authority about him. he would stand at the end of the bar, usually with a glass of champagne in hand, and survey all before him. >> john: jeremiah was fully at home at stars. tis is, i think, what he had aimed for all along. this was wholly his. >> mark: it's not real. it's just a -- it's fictitious. it's a painting. it's something out of a movie. i don't even vision reality, i envision the movie of it, because it's sort of romantically replayed in my mind, and i'm sure that's what most people think of, when they think of stars. [ sirens ]

>> mario: i don't know what went wrong. i was gone by that time, and i just remember going back, and it's as if you went to where the louvre was, and it wasn't there anymore. how did this go? >> john: after stars closed, he never made contact again. he really just disappeared. i don't even think any of us knew for sure what had happened at stars. at the time, i had always assumed it had to do with some kind of expression of that restlessness, where he could never be satisfied with what he had already done. but in this case, it was very clear that he had simply left, and he had left everyone behind.

>> james: i don't know. there's just so much hidden with jeremiah. it's taken me 40 years to learn these things. apparently, all hell was breaking loose in those restaurants. there were -- jeremiah said, "there are people out to get me," and there were people out to get him. he never talked about it. all of that was churning, festering inside of him. >> mark: to go out in that dining room every single night and face your worst demons is amazing. >> ruth: he -- i think created his own doom. >> michael: maybe it's for the best that he shed all of that over time. uh, if he's content, i certainly hope he's content with it. i'm not sure. >> mario: it is always with dismay when i see that jere's not on the scene right now. the cautionary tale, of course,

is, or the lesson, is you have to keep working. you must keep doing something or you will just eventually fade away. >> anthony: you know, j.d. salinger, did he ever write another book? really? it largely explains his immortality. there will always be people reading "catcher in the rye." if he'd written some really crappy book that let everybody down 30 years later, um -- i see nothing wrong with walking down the beach for the rest of my life with people wondering what it might've been like if i'd come back. >> gregg: whether that's all that's left to life for jeremiah, i don't know. i hope not. >> mark: it was him against the [ bleep ] world. still is. it still is him against the [ bleep ] world.

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>> andrew: november 3rd, all of a sudden there was a tweet from "the new york times" saying something to the affect of, "jeremiah tower announced as new chef at tavern on the green." >> florence: the story went up online on monday and all hell broke loose. nobody could believe it. this is so out of left field. >> man: people were buzzing about it and talking about it, and all the blogs were going crazy and twitter went kind of nuts. >> anthony: i mean, my first reaction was of course, "holy [ bleep ]." second was, "why?" why would jeremiah tower come to new york to work in one of the biggest, most thankless operations going, one that has

just had a high-profile opening that landed with a big, horrifying thud? >> andrew: here's a guy who's been basically out of the profession as a working chef for 15 years, never operated a restaurant in new york city. it just seemed incredible to me. it seemed like something you'd see in a movie, but would never happen in real life. >> florence: and yet, here he is, finally, coming to new york. i think you have to be excited. my hope is that it's going to be a homerun. do i think that will happen? i think -- i think there's a chance it will. >> ken: you know, stars was like the velvet underground. it wasn't really around long enough. it was only there, i don't know how long, but it wasn't ma -- very many years. and then, he kind of disappeared without a trace. there's clearly unfinished business. >> jeremiah: that quote from proust, "work while you still have the light." i wanted to see if my light was still on. if you had seen stars, then

you'd know what tavern has to become. this is a great theatrical setting. its bones are perfect, and i know exactly what we have to do. the big challenge at tavern is to bring it back to a place where everybody can enjoy it. >> andrew: so jeremiah has mentioned that back in the day when he was at stars, that he always thought of stars and tavern on the green as cousins, is the word he used, because they were both among the top grossing restaurants in the united states. they -- both places had sort of a grandeur to them. they were both very dramatic spaces. >> anthony: you know, back in its golden years, warner leroy owned tavern. he was this pt barnum like, uh, impresario. >> florence: it was a hub for events, but it was certainly not a place new yorkers went for dining. >> andrew: it was reopened with two restaurateurs from philadelphia at the helm, who had done nothing of a comparable scale. they brought in katy sparks, who's been a chef in new york for decades. >> florence: the bottom line is, the reviews were devastating. >> andrew: so now, here we have him coming to tavern on the

green, which is really rudderless without a chef at the helm the last two months. there is this very sort of sense of deja vu, although you're going back 30-something years. >> jeremiah: in a restaurant, everything has to be in balance, in sync, giving the same message, so everybody dive in and let's start cooking. somewhere out of my past was this feeling that the show must go on and it'd better be a damn good show. i've always been an obsessive person. i mean, when you really do something fantastic and it works beyond your dreams, there's no greater high. and then the monster is unleashed.

>> alexandra: too many new locations at the same time, so too many, too much, too soon, too fast. >> ken: i remember there was a stars palo alto and there was a stars cafe, and then he opened another building down the street. and then he was all over asia. and -- >> jerry: i honestly expected to see a ferris wheel on the corner, you know, jeremiah-land. >> ken: he was opening all these stars everywhere, you know, while the original stars was probably kind of falling apart while he was on a plane going off to the new stars. >> mike: we saw less and less of him, and that was also a change in, you know, because stars wasn't stars without jeremiah there, not quite. >> tony: you take such a strong personality out of the environment, none of us could mimic what he did, although all of us would love to be able to, we just couldn't. >> ruth: ultimately, restaurants are businesses. and it doesn't matter how brilliant your restaurant is, if it fails as a business, it fails. >> steven: you know, some people told me that jeremiah lost stars. he didn't lose stars. i think stars lost jeremiah.

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>> florence: he will edit. he will start by editing. he will take the dishes that he finds acceptable and get rid of

the real turkeys that are on that menu. >> jeremiah: the lobster in here and a little bit of caviar on top, and they'll pour the hot soup in at the table. >> mark: you have to be able to create a team, pull together a group of people that, one, know how to cook, two, understand what it is you want, and three, are able to make that happen. >> jeremiah: everybody taste, please, so that we know what the standard is. so this is our benchmark. okay? >> clark: when you think about all the famous chefs -- ducasse or robuchon, thomas keller -- none of those famous people could do tavern on the green. it has to be an american. it has to be somebody who's schooled in the old ways, but not stuck in them. it has to be somebody who will command great respect. and who else has that all together, plus the ability to do volume and to put on a show? jeremiah. >> andrew: whether or not the owners want that influence from

him beyond the kitchen, that relationship needs to be calibrated, you know, at every restaurant where the chef is not also the owner. >> jeremiah: why are these limes so nasty? dump them. horrible. that's unacceptable, guys. you can't, you can't -- >> bartender 1: no, no, of course, absolutely. >> jeremiah: you know what i tell the kitchen is, how much would you want to pay for that? >> bartender 1: i wouldn't pay for that. >> jeremiah: would you put it in your mouth? would you put it in your drink? >> bartender 2: no. >> jeremiah: we're asking people to pay for it, so -- but anyway, you know, you know this. >> andrew: when jeremiah opened stars, it was his baby. that being said, he's not the owner, but i think he is someone who definitely has ideas about what a restaurant should be, how the phone should be answered, how many flowers should be in the dining room, how the waiters should address their customers. >> jeremiah: you know, you have to put cocktail napkins down. when i said that the other day, the dining room manager said to me, "well, we'll bring it up at the next ops meeting."

so the ops meeting was five days in advance, then they'd have the meeting. then it would take a couple of days to memo it out and everything. i mean, what are you -- ten days to use the [ bleep ] cocktail napkins? no. no, no, no, no. i said, "do you have cocktail napkins?" "yeah, we have them." "get me the goddamn cocktail napkins on the table." tavern needs that kind of power in it. >> anthony: he's a control freak, as all the great chefs are. he can't stand in that dining room and look across the dining room and see some waiter with a -- with, you know, with a dirty jacket. that's going to hurt him. he's going to go home unsatisfied. it'll be eating at him all day. >> jim: we definitely were a little bit concerned about, can you work for two 50 year olds not from new york who, you know, are sort of the underdog in this whole thing? because if you can't, then that wouldn't work. as long as, you know, we all know the boundaries of who's doing what, and jeremiah has carte blanche in the kitchen, he

