The Elephant to Hollywood

14 Kitchen Sink Dramas

The death of my mother, the discovery of David and the publication of What’s It All About? were all watershed moments in my life. And when these were coupled with what looked as if it might become a permanent gap in my movie schedule, I was forced to take stock and consider the future. The book had gone brilliantly, and I had loved writing it, so I decided that writing might be one way to go – and then there was my restaurant business. It had been part of my life for thiry years, but it had definitely played second fiddle to my movie career. I could, I decided, perhaps take this chance to move it more centre stage – although, given some of my experiences with the ‘talent’, this wasn’t a step to be taken lightly!

The London I grew up in after the war was a bit of a culinary desert, to put it mildly. Restaurants were the province of the rich and the dress code of suit and tie was meant to keep the likes of me out. But gradually things began to change and when two Italians, Mario Cassandro and Franco Lagattolla opened their Italian restaurant La Trattoria Terrazza on Romilly Street in 1959, it had no dress code at all. Not only that, it stayed open until the last customer had left and it was open all day Sunday. The waiters were all friendly and helpful – unlike many of the English waiters who used to start looking at their watches and sighing before you were even halfway through your meal – and the whole atmosphere was fun and relaxed. As the Sixties got into full swing and London began to be the cosmopolitan city it is today, eating out started to be part of our culture – and I loved every minute of it.

I enjoyed eating out in other people’s restaurants, and as the London restaurant scene began to liven up, an idea began forming in the back of my mind: I wanted to open a big brasserie, a bit like La Coupole in Paris. This might have remained a fantasy if it hadn’t been for Sidney Poitier. He and I were in London together, working at Pinewood putting the final touches to The Wilby Conspiracy in 1974, and he and his wife Joanna and Shakira and I would eat out together a few evenings each week. When it was Sidney’s turn to take us, he always chose Odin’s, a great restaurant just off Marylebone High Street. On this particular evening, we had just been seated at our table when a short fat man reeled towards us, rather the worse for wear. He seemed to know Sidney. ‘Hello!’ he said and stood there, clutching the back of a chair for support. Sidney, who is a very polite man, immediately introduced us. ‘And this is Peter Langan, the owner of Odin’s.’ Peter stood there swaying for a bit, frowning. He appeared to be trying to retrieve some long-lost piece of information. Eventually light dawned. ‘Michael Caine!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Sidney tells me you want to open a restaurant!’ ‘Well – yes…’ I said, rather reluctantly. He bent over me and I nearly passed out from the fumes. ‘When you do, kid,’ he said, ‘give me a call. I’d like to be your partner.’ And with that he hauled himself upright and tottered away. ‘Is he always like that?’ I asked Sidney. ‘I don’t know,’ said Sidney, carefully. ‘But I have never seen him when he wasn’t.’ ‘Well, if I ever do open a restaurant,’ I said, ‘he’d be the last partner I’d choose.’ Famous last words…

I didn’t bump into Peter again until some time later – and when I did, he was completely sober. I almost didn’t recognise him: he was off the booze, he explained, because someone had bet him he couldn’t stay away from it for a whole month. He asked me whether I’d had any more thoughts about opening a restaurant and I was about to say no, when something stopped me. Sober, Peter was very impressive – and his track record in the restaurant business was very good. ‘Yes…’ I said cautiously. He beamed. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve found some premises,’ he said. ‘Do we have a deal?’ We shook hands and as we parted I shouted after him, ‘When’s the month up?’ ‘Tomorrow!’ he yelled back.

We next met in the lobby of the Ritz. However shabby Peter looked – and he could look like a down and out because he was so often sleeping rough – he always wore a tie and so they always let him in. He had found premises, he said, and went on to outline a business plan that would give me a third of the profits in return for an investment of £25,000. ‘Was I in?’ he asked. I looked over at this scruffy Irishman – the last person you would ever think of as a trustworthy and reliable person to go into business with – and I thought of what my father would have said, and I said, ‘Yes.’ There was no reply: Peter had fallen asleep.

When I’d woken him up, we went across the road to look at the premises he’d found in Stratton Street. It didn’t look very enticing, but I trusted Peter to get it right and he did. He stripped out all the interior walls to leave a big open room, which he painted a faded orange colour that looked as if it had always been there. He covered the walls with pictures that were hung randomly to give an informal look and lit the place so that although you could see what you were eating, you would never be blinded by looking at a light bulb. We hired a chef from Alsace to recreate good bistro food and opened very quietly on a Monday lunch. The word got round very quickly: our Alsace chef was used to feeding French manual labourers and the portions were enormous. On the second night we were full, and by the third there was a queue round the block so long we actually ran out of food.

