One World, Many Friends

So what came first for you—an interest in food or an interest in celebrities? Of course the great food which kept me alive for many, many years, and thanks also to my mum’s home cooking, I was able to learn the way of the pizza making and the home cooking of the south of Italy, like pastas and meat and fish and stuff like that. And celebrities came at a much later stage, in the late ‘70s when Dustin Hoffman used to come to the restaurant and he started to get to our pizza with mushroom and garlic. I’ll never forget, his wife Lisa couldn’t finish her pizza, so he finished it, and then he asked for a third one! It’s okay if you finish your pizza and then your wife’s, but then to ask for a third one, I thought: wow! And then he’d been telling some of his friends as well, and another great Irish comedian, Dave Allen. He was working a lot with the BBC in those days. He used to find Pomodoro’s was kind of a home for him, where he could sit and read scripts without being bothered and then maybe at the end of the night someone would ask him for an autograph or a story, and he’d make them laugh by saying some rude jokes. The food was always a great priority. Without the great food, you become just a bar, and a bar dies with time. We hear Sylvester Stallone’s a good friend. What’s his favorite thing to eat here? He has a great pizza called the Katarina. I met Sly, Sylvester many years ago, in the early 90s. In the late 80s I used to know his brother and his mother very, very well. His mum used to ask me to go to his house, and have lunch with them and I said “no, because if your son finds out I have a restaurant he’s going to hate me, and he’s going to think I’m using you to get to him.” So a couple years later, when her son started to realize I was not that kind of person and that my friendship with his mother was a genuine one, and we became very close. So whenever he’s in London or LA, I visit him and go to his house. And last time I was there two years ago he saw me full of tattoos and he said “what’s wrong with you?” I said, “nothing’s wrong, Sly.” He was looking at me, and funny enough, three months ago when his mother found out I was in Kiev, Jackie came to Kiev and she told me Stallone has a full body of tattoos like I have, on the arms. I have spiritual journey tattoos, and he has family tattoos. So he puts pictures of his wife on his arm, and then he puts his kids. He loves that. I don’t know if it was my influence. I saw the way he looked at mine that day. Another great friend of mine is Patrick Swayze. When I visit London he calls me up. We meet each other, go out for drinks, or he comes to Pomodoro. Are you friends with any Chinese celebrities? Cui Jian, you know the rock singer. He came for dinner a few times and loves our food. I’m trying to do a couple shows with him, one for the United Nations and then a couple of shows here in Beijing. And also I’m working now with Jackie Chan and Don Johnson, I’m raising money for a movie that I’m producing with them. It’s called “A Bullet for a Pretty Baby.” It starts in San Francisco and goes to New York and London and hopefully we’ll go to Russia, because we’re raising some money in Russia and we’re looking for a Russian actor. Jackie Chan is a lot of fun – he improvises things and he’s a great, great funny guy to work with. I don’t know him well, but I’m sure through this chapter of this movie we’ll be more friendly. Since I was a kid, Bruce Lee was our idol. We all grew up with martial arts and kungfu and karate as kids and definitely kungfu was our motivation to one day come to China and feel part of the wonderful people of China. And finally, two or three years ago, through the movie people, Oliver Stone the great director, he was over here with Collin Farrell and my business partner here now and he said we should open a restaurant here, and originally it was a joke, but here we are two and a half years later, and we have a great restaurant in Sanlitun and we’re doing very well. What are your plans for the Olympics? Take it day by day. I’m looking to go see some wonderful shows, and I love gymnastics and boxing, since I was a boxer when I was a kid, and boxing brought me to what is today my life in the restaurant business.

Really? Yeah. I could train that way, because my trainer helped me find work doing some ice cream, some cakes and I was brought up in this catering business so I was watching chefs and management skills and how to run a restaurant and I fell in love with it, so instead of pursuing my career as an accountant, as my brother did and become a lawyer and professor, and he tried to push me into that, I said “let me become a very happy bum and go around the world and embrace people and open up a restaurant and be happy.” And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years. How do you like Beijing so far? I love Beijing. I think that the government is doing a great job now and even today I went to Tiananmen Square to see the Canadian Pavilion and I was very impressed with the tour that I had over there. All the Chinese there were able to speak English and even Italian, some of them. I was impressed. I love Beijing for this. We used to hear about “made in China, made in China,” and now I understand why everything’s made in China, because there are great people around to make things and to make things easier for people like us coming over. So I’m very pleased. I love also what they’ve put all over the walls here, “One world, one dream.” You know that brings everyone, everyone around the world together, no matter what kind of religion we are or what kind of people we are, this is so important. Sports always have been uniting human beings for centuries and always will. That’s why it’s a great slogan they have, and I think they should keep it, even for the next Olympics in London. I’ve been following the Olympics since 1960 when I was a kid myself, when Cassius Clay, before he became Mohammed Ali, he won the Olympic championship in Rome in 1960. And in 1961 I started my career as a boxer. So what’s your slogan? We don’t make the difference, we create it. What are some of the other big projects you’re working on now? Now we’re working on a big show in New York on Sept 12, or maybe even after the election, depends. Cui Jian will represent China, B2 will represent Russia, working now on getting Bob Dylan to represent America and on and on and on. We got about 15 countries already lined up for this to play for the UN at the General Assembly Hall in New York. Also, my next project is my restaurant, which is my first priority in life, opening up in Kiev at the end of September or October with Zhenya Carr, the daughter of the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. She was my customer in London about eight to ten years ago. Four, five years ago we started to meet in Kiev and she said, “We miss your food. We miss you here. Why don’t you open Pomodoro here?” So here we are again, opening up Pomodoro with people who are our customers, because the food kept bringing them back to the restaurant and now they want to open the restaurant in their home town. And after we’re going, I believe, to Moscow. And hopefully Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo in the next couple years. With all these projects, who’s cooking the food? Antonio Coppola, my nephew, is also my executive chef here in Beijing, and he’s the one who designed the food menu and all the recipes for all our restaurants around the world, and now he’s here in Beijing for a few months to make sure all goes well. We’ve also got other Italian chefs and a good team of local cooks.