is our executive chef. and i think jeremiah understands that ultimately, david and i have carte blanche in the rest of the restaurant. >> jeremiah: a light gray outside, a damp, watery light. it is the opposite of willpower, how pasty the day is. the horror of mediocrity. anything better than falling into an abyss of slop. running a restaurant is difficult enough without people getting in your way. >> steve: jeremiah's partner at stars was doyle moon. he had a bit of a hostile streak in him, i think. >> sharon: the guy was a son of a bitch. i'm sorry. he just was. a cowboy, tough, too rich, and he didn't respect jeremiah. he was jealous of jeremiah's intelligence.

>> mark: he was the guy who built the restaurant. i don't know where he got the money. and then sat in the back and threw his two cents out constantly. jeremiah hated that. >> steven: at some point in time, someone must've talked sense into them about, this isn't doing anyone any good. lawsuits are heard flying around everywhere. and finally, they agreed they would do, uh, basically an auction. jeremiah won. he out poker-handed him. so he had stars all to himself with a very big, large loan to pay off. >> gregg: that side, the more maniacal side of trying to achieve something, a goal, a vision that he had began to make enemies out of people who had admired him and been attracted by his charisma. i think it's an egoism that is the egoism of an artist. an artist has a vision and nothing is more important than that.

>> samantha: he's been a great leader. everyone's been so excited about this new menu, so it's really exciting to see it come to fruition, and then also, to read a good review for it. >> samantha: it's from "the daily news" saying a drastic improvement. it's nice to see. it looks like things are turning around. >> jeremiah: what was the worst food in new york, according to the same reviewers, just got three stars, and they said it would be four stars if the waiters hadn't been inept. a blend of american bigness, new york authenticity, retro romance, and just a little fantasy to suit the still-magical surroundings. well, if i could write, i would've written that myself. >> customer 1: this is just great. >> jeremiah: fantastic. >> customer 1: great. >> jeremiah: thank you. >> customer 2: oh, how nice to meet you. >> jeremiah: nice to meet you. >> customer 4: thank you.

>> customer 5: glad you're turning it around. >> jeremiah: it's a pleasure. all right. >> customers: thank you. >> anthony: the beast, the religion of any restaurant, is consistency. the food has to be the same every single time. it has to be as good. that requires eternal vigilance, meaning the ability to stand in that incredibly busy kitchen with hundreds of meals going out all around you, and you're aware of every plate. you're looking at eyes in the back of your head. i detect a lamb chop that's not right. tavern on the green? we're talking thousands of

meals. it's impossible to make great food when you're doing the -- those kinds of numbers. it's a chef killer. >> jeremiah: you're burning that. you think you're going to use that? what's it for? >> cook: this is for the -- anything from this that i can salvage? >> jeremiah: no, you've burned it. i told you to keep your eye on it and you burned it. >> wolfgang: what you know when you run such a big restaurant, you need a lot of people to do their job just right. >> jeremiah: how could he be on that station and have no clue what he's doing? >> cook: actually, i don't know. >> jeremiah: the chef de cuisine had actually let him crash and burn, meaning he was put on a station, not shown how to do it, uh, didn't know what he was doing. and that's inexcusable. you're actually working against us all, because you are thinking you're working against me, and that includes everybody. >> anthony: i would go in, fire the entire top level. you know, anybody who's not a

loyalist is out. i can't believe you're listening to reasons why it didn't happen all day, especially in a place that size, where you're just hemorrhaging. >> jeremiah: a bad morning. >> cook: bad morning? why? what's up? >> jeremiah: lots of things. "the new york post," two stars. and obviously not as good as one could've hoped for, you know? "new chef hardly towering." so i'm better than katy sparks, but not that much better. "tavern on the green's menu has improved with its new chef." and then in the text, it tears it to pieces. could you give me a -- heat up a gratin. i want to taste it. >> florence: he's got ranks of critics waiting in the bushes to ambush him. he's going to have to face that. >> jeremiah: this got by everybody here. take that one back.

