“Danny Kaye was a world-class chef”

Spokane Chronicle – Mar. 24, 1987

By: William Rice (Chicago Tribune)

Through television, many people saw Danny Kaye play chef de orchestra at laugh-punctuated charity concerts. A much smaller audience was able to see him perform as chef de cuisine, but it was one of his greatest roles and he played it to the hilt. Those who had the privilege of dining with him are well aware that his recent death was as much a loss to the culinary arts as to the performing arts.

At intimate dinners for 8 to 10 persons in his Beverly Hills, Calif., home, Kaye orchestrated, prepared and served Chinese banquets and earthy Italian family-style meals. His guests included the elite of Hollywood, international celebrities, family friends and an occasional journalist. More often than not the event was spontaneous: a summons because “I feel like cooking tonight.”

Dinner was served at a round banquet table in a beautiful room at the rear of the home. He liked to explain that the space had been created out of necessity when a giant, custom-made Chinese restaurant stove could not be fitted into the house. Ever resourceful, Kaye simply ordered a kitchen and dining area built around the stove in the alley where it stood.

Once there, you were a prisoner of the chef. He decided when you ate and what and where you sat, and commanded silence whenever a dish was served. Only rarely did he sit with his guests. Instead, he would kibitz for a time, then move to the stove and in a frenzy of activity produce a celestial hot and sour soup or fegato Veneziana, a gossamer version of the world’s best liver and onions dish.

This was not a case of a celebrity donning an apron as a publicity stunt. Danny Kaye’s cooking wasn’t merely good, it was marvelous. He was, in that painful contemporary phrase, a “world-class” chef. Of course, the deck was stacked in his favor: In addition to the aforementioned conditions of dining, something no restaurateur could enforce, his ingredients were the best and freshest that money could buy, and he had several pairs of skilled hands doing prep work for him. Each course was served within moments of being cooked. Such split-second timing, virtually impossible in a busy restaurant, can make the difference between a good dish and a great dish.

But his greatest assets as a cook were those that made him a wonderful entertainer: coordination and physical stamina, a nimble mind, theatrical flair, a talent for mimicry and the unrelenting perfectionism of a great artist.

When Danny Kaye did something it looked easy. But before he faced an audience, he had studied the role, thought about how he could make it his own and practiced it over and over. He applied these talents to becoming a licensed pilot and a low-handicap golfer as well as a symphony conductor and cook. He spent long hours working with the chef at Johnny Kan’s restaurant in San Francisco and with Cecilia Chang at her Mandarin restaurant in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In the kitchen, moreover, he excelled because of another talent: an instinctive, finely honed taste memory that allowed him to re-create dishes he had been served.

Over the years, often in the company of close friends such as Jim and Helen Nassikas, of San Francisco’s Stanford Court Hotel, and Los Angeles wine merchant Steve Wallace, he would visit restaurants, wineries and cooking schools. He had a reputation for being difficult and imperious; and it is true, as the world’s tallest child, that he was easily bored and had a nearly insatiable appetite for being the center of attention.

But in a profession filled with insecurity, in a city obsessed with status, in a nation that is only now beginning to treat its cooks and winemakers with respect, Danny Kaye was a vocal and visible champion of culinary quality irrespective of fame or fads. In the presence of true talent he could be a model student, attentively absorbing information and enthusiastically spreading the word to his wide circle of influential friends after he met a brilliant chef or teacher, or tasted a delicious wine.

He didn’t use recipes. He scorned them as crutches. Instead, he worked from experience and let taste rather than formulas guide him. The meals he prepared showed that cooking, like comedy, can be elevated to an art if only the cook, and the audience, care enough.

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