Mr Chow: interview(1)
How the world's starriest restaurateur turned feeding the famous into an art.
‘No restaurant in the world – including McDonald’s – treats everyone the same,” asserts Michael Chow, holding up a school-masterly finger. “Anyone who says different is lying.”
As one of the most famous restaurateurs in the world, and a man who for the past 43 years – through a freakish, unfailing intuition envied by his industry – has guessed rightly when and where to expand his empire, I’m inclined to take him at his word. In any case, disagreeing with the 72 year-old doesn’t seem to be an option. With his clipped hair, clipped eyebrows and clipped public schoolboy tones, Chow presents you his world as a fait accompli.
From where I’m sitting – in the living room of his museum-like Beverly Hills mansion (think the Getty, with a few less wings), where “the whole side of a cliff was cut out” to build the structure, and canvases by Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat line the 30-feet walls – Chow’s world is a pretty seductive place. No surprise, when you consider that after trying his hand at painting, architecture and acting, the Shanghai-born former art student who came to England “determined to out-chic everyone” discovered that his real artistry lay in creating glamorous playpens for artists and celebrities.
Because eating at Mr Chow has never just been about the premium quality spicy shrimp. It’s about rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of John Lennon, Lana Turner, Andy Warhol and Julie Christie; it’s about watching Mick Jagger, Charlize Theron and P Diddy watch one another as you tuck into your Velvet Chicken.
With five Mr Chows now spread across Britain and the United States – one each in London, Beverly Hills and Miami and two in New York – Chow feels unconstrained by what he calls the “hypocrisies” of more diplomatic restaurateurs.
“Of course we have a star seating system at Mr Chow,” he goes on, warming to his subject.
“Let me explain the restaurant culture to you: in Europe, the people who sit at the back are the stars. In America, where people like to show off, those who sit at the front are the stars. Out here, the first table is always the star table.” So if Barack Obama comes in, where would he be seated? “In the back, because it’s super chic in the back.”
So not everyone in America craves that front table. “Ingrid Bergman would also ask to be seated at the back – half-hidden.” It’s when several big stars come in at once that the problems start. “A couple of years ago Lauren Bacall came in at the same time as another celebrity. Let’s just say that the other celebrity was bigger than Bacall, and so you have to make a calculation.” Chow makes that calculation, he jokes, by “feeding the names into my star-system computer software. It’s like a painting – you don’t just sit down and paint – first you need to get the composition right.”
Artistic metaphors pepper both Chow’s speech and that of his exquisite 54-year-old Korean wife, Eva, lounging on the sofa beside him in Prada heels and a Lanvin jumpsuit. Painting may remain an elusive talent (he has just started doing it again after finding it “too painful” for many years) but artistic vision, he’s learnt, can be applied to every element of his universe, right down to his own personal style.
From the cut of his lapis-blue Hermès suit to the socks a half a shade lighter and black, snakeskin brogues, Chow’s exterior has been meticulously cultivated. Nothing is there by chance, certainly not the trademark tortoiseshell glasses.
“When I first came to England I realised that two things could let you off the hook race-wise,” he says. “Eccentricity and fame. For that reason, I call them my ‘anti-racism’ glasses, because people look at the glasses more than me, so the Chinese part begins to disappear.”
Chow had one very clear ambition when he left architecture school: “to be the best”. “But it’s highly impractical to think that one can be the best painter, the best architect, the best lawyer and the best film-maker,” he smiles. “You have to pick one.”
It was the Sixties and London was experiencing a moment of condensed energy that Chow describes as “a cultural revolution – but a good one”. “Suddenly there was talent in every single area: photography, soccer, music, fashion, art. Every single great thing that was happening in the world was happening in London.” Chow had long hair back then and a model wife (Grace Coddington, who went on to become the creative director of US Vogue) and when he transformed an old Knightsbridge curry house into a Chinese restaurant where the waiters were Italian and there wasn’t a chopstick in sight, “it was like telling people that the world was square”.
Before long, the Beatles had made it their number one haunt. Federico Fellini, Frank Sinatra and Jeanne Moreau swung by whenever they were in town and Paul McCartney could be found there at lunchtime, “finger strumming a new tune called Back to the USSR out on the table.”
About the importance of that time, Chow is unequivocal (“my whole life is based on that period”), but this was just the start. In 1974, he opened a Mr Chow in Beverly Hills, predicting, yet again, where the next cultural wave was about to break. “My timing has been good,” he agrees. Clint Eastwood and Eartha Kitt came to the launch; Billy Wilder, Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson became regulars.
Chow had pulled off every restaurateur’s dream: transposing a restaurant and its atmosphere from one city to another. Not that the idiosyncrasies of the Sixties Brit Pack could rival this lot. Chow can still remember Mae West being given a standing ovation for finishing her meal and scrawling “for food that’s best, ask Mae West” in the visitor’s book. “Then there was Groucho Marx, who came in one night only to have a hamburger delivered to his table 30 minutes later,” he chuckles. An affront, surely? “If they’re artists,” shrugs Chow, “they can do whatever they want.”
Powerful Hollywood couples met and courted at the Beverly Hills eatery. Mr and Mrs Chow were there the night Barbra Streisand was introduced to James Brolin. “Oh there was a lot of that,” says Chow.
“I’m not sure how many divorces were instigated there but I can tell you that in the London restaurant we’ll get men coming in with their girlfriends and be forced to warn them that the wife is downstairs.”
Among the patrons of the Midtown New York branch, opened in 1979, a little infidelity would have been considered the soft option. It was post Studio 54 and Chow picked up the scene from there. “Suddenly it was like a repeat of Sixties London was happening in New York – the city was at the epicentre of art world, and the fashion world… Andy [Warhol] started coming in with Julian [Schnabel], Jean-Michel [Basquiat], his girlfriend Madonna and Keith [Haring].”
It’s to his credit that Chow hasn’t been tempted to rewrite history with the luxury of hindsight. He didn’t, for example, see his friend Warhol’s death coming. “But I do remember that he had this terrible fear of hospitals. Andy used to say that if he was ever admitted to one he would die there – and that’s exactly what happened.” Nor did he guess, when Lennon came by one night, that he would be serving the Beatle his last supper. “He had this psychic that he swore by. Sent me to see him once – but obviously he failed to warn him.”
