Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Gwyneth Paltrow worked for a day in the River Cafe kitchen.
Speaker 2: She arrived early dressed in professional chef whites, ready to cook.
Speaker 2: This memory speaks to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar
Speaker 2: winning actor, she built Goop from a simple newsletter into
Speaker 2: an influential and uplifting business with energy, elegance, and strong values.
Speaker 2: Another memory. Ten years ago, just after the death of
Speaker 2: our son, Beau, I asked Gwyneth if she might surprise
Speaker 2: the River Cafe team and sing one song for them
Speaker 2: at our Christmas party to thank them for their care
Speaker 2: and concern for me. Gwyneth not only said yes, she
Speaker 2: sang four songs, danced with everyone, and stayed to the
Speaker 2: very end. In the River Cafe history, we still talk
Speaker 2: about the time Gwyneth Paltrow came to sing. I admire
Speaker 2: Gwyneth for being a brave, smart entrepreneur. I respect Gwyneth
Speaker 2: as a writer of recipes. Most of all, I love
Speaker 2: Gwyneth for being there with me that night and here
Speaker 2: with me today.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 4: That was so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Thank you. So, if we were going to start at
Speaker 2: the beginning, what is the beginning? Where were you born?
Speaker 2: Where did you grow up?
Speaker 3: I was born here in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. We
Speaker 3: kind of went back and forth between New York City
Speaker 3: and Santa Monica a lot. I did a lot of
Speaker 3: preschool in New York City, and I did first and
Speaker 3: third grades in New York City while my mother was
Speaker 3: on Broadway, and then the bulk of the rest of
Speaker 3: elementary school here and then moved permanently to New York
Speaker 3: City when I was eleven.
Speaker 2: Can you remember the kitchens as food? I described the kitchens,
Speaker 2: but they're very different.
Speaker 3: The La house and the kitchens were very different. So
Speaker 3: our kitchen in Las Angelus here had a brick floor,
Speaker 3: red brick floor and a tile counter, sort of like
Speaker 3: very country kitchen. Lots of windows, and you could see
Speaker 3: the backyard in the pool, and we were in there
Speaker 3: a lot. I mean, I think with every house, you're
Speaker 3: in the kitchen more than anywhere. Our New York kitchen
Speaker 3: was on the ground floor. We grew up in a townhouse,
Speaker 3: almost no windows, but we had a big fireplace in
Speaker 3: the kitchen, which was really nice, and it was more
Speaker 3: of a modern kitchen had been done by a Swedish architects.
Speaker 3: It was kind of minimal and who cooked well. When
Speaker 3: I was little, I remember, I mean my mom cooked.
Speaker 3: My dad started cooking a lot, but that was later.
Speaker 3: He got very into cooking, kind of when we were
Speaker 3: older teenagers.
Speaker 2: And when you have meals around the table together with
Speaker 2: you and Jake, Oh, my parents sit down, what were
Speaker 2: they like?
Speaker 3: They were really nice. I mean it was I think
Speaker 3: we felt special being included the dinner table, even though
Speaker 3: it was a nightly event. It felt, you know, like
Speaker 3: if they had friends over. We sat with them at
Speaker 3: the table and had long conversations. It's something that I've
Speaker 3: carried on with my kids as well. You know, we
Speaker 3: always have dinner all together as a family, no phones
Speaker 3: allowed at the table, and you get into great discourse
Speaker 3: with them and hear what they think about things. And
Speaker 3: I think my father made me feel that I was
Speaker 3: valuable during those dinners because he really elicited our opinion.
Speaker 3: He asked questions, and my brother and I were very
Speaker 3: much a part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: It was his background.
Speaker 3: He grew up without money, he grew up on Long Island,
Speaker 3: and they were you know, They were kind of a
Speaker 3: working class moving trying moving up into middle class Jewish family,
Speaker 3: but they didn't have a lot of disposable income, and
Speaker 3: they didn't they didn't go out to eat. So when
Speaker 3: my father finally made it, you know, like his and
Speaker 3: he loved food and all the.
Speaker 2: Beautiful things in life.
