EVAN KLEIMAN TRAVELS TO ITALY BY WAY OF SILVER LAKE
By Leslee Komaiko
For dineLA.com
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Evan Kleiman |
Los Angeles native Evan Kleiman opened Angeli Caffe on Melrose Avenue an impressive 23 years ago. Many local foodies however, know Kleiman not as a restaurateur but as host of KCRW’s weekly radio show, Good Food (Saturdays at 11 a.m.). So how did this gal from Silver Lake become an accomplished Italian chef? We caught up with Kleiman to get an inside look at how she views the LA food scene.
How did you get hooked on Italian food? You’re not Italian, right?
I’m not Italian, but I’ve always been fascinated with language. When I graduated from high school, I took a year off and went to Europe thinking I would go to France and fall in love with it. But I was young and they weren’t very welcoming. I got really intimidated. I ended up in Italy and I loved it.
When I went back home and finally started college, I took an Italian immersion class. It became my major. Also, I started figuring out any way possible to spend every summer in Italy. It’s like my adopted culture.
When did cooking come into the picture?
Cooking was always there. Cooking was sort of how I expressed myself my entire life. I was the only child of a single parent, my mom. My father died when I was seven. Ours was the kind of house where the door was always unlocked and there was always food. My mom was a natural cook, not a fancy cook. So when I was pretty young I started buying cookbooks and [began] experimenting.
I remember being in junior high and stopping at Nicola’s Twin Market right there on Sunset and Hyperion. They used to have this butcher shop. My mother would call in the order and they would write on the butcher paper what I was supposed to do. I would follow the directions so by the time my mom came home from work, the food was ready.
In LA restaurant years, 23 years is almost forever. To what do you attribute the longevity of your restaurant?
Stubbornness. And the ability to accept debt in lean years.
I’ve always thought of Caffe Angeli as that rare place where you could go on a date or take your kids. Was that intentional on your part?
When we first opened, it was like a raging hipster place. In the 80s, it was one of those places where you’d go into the bathroom and you’d find a couple engaged in amorous activities. Over the years it’s just mutated.
I think those people who were having amorous activities in the 80s had children and those children came to Angeli when they were tiny. It’s like this whole generation of with-it parents and their children have created this strange hybrid space. It’s very popular as a first date location, and yet we have on weekends what we call the Chuck E. Cheese hour. Between 5 and 6 p.m. there are tons of kids.
I know you do something cool for kids. Tell me about that.
They get a ball of pizza dough to play with and they give it back to us and we bake it.
Are you playing with anything new or fun in the kitchen (ingredients or equipment)?
I’ve been spending a lot of time in a region of Italy called Basilicata. It’s an area of Italy that has unique ingredients. There’s this ground pepper that I don’t want to call a paprika because it’s not really paprika. It’s not like Spanish or Hungarian paprika. It’s called peperoni di Senise. My chef Kathy Ternay and I have been playing with that a lot. As for toys, not really ever because it’s such simple Italian food.
How did you get the Good Food gig and how much time do you spend on that?
Good Food came about when Mary Sue [Milliken] and Susan [Feniger] were hosts and I was an occasional guest. When they made the decision to go do other stuff, I was contacted by the producer. It changed my life.
How so?
With my academic background — I’ve always been a geek in that way — I’m a voracious reader. I’ve always loved to read not just novels, but read about food. And so this is a job where my job is to read about food. The restaurant business is not an intellectual pursuit. There was a part of me that wasn’t necessarily being fulfilled in that way.
What the show allowed me to do was continue my intellectual pursuit of food. Since it’s not a recipe show — it’s pretty much about the world seen through food — I get to talk to scientists and biologists, artists, religious people. I get to be like the Charlie Rose of food. I’m at the station two days a week and I do between eight and 12 interviews a week. It’s very satisfying. I love it.
When you’re not cooking, where do you like to go to eat?
I’m like a lot of chefs. If you have a limited amount of time to go to a restaurant, you just want it to be like home. You want it to be comfortable. I go to this sushi place Hirozen a lot.
I know you’re a big supporter of Slow Food. For people who may not be familiar with the organization, tell me a bit about it.
Slow Food started as a way to preserve artisanship in food. The guys who started it became acutely aware that they were standing at a certain place in time where the pressures of industrially produced food were starting to push out this incredible patrimony in Europe. Young people weren’t able to make a living carrying on their parents’ businesses and so were abandoning all these traditional foods. Slow Food jumped in to become this educational and marketing force.
How can people get involved in Slow Food?
It’s great if they join. But they can start going to activities. Slowfoodla.com is the website. They always have something going on.
Finally, I know there are a number of well-known female chefs in town. But it’s still overwhelmingly men. Do you see this changing?
There are many more women in restaurant kitchens. Just about every kitchen has women, which didn’t used to be [the case]. Maybe it’s just because women are saner and they don’t want to have the nightmare of owning a restaurant.
