MAYBE it’s her grand-kids, maybe it’s being 81, but Barbra Streisand is open to new stuff. Take sharing. Well, take sharing herself. My Name is Barbra, her first memoir, is upon us. It’s 970 pages and billows with doubt, anger, ardour, hurt, pride, persuasion, glory and Yiddish. I don’t know that any artist has done more sharing.
And yet after lunch at her home in Malibu, Barbra shares something else, a treasure she guards almost as much she’s guarded the details of her life. And that’s dessert.
There’s a lot in this book – tales of film shoots, clashes and bonds with collaborators and a whole chapter on Don Johnson (she dated the Miami Vice actor in the 1980s). But food is so ubiquitous that it’s practically a love of Streisand’s life, especially ice cream.
So when it’s time for dessert at Barbra’s, despite any choice you’re offered, there’s truly only one option. And that’s McConnell’s Brazilian Coffee ice cream. She writes about it with an orgasmic zeal comparable only, perhaps, to her stated zests for Modigliani and Sondheim. How much does Barbra love Brazilian Coffee? In the book, she’s in the middle of a sad story about a dinner with her buddy, Marlon Brando, at Quincy Jones’ place, when she interrupts herself to rhapsodise over its flavour and reminisce on the lengths she has gone to get some. So I wanted to have what she’s having.
Eventually, her longtime assistant, Renata Buser, arrives with a bowl, and I get it. It tastes like money. Renata has lodged Barbra’s demiscoop inside a wafer cone just the way