i want to see them cook a little bit more. >> anthony: if you're a food critic in new york, you're kind of not allowed to like tavern to start with. tavern will never be cool, ever. >> jeremiah: these look tired. they're horrible. look at that. anyone who read that review this morning will be looking at this dish and we're just producing the worst we ever have, so i'm drawing a line in the sand here, gentlemen. we are not going to prove that "the post" was right. >> mark: i hope they give him some time, because, you know, you can't just go in there and save the world all at once. it doesn't happen that way. it's going to take months. it could take years. >> jeremiah: re-plate this. >> man 2: the biggest problem is when people start to not believe you, then you're screwed 'cause it's just one person after another starts falling away. simon and garfunkel ]

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>> jeremiah: something is stale about this february weather. only old fates cling, still in my brain. learn to be silent.

>> gregg: he never could share the tough experiences, the hardest things in his life. he had been taught to be self-reliant when it came to the sadness in his life. the one moment that i'd stopped hearing from jeremiah was the end, when things began to crumble for him. >> steven: when the aids epidemic started and we all had a lot of friends and a lot of people that we lost to aids, and it was really scary because no one knew what was going on except for these people were dying and people that we worked with. >> crowd: fight back, fight back. >> mark: we had a waiter at stars who was phenomenal. rolando was always somebody who made the night good. well, eventually, he just wasn't the same.

there was no marked change, no difference in anything else, just attitude. and it became harder and harder, and he had less and less patience. so i don't remember how it happened, but i do know that jeremiah was really horrible about if you were not front and center in his world of making things happen, then you were persona non grata. i mean, you were like, okay, next. >> james: baby, this went to court. and it was ugly. but if he'd just stood up i think and said, "you're preaching to the choir. i am a very active gay man. i sympathize with this thing." to my knowledge, jeremiah never said that. >> mark: then he lost the suit. i don't know how that happened. he must've had a lawyer from hell. i have no idea. >> crowd: fight back, fight back. >> sharon: the act up people, a protest group, one night in the middle of service they came and jumped up on the bar yelling, screaming about how he was a gay man and he wasn't out and he

wasn't supporting what was happening. >> protestor: aids discrimination in this city will never be tolerated. silence equals death. you lie, we die. you lie, we die. >> sharon: at the same time, while they were protesting jeremiah, he was supporting two of his waiters that had aids and were dying, and he was paying for all of their medical expenses. i knew it because i wrote the checks. that really broke his heart, almost like the final straw. >> jeremiah: "you can't help hoping that jeremiah tower will rescue tavern on the green if you've ever seen a movie about an aging rogue coming out of retirement for one last heist, con, caper, battle, boxing match, or in this case, a 700-seat restaurant that

combines certain qualities of each of those things. the story and scenery are so perfect that somebody should really make a movie out of it. but right now, the fun stops when the food arrives." oh, this is just too good. friday morning, we had a meeting. i had all my files and all the menus. i'd seen the owner jim come in. i hadn't seen him since the review in "the new york times." and then he said, "you know, we've given you all the leeway because you didn't want to be micromanaged. and this is the result. so now, we have to actually monitor you and we're going to take charge of the food." i thought to myself, "really? these are the ones who asked me whether lamb had both white and dark meat." these are the people who are going to take over the food for [ bleep ] sake. i am sitting at the meeting thinking, "why am i listening to this crap? these people are losers." and i took my files and the garbage can was right there, and

i just threw them into the garbage can. i said, "oh, obviously, we're not needing these any time soon. if we can't improve this situation, then i'm not coming back." so then, i got a text from jim on sunday, the owner saying, "uh, are you quitting?" and i texted him back saying, "um, no, i'm not quitting. would love to make it work and i'm not quitting. jim, i am not quitting." the lawyers saying, they claim to be so befuddled by the whole thing, still in shock. so of course there's a problem. the same problems with alice, you know, and doyle. when there's something wonderful to be done, if you're not right there with me, then get out of the [ bleep ] way. "this behavior is beyond our comprehension." well, of course it is. they don't have a clue. "rumors about you quitting are already at eater. i thought you were way beyond this, jt, really." shut the [ bleep ] up and get to work. there is no excuse to not

endlessly continue to try and make everything that you want to do as wonderful as your vision. i mean, i don't know any other way. anyway, i seem to piss people off a lot. [ phone ringing ] i think it's jim. jeremiah speaking. >> man: oh my god, we're having an earthquake -- >> woman: oh my god, we're having an earthquake. wait a minute. hold on. hold on. can you feel that? there go the lights. oh shit. >> james: the earthquake is what caused the end of stars. i think jeremiah told me, he got somewhere to get away and the phone rang as something and i think someone said, "there's been a major earthquake."