Speaker 3: You know, he loved beautiful fabrics and paintings, and you know,
Speaker 3: he would take me to every museum in the world
Speaker 3: and we would walk for hours. And I think food
Speaker 3: for him was really an expression of life's beauty and
Speaker 3: our blessings and good fortune to be able to eat
Speaker 3: something that was fresh and delicious and really well conceived
Speaker 3: and thought about. And he was so proud that, you know,
Speaker 3: we ate oysters and you know, things that he hadn't
Speaker 3: come across until really later in his life. And I
Speaker 3: always remember, and I wrote about this in my first book,
Speaker 3: that when we would get into the car to go
Speaker 3: out to dinner, like no matter how many times we
Speaker 3: had gone, like, he was so excited. It was like
Speaker 3: the greatest thing of all time that we were going
Speaker 3: out to dinner.
Speaker 2: Did you travel with your parents, Did you go to
Speaker 2: Italy or Spain?
Speaker 3: We never went to Italy, until you know, the first
Speaker 3: time I ever went to Italy with my mind. My
Speaker 3: father he was when he died. He died in Florence,
Speaker 3: he died in he died in Rome. And we were
Speaker 3: doing our first kind of road trip after my thirtieth birthday,
Speaker 3: and yeah, he kind of died on me, which.
Speaker 4: Complicated the trip.
Speaker 2: It is a complicate Italy for you.
Speaker 3: It did complicate Italy for me for a long time.
Speaker 3: I didn't go back for ten years. And when we
Speaker 3: were on our road trip and I found out that
Speaker 3: he was sick and he had been coughing up blood,
Speaker 3: and I said, we have to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3: You know, he'd been hiding it for me because he
Speaker 3: didn't want He really wanted to finish our trip. And
Speaker 3: I was like, this is so, we're going to the hospital.
Speaker 3: And he was like, no, we got to get to
Speaker 3: the Splendido. He really was trying, and I was like,
Speaker 3: we're not going to the like, we're going to the hospital.
Speaker 3: And he ended up dying. And then I had a
Speaker 3: real aversion to Italy for a long time. And then,
Speaker 3: very sweetly, Chris Martin, my first husband, on my fortieth
Speaker 3: birthday ten years later, and I was having a lot
Speaker 3: of anxiety about it anyway, because I think turning forty,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm about to turn fifty and I kind
Speaker 3: of don't give a but forty I was like, really
Speaker 3: had so much anxiety about it, and he by that point,
Speaker 3: I had the two kids and we got on a
Speaker 3: plane and I didn't know where we were going, and
Speaker 3: we all of a sudden, I realized we were landing
Speaker 3: in Genoa and that we were going to the Splendid Though,
Speaker 3: which was so sweet. It was such a nice surprise.
Speaker 3: So it was like a completion, but it was. But
Speaker 3: Jake was with me and my two best friends Mary
Speaker 3: and Julia, who've been my best friend since one since
Speaker 3: I was four and one since I was eleven. They
Speaker 3: were with me, and they my father was like a
Speaker 3: father to them too, So it was it ended up
Speaker 3: being a really beautiful experience that we all got to
Speaker 3: be there and kind of come full circle. And now
Speaker 3: I'm you know, we bought a little farmhouse in Umbria,
Speaker 3: so just south of the Tuscan border.
Speaker 2: Great food in Umbria, Yeah, tuffles in the fall, you
Speaker 2: have lentils and you know, boar, it's great.
Speaker 3: I know, it's really it's a really special place. So
Speaker 3: I'm excited to spend more time there and to learn
Speaker 3: some Italian.
Speaker 2: But what about Spain of France.
Speaker 3: Spain so France. Well, I kind of told this like
Speaker 3: now now it's kind of food. A famous story about
Speaker 3: my dad taking me. My mom was doing a filming
Speaker 3: something in London when I was ten. We still lived
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles, and we all made the trip over
Speaker 3: to visit her, and then my dad took me to
Speaker 3: Paris for the weekend and just he and I and
Speaker 3: we stayed at the Ritz and we went to the
Speaker 3: Pompei dou, We went to the Louver, we went to
Speaker 3: all museums, and my main thing was that I wanted
Speaker 3: to eat French fries, like actual French fries. So that
Speaker 3: was the first thing we did when we checked into
Speaker 3: the hotel, is that I ordered French fries. And he
Speaker 3: took me all around, you know, we were eating all
Speaker 3: kinds of things. And on the way back to London,
Speaker 3: he said, do you know why I took you to Paris,
Speaker 3: just you and I? And I said no, and he said,
Speaker 3: because I wanted you to see Paris for the first
Speaker 3: time with a man who will always love you no
Speaker 3: matter what.
