George Munger (1940-2009): San Diego’s first foodie

Few will argue that the early 1970s were the dark ages of San Diego dining. Continental cuisine was the order of the day, and fine dining meant places with starched table cloths and equally stiff waiters who served European style dishes such as Veal Oscar, Tournedos Rossini and Lobster Thermidor in hushed, darkened rooms.

But all that changed in 1974, when a tall Midwestern transplant named George Munger with big creative ideas and a taste for modern cuisine, and his wife Piret, opened a gleaming cookware shop called The Perfect Pan on the corner of Goldfinch and Washington streets.

The Perfect Pan set in motion a delicious chain of events that led to the Mungers owning several Piret’s restaurants, writing a nationally bestselling cookbook, co-founding influential culinary organizations and making lasting changes in the way San Diegans ate and thought about food that persist until today.

George Munger died at age 69 on April 22 after a long illness.  He is being remembered as San Diego’s first foodie; a man who embodied the word hospitality and was a catalyst for an appreciation for fine food and good living in San Diego.

“He was larger than life physically (and so was) his heart,” said Jacques Pepin, the famous French-born chef, author and television personality in a phone interview from his home in Connecticut. “He was a very generous, open, fun guy to be with and his wife as well. We have lost someone who had no prejudices about food and was always into trying new things and bringing new things to San Diego.”

A private celebration of George Munger’s life is planned for Friday, June 4, by the local chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food, one of the influential culinary organizations that Munger helped establish.

“George played a major role in creating the impressive dining scene that San Diego enjoys today,” said former San Diego Union-Tribune restaurant critic Maureen Clancy, who wrote under the name Leslie James. “He blew into San Diego in the early ‘70s with a huge personality, a passion for food, tremendous energy, and a determination to put the city on the gastronomic map.”

The economy notwithstanding, it’s not hard for a food-loving couple today to imagine quitting their day jobs, scraping together some money and opening a gourmet store and cookware shop.

But back in 1974, food didn’t have nearly the importance it does now. Bon Appetit was a free hand-out at the grocery store and there were just a few cookware shops in the nation: one Crate & Barrel in Chicago, a single Williams Sonoma on Sutter Street in San Francisco and Fred Bridge in New York City.

“There were very few places around for people who wanted to buy things they could cook with or do cooking classes and that kind of stuff,” said Darrell Corti, a gourmet food and wine importer who runs the Corti Brothers store in Sacramento. “Remember, what we have today is only thanks to people like the Mungers who started this a long time ago.”

THE EARLY YEARS

“Everything about him was joie de vivre,” Piret Munger said of her late husband. “He had a love of parties and entertaining.”
Piret and George met attending Custer High School in Milwaukee. Even then, George was a leader and liked getting others to join in. The pair became friends and then started dating after graduation.
George’s mother was a fabulous baker known for her apple pies and his dad loved to cook as well. The family would get together for card parties with endless games of pinochle and dry Manhattans.

At the University of Wisconsin, George started cooking for his roommates and earned money working at a little cafe that sold bratwurst and other sausages.

When they graduated from college, Piret and George married and relocated to San Diego. Piret became an account executive with an an advertising agency, while George went into the Navy. George used trips to Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines as excursions to find exotic ingredients.

“He was always finagling how he could get good food of some sort,” Piret Munger said. “He loved to go find ingredients. His base was French food, and he tried to eat and taste anything French.”

They also bought lots of international cookbooks; many of them are  now a part of the Culinary Collection at UCSD’s Mandeville Special Collections Library.

When George Munger resigned from the Navy, he started working with Ace Auto Parts, the company that now owns most of the paid parking lots in town, Piret said. For a while he designed the flow of parking lots, starting with what is now Qualcomm Stadium and going on to do the same in Dallas, Honolulu and Buffalo.

See: The SDNN Food & Drink section

But his passion for food still burned brightly. Piret Munger said he often complained that it was so hard to find good cookware, copper pots and special whisks that he read about in magazines and cookbooks. George decided that they needed to do something about it. Friends pitched in and helped the couple turn a former hair salon at 4440 Goldfinch St. into The Perfect Pan.

“It was definitely an emporium for people who loved to cook,” said Toni Allegra, an author and cooking school teacher based in St. Helena, Calif. “Before … the Food Network, Piret’s was the food network in San Diego. It brought people together just the way TV does now, but there you got to know each other.”

Allegra, who was known as Toni Griffin while she was the food editor of the San Diego Tribune, said the Perfect Pan was the first place to sell the Cuisinart.  They used the new device in the cooking classes and then when people saw the way it could grind up meat, vegetables or make pie crust, they had to have one.

Running the biggest cookware and gourmet food shop in the area put the Mungers on the radar of well-known cooks and chefs who came to visit San Diego for charitable benefits. They often supplied staff and equipment.

Pepin remembers visiting San Diego in 1974 to do a cooking demonstration as a fundraiser for a hospital.

“I was in front of a large audience and I remember the stove did not work,” Pepin said. “All of a sudden down the aisle came that giant with a big stove in his arms and that was George.”

Munger invited Pepin to come teach at the Perfect Pan cooking school, and so he did. So did Julia Child and James Beard, Biba Gaggiano, Diana Kennedy and Paula Wolfert.

Since many women were working outside the home, the Mungers saw a need for something like the traiteurs in France, gourmet shops where people would go for sausages, roasted endive and fruit tarts that could be taken home and turned into a meal. They added a space to sell foods like roasted chicken, prepared salads and artisan bread for take-out; it too was a novel concept.

“I had to take a health inspector around one day and I said we’re going to sell påté,” Piret Munger said. “He looked at me and said “what’s that?” I finally said it’s like cold meatloaf.”

The takeout shop at The Perfect Pan was a success right away and the few tables where people could sit and sample foods were always busy.

“The problem was San Diego had absolutely no restaurants that were at all sophisticated and nothing with a bistro atmosphere,” Piret Munger said. “People kept saying you really need more tables and the next thing we know — of course George being George — we’re in the restaurant business.”

Piret’s served things like grilled salmon with avocado, choucroute, and a composed salad called Salade Verte which included baby greens, radicchio and blue cheese and a sherry cake that diners always wanted the recipe for.

Ten years after the Perfect Pan opened, the recipes they collected from the cooking school and the restaurant went into Piret’s: The George and Piret Munger Cookbook that was published in 1985 by Houghton Mifflin Co. The cookbook — now out of print but available on book resale sites — was considered a contemporary with the Silver Palate Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso for the way it taught readers just opening their palates to European style foods how to make beurre blanc and Caesar salad, steak au poivre and California style pizzas. Piret Munger said the cookbook eventually sold 150,000 copies and was on both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists.

Owning one of the first serious cookware stores in the country led George Munger to help form an association that eventually became the International Association of Culinary Professionals. By the time they sold the company, the Mungers had six Piret’s restaurants and three Perfect Pan stores.

They opened a restaurant called Cane’s in the Uptown Center in Hillcrest, but Piret Munger said a sale of the property sent the rent sky-high. After a few years they decided it wasn’t worth the effort and closed. Terra Restaurant now occupies the former Cane’s.

THE ULITMATE HOUSE PARTY

While the Mungers were busy running Piret’s and the Perfect Pan and writing in their public life, they loved entertaining friends at their wood and glass A-frame house in Del Mar.

Pepin remembers eating at the Mungers and turning the best ingredients they could find into simple and elegant meals, washed down with lots of wine.
George formed a foodie group called Club LeRoy whose members would plan trips or activities around food.

“We were all part of Club LeRoy and would do something fun or philanthropic,” said Lorenzo Gunn, a close friend who now runs Piret’s Catering. “Once a month we would … play bocce ball in the par or carving pumpkins to take to Children’s Hospital.”

But the parties that everyone still remembers 30 years later are the ultimate in potluck parties that came to be known as the Munger’s Annual Cookoff. Each guest not only had to bring a delicious dish, they had to present it in a grand way.  A couple named Frank and Linnea Arrington made a souffle one year, and delivered it in a hot air balloon. Someone else hired a high school marching band to deliver a root beer float.

”That year I may have done some soul food: black eyed peas and corn bread and I brought in break dancers,” said Gunn. Su Mei Yu, who now owns Saffron Thai Chicken, cooked a Thai dish that she presented along with 30 children singing and dressed in traditional clothing.

Judges were prominent foodies and writers like Tom Blair, late Al Jacoby of San Diego Tribune and Allegra.