and jeremiah immediately got in the car and went back to stars, and that was the crowning blow in which he found he finally sold. >> mark: you know, one day there were 250 people coming in every single day for lunch, the next day, not a soul came in. >> james: they decided to totally redo that whole civic center. >> michael: city hall, where so much of his business came from, directly or indirectly, was shut down for years. >> mark: i think 40,000 people left that area overnight. that was devastating. >> michael: a tremendous challenge to keep it going, ultimately, he couldn't. uh, but some of it was out of his hands. people forget that the earthquake changed the demographic in a very dramatic way. >> jeremiah: i should've got out a couple bottles of krug, gone down to the basement, turn on the gas, lit a match, after i'd drunk the champagne, and, uh, gone up with it. you know, it would've been

great. so that was a sort of ten-story building just two months ago. that machine is sort of like some big animal dinosaur that's just eating the building. it's very satisfying, that, for some reason. the owners of tavern on the green are done with me. "they say the damage is done," that's from michael, my lawyer. "they called me back. they are not moved by attempts to keep you on. need to craft an exit strategy." i should've known that they were unreliable. early on, i just knew not to put too much faith in human beings, you know? and a huge amount of faith in what human beings can do, but not always in the way they do

it. and here's an email from josh, one of my sous chefs at tavern. "i wanted to thank you for the time you spent at tavern. it was an amazing opportunity to be able to work for you. i started cooking in '93, and you were one of the most influential american chefs at that point. thanks for being a cool guy, too. it sucks if you find out your hero is a dick. the mood at -- is down at tavern, of course. all the chefs and most of the cooks know that we were right on the cusp of something wonderful. we were so close to making that place what it could be." very true. "thank you for everything, chef. joshua." how very nice.

my childhood painting by augustus john of one of his -- one of his illegitimate children. it's from my early childhood, and i've known it all my life. looking at the world and saying, "[ bleep ] you." in a way that a little kid could think it but probably not know what to say. so i identify with that, too. that's the look i know what i'm thinking, and one of these days, i'll express myself. well, now i have my lucky charm mascots. i guess that means i really am leaving new york. maybe i'll do a -- dine every land and write a book called "how to be a well-mannered idiot." >> james: i look for the crown, but i always knew the guillotine

was in sight. and he got the guillotine again. he's been getting the guillotine his whole life. how many of us search for the crown? not many. jeremiah does. but he knows that guillotine is waiting. >> anthony: it takes a certain kind of person to keep coming back. it takes a romantic, honestly. jeremiah was very much maybe the last, certainly the most important bridge between the old world and the new. a lot of the people who came after didn't have that really deeply felt romantic connection to the traditions, classic service and ingredients. >> james: we need jeremiah tower in this world, if for nothing else than to teach, not just about cooking and everything, but about his style. it's a beautiful style, something that elevates him,

brings us out of the muck, that brings us out of the mediocrity and out of the vulgarity in which we are forced to live. and i think that's what jeremiah spent so much of his life doing, is blocking out vulgarity. >> mario: he was a natural, generous, joyous creature. there were tough days and lawsuits and someone sending their food back, but that doesn't break down the heart of a real chef. a real chef knows that their work is good. >> anthony: we hadn't seen his kind before, certainly not from someone who cut his widest swath. and, uh, i think it'll be a long time before we see his kind again. >> james: is jeremiah a lonely man? oh god, yes. god, he's a lonely man. all innovators are lonely. all creators are lonely. all artists are lonely. you don't lead a life like

jeremiah, you don't take the chances for the guillotine that he does without being a lonely man. and he made his mark. that takes loneliness. that's the way i think jeremiah's always lived.

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