From Mick Jagger to Warhol and Madonna – who is Mr Chow, the man who ran the ‘Studio 54’ of restaurants?

Ever since Michael Chow threw open his doors in London in the Sixties, the A-list have flocked to his restaurants, but there was a dark side to the glitz and glamour. As a new HBO documentary reveals the painful truth, Bill Borrows goes to meet the man with the most extraordinary life

Zhou Yinghua, aka Michael Chow, aka Mr Chow, aka M, became a legend in many A-list lunchtimes (Courtesy of HBO)

It’s 9.30am in the Hollywood Hills, and Mr Chow’s favourite time of day. He has attended to his ablutions, styled his archipelago of dark hair (c/o “Touch of Grey” shampoo), and affixed a pair of two-tone blue Cutler and Gross round glasses to his kind and remarkably unlined face. In his pristine “athleisure” wear, he looks about 56 instead of his 84 years of age.

He may be over 5,000 miles away in Los Angeles, but when Michael Chow asks you to do something, you do it. Ask me, he says, “What do you do?” I politely comply. “Well, I used to be an a**hole, but now I’m a legend.”

The artist and restaurateur to film, fashion, music, and art nobility for over five decades looks delighted with his proclamation as he rocks back in front of the tropical flora print wallpaper in one of the two houses he bought from Katy Perry for $12.7m five years ago.

“I love name-dropping,” he laughs. “I usually say I hate it and that my friend Lady Gaga agrees with me, but I’ve met everybody, and I mean everybody. I had tea with Napoleon the other day. Or was it Ridley Scott? I forget. I even did a movie three years ago with Joaquin Phoenix, the actor [who plays Napoleon in the new Scott movie].”

Michael Chow with a 1973 painting by Ed Ruscha at his Los Angeles restaurant (Allan Tenenbaum/HBO)

Now married for the fourth time, to Vanessa Rano, a licensed social worker (therapist), who is 39 years his junior and the mother of his two young children, Phoenix (aged four) and Skye (two), Chow claims to be in the fifth act of his extraordinary life.

“Most lives have three acts, right? If you look at obituaries these days, about 50 per cent of people seem to die in their eighties. They catch a cold and die. Yesterday I had a minor procedure, but I’m very ambitious. This documentary has been a tremendous success in America. People are saying hello to me in the middle of the street. I’m really shocked.”

The HBO documentary is aka Mr Chow – the title being a reference to his world-renowned and eponymous chain of glamorous upscale restaurants that were at the heart of anywhere that was ever having a moment: from Swinging London in 1968, Beverly Hills in 1974, and New York in time to catch the end of the Studio 54 era and the rebirth of the city in the Eighties to Miami, Las Vegas, and soon, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

The menu is unashamedly expensive and frequently derided by critics (“I never had good reviews. Are you kidding me? The New Yorker called my food ‘turd’”).

Yet, Mr Chow’s has never been about the food. Ever since The Beatles and Stones turned up for the opening of his original Knightsbridge establishment, Mr Chow’s has been a haven for his artist friends (Warhol, Blake, and Herring) and some of the biggest show business names on the planet. His was the original restaurant as “theatre” and every night, he insists, should be a “performance”.

Mr Chow in his Beverly Hills restaurant last month (Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty for Haute Living)

Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen swinging by, Jean-Michel Basquiat working on his art with a plate of noodles to one side; a standing ovation for Mae West; Groucho Marx at the bar; cooking for Brigitte Bardot, Lana Turner, and Rita Hayworth; earnest conversations with Orson Welles and Federico Fellini and Madonna demanding attention – all of these are now precious memories for Chow.

But proximity to fame was never the motivation for Michael Chow. The title of the documentary is a nod to the young Zhou Yinghua who, before he became hip restaurateur Mr Chow, already had an intimate relationship with celebrity. His father, Zhou Xinfang, was a grand master of the Peking Opera and the most famous playwright and actor in China (“a complete artist” says Mr Chow, “Beethoven – that kind of level”). “I was born into this kind of melodrama,” he remembers.

There were two cultural revolutions. One in Britain and one in China, and I was in the right place at the right time

In 1952, he was sent to boarding school in England. “I grew up, my first 12 years, and I was spoilt. I was told my father is the biggest star, the greatest human, and that I’m going to be great also, so I take it for granted but then I arrive in England and I become a cockroach.

“I hated school and exams, left with O-levels in Chinese and art but somehow talked my way into architecture college. I climbed out of a hole with all this fuel inside me and this sense of humour.”

He would never see or speak to his father again – a traumatic development brought about by the political situation in China and the onset of the Cultural Revolution – but he felt a “necessity to be a great something or other.” It could have been painting (he studied at St Martin’s for a year) but he also began acting in 1958 (bit parts in films such as The Brides of Fu Manchu and You Only Live Twice – both with his actor sister Tsai Chin). But with the restaurant business, he found he could combine all of his passions.

“There were two cultural revolutions,” he says. “One in Britain and one in China, and I was in the right place at the right time. Something fresh always comes along after a war, and creativity came with the whole 1960s Swinging London thing.

“We ruled the world, and I was at the centre of it with the restaurant. The best bands, actors, photographers, models, designers, even the World Cup footballers, and we walked around like a gang. F***ing incredible… although I did fall asleep in the second row as Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar and smashed it up.”

With the right investment, impeccable contacts, and a tried and tested business model, Chow crossed the Atlantic for a second launch but, as the documentary reveals, there was a new kind of prejudice to overcome.

Michael Chow as a young man: ‘I climbed out of a hole with all this fuel inside me and this sense of humour’ (Richard Lin/HBO)

His round spectacles have become a trademark style statement but, he has acknowledged, were initially adopted to make him seem less Chinese. “British racism and American racism are different,” he says. “With the British, you’re forgiven if you’re an aristocrat or eccentric. Money doesn’t mean much… if you are artistic, you can dine with us… I was all three. But American racism really hurts. Tell them you’re an aristocrat [in the US], and they’ll say f*** off basically,” he smiles as he remembers how he reinvented himself for a new audience. “There’s a reserve currency of poker players, so that’s what I did when I had to plug myself into LA. They were all stars like Walter Matthau, so instantly I’m socially bang-bang… fate always has a guiding hand.”

And in aka Mr Chow you get a real sense of the scale of reinvention he went through. With former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter as executive producer, the documentary is as glamorous as you would expect, but it also goes places that Michael Chow has denied to journalists for years. These include the trauma of his family left behind in China; problems with gambling; depression; the death of his second wife, American-Japanese jewellery designer Bettina (Tina) Louise Lutz, to the Aids epidemic that devastated the artistic community in New York (“the craziest thing that happened”); and the breakdown of his third marriage.

So why tell these stories now? “I was in denial, like all old people, thinking I’m young. They slapped me around and said, you’re not young, you’re old, it’s your duty to make a documentary so you can benefit future generations. So I say ‘OK, that’s kind of a noble thing to do’.”

I’m working towards becoming the greatest living artist… that’s a living artist, not the greatest artist of all time

The man that emerges is a prolific expressionist artist working as “M” – aka Mr Chow once again – with all types of paint and tools, an erudite collector, ambitious businessman and a proud father preoccupied with laying a loving foundation for his two youngest children. But, I say,  it can’t be easy being such an old dad.

“The second run of children is amazing. I was first and then Al Pacino and Robert de Niro copied me… you really have to give the children a lot of love. That’s the most important thing. If you don’t, even at two and four, they will grow up with… [and he pauses] The mother is very important for children.”

He claims not to have many “old” friends and enjoys talking to people around 30 years of age, only slightly younger than his wife who has spent 10 years as a psychiatrist and “kind of saved my life.”

He is an undeniably inspirational figure. “I don’t have much time left, but after this documentary, I’m going to be doing two very big things, and the best is yet to come,” he insists. “I’m working towards becoming the greatest living artist… that’s a living artist, not the greatest artist of all time. And secondly, after I’ve opened Mr Chow in Dubai, I’m going to launch OO TO GO by Mr Chow – American-Chinese food for the market opened up by Uber Eats.”

So has reliving his past for HBO taught him anything? “The recent discovery for me is that everything is a recipe, and I’ve been very, very lucky,” he laughs. “Even if I did die tomorrow, I’ve lived a full life. My favourite movie is Lawrence of Arabia and the line, ‘I know I’m not ordinary … All right! I’m extraordinary!’”

‘aka Mr Chow’ will be available on Sky Documentaries and Now TV from 4 December