The Taming of the Review--the Spago Tasting Menu Part 3

            As soon as Spago Beverly Hills opened, an amuse bouche—often the miso cone—became a tradition. A trio of amuse bouche arrived in quick succession, season specific, for Spago’s menus always followed the seasons. You’d never find blueberries from Chile in December.  Truthfully, the billionaire Marvin Davis could get out-of-season fruit whenever he wanted since he didn’t believe in winter, summer, fall or spring; he lived only in Marvin time and assumed others did too.  Once Mr. D, as we called him, travelled to Houston in the morning to check on his oil company and returned to L.A. that evening just in time for dinner.  I’d heard Houston was struck by severe thunderstorms that day, so I asked, “Mr. D., how was the weather?”

             “What’s weather?” he replied, and it struck me then: Of course he had no sense of weather. He moved from air conditioned house to garage to air conditioned limo, to private plane in private hangar, to Houston hangar, to new air conditioned limo, to garage to air conditioned office.  Mark Twain once famously said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it, but I realized in that moment that Marvin Davis had indeed done something about it.

            At any rate, back to the table. In early summer, the amuse bouche might be a delicate mini tart, filled with the first of the season’s Junecrest peaches from the Masumoto family farm just south of Fresno, topped with a dollop of mousse de foie gras marinated in sweet Moscato. This would be followed by a confit of pork belly tucked inside a pâte feuilletée.  Once the guest had peeled himself off the ceiling and floated back to the table, he was greeted by a petite tasse brimming with Santa Barbara sea urchin pot de creme illuminated by a wasabi cream and osetra caviar.  Sometimes I watched a guest and imagined he must be wondering if he ought to eat it or sell it to the highest bidder at Sotheby’s for the dish is that beautiful, and the very moment the urchin touches tongue, . The taste rockets the taste buds to the fourth dimension where time stands still and Cher looks young.

            As the guest comes to, waiter, sommelier, assistant sommelier and manager are staging glasses for the first course of the evening.  Sometimes a guest’s eyes might wander to glance at the big star who just entered the restaurant or to gaze at Wolfgang Puck standing just across the room despite having appeared live that very morning on Good Morning America. .  “How the hell did he get back in time for dinner?” a guest might ask herself. “He was in New York this morning and now he’s signing a stack of cookbooks for one large table, posing for a photo with another.  

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Barbara Lazaroff, designer and partner (soon to be Puck's estranged wife), appears and works her way around the room.  She’s directing busboys who carry a huge, booth-like chair into the main dining room and set it at a large, round table.  From a side door an enormous man enters; he’s accompanied by two burly men and a petite lady, obviously the man’s his wife dressed to the nines in a fabulous St. John knit.  At that moment Sydney Poitier appears around the corner, joined by Jackie Collins and Bob Newhart!  Barbara embraces them all.  And as I watched I always heard the Spago refrain playing in my mind: Live! Love! Eat!

Memory Lane: the Lazaroff "Spago" Collection Goes on the Block

Wow!  I saw Julien’s Auctions of Beverly Hills--The Auction House to the Stars!--plans to auction a sizable collection of works of art from the collection of Barbara Lazaroff. 

Wolfgang and Barbara back in the day.

What makes these works notable, is that they were all acquired to decorate the famous eateries owned by her and former husband Chef Wolfgang Puck. Spago recently went under the knife to reinvent itself.  Rumor has it his current wife, Gelila, oversaw this redesign, so if their marriage doesn’t work out—knock on wood!--maybe there will be another auction down the line.

Almost all the works are from the private dining rooms of the original Spago Beverly Hills.  In light of my recent musings on Spago from 1995-2002, and the fact that I spent almost that entire period intoxicated, this auction serves as a gift from God.  A veritable treasure trove of forgotten images, that when viewed in the sober light of day in 2014, awaken memory after memory. 

Who can forget drinking tequila in the banquet bar while debating the bartender whether Jim Lutes’ watercolor abstracts are really depicting penises and saggy boobs over out-of-focus portraits,

Jim Lute Abstract '96

or if the Mary Burns’ ornate ceramic urns that we hid our cocktails behind were really designed and put there in the likely event that if Milton Berle dropped dead while dining, we could just cremate him in our pizza oven, and pour him into anyone of the urns glued firmly to the shelves throughout the private dining room (PDR).  I recall we used them for paper wad “basketball” practice too.  Eventually they would overflow, and Hugo, the manager, would have to empty them, but he couldn’t tilt them because they were cemented in place!  I’ll never forget the disgusted look on his face as he would stand on a chair and reach in, never knowing for sure what might come out.

Ceramic Vase by Mary Burns

In the main private dining room, I would get dizzy studying Robert Motherwell’s “artist’s proof” lithographs of his Beau Geste Suite abstracts.  Every mother says their kid is precocious; Motherwell’s mom, I’m sure, was no exception, but sometimes the only difference between a piece of shit and a work of art, is a price tag.

Beau Geste Robert Motherwell

James Rosenquist’s Time Door Time d’Or dyed paper abstract depiction with lithographed appliques hung nearby the fabulously dizzy work of Motherwell, and the central artwork in the VIP dining room belonged to Jim Dine’s The Oil of Gladness [heliorelief and drypoint (printers proof)].  His reimagining of Venus di Milo sought to capture an age old depiction of beauty, and in my refocused recollection, it succeeded, especially when the scintillating rays of lamplight emerged from the hand blown Venetian glass chandeliers.

The Oil of Gladness Jim Dine

Time Door-Time d'Or Jim Rosenquist

Other works included Helen Frankenthaler’s The Grove color wood cut print on Awagami-Fujimori paper, and Roy Fairchild Woodard’s Only the Stars

The Grove  Helen Frankenthaler

Only the Stars Robert Fairchild Woodard

Also, perhaps on the cheesy side, but to me totally appropriate, she is auctioning all the furniture from Spago Beverly Hills.  A wave of disappointment crashed over me as Marvin Davis’s custom chair does not appear in the catalog.  I bet if you take a whiff of the upholstery, you can still smell the Cote de Bœuf he had just before his death.

I’ll be there on Thursday June 26^th at 200 pm.  ! http://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/2014/fine-art/index.html