And so Langan’s was up and running. Peter’s antics – he would occasionally get so drunk he would insult the customers and one time actually got under the table and bit a woman’s leg – ensured us constant coverage in the gossip columns, but our long-term success was really established when the chef Richard Shepherd joined us to give us the stability we needed.

As Langan’s thrived, Peter’s alcoholism worsened. By the time Shakira and I had moved to Los Angeles in 1979 he was really out of control. He had taken to sleeping under a table at the restaurant overnight and would often still be there at lunchtime the next day. But he seemed completely oblivious to the havoc he caused and I was rather alarmed to hear that he was planning to come out and see me in LA to discuss opening a restaurant there. The English find drunks quite amusing, but it’s not like that in health-conscious Beverly Hills so I was dreading his visit. I was right to do so. He’d asked me to get together some investors to discuss the project, so, because I felt I owed Peter in part, for the success of Langan’s, with a certain amount of dread, I did. Peter was half an hour late for the meeting and when he arrived he collapsed in a drunken heap on the floor. There was a long silence and the potential investors looked appalled. Eventually one of them said, ‘So – if we invest, who would be in charge?’ I pointed to the crumpled, snoring heap on the floor. They got up and left without another word.

I should have learnt my lesson but, ever hopeful, I invited Peter to lunch at Ma Maison, at that time the star-studded restaurant in LA. We sat outside and he was surprisingly well behaved during the meal, in spite of his prodigious intake of cocktails and champagne. I wasn’t taking any chances, though, and when he decided he needed a pee, I went with him into the restaurant to make sure he found the toilet. Unfortunately, he put on a turn of speed and before I could stop him he had lurched over to a table where Orson Welles was sitting. ‘Orson Welles?’ he asked politely. Orson said yes. Peter stood up straight and with all the misplaced dignity of the very drunk announced, ‘You are an arrogant fat arsehole.’ All hell broke loose. Patrick Terrall, the owner, came over and barred Peter from the restaurant for life and told me off for bringing him in the first place. I stayed behind to apologise to Orson while Patrick escorted Peter – effing and blinding the whole way – off the premises. As I dashed out after them, I heard a scream and emerged to find Peter peeing in the flowerpots lined up by the entrance. Peter left LA a day later and I didn’t go back to Ma Maison for some time…

Over the following years Peter’s behaviour got more and more out of hand. He was on a path of self-destruction and neither Richard Shepherd nor I had the slightest chance of persuading him off it. There was no chance of getting him to Alcoholics Anonymous, so I tried at least to get him to a doctor. But he refused, with the inevitable and tragic result that one night, in the middle of his customary drunken stupor, and in a set of very bizarre circumstances, he set fire to himself. He lived on, in agony, in an Intensive Care Unit for five terrible weeks before finally succumbing to the oblivion he had been looking for. I owe him a great deal – a career in the restaurant business, friendship, those good times, when we were buzzing with the delight that running a successful convival restaurant brings – but eventually the demons took him over completely. I miss him still.

My partnership with Peter was the first of a number of other such ventures. At one time I owned seven restaurants, including The Canteen in Chelsea Harbour, which we opened in 1993 with Marco Pierre White as chef. I had always sworn I wouldn’t work with another temperamental partner after Peter, but Marco was so talented that I made an exception. It didn’t last. The sous-chef under Marco at The Canteen was Gordon Ramsay – so one of the invisible costs involved with this sort of talent was the installation of extra doors between the kitchen and the restaurant so the customers couldn’t hear the language… I had a couple of restaurants with Marco in charge – and they all needed extra doors. I thought movie stars were temperamental, but they’ve got nothing on chefs, although I think both Marco and Gordon are brilliant at what they do.

After three very successful years at The Canteen, the owners of Chelsea Harbour put up security gates, which destroyed our business, and we had to close it down. I also got an offer from my partner in the Langan’s Group of restaurants, Richard Shepherd, to buy me out and I decided to call it a day. I have absolutely no regrets about getting involved in the restaurant business, but it is a relief to be out of it now. It isn’t only the challenges of dealing with brilliant chefs, it’s the customers too. I was minding my own business on a British Airways flight the other day, when a woman came up to me and said, ‘I had a steak in Langan’s the day before yesterday, and I asked for it to be medium and it was well done.’ I was very glad to be able to say to her, ‘Madam, I no longer own any restaurants, so it’s not my fault.’