Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In 1934, New York City power broker Robert Moses led the transformation and redesign of Central Park, which included turning a holding pen for sheep into a new restaurant, Tavern on the Green. The Central Park restaurant has become an institution. Through Tavern on the Green, closed in 2019 in the wake of the financial crisis, new ownership and a new head chef took over. The restaurant reopened in 2014 and has remained a beloved spot to celebrate a birthday, a holiday, or just spend a beautiful day in Central Park.

Now, for those of you who want to create a little bit of that Tavern on Green magic at home, you are in luck. There's a brand new cookbook out from executive chef Bill Peet titled Tavern on the Green Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes and Historical Treasures from New York City's Iconic Restaurant. The cookbook is broken up by month, featuring some of the beloved menu items featured during that time of the year. Plus, it offers stories and behind-the-scenes tidbits about the historic restaurant. The cookbook is out now, and I'm joined in studio by executive chef Bill Peet.

Bill Peet: Hi.

Alison Stewart: In your whites, you're ready to go?

Bill Peet: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Along with Tavern on the Green co-owner Jim Caiola. Jim, it's nice to meet you as well.

Jim Caiola: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. What is your favorite memory of Tavern on the Green? Maybe you grew up going there, or it's your favorite birthday spot. Maybe you saw somebody famous come out of Tavern on the Green. We want to hear your Tavern on the Green memories. Give us a call at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. The cookbook actually starts with a history of Tavern on the Green. The building that houses Tavern on the Green was originally designed in 1880 to house sheep. Jim, how did it become a restaurant?

Jim Caiola: Well, I think they retired the sheep, and they got a lawnmower for the sheep meadow.

[laughter]

Jim Caiola: Then it stood empty for a couple years, and then they had the great idea to turn it into a restaurant, which was a brilliant idea because it's a perfect landmark there and a great respite in Central Park to go to the bathroom or eat or whatever. It's been a great run, almost 100 years.

Alison Stewart: Bill, what was your impression of Tavern on the Green before you joined as chef?

Bill Peet: Well, I've been in New York City a long time, so Tavern on the Green was one of the places where you always wanted to go. I actually worked a party there in 1983. I knew the chef there. Then I was the chef at Café des Artistes years later, right across the street, and we would borrow back and forth.

Alison Stewart: Nice. Jim, in 2009, it closed its doors. The parks department had to reissue its operating license. Then you and your partner, David Salama, got involved. Why did you want to own Tavern on the Green?

Jim Caiola: When I was young, I was an actor, and I brought myself there one day, and I just was so in shock at how magical it was. Just an awesome place of celebration it was. I was celebrating, and everybody around me was celebrating different things, and there were multiple languages I heard. I just thought, "God, this is like the center of the world right here," because it's in Central Park, which is the center of Manhattan and New York. It's just phenomenal. It just felt so magical. I sort of kept in touch with it. I would come visit it when I came to New York, and I just sort of kept in touch with what was happening with it. That's what happened.

Alison Stewart: Well, the legend goes that your partner was not as convinced.

[laughter]

Jim Caiola: He was not interested in doing it whatsoever. When we won the bid, he had no choice.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You had no choice, right? When you say you won the bid, what does that mean exactly?

Jim Caiola: There's an RFP that the city puts out, and you have to respond to it. We were by far the highest score in our response, and so we won. Then you had to find financing and all that stuff. It was a hard road, but we did it. It was very exciting. The city was very committed to helping us. It was great.

Alison Stewart: Bill, why did you want to take this job when you got the call?

Bill Peet: It was the perfect opportunity. Like I said, I had known this place, and it was like coming home. I'm there 10 years now. You just get to touch so many people. We're very busy, so it's exciting every day.

Alison Stewart: When you walked in 10 years ago, what did you think your menu was going to be like?

Bill Peet: New York.

Alison Stewart: Yes?

Bill Peet: Yes, New York. Classic New York. American food. That's what it still is.

Alison Stewart: Jim, you have an iconic restaurant, but you also have to deal with the reality of present day. How did you want to bring the restaurant into the 21st century while still honoring traditions?

