When a chef dies and his recipes aren’t recorded, those recipes die with him.
George Mather, a Raynham resident and retired Lutheran pastor, didn’t want that to happen with his dear friend, Paul Posti. Posti was Frank Sinatra’s personal chef for 22 years and co-creator of the The Brown Derby’s famous cobb salad.
Posti died at 89 due to heart failure in 2002. Since then, Mather and his wife, Sharon, have been working on a project to honor their late friend.
The couple recently self-published, “Old Hollywood’s Original Recipes,” a collection of more than 500 of Posti’s recipes, including special dishes he made for Sinatra like “Steak Sinatra.” Mather also published a memoir about Posti, “Posti: War Hero, Hollywood Insider, Chef to Celebrities and Redemption,” by Larry Nichols.
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George Mather meets Sinatra’s former chef in 1993
Mather met Posti in 1993, when Mather was pastor at a church in Sherman Oaks, California. As soon as Posti said, “Good morning, Pastor,” Mather, originally from Brockton, recognized Posti’s Boston accent. The two immediately hit it off and soon learned they had a common interest in cooking. Mather was a chef prior to becoming a Lutheran pastor.
“I became like a second son to him,” said Mather. “He started having my wife and I to dinner at his house every Monday for several years, and we would often cook together.”
Posti’s kitchen became Mather’s culinary classroom.
“You can’t get food like this in restaurants anymore,” Mather said.
Posti told Mather stories about his career as a chef and his many interactions with celebrities, including Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd).
“Paul had a wall of pictures of movie stars,” Mather said. “Stars he spent time with, like Clark Gable, Carol Lombard, Joe Pechi, Elvis (Presley) and many more. The whole wall was covered.”
Before he was a chef, Paul Posti was a hero in World War II
Mather soon learned that Posti was a World War II hero. Before becoming a chef, he served in the United States Army Air Forces and was the only person in history to shoot down a German Focke-Wulf fighter plane with his father’s Smith & Wesson 38 caliber service revolver.
Posti also survived a prison concentration camp and helped 26 people escape, said Mather, noting Posti lost an eye at the time.
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“The experiences he had during World War II were edge-of-the-seaters,” Mather said.
During his visits, Mather also learned of Posti’s dark moments and painful childhood.
“His drunken, abusive father was a member of the Boston mob, otherwise known as The Black Hand,” said Posti.
Paul Posti trained under French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier
Born in the North End in 1913, Posti was the son of Sicilian immigrants, according to Mather. His chef training began while working in Venice, Italy, at Locano Capriano, where he learned to make ravioli.
Posti mastered the baking of a traditional English pound cake while at Genaro’s in Trafalgar Square, London. And while under the training of world renowned French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier at the Badrutt Palace Hotel in Chelsa Veglla, St. Mortiz, Switzerland, he learned to make Spanish paella.
Sinatra tasted Posti’s cooking in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1936, said Mather. Posti would give Sinatra free meals to help him out during the early days of his career when he started as a member of the Hoboken Four. This began a lifelong friendship.
Mather said Posti told him that Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, didn’t want him to be a singer, and implored him to instead become an engineer. One night, Dolly Sinatra came into the restaurant where Posti worked looking for Frank. Posti witnessed them arguing. She was yelling at her son in Italian and hit him with her shoe, Posti told Mather. Sinatra tried to escape out the door. Posti said this was one of his funniest memories of Sinatra.
In 1946, Posti became a chef at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles, where he and owner Bob Cobb created what is now known as Cobb salad. It was concocted on the spot to please actor and filmmaker Cecil DeMille.
On another occasion, Posti told Mather he kicked a hungry kid named Elvis Presley out of his kitchen at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City, where he made Elvis’ special hamburger sauce (that recipe is in the cookbook Mather published).
Sinatra later hired Posti to be his personal chef and executive chef at Patsy D’Amore and Sinatra’s Villa Capri restaurant, both in Los Angeles.
Posti showed Mather a collection of Sinatra albums all signed, “To Paolo, the meatball” because he loved Posti’s meatballs and “Paolo” is “Paul” in Italian, but it also means “small” — Posti stood 5-foot-5.
Compiling Posti’s recipes and stories was a labor of love
The Mathers spent years compiling Posti’s recipes and recording his stories for the cookbook and memoir.
In “Posti: War Hero, Hollywood Insider, Chef to Celebrities, and Redemption,” Mather wrote, “I came to know and love Paul Posti. He was simply a man who I would characterize as ‘salt of the earth.’
“His spirituality moves one from a kitchen filled with pots, pans, spice racks, creative concoctions and cooking lessons to a world of wonderment and awe.”
