Speaker 1: While she is an award winning chef, co founder of
Speaker 1: a Michelin starred restaurant, author of thirteen cookbooks, a native
Speaker 1: New Yorker, has a podcast where she talks with the
Speaker 1: likes of Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, Mel Brooks,
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart, Francis Ford Coppola, Markcarney, Bob Eiger, Johnny Ive
Speaker 1: whose comfort food, by the way.
Speaker 2: Is peet okay.
Speaker 1: I like that you would have known. She has also,
Speaker 1: full disclosure, talked with Michael Bloomberg, of course, founder of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. She has talked with many,
Speaker 1: many folks. All of it comes together in a great book.
Speaker 1: It's also comes together like a great meal with amazing company.
Speaker 1: Her new book is entitled Table four at the River Cafe, which,
Speaker 1: as we understand, is a highly coveted physical table located
Speaker 1: near the restaurant's open kitchen. Here to tell us about
Speaker 1: it and more is Ruthie Rogers, co founder of The
Speaker 1: River Cafe in London, host of her podcast, Ruthie's Table Four.
Speaker 1: She joins us from London. We are so delighted to
Speaker 1: have you. We know it's a little bit later there
Speaker 1: in London, congratulations on the new book. We were thinking
Speaker 1: about where should we begin and if you had to
Speaker 1: pick one single thing, Ruthie, as to where you are today,
Speaker 1: why you got there, your restaurant, iconic, well known in London,
Speaker 1: award winning, you've got now a five year old podcast.
Speaker 1: What might that thing be?
Speaker 3: I think that you know, from the very beginning, we
Speaker 3: started with the values of a restaurant. What is a restaurant?
Speaker 3: Why do people go to restaurants? What do you look
Speaker 3: for in a restaurant? And I was just downstairs just now,
Speaker 3: and I see that the way people are greeted, the
Speaker 3: way people have made to feel welcome. Of course, the food.
Speaker 3: We changed the menu for every meal. We write a
Speaker 3: menu we rather like you do at home. We see
Speaker 3: what is fresh, what we have we've bought the day before,
Speaker 3: and what, of course always what is in season in
Speaker 3: the Italian market. So I think every day is a
Speaker 3: different day. We have great people working here who we
Speaker 3: you know, the whole kitchen is open, and so there's
Speaker 3: a kind of way that we all work together. And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, we want, really people to come
Speaker 3: to your restaurant and leave. I always say quite simply
Speaker 3: happier than when they arrived.
Speaker 2: So tell us about for people who haven't been to
Speaker 2: the restaurant, the coveted table four.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, Michael Caine always used to sit
Speaker 3: at table four. But then you know, when Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 3: came in, we set at table one, and there might
Speaker 3: be a table who prefers somebody who prefers table ten,
Speaker 3: which is nearer to the entrance. Table four is slightly
Speaker 3: also a pun on the word four, so it's a
Speaker 3: table number, but it also is a table for Michael Bloomberg,
Speaker 3: a table four any of the other people who are
Speaker 3: in the book. Because what we wanted to do during
Speaker 3: when we had to stop the restaurant because of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: we wanted a way to reach the people who ate
Speaker 3: in the restaurant. How could we reach them. We thought
Speaker 3: about reading a recipe every day, and then that segued
Speaker 3: into the story. Because when you think about when we
Speaker 3: talk to people through the lens of food about their memories,
Speaker 3: it's very thoughtful. If it brings back if I asked you,
Speaker 3: did your mother cooke? Did your father cook? Did you
Speaker 3: go to restaurants? It brings up other stories.
Speaker 1: I love that aspect. Being from a large family, food
Speaker 1: was a big part. My mom loved to cook, and
Speaker 1: you know, especially around holidays, birthdays, a relative in town.
Speaker 1: She would cook and make sure there was things for
Speaker 1: everybody who liked, you know, even if she had to
Speaker 1: do like five different vegetables to make sure everybody was happy.
Speaker 1: But we would sit Ruthie at that table for hours,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's where you're coming from now.
Speaker 3: The best things happen around a table, I think very well.
Speaker 3: And the sad things happened around a table. But I
Speaker 3: think it is around a table that we all meet.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. We could have a sandwich around the
Speaker 3: table or a drink around the table, but there is
Speaker 3: something of that conversation. And when when I you know,
Speaker 3: when we interviewed Elton John and David Furnish, the woman
Speaker 3: who worked for his chief of staff is said she'd
Speaker 3: worked with and heard so many interviews over twenty five years,
Speaker 3: but it was only when Elton started talking about potting
Speaker 3: peas with his grandmother or how they tried, you know,
Speaker 3: the people who goose food, you know, to seduce, to impress,
Speaker 3: to give joy, to share. It's you know, and I'm
Speaker 3: also you know, I made a lot of women who
Speaker 3: don't cook or men who don't cook, and that's fine.
