Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [36]
Although he had help in the kitchen, he cooked Italian food almost every day because that was all he really liked to eat. Lord help anyone who overcooked the pasta or tried to serve him ketchup. He loved good peasant fare, although strangely for an Italian, he didn’t like garlic—an aversion he claimed came from when Dolly would tie an entire bulb around his neck if ever he had a chill as a child. He might sauté a little garlic for a sauce, but then he’d throw it away. During a film he made with Gina Lollobrigida in 1959 called Never So Few, she allegedly ate an entire bulb of raw garlic just before a kissing scene to spite him.
The dish Frank’s friends enjoyed the most was one he’d get up and make for us in the early hours, when everyone was loaded. He’d place a pot of salt water on the stove, cook the pasta until it was al dente, drain it, then crack two eggs into it and grate plenty of Parmesan cheese over it before adding lots of olive oil, salt, and pepper. The hot pasta would cook the eggs. It was wonderful and the best thing to eat at three or four in the morning.
Another specialty of Frank’s was pasta fagioli, which he and Dean Martin pronounced “fajool.” It was Dean’s favorite, and the two of them would happily finish off a whole pot together. Frank worshipped Dean, not just for his love of all things Italian but for his ability to make Frank laugh. As he always said, “Dean isn’t just funny, he thinks funny.”
Generally speaking, Frank was very good with the staff and never lost his temper with them, but one night when we had a full house and everyone was seated for dinner, the veal dish I’d asked for came out undercooked. I took one bite and had it sent back. Our chef sadly took offense and began throwing things around the kitchen, rattling pans and breaking dishes. Everybody heard, but nobody knew what to say. Frank smiled, asked to be excused, and got up from the table. Beyond the kitchen door, he told the chef, “I’m going to count to three, and you’d better get your fat ass out of here or else!” Even though that chef was a big guy, he couldn’t run out of there fast enough.
Another night, we were in Matteo’s, an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, when the pasta was served soggy. Frank hated that more than anything else and stormed into the kitchen. Looking around, he held up his hands and cried, “Where are all the Italians?” The staff was Filipino. He came back into the dining room and, furious, picked up his plate of pasta and threw it against the wall, splattering tomato sauce all down it. Before walking out, he examined the mess he’d made and, using his finger, wrote: “Picasso.” Later, the owner—his childhood friend Matty Jordan—put a frame around Frank’s unorthodox work of art.
When we weren’t seeing Frank socially, Zeppo and I muddled along with dinners and parties as well as keeping up with the constant rounds of gin, golf, and tennis—the last often played on Frank’s court, which was the closest.
I played with the future vice president Spiro Agnew there and other guests of Frank’s, but one of my most memorable doubles matches was with Bobby Kennedy, the former U.S. attorney general, who came to town not long after his brother had been assassinated. Dear Harpo had died by then, and Bobby and Ethel were staying at El Rancho Harpo, owned by mutual friends. It was they who asked me to make up a foursome, and as I recall, Bobby and I whipped them. He was a good player and nice enough, but he never had the charisma of his older brother and always lived in his shadow. Frank certainly