Jim Caiola: I wanted the menu to follow the seasons of the year. Bill's really great at that. I wanted us to progress every year. Lately, we've been bringing vegetarian and vegan food into the mix because that seems to be a very important thing in the culture of food right now. I think we check in with each other a lot to see how we can keep the menu more current and more future-forward-looking.

Alison Stewart: Why was Bill the right guy to be your head chef?

Jim Caiola: He's such a gentleman, and that's very rare in the world of chefs. I grew up working in restaurants where knives were being thrown across the room.

[laughter]

Bill Peet: Right.

Jim Caiola: My number one criteria in a chef was to be not throwing knives in the kitchen. Bill does up to 1,800 brunches on a Sunday. Orchestrating that and coordinating that is very special. It takes a special kind of person. He has that personality.

Alison Stewart: How do you have that personality, Bill?

Bill Peet: I have seven brothers and sisters, so you kind of get beat down a little bit. I always found it easier to work with people than to yell at people, and it works.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the brand new cookbook, Tavern on the Green Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes and Historical Treasures from New York City's Iconic Restaurant. My guests are executive chef Bill Peet and restaurant co-owner Jim Caiola. Listeners, we're taking your calls. What's your favorite memory of Tavern on the Green? Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We have calls lined up. Let's talk to Michael, who's calling in from Forest Hills. Hi, Michael, thank you for taking the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

Michael: Hi. Yes, I almost died at Tavern on the Green. I was working at Popular Science magazine, and they hold an annual event there called Best of What's New. It's a product showcase, and I'm walking around with a camcorder, and one of the exhibits is a baseball video game. Keith Hernandez, formerly of the Mets, was there swinging a bat, demonstrating how the game worked. I'm paying more attention to the camcorder than to him. I came within inches of him taking a swing, and he was just missing me. I'll never forget my time at Tavern on the Green.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Michael, thanks for the call. Let's talk to Emily, is calling from New York. Hi, Emily. Thank you for calling All Of It. Hi.

Emily: Hi. Well, my seven-year-old daughter was asked what it means to be a feminist. Her answer was, it means you get to go to meetings with a lot of women talking, and they're always at Tavern on the Green.

[laughter]

Jim Caiola: Wow. We invite that meeting again.

Alison Stewart: I like that. Let's talk to Joe on Long Island. Hi, Joe. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Joe: Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me. It's an interesting experience for me in the sense that I'm a native New Yorker, grew up in basically all the boroughs to a certain extent. When my parents split when I was just a little five-year-old, Dad found a rent-controlled apartment right down the block on 65th between Central Park West and Columbus for like $75 a month.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Jim Caiola: Wow.

Joe: Five-story walk-up. Yes. After 30-plus years of 4% increase only every two years, it was only about costing 375 by the time he did leave in 2003. Anyway. Growing up, we would visit Dad. We would go to Central Park and play our makeshift stickball games with the trees, and then soccer. The trees were the goalposts, and just lots of childhood memories of just walking right by it all the time. Then, as an adult, when I was socializing, I would go to different various social events. I've danced there, and I've drank there, and I've eaten there, and I did not almost get killed there. Thank God.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. All right. You are a chef, but this is really a cookbook for home cooks. What went into figuring out how to turn a restaurant-sized recipe, restaurant-gearied recipe, into something that people can make at home?

Bill Peet: Well, that was the hardest part, but we broke it down. It's step by step, and at the end, you're done, basically. You could think of it like IKEA. When you're building something, when the last part is done, you're done. That's how these recipes are laid out.

Alison Stewart: What does a person need in their kitchen to try out one of these recipes? Three things that you think everybody should have in their kitchen.

Bill Peet: Well, we were very good setting up this cookbook. Even if you don't have a mixer, you could do it by hand, so you don't have to do dough with a mixer. I've laid that all out in there. There's really nothing that are basic--

Alison Stewart: You have to have good knives.

Bill Peet: Yes, a good knife, and it should be sharp because that's how you get cut when your knife is not sharp.

Alison Stewart: Someone just sent us a text that says Ghostbusters.

Jim Caiola: Yes.

Bill Peet: Yes.

Alison Stewart: A big one. This says, "My favorite memory of Tavern on the Green is walking across Central Park in the snow with my very young nieces and arriving at T on the G for lunch. The word is magical, especially for little girls on a snowy day."

Jim Caiola: Wow.

Bill Peet: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jane on Roosevelt Island. Hi, Jane. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Jane: Hi, thanks for having me. In the mid-80s, my mom took us to dinner there for her birthday, and her mother, my grandma Lulu, got caught stealing the silverware. She was putting them in her purse, and the waitress came over and said, "Excuse me, miss, we need those."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That's a great story. Let's talk to Gail in Brooklyn. Hi, Gail. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Gail: Hi, thanks for taking my call. My story is that my parents got engaged at Tavern on the Green in the mid-50s, and they always shared it in a very magical way. It was a beautiful photo of them together. I grew up in New Jersey, and it was such a wonderful, aspirational, nice thing to go back to New York. Of course, I live in New York now. It's full circle and very lovely memory that they shared.

Jim Caiola: That's awesome.

Alison Stewart: That's an incredible story. Do you find that a lot that you have a lot of people making memories with Tavern on the Green?

Jim Caiola: Definitely. We have a lot of young people who grew up with a picture of something like that, or their mother's sweet 16 there or something. They have such an amazing-- Just the experience of walking in for them is so magical because they've imagined it for however many years.

Bill Peet: Our son's baby shower was there.

Alison Stewart: Aw.

Bill Peet: We live in New Jersey.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] It's interesting because the restaurant caters to both locals and tourists. What's the key to keeping those customers happy, locals and tourists?

Jim Caiola: I think we always talk about how people's expectations are pretty high coming to Tavern, and so we try to meet them. I do think the idea that it's a tourist restaurant is kind of silly in the sense that every restaurant in New York, if you walk around, unless you're in the middle of Queens somewhere, that isn't only a neighborhood restaurant. Even those restaurants, if they get press. If you walk around a restaurant in New York, 70% of the people don't live in New York, no matter where you go. People talk about Tavern being a tourist restaurant, but I would say it's very average as far as the percentage of tourists and local people.

Alison Stewart: Coming up next on All Of It, we'll talk about some recipes on the new cookbook, Tavern on the Green. We'll be right back.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We're talking about the brand new Tavern on the Green Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes and Historical Treasures from New York City's Iconic Restaurant. My guests are executive chef Bill Peet and restaurant co-owner Jim Caiola. All right, we have a question for you. One of our listeners writes in. "Would you please ask Bill what past restaurant chef experiences he brought to his menu at Tavern on the Green?"

Bill Peet: Well, like I said before, I'm in New York City a long time. I was at Lutece for 15 years. I was at Patroon on 46th Street for eight years. I opened a Belgian beer cafe. I was the chef at Asia de Cuba. There's so many diverse restaurant experiences there.

Alison Stewart: All right. This cookbook goes by months, and since we're in April, we're going to start with April. Your April recipes are very vegetable-forward, shall we say? What do you like about leaning into veggies this time of year?

Bill Peet: Well, we have a very good couple of vegetable purveyors, and we have a little farmer's market down the block. A couple days a week, we can go down there. This time of year, it's morels, ramps are starting. It's spring.

Alison Stewart: You have a chopped vegetable salad, which looks deceptively simple, but has some sort of complex elements to it. What goes into that recipe?

Bill Peet: Well, it's 13 different vegetables. I've worked in restaurants where the guests would send their salads back to the kitchen for us to chop, and big leafy greens, so they didn't want to fuss with them. It got to be such a mess that I came up with this. It's all little cuts of different vegetables. Some are raw, some are grilled, some are poached or sauteed. We just build it to order, so you can actually omit things from it. You don't need to have potatoes in it. It's very quick. It's vegan, gluten-free. It's great.

Alison Stewart: What do you like to eat at Tavern on the Green in springtime, Jim?

Jim Caiola: I like the lamb. It's really, really good.

Alison Stewart: You know what was interesting? As I was looking through the cookbook, there are a lot of different vinaigrettes in the cookbook. There's lemon truffle, roasted lemon, passion fruit. Why is the vinaigrette an important thing to consider?

Bill Peet: Well, you need acid. You need acid in everything, whether it's vinegar or lemon. I don't like redundancy. Even on the menu, everything is a little different. We don't use the same vinaigrette for everything.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some more calls. Joe is calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Joe. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Joe: Thank you for taking my call. My mother grew up in the Bronx and said that her one Christmas wish was to have a lunch at Tavern on the Green. In the early 2000s, I was able to give her that Christmas gift of taking her to lunch. It was magical with decorations and the food, and everybody was fantastic. I remember my mother saying she felt like a queen. She felt like she was royalty. We continued that tradition, and my sister and I continue that sort of thing.

Jim Caiola: That's so great.

Alison Stewart: Joe, thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to David, who's calling from Manhattan. David, you're on the air.

David: Hi. First, I just want to say to your guest who worked at Lutece, that is probably one of the most singular dining experiences in New York, if not in the world. Congratulations. What a wonderful thing to have on your resume.

Bill Peet: Thank you.

David: I'm a documentary filmmaker, and a number of years ago, I did a documentary about Joe Baum, the greatest restaurateur of the 20th century. Up until September 11th, 2001, the four highest-grossing restaurants in the world were Windows on the World, Rainbow Room, Four Seasons, and Tavern on the Green, all of which are Joe Baum creations.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Pamela is calling us from Hoboken, New Jersey. Hi, Pamela. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Pamela: Hi, thank you for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: You're on the air.

Pamela: I remember in 1980, when I was 11 years old, my father married his second wife at Tavern on the Green.

Alison Stewart: How old were you at the time?

Pamela: I was 11. I'm 57 now.

[laughter]

Jim Caiola: Have you been back?

Pamela: It's funny. I haven't gone back in, but I ended up going to college in New York City and living there for another 9 or 10 years after that. I'm not that far away in Hoboken. Ever since that wedding day in 1980, every time I bike ride or walk through Central Park, and I look toward Tavern on the Green, it brings back such unbelievable memories.

Alison Stewart: You should go. I went to an affair there. I'll say an affair. I went to an affair there, and it was beautiful inside. I hadn't been in a really long time. I was like, "Wow, this is a really, really gorgeous space." This text says, "Our parents took a friend and I to Tavern on the Green at high school graduation in 1985. It was the first place I ever saw a miniature shower cap of gauze over a lemon wedge to prevent pits from falling in one's tees. The teacups felt perfectly balanced in my hand. It was super fancy schmancy." Would you just say it is still super fancy schmancy still?

Jim Caiola: We still have the gauze on the lemons.

Alison Stewart: Okay. That's a good thing. Hey, it's almost Mother's Day. You must have to prepare for Mother's Day.

Jim Caiola: We do. It's a big day.

Alison Stewart: What goes into the preparation for Mother's Day?

Jim Caiola: We have this little gift we give all the mothers. It's like, best mother of the year. We have a photo booth you can take pictures with your mom.

Bill Peet: Yes, we just got the frames in.

Jim Caiola: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Nice. Bill, one of the recipes you feature for May is chilled sweet pea soup, which you say is ideal for a spring or summer dinner party. Plus, you can make it ahead of time.

Bill Peet: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: That's key. What's important to remember when you're making this soup?

Bill Peet: Once you boil the peas, you have to shock them, so you drop them into ice water and then take them out. You just want to lock in that color. Then, when you puree them, it'll stay nice and green.

Alison Stewart: You also have something in here which looks kind of fun. It's called the confetti birthday cake. How do you decide who the cake will be dedicated to each day?

Bill Peet: I look it up every day.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Bill Peet: Absolutely. Yes, we take a look at whose birthday it is out there and write it right on top.

Alison Stewart: That's pretty funny.

Bill Peet: We have a lot of employees, so we find out whose birthday it is at home, too.

Alison Stewart: Aw, that's so nice. In the warmer months, can you get Tavern on the Green to go?

Bill Peet: Yes, but we have a to-go window, actually. It's open right to Central Park. All the food comes right off the hotline, too.

Alison Stewart: Nice. Let's look ahead to summer. Jim, what do you love about summertime at Tavern on the Green?

Jim Caiola: The outside. The greatest thing about this iteration of Tavern is we have so much outdoor space. We have a bar that is really hip at happy hour, which is so fun to watch that build up every day. It's a great place to be a part of the park. We open up the gate into the restaurant from the park during the summer. It's a much more casual, fun place to be in the summer.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jerrod in West New York. Hey, Jerrod. Thank you for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Jerrod: Hi there. Thanks for taking my call. Growing up in New Jersey, we had heard about Tavern on the Green. My first time there was as a performer. Many years, many pounds ago, I was a dancer. We had a gig for a woman who had a production company, Tom Vaughan and I, to be two of the village people. I was a cop. He was the Indian. On the way to Tavern on the Green, driving through Manhattan, I got a flat tire. We had to change the flat tire using the donut in my trunk, in our costumes, so as the cop and the Indian. Get there, perform at Tavern on the Green. It's a party. It was a great time. Then drive home on the donut. That was my first Tavern experience.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That was a good story. Jerrod, thank you for holding on for that. Bill, speaking to what Jim was talking about earlier, in your summertime recipes, you have a veggie burger in here. What are your key ingredients for a good veggie burger? Because everybody's got a different one.

Bill Peet: Well, there's beans. We have beans in there, but it's mushrooms. The mushrooms bring that umami to it, that deep flavor. There's spinach, and there's a little oatmeal in there also to hold it together.

Alison Stewart: There's a recipe that looks so good for June called blueberry lemon crumble, which you say is really easy to make at home. It's also good if you like to go pick blueberries.

Bill Peet: Well, that's a season for blueberries.

Alison Stewart: Absolutely. Why is lemon a good counterpoint for blueberries?

Bill Peet: Again, the acid. It just makes it very bright.

Alison Stewart: Jim, it seems like there are a lot of desserts in this particular book.

Jim Caiola: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: Do you have favorites?

Jim Caiola: I like the cheesecake. It's a really great New York cheesecake. It's phenomenal. It's on the menu pretty much all year, with different toppings throughout the year. The birthday cake. We all spend a lot of time on the birthday cake.

Bill Peet: Well, you love the strawberry shortcake, too.

Jim Caiola: The strawberry shortcake and the pecan tart.

Bill Peet: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: We keep going. In terms of the strawberry shortcake, what's the key to making a really great shortcake?

Bill Peet: Not to overwork it. We just get it together, and we take scoops of it, and we just bake it. The more you work it, the tougher it gets. We want it to just break apart when you hit it with a fork.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Doris. Hey, Doris. Thanks for calling All Of It. You're up in Tarrytown.

Doris: Hey. Yes, I am, and I love your show. Thanks for having me. I'm calling as another performer as well. I was in St. Cecilia Chorus for many years with David Randolph. It's now called St. Cecilia Chorus of New York. We had the privilege and honor of singing as choristers, greeting people as they entered the restaurant. I've always thought of Tavern on the Green as such a magical old New York place. I just felt like I was in the midst of that kind of a memory I had as a kid, and it was an honor to do that. That's my story.

Alison Stewart: Aw, that's a great story.

Jim Caiola: It's great.

Alison Stewart: Jim, what are you most proud of in this new 21st-century iteration of Tavern on the Green?

Jim Caiola: I think that it reflects the original 1930s Tavern on the Green and that it's sort of back to the basics of what it originally was, which was a very accessible place for people in the park, for people that are visiting New York, and for people that live across the street. I think we've really accomplished that. I think we keep growing with the times as far as the menu, and we keep upgrading the space as it needs to be. It's been really fun to do it.

Alison Stewart: What is the easiest-- I know what you're going to say, but what is the easiest recipe in this book, Bill?

Bill Peet: Easiest recipe? I don't know. For me, it's the Irish cream, which I love, but that's more towards December. Tomato soup is great. It's very easy. It's one pot.

Alison Stewart: Love that. We've been talking about Tavern on the Green Cookbook: Seasonal Recipes and Historical Treasures from New York City's Iconic Restaurant. My guests have been executive chef Bill Peet and the restaurant's co-owner, Jim Kaiola. Thank you so much for coming to the studio. This was fun.

Bill Peet: Thank you for having us.

Jim Caiola: Thank you. That was really fun.

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way.

 

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