107. Episode: Bread and Mozza - Nancy Silverton from Mozza in Los Angeles

World of Mouth podcast

Nancy Silverton reflects on her decades-long journey from a childhood inspired by family dinners to becoming one of Los Angeles's most influential chefs and restaurateurs.

Key takeaways

• Silverton credits Wolfgang Puck's Spago opening in 1982 as the career-changing opportunity that put her on the map as an opening pastry chef.
• Her partnership with Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali provided the Italian authenticity needed to confidently launch Mozza as a true Italian restaurant concept.

Main topics

• Nancy Silverton's early life and culinary origins
• Founding iconic LA restaurants like Spago, Campanile, La Brea Bakery, and Mozza

Notable quotes

"I think that we're in the hospitality business. So I think you have to have that commitment to be hospitable to your guests and provide an environment that people want to come to."

Conclusion

The episode offers a reflective look into Silverton's enduring impact

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, and welcome to the Wall of Mouth podcast, where we're sharing the stories of the world's best chefs, restaurateurs, and other experts, and their favorite destinations to travel and eat. I'm Kenneth Nars, and I'm a co-founder of Wall of Mouth, a platform that connects some 800 restaurant experts who share their favorite restaurants, from the best wine bar, street food noodles, or hamburgers, to the latest fine dining restaurant opening. All of these easily accessible in the app with the new WOM Concierge function. In today's podcast, we're meeting Nancy Silverton, chef, baker, restaurateur, cookbook author, and co-owner of the Mozza Restaurant Group in Los Angeles. Since starting her chef's career in LA in 1982, she has opened numerous restaurants, most recently Max & Helen's in LA together with Phil Rosenthal. She has received the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award and been featured in both Netflix Chef's Table and Masterclass. She has also written 11 cookbooks and is an active fundraiser. In her podcast, we will hear Nancy Silverton tell about how she fell in love with cooking and what it actually takes to be a good restaurateur. She will also reveal some of her favorite places in Los Angeles and the rest of the world. You'll find all these places in the Wall of Mouth app, available in your app store. If you're not yet a member, as a podcast follower, we offer you a promo code for 90 days free use. So download the Wall of Mouth app in your app store and use the promo code WOMPODCAST to unlock thousands of personal restaurant recommendations in the app for free. Promo code WOMPODCAST. Speaker 2 (1:30) And now Speaker 1 (1:30) to today's podcast. Please tell the listeners who is Nancy Silverton. Speaker 2 (1:37) Well, so I am a, you know, I think that people immediately think, okay, who am I as a restaurateur or as a chef? But I'm certainly more than that. I'm a mother, right? I'm a friend. But my sort of passion, calling, and life from many years has been the hospitality industry. So it's a... Speaker 2 (2:06) wide industry that encompasses a lot of layers, right? But it's something that I am so much a part of. It keeps my life going. And when people say to me, look, you're 72 years old. Aren't you ready to retire? My response is always retire from what? This is what I love to do. And this is what I do in some form every day. Speaker 1 (2:35) Your passion for food, how did it start growing? And I mean, how was your childhood? Was there a lot of baking and cooking in your childhood? Speaker 2 (2:44) You know, my mother cooked dinner for a family of four, including herself, every evening. She loved to cook. I grew up in, let's say, the 60s. In the 50s, I was probably too young to think about it. But let's say I grew up in the 60s. And during... Those years, it was considered, at least in my country, the woman's role to create or cook dinner, whether she liked it or not. And I don't know if there were a lot of happy cooks out there. My mother, on the other hand, was a career woman. She was a writer for television and for fiction. But she loved to cook. Speaker 2 (3:32) drop her pen down, usually every day, at least by four o'clock, and cook a wholesome dinner for the family. But it wasn't something that she ever invited myself or my sister into the kitchen because she just never thought of doing that. I think she never thought of raising my sister and I as homemakers. And so there wasn't kind of a need to do that. And that's kind of something that I've been thinking about later in life. Like, why didn't I say, Mom, can I cook with you, right? But I do have to say that I didn't necessarily enjoy, appreciate, or love the food she was cooking. I wanted another type of food, which we can get into later. But what I did love was that every night the family sat down at 6.30 for dinner. together. And that was a very important part of my day and a very memorable part of my, still my day now. And ironically, I'm talking to you from my house, and I'm sitting at that same table that I grew up with. So it must have meant a lot to me. So when, when, you know, journalists or podcasters ask me, what is your fondest memory of food growing up? I think of it, the conversation at the table rather than the food itself. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:06) You founded restaurants, bakeries in the 1980s, La Brea Bakery, Campanile, Mozza, and so on. I mean, how did that start? How did you venture into this industry? Speaker 2 (5:20) Well, let's say, first of all, when I started cooking, before I was 20 years old, I had just moved up to my college in Northern California. Speaker 2 (5:37) For only the reason, to be honest, and I'm not going to hide behind it, there was a really cute boy and he was working in the kitchen as the vegetarian lead cook. And I went up to him and I said, I love to cook. I'd love to cook in the kitchen. And obviously it was just a way to meet him. Little did I know that after a few weeks of being there, I realized that I really did love to cook. It really, I mean, certainly it surprised me. But, you know, you got to think back to those days. There weren't the role models that, let's call them kids today have. So there wasn't, you know, there wasn't the TV show chefs. There wasn't the food competition. There wasn't the cookbooks. There wasn't the internet. There wasn't anything that gets young people today excited about the food business. So it was nothing that I ever considered that that was even, a way of earning a living, right? And yet I said, oh my, I love this. This is going to be my life's journey. And it was and has been. I've never looked back. Speaker 1 (6:51) And then from university, the next steps, I mean, the first restaurants and the first jobs and then founding your own restaurants. How did you end up doing that? During Speaker 2 (7:00) my summer vacation from school for the first three years, I and I did I came back to Los Angeles and I got a job at my summer jobs were at very modest cafes. Right. And I. I don't know, I made salads, I made omelets, whatever it was I did. And in my senior year, I decided that there was nothing that I would ever consider doing with a degree. And I didn't feel the need to finish something that I had started, or at least in the academic world. And so I left college and I went to work at what I thought was the best restaurant in my area. I still wanted to stay living where I was living. And at the same time, I signed up with because my father had asked if I would do that when I dropped out of school, signed up for cooking school at the Cordon Bleu in London. I didn't speak French. And at that time, the only other one was in France. And I had no awareness that we in the United States had a very reputable school called the Culinary Institute of America on the East Coast. I didn't even know it existed. And so I went, my mind went straight, or my father's mind went straight to Europe. And so that's what I did. There was a waiting list. I worked for a year at this restaurant. And then I went to the Cordon Bleu to take what they called their certificate course. Came back to that same restaurant I had been working in for another year. And then moved