I held my 60th birthday party here in March 2005. Turning 50 was fine but most people will agree that 60 is not fine. Although in Titian's Venice, you were only old when you were 70. I imagine all those Venetians saying, 'Oh, 60's the new 70'. That day, about 40 of us had hors d'oeuvres at 12pm and we didn't leave until six. I was absolutely the worse for wear by the end.
I discovered Moro through its cookbook and finally came here by myself one evening in November 2004, exhausted after shooting. Relaxed and friendly, it struck me as a happy, unpretentious place. I sat writing and eating fantastic quick-fried liver. And the wine list is incredible.
I grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, which was a working fishing village and, because we were kosher, the winkles, cockles, oysters and mussels smelt gorgeous. The food I ate as a child was very Jewish. I never had the courage to tell my mother what a rotten cook she was. When I stopped being kosher, the first thing I wanted to eat was seafood. It was at university that I stopped being kosher because I was sick of horrible cheese omelettes. Anyway, I'd long since stopped believing in God.
In The Ipcress File, Michael Caine tells Sue Lloyd, 'I'm going to cook you the best meal you ever had,' and I realised that cooking was a way of getting cachet. At college, I only had a single gas hob but I was whipping up coq au vin and it worked with girls - up to a point!
After graduation, I went to Harvard because they offered me the freedom to teach my enthusiasms. But I missed kippers. In America, you get Canadian kippers and they're crap so I order them from www.mackenzieltd.com. The older you get, the more homesick you feel. Filthy pavements, the rain - I get very soppy about London. But my wife Ginny runs a high-powered genetics lab at Harvard so she is not transportable.
I was a live-in don until I met my wife. She surrendered cooking to me, although whenever I come back from a horrible transatlantic flight - which is almost every three weeks - she has something wonderful there like Jamie Oliver's baby roast chicken dish.
When I started dealing with kids, I realised that cooking was totally calming. I cook every day when I'm at home. One of my favourite dishes is a middle-Eastern lemon chicken dish, or polpettone, an Italian veal and beef meatloaf. My writing goes downhill after 4pm so I shop. I avoid supermarkets except to buy newspapers.
We said that we would always have dinner with the kids and they would eat what we were eating. And they grew up loving it. By the time they were six, they wanted to know how to make soufflés. I'm very proud of my son Gabriel. He wrote his college entrance essay about making polpettone with his father, which was very sweet. He used to be a shy, quiet kid, but no longer. He's now studying architecture at Columbia and calls me from Washington with recipe enquiries. I've been tolerated as an uninvited guest when my daughter Chloe cooks for her friends, too. It's such a nice thing to share with your kids. They were at my party at Moro in their posh suits and they adored it too.
When I design my own perfect restaurant in my head, it isn't much different from Moro.
Moro
34-36 Exmouth market, London EC1/ 020 7833 8336
History
Eleven years ago, Moro's owners Sam and Samantha Clark spent their honeymoon driving through Spain and Morocco and decided they wanted to explore the less familiar flavours of the Mediterranean more fully by opening their own restaurant which they did in 1997.
Popular dishes
Wood-roasted middle white pork with orange and fennel salad £16.50. Charcoal-grilled lamb with escalivada £17
Celebrity customers
Michael Palin, Coldplay, Zaha Hadid, John Malkovich, Tom Ford
Opens
Mon - Sat
Lunch 12.30-2.30pm; dinner
7- 10.30pm; tapas all day
· Simon Schama's Power of Art is published on 28 September (BBC Worldwide, £25)
