Taste With Tori: Sweet Lula's
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- How about a dinner and a show in a small New Jersey town? Tonight our Taste With Tori is in a restaurant run by a puppeteer with ties to Hollywood and a beautiful singer and former model from England! Our Vittoria Woodill takes us to Sweet Lula's.
There's singing in the restaurant and fantastic stories in the kitchen.
"I thought this would be fun," says Anthony Asbury laughing about being a puppeteer turned chef.
Anthony Asbury is not your typical chef.
In fact he's not even a trained chef. He's self-taught.
And even though he's a former professional puppeteer who's always on, he's always performing.
We even had to interview him in the kitchen because he's the only guy cooking for a packed house on this night.
"Let me have a scallop set up out here," he yelled to the staff.
Before he got into the restaurant business he was in show biz.
It was Hollywood!
He worked on the movie, 'The Flintstones' with actor John Goodman and many of the character puppets.
Anthony brought Dino to life.
He recalls this story on set one day.
"We had a bucket of slop for Dino's tongue, I hit John Goodman in the face with this big rubber tongue and it was just flying everywhere, " he laughs as he continues.
"I was so exhausted and then I looked down at John and I'm still sitting on him and I go 'is this the weirdest thing you ever done' and he goes, 'get off of me'".
He's worked with the famous muppets creator Jim Henson and singer David Bowie in the 1986 movie 'Labyrinth' an adventure fantasy where most of the characters were puppets.
"What was Jim Henson like,"asks Woodill. "Without a doubt the most generous person I ever met in my life," says Anthony. "When you were working on a new character or something, he'd let you discover things, try new things until you got it."
Anthony's knack for improv also leads him to create inspired American cuisine.
"It freaks my son out he says 'where did you that come up with that recipe' and I go I just thought it up," he said.
He's created dishes like a decadent duck with a cherry reduction sauce that was fabulous.
But let's not forget the music.
Anthony's co-star and wife, Louise, is known to belt out a few tunes on the weekends.
Anthony's nickname for her is Sweet Lula which became the inspiration for the name of the restaurant.
Lula even had her own brush with fame as a British singer and model in the early 80's.
"I did back up vocals for Edwin Starr, remember War," she asks referring to the song War.
She even broke out into the tune's lyrics.
In Pitman, New Jersey dinner and a show have never been so sweet as here in Sweet Lula's.
"Do you ever look at your wife singing and you're back here cooking and you go 'wow, this is cool,'" Woodill asks Anthony as he plates up dinners.
"All the time," he told her. "The first time I noticed it we had a line going out the door and for some reason I took a second and I looked up and everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating, stood up and started dancing. She's absolutely awesome."
A love song and a love story, all with a sweet ending.
Anthony and Lula have been married for twenty-one years.
They met in a bar in Birmingham, England after one of Anthony's shows.
He tells us it was love at first sight.
We've set up a link here so you can check out Sweet Lula's story and its menu.
And don't forget to Facebook Tori about your favorite places and why you like them at Facebook.com/vittoria woodill.
