Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A self-taught chef who achieved three Michelin stars and runs three top London restaurants.
On the island
Eight records
RAI Symphony Orchestra of Turin, conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti
Rossini Gioacchino Rossini is my favorite composer. He was very economical in his production of operas, but he was very prodigious with his with his appetite and his love of good food.
Onward, Christian SoldiersFavourite
The second record will bring me back to my school days, my first school, my English school, where I learnt to be part of the English traditions and the English methods and the English customs. I remember singing at the very, very top of my voice this particular hymn.
Festival of Male Choirs, conducted by Haydn James
Record number three is something I will always associate with my life at the Principal School in Nairobi. There again I was shown how to be competitive, how to be a good person, how to be a Christian. And in life, all that mattered was to do well.
This particular music is something that really haunts me. It's a music that comes from a film called Once Upon a Time in America. My father was Greek. He came from Asia Minor. He went to America. And I can just about imagine him the poverty and the difficulties he had.
Maria Callas, with the French National Radio Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre
is um from the opera Carmen, because I love this woman, I love her voice, I I like the her association with one of my favorite characters in life, uh Onassis, and this is to remind me of Maria Carlos.
It's a song called Amapola, um, which is a song that I remember since my childhood days, and Nanamuskuri happens to be one of my favorite um singers.
R record number seven is again a part of the music from the film Once Upon a Time in America. It is another part which I love very, very much. It really completely haunts me.
Luciano Pavarotti, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge
It's a song that my mother used to sing, and I'd like uh Luciano Pavarotti to sing it
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Is healthy eating anathema to you?
Not really. If you want to enjoy food, you enjoy every kind of food, every part of of food. But I'm not saying that these days one doesn't need to be a little bit more careful with what they eat. You can hold back on the butter, you can hold back on the cream.
Presenter asks
2:03Where is your enjoyment in cooking [given the angst and misery in your career]?
It is. For me, it's been very painful simply because I look at cooking and food as a means of getting towards a perfect situation. Not that I don't like food, it's not mechanical, it comes from my heart. But when I create and when I cook, I like to do it perfectly, and it is for me a total involvement of my brain and my heart. And it can make me very depressed, very angry. and um very unhappy.
Presenter asks
8:22Why did you eject people from your restaurant [and rip up their money]?
This is a very simple situation where Somebody asked for a a well done steak uh and they were very insistent and it went on. There was a scene at the end of it all and the person insisted on paying and I said I didn't want any money He said, No, you've got to have the money So I said well, I don't want the money so I tore it up. The f I had the last laugh because um He was crawling on all fours under the tables, collecting bits of one pound notes
The keepsakes
The book
P. C. Wren
The book I would like to bring with me is a book which I read six times when I was a schoolboy, Beaugest.
The luxury
My favorite knife wrapped in Eric Cantona's red shirt (number 7)
I'd like to take my favorite knife with me. I would also like to take a certain red shirt with the number seven on it, [Eric Cantona's] shirt with me and I would like to wrap the knife in that shirt and take it with me to my desert island.
Presenter asks
10:39Can you give me a picture of that childhood in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro?
How Mount Kilimanjaro is seared in my mind this massive black mountain with a with a white rounded, snowy cap. And it was frightening. I remember I used to get frightened when I used to look up. It looked as though it was going to fall on top of us. And we used to, as boys, roam amongst the coffee plantations and the banana plantations. And we used to kill partridges and sometimes chickens belonging to the Africans. And we used to dig holes, make a fire, and this is where I took my first lessons in cooking. We used to cook the partridges and the chickens.
Presenter asks
15:55How could you have the courage to [go to Provence and eat for twelve months]?
I wanted to go away and to think about my life and to see if another country would provide any opportunities for me. I couldn't see how in the England I loved and in the way that I was educated in the English way how I was failing and why I was so miserable and why I could do nothing at all. And I thought to myself, Let me go to another country and see if they're all like that. If is it the country or is it me? And in France, frankly, It was a lovely country, but I thought it was much better to live in England. The only thing I saw in France was the wonderful food, and rather than stay miserable for a whole year, we just went out, ate, eating every day, maybe sometimes twice a day.
Presenter asks
27:24What happened when [the Michelin Guide editors] came in?
My God. I I I was flustered. I didn't know where to go, what to say, where to show them, where to take them. I wanted to run into the bathroom and start crying. I hadn't cried for a long, long time. And um they were embarrassed by the way I was I was behaving. And um They waited very patiently for me to find my, you know, my um [composure] ... I remember Derek Brown very, very quietly put his hand on the table and he said. In the 1995 guide. Janico is going to have three stars. And There were tears in my eyes.
“I very readily admit the fact that um It's a sign of insecurity. A total sign of insecurity.”
“I feel that I came away in the still of the night and snatched a prize, which doesn't belong in my kind of life. I come from an academic background, and there's not very many chefs with with with degrees.”
“The customer is not always right, but these days I don't actually follow the maxim to the very bitter end. I have people who work for me and it's their job to diffuse. And they do it, and I'm a very, very hap much happier person.”
“if you are in this business and you are a competitive animal and you are Always reaching for the stars and the moon and perfection, there is nothing There's nothing except the Mishnah. It is just. Just too important for words. I cannot begin to describe what it means. It's ten Oscars. Into into one.”