Speaker 2: So sweet. I mean, what you've been talking about is
Speaker 2: memories of a man who loved food, loved you, wanted
Speaker 2: to take you and indulge in new experiences to do
Speaker 2: with eating and cooking and spending time with you. And
Speaker 2: I think that you know that is about what we do.
Speaker 2: Food is memory and food is love.
Speaker 1: Oh, everyone, hope you will sorry to be familiar.
Speaker 5: I just am because I'm here. They always look.
Speaker 2: Like what.
Speaker 1: He's quite familiar that hello.
Speaker 2: I can't say how many times when arriving in the
Speaker 2: River Cafe in a taxi the driver will turned around
Speaker 2: to me and say, is this the restaurant or Jamie
Speaker 2: Oliver cooked the other day? One even informed me that
Speaker 2: the River Cafe was owned by Jamie, and I thought,
Speaker 2: why correct him? He is a prodigal son or the
Speaker 2: brother who knows that when he walks in the door
Speaker 2: of the restaurant he is home.
Speaker 5: Like the old days.
Speaker 2: When was the last time you're here?
Speaker 1: I try and get here at least two or three
Speaker 1: times a year if I'm lucky, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: it's a bit like therapy really see Charles, which always
Speaker 1: makes me very happy. We normally go through the same
Speaker 1: old jokes and then crack onto a bit of new news,
Speaker 1: friends and family. But there's lots of nostalgia, isn't there.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things you always said is
Speaker 1: that you love the reset of coming back to the
Speaker 1: River gap, something you and.
Speaker 5: Beggsy always said. Yeah, as you go out.
Speaker 1: Into the world, and then it's quite nice to get
Speaker 1: back to your roots and taste a bit of that
Speaker 1: get that River Cafe experience again. It's like being home,
Speaker 1: which is lovely.
Speaker 2: Jamie came to work with us when he was just
Speaker 2: about twenty, I guess almost thirty years ago. Rose Gray
Speaker 2: interviewed him for the job and as always said, it
Speaker 2: was love at first sight.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Euthie. Well, I love that. I remember the
Speaker 1: first time Rose interviewed me.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I had been working at the Neil Street restaurant
Speaker 1: for a year and a half and I knew it
Speaker 1: was time for me to move on. And I just
Speaker 1: read this book, the first River Cafe book, Blue, and
Speaker 1: it just like changed everything. It was like it's like
Speaker 1: a moment because just from a design point of view
Speaker 1: and a feeling point of view and the black and
Speaker 1: white reportage photos, and it was like fresh air and
Speaker 1: I knew I had to get there, so I owned
Speaker 1: up and I came in. I was quite skin and
Speaker 1: I had my first suit that was a really cheap suit. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was if it had gone near a candle. We
Speaker 1: had gone up in flames so quickly, and I turned
Speaker 1: up in a suit with a terrible tie because my
Speaker 1: dad always said, like, make an effort. And I remember
Speaker 1: the head chef at the time and all the chefs
Speaker 1: looking around just thinking like he's in a suitcase.
Speaker 5: You don't really wear suits.
Speaker 1: Of the River customers, but we we definitely bonded on them.
Speaker 1: I think Ravioli was the place that we kind of
Speaker 1: connected and then the rest was history.
Speaker 2: Then did you come straight away? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I couldn't wait.
Speaker 1: And it was like it was an amazing time because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you always look back with romance, but
Speaker 1: it was an amazing time in Britain and the River
Speaker 1: Cafe was on fire and had come from you know,
Speaker 1: such humble beginnings. But was this extraordinary, unconventional John doing
Speaker 1: incredible things, run of course by Ruthie in the amazing team,
Speaker 1: but you know, cool Britannia, the music scene, the fashion scene,
Speaker 1: the photography scene, the part scene. I remember cooking with
Speaker 1: you for a new labor before they got in and
Speaker 1: during they got in, and and I remember the Millennium
Speaker 1: Dome as a sketch on a tablecloth, and I remember
Speaker 1: it as a as a model that was just a
Speaker 1: few meters away from the pastry section while making chocolate Nemesis.
Speaker 1: And then I remember the real one.
Speaker 2: Did you do you remember I was I was nineteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was nineteen years old when I came here,
Speaker 1: and I was.
Speaker 2: Ninety wondered Blair when the election wasn't ninety seven. And then,
Speaker 2: as you said, there were a kind of excitement, a
Speaker 2: kind of melding also politics and food and as you say,
Speaker 2: culture and excitement. I certainly remember Rose calling me up.
Speaker 2: I think I was away clearly when you were. When
Speaker 2: you came through an interview in the suit, I would
Speaker 2: have remembered it. And she said, you know, Ruthy, this
Speaker 2: one you're going to love this.
Speaker 4: This is somebody else.
Speaker 5: I was so keen.
Speaker 1: I was so keen, and it felt like a family
Speaker 1: straight away, and I'd grown up obviously in a family restaurant.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: My last bit of advice from my dad to me
Speaker 1: was like just whoever you work for, just treat their
Speaker 1: business like yours. And you haven't got one job, You've
Speaker 1: got every job. If the phone rings picked it up,
Speaker 1: if your floor needs moping, moping. And I remember just
Speaker 1: sort of coming to the River Cafe and it actually
Speaker 1: felt like a family, which is actually it is more
Speaker 1: rare than it's not that common even now in restaurants.
Speaker 1: What you and Rose were doing was so untraditional from
Speaker 1: what the kind of machine teaches.
Speaker 5: I remember.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking about crying for about three weeks, not
Speaker 1: because of you or the team, but just because of
Speaker 1: the stress of a new menu twice a day.
Speaker 5: Was completely outside of what I knew.
Speaker 1: But then you get used to it, and I learned
Speaker 1: what you created was thinkers. Yeah, people that could adjust
Speaker 1: and react to seasons, and everything that was happening in
Speaker 1: the industry was about protocol and structures and safety, whereas
Speaker 1: we I don't know, it was so exciting to have
Speaker 1: two women as bosses and owners. I think very male
Speaker 1: driven kitchens, and I'm not saying this for any effect,
Speaker 1: like quite aggressive, often flooded with drugs, and it was
Speaker 1: quite scary. Yeah, And I knew those kitchens and I'd
Speaker 1: worked in London and abroad and things like that. So
Speaker 1: it was, you know, even when I come in today,
Speaker 1: you can see there's this lovely fifty to fifty balance
Speaker 1: of them. And that's the holy Grail, I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if.
Speaker 5: You skew one way or the other, you can get issues.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's but the thinking was so different.
Speaker 2: One of the amazing trajectories was when we did a
Speaker 2: film called what was it called A Christmas at the
Speaker 2: Christmas at the River Curvet, and that was a film
Speaker 2: that you know, really I remember, you know you've fried mushrooms,
Speaker 2: didn't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we did, I think Paul Ketta and Ret Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then I think I was on HOTS two one night,
Speaker 1: and obviously I can look at it back now sort
Speaker 1: of seeing because I think, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: You were filming for.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks, the show that you were making,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't supposed to be working that night. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I ever told you this, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. So the night that I was in the
Speaker 1: background of your your program, I wasn't supposed to be working.
Speaker 1: I was off, and my wife Jewels was off as well,
Speaker 1: and she worked at the River Cafe in the front
Speaker 1: of house. We hadn't had a night off together for
Speaker 1: ages and the phone rang about four o'clock and one
Speaker 1: of the team had gone sick jewels, you know, with
Speaker 1: all the best in the world.
Speaker 5: I had to come and put the shift in.
Speaker 1: But that's when the crew was there, and actually they
Speaker 1: were kind of in the way because I was catching
Speaker 1: my tail because I was an hour and a half
Speaker 1: late for the shift to cover someone and I was
Speaker 1: running Hots two, which as you know, is one of
Speaker 1: your busiest sections. I'm sure it still is now. But
Speaker 1: it was free to miss the tagleteleia I remember with
Speaker 1: Girol's and Risotto, remember I do, I do remember, and
Speaker 1: the slow of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't think anything of it, and the night went
Speaker 1: out on TV like many months later, maybe six months later.
