I was at [New York restaurant] Elaine’s with Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase when I came up with the sketch for Saturday Night Live in which I demonstrated the Bass-O-Matic, a blender to grind up whole fish. The inspiration came from my aunt, Helen Gougeon, who was the Julia Child of Canada and had her own TV cookery shows. I was at her house when I was 13 and saw her force a whole bass into her Cuisinart to make a fish stew. I said: “Aunt Helen, aren’t you supposed to de-bone, de-scale and wash the fish first?” She replied: “It’s a bouillabaisse, Daniel, a bouillabaisse!”
Helen taught my mother to cook all sophisticated in clay pot dishes and Dad couldn’t compete. He’d say: “We’re going to have quail on toast tonight” and he’d take white bread and pour a can of peas on. This was partly his jokey way of saying we didn’t have money for quails, but for a long time I assumed that quails were peas.
I have a house in Martha’s Vineyard and I’m proficient at garbage-can clambakes on the beach. I dig a big hole in the sand, light a coal fire in it, drop in a garbage can containing seaweed, seawater, clams, lobsters, chicken, shrimps and mussels, pour in a case full of beer, put on the lid, let it cook for an hour, then pull it out and throw the contents across a surfboard, for people circling around to devour.
When I was 17 my parents received a letter announcing, “Your son is no longer suitable for the priesthood.” I’d been boarding at a seminary, where the nice people were the nuns who dispensed the food. At night we’d sneak into the kitchen, because the nuns – knowing we’d steal them – would leave out milk and beautiful chocolate chip and oatmeal honey raisin cookies.
I worked for a surveyor’s assistant, helping build a road on top of tundra and swamp in the Northwest Territories. Once I had to spent a night away from camp, with no food, so a mechanic called Julian shot squirrels for us to roast over a fire. They taste like chicken and are better than rattlesnake.
Typical memories of eating with John Belushi are of taking breaks from writing to go get shawarmas in Times Square with sauces and pitta right off the grill, or going to his townhouse and standing at his fridge and eating yogurt ice-cream, sandwiches and everything else in there. John had big appetites. He liked to fress – a wonderful Yiddish term. A fress is just a snack, but a heavy snack.
You’ll never get a better breakfast burrito than when making movies, or strip loin steak, a wider range of salads and exotic pastries. The caterers are famously fine chefs because if a bad one’s hired morale plummets. There’s no better life for someone who likes to eat than as a Hollywood actor on location.
When I opened the first House of Blues in Cambridge, Massachusetts it was the legitimisation of my career as a purveyor of alcohol. Previously I’d run the 505 Club on Queens Street, Toronto, where we were never bothered by cops despite selling alcohol after 1am at a severe mark-up to street-car and tow-truck drivers.
I opened my first little bootleg bar – the Ditch – as teenager. It was accessible through a coal shuttle behind a Victorian mansion in Ottawa. We Canadians start early. At 12 we’re out in the woods, drinking quarts – not pints – around a campfire.
I’m a UFOlogist and believe that alien constructs visit our planet. I’ve keenly studied the work of Linda Moulton Howe, an investigator of cattle mutilations – a very strange phenomenon. It’s my own theory that ETs take them back to their craft and prepare them – as delicacies – in their space kitchens. Aliens are food tourists.
Suffering acid reflux while being a guest judge on Top Chef Canada was a grim experience, except for this chef from Calgary who came out and served us a very unappetising-looking tiny grey sausage, alone on a plate. It turned out to be absolutely delicious. It looked like a poodle’s dick but won the competition.
Dan Aykroyd is co-founder of Crystal Head vodka: crystalheadvodka.com