Speaker 3: It's not about the cooking. It's about somehow being together.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about the podcast a little bit in
Speaker 2: the way that these interviews have come together in this
Speaker 2: new book. As Carol mentioned a host of names, these
Speaker 2: are not your favorites. These are just some of the
Speaker 2: interviews that the publisher picked.
Speaker 3: We should know make it clear because so many brilliant
Speaker 3: people are not in the book, but they'll be in
Speaker 3: volume two.
Speaker 2: Well, what is the connection between the podcast and the
Speaker 2: restaurant and the way that you try to bring what
Speaker 2: you bring to life in a restaurant to an audio
Speaker 2: format that you invite people to sort of be at
Speaker 2: the table with you.
Speaker 3: I think there are two things. I think a friend
Speaker 3: of mine came into the restaurant the other day and
Speaker 3: he said, you know, oh, I don't you know, I'm
Speaker 3: having trouble with one of my children. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: that I can join this crowd. Look at this room, Ruthie.
Speaker 3: There are so many people at this table, looking so
Speaker 3: happy and celebrating. And I said, you know, if you
Speaker 3: want at every table in this restaurant. Everyone has a story.
Speaker 3: Everyone has a story. It could be a happy story
Speaker 3: that daughter might have graduated, or they could have been
Speaker 3: fired that day, or their mother might be sick, or
Speaker 3: you know, there's so many stories that people have, and
Speaker 3: I think what I wanted to do is talk to
Speaker 3: people and have their stories told. As I say, through
Speaker 3: the lens of food and you discover we have different section.
Speaker 3: We have the chapter of food is Family and so
Speaker 3: we have the McCartney family, we have the Beckham family.
Speaker 3: We have the Mary Russell and Matthew Rice. We have
Speaker 3: and that's families. We have the art Food is Art
Speaker 3: and we have I see emmen and we have Johnny
Speaker 3: Ive who's a designer. We have the political artist politics.
Speaker 3: We have as you said, Mark Carney. And it's not
Speaker 3: about famous people. It's not about celebrities. It's about people
Speaker 3: who have stories that we all want to know about,
Speaker 3: you know. And so I think it's quite democratic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, it is, and the approach is really
Speaker 1: fun to kind of go through. I want to ask you, though,
Speaker 1: I think your first podcast was September. Back in September
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, Jake Dyllen Hall, was it Jake,
Speaker 1: And if so, why how did that come to be
Speaker 1: in white Jake being the first.
Speaker 3: Well, we never thought, we never. Jake is a really
Speaker 3: good friend. I've known him for a long time, and
Speaker 3: I said, would you do this with me? Because I
Speaker 3: don't really know what I'm doing, but we're going to
Speaker 3: try and do this podcast. And it really came from
Speaker 3: my husband and I used to give evenings one every
Speaker 3: year in which an actor or a singer or a
Speaker 3: writer would would perform in the living room of our
Speaker 3: house and we would give the money to, you know,
Speaker 3: the charitable cause we believed in. And one night we
Speaker 3: had Ian McKellen, and you know, he told an anecdote,
Speaker 3: he sang a song, he recounted something that happened to
Speaker 3: him in the theater, He did a sonnet of Shakespeare.
Speaker 3: But the last thing he did was to get one
Speaker 3: of our cookbooks, for the first cookbook and read a
Speaker 3: recipe for a soup. And you know always say a
Speaker 3: recipe is half science and half poetry, right, and the
Speaker 3: recipe is actually there's something rather beautiful about listening. So
Speaker 3: I said to Jake, helped me out here, and so
Speaker 3: he did one and the first one, I think, and
Speaker 3: it was Wes Anderson, who's another good friend and one.
Speaker 1: Listen, Ruthie, we have to jump and go ten seconds.
Speaker 1: What's your comfort food?
Speaker 3: My comfort food would be real quick sauce.
Speaker 1: Ah, A good one. Ruthie, thank you so much. We've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to catching up with you. Ruthie Rogers,
Speaker 1: co founder of The River Cafe in London, her podcast
Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table for her new book, Table four at The
Speaker 1: River Cafe