Speaker 1: Possibly I didn't know I was in it because I
Speaker 1: was working. But then the phones started to ring. The
Speaker 1: next day, literally the next day I came in.
Speaker 2: I would say that I came in that morning and said, wow, Jamie,
Speaker 2: you did a really great, great thing with those mushrooms.
Speaker 2: You were amazing on television. And then the phone rang,
Speaker 2: and I can remember where it was. The phone used
Speaker 2: to hang up on a hook in the kitchen just
Speaker 2: when you came in. It was before we had the
Speaker 2: really open kitchen, and it was a call for you
Speaker 2: from Pat Lewellyn came over to me like, Ruthie. Somebody
Speaker 2: just called me up and asked me if I wanted
Speaker 2: to do a screen test? What's a screen test? Should
Speaker 2: I go? And we didn't know anything, and then they said, Ruthie.
Speaker 2: The newspapers called up and said do I want to
Speaker 2: do it? Calm? Can I go?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 5: Damien.
Speaker 2: Then a supermarket is called up cold and I say
Speaker 2: that within a very short time, you had a column
Speaker 2: in a newspaper, a television show, an advertising campaign with
Speaker 2: the supermarket, and they knew, they knew that you could
Speaker 2: do all this, and you showed them that you could
Speaker 2: and you did.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I think about it, I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember when I had my twenty years anniversary and there
Speaker 1: was loads of people together, and to think that it
Speaker 1: really genuinely does come back to that phone court four
Speaker 1: o'clock saying can you cover.
Speaker 2: Some weeks ago? Ian Wright and his beautiful family were
Speaker 2: sitting here in the River Cafe garden celebrating Nancy, his
Speaker 2: wife's birthday, Ruthie the waiter said to me, please go
Speaker 2: and ask him to do a podcast, especially for all
Speaker 2: of us. We know he loves to eat, but we
Speaker 2: want to know more about him. He is our hero.
Speaker 2: Ian does a lot that I could never dream of achieving,
Speaker 2: for instance, kicking footballs into nets. But we do share
Speaker 2: a lot as well, concern for healthy eating for children,
Speaker 2: advocacy for social justice, a more fair society, and an
Speaker 2: end to racial discrimination. Today, on table four, we're going
Speaker 2: to get to know each other better, discussing all this
Speaker 2: and more, including having delicious lunches with our family. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for doing this. Nice and you're going
Speaker 2: to stay for lunch? Yes, yeskay, because you do love
Speaker 2: to eat out. Yes, I see you here and you
Speaker 2: always seem so happy. Did you eat out as a child.
Speaker 5: No, This is probably why I love eating out so much.
Speaker 5: I didn't actually start eating out until obviously, I think
Speaker 5: I'm probably twenty one. Yeah, I didn't have a lot
Speaker 5: of experiences of going to restaurants, and even when I
Speaker 5: started doing that, I started eating past the very late
Speaker 5: in my life, and my mum never There wasn't a
Speaker 5: lot of variety, a lot of West Indian stew chicken.
Speaker 5: It was curry, golt, mutton, tripe, pigs, trotter's oxtail, white rice,
Speaker 5: rice with peas, boiled dumplings. So it was that kind
Speaker 5: of food all the way up until that point. And
Speaker 5: I remember when I started playing football in Crystal Palace,
Speaker 5: I used to get very nervous about going to like
Speaker 5: we used to have to go to hotels, you used
Speaker 5: to have to go to restaurants and communal eat all
Speaker 5: of us together. And I was very insecure about it
Speaker 5: because I didn't know I didn't know foods. So and
Speaker 5: then we had older players who were really they were
Speaker 5: quite mean. Let's say things like, you know, you know
Speaker 5: you've got duffin wires on there, you know you've got
Speaker 5: sour ta potatoes, And they'd say things like do you
Speaker 5: know you don't even have to spell duffing wa? You
Speaker 5: know what I mean? Do you know what potatoes are?
Speaker 5: Can you afford steak? So what I would do is
Speaker 5: I would I would end up then getting my mum
Speaker 5: to make me something. I'd go down so the boss
Speaker 5: would see me and then I'd say for a five
Speaker 5: minut and then I'd leave and get my food warmed
Speaker 5: up by the people in the kitchen, and I'