“To me George was like everybody’s tall big brother and he had this way of taking creative ideas and making them happen,” said Allegra. “In those days of the 80s they experienced that kind of wacky, far-out, food-loving life.”

The Arringtons showed their flair for drama again when they made a curry dish one year.

“They had rented a little sort of Hollywood elephant and they cam in on this elephant’s back carrying the dish,” Piret Munger she said. “Honest to God you have not lived until you’ve seen an elephant lumbering into your yard. And just a flash I wondered if we have elephant insurance.”

Towards the end, health problems kept Munger from doing very much, but he still was active in the local chapter of the American Institute of Wine & Food. Cravings for flavors he loved sent them to a handful of restaurants.  They loved visiting  Arterra in the San Diego Marriott Del Mar for what Munger said is the best hamburger in town; Carl Schreoder at Market Restaurant + Bar in Del Mar; Ritual Tavern in North Park for the perfect onion rings and fish and chips made with catfish and Arrivederci Pizza in Hillcrest for the Italian style thin-crust pizzas. They mostly independently owned places that had the same spirit as Piret’s.

“Piret’s and Perfect Pan were a breath of fresh air in San Diego,” Piret Munger said. “There were people who had aspirations to open a restaurant and suddenly they thought wow, maybe I could do that. George is really the father of the contemporary restaurant scene in San Diego.”

Gazpacho
Makes 4 servings

The Mungers wrote that they weren’t sure of the origins of this recipe, but it was a summertime favorite at Piret’s. Be sure to chill the soup thoroughly and that the vegetable garnishes are cold, firm and crunchy. Serve it with croutons - homemade or otherwise.

For the Soup:
1 cup sliced hothouse cucumber
4 tomatoes, peeled and seeded
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco, or more to taste

For Garnish:
1/3 cup each: minced green bell pepper, celery and cucumber
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

To make the soup, combine the cucumber, tomatoes, salt, red wine vinegar, lime juice, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco in a blender or food processor fitted with a steel blade, and process to a smooth consistency. Chill the soup in the refrigerator until it is ice cold. After it is chilled, taste the soup for seasoning, and adjust with more lime juice, Worcestershire and Tabasco as needed. Garnish each serving with a sprinkling of bell pepper, celery, cucumber and cilantro.
Adapted from Piret’s: The George and Piret Munger Cookbook by George and Piret Munger, Houghton Mifflin, Co. 1985.

George Munger’s Steak au Poivre
Turn the vent on or open a window when making this dish because Piret Munger says this recipe creates a a lot of smoke. But it’s well worth the end result.

Makes 1 serving
1-1/2 inch thick prime filet of beef (about 6 ounces)
whole black peppercorns
salt or kosher-style salt
minced fresh parsley and chives, to taste
1 tablespoon butter
1 drop Tabasco
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 lemon tied in cheesecloth
1/3 cup Cognac

Trim the  filet of all fat and sinew. Coarsely crush the black peppercorns with a mortar and pestle. Press the peppercorns into both sides of the steak so the steak is nicely crusted. (This steak should be quite peppery.) Allow the crusted steak to rest for 30 minutes before cooking.

Place enough ordinary table salt or kosher style salt in a cast-iron skillet to lightly coat the bottom of the pan. Place the skillet over high heat. When the salt begins to jump in the pan, sear the steak on one side about 1-1/2 minutes. When you turn the steak, place on top of the seared side the minced parsley and chives, butter, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce, and squeeze the juice of the lemon through the cheesecloth onto the steak.

Turn down the heat, pour the Cognac into the pan and light it carefully with a long match. When the flames die down, place the steak on a warmed dinner plate and pour over the pan juices. Garnish with additional parsley and serve immediately. We like to serve Steak au Poivre simply, with baby carrots, Chinese pea pods, or another colorful vegetable. This cooking time produces a rare steak, which we prefer, but you can adjust the cooking time according to your own or your guests’ taste.

Adapted from Piret’s: The George and Piret Munger Cookbook by George and Piret Munger, Houghton Mifflin, Co. 1985.

Maria Hunt is the SDNN Food & Drink editor.

Tags: George Munger, gourmet, Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Maria Hunt, Piret Munger, Piret's Cookbook, SDNN, The Perfect Pan, Uncategorized

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