Name-dropping #3: Yehudi Menuhin

Sometime in the early Seventies I got really fed-up working in retail pharmacies and got a job with the British National Health Service in a hospital Sterile Solutions Lab. Nowadays all sterile solutions are bought from big manufacturers. In those days we made all our own IV solutions and sterile eye-drops. It was an interesting job but I had to join the union and ended up being reported to my shop-steward for "lack of team spirit" - basically I worked too hard and made my fellow workers look like slackers. I also really resented having 15% of my wages withheld for union dues. I was not happy.

Then a friend suggested that I take her place managing a famous "whole foods" restaurant in London. She was leaving for a job as service manager aboard the private yacht of an Arab "prince" in the Mediterranean. I didn't think I had the right sort of experience but I interviewed for the job. It turned out that one of the owners had been a pharmacist but had given up her career because, as she put it: "I got bored with modern pharmacy - counting pills and typing labels - and no longer believed in it." She now believed in organic "whole foods." She told me that she wanted to hire me because she needed someone with organizational skills as she was sick of the "creative types with no real business talents" who were attracted to the restaurant business. I clicked with her. And there was no union. I accepted the job.

I could write a whole book about that restaurant but I'll just tell one tale that relates to the point of this story.

There were two chefs, both called Michael, who were "lovers." They fought constantly and that really had a bad effect not only on the quality of the food but on the service, staff morale and general atmosphere. One day I heard a crash in the kitchen and, when I went to check it out, I found the two Michaels chasing each other around the kitchen with huge carving knives. I fired them and told them to get out or I would call the cops.

They left and I was stuck without chefs. The rest of the kitchen staff were excellent but there were too many Indians and no chief. So I stepped in. Even though I could organize and manage staff, it was a bit of a baptism by fire.

I had grown up in a cooking family and knew how to do basic "British cuisine" but I also knew how to cook "South African cuisine" which is a mixture of European and "Cape Malay." The "Malays" (really Sumatrans) had been brought to the Cape by the Dutch settlers as household slaves and soon introduced their own cuisine and nowadays many of the traditional South African dishes such as bobotie and sosaties are actually "Cape Malay." I had also learned Hindu cuisine from an Indian friend. I introduced some of my recipes and they were hits.

Eventually I hired someone to manage the "front of the house" (as the dining room is known in the business) and I took over as chef. That was the beginning of my dream to one day own my own restaurant. But, when it came time to renew my work-permit, I was told by the Brit immigration authorities that I had to go back to pharmacy as there was a shortage of pharmacists but not of cooks. So I went back to pharmacy for another 20 years before I owned my own restaurant.

Anyway, I better get back to the topic. There were three owners: the former pharmacist and an aristocrat who sat in the House of Lords (and who had tried unsuccessfully - the government bureaucrats were commie - to pull strings with immigration to keep me) and Yehudi Menuhin, the violinist. Even though Menuhin was an American born in NYC, he went to live in England in 1962 and eventually became a Brit citizen.

I was slightly in awe of the aristo but I was struck dumb when I first met Menuhin. He was the most famous violinist in the world when I was a kid. My paternal grandmother, a classical pianist and my first piano teacher, worshiped Menuhin who had been a child prodigy in her youth. (His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923.)

I was surprised at how short Mehuhin was. He was a nice if somewhat aloof and patronizing man who used to eat there regularly. He would walk in, smile weakly, wave his hand sideways like the queen and say: "Good morning, staff." After I had started to cook and spent most of my time in the kitchen, I seldom saw him but he always left a message for me that he had enjoyed the "new dish." He was a vegetarian convert to Hinduism and especially liked my vegetarian Indian dishes. (He brought the yogi B. K. S. Iyengar to the West in the 1950s.)

That's it. Now you can see why I went off on a tangent from the gitgo. I don't have much to tell about Menuhin. Even worse: afterwards, whenever I told people proudly that I had once worked for Menuhin, most of them would say:"Who dee who?"

After building early success on richly romantic and tonally opulent performances, he experienced considerable physical and artistic difficulties caused by overwork during the war as well as unfocused and unstructured early training. Careful practice and study combined with meditation and yoga helped him overcome many of these problems. His profound and considered musical interpretations are nearly universally acclaimed.

Here's a video of Yehudi Menuhin filmed in Charlie Chaplins studios in Hollywood in 1947 and conducted by Antal Dorati with the Hollywood Symphonic Orchestra playing Mendelssohn's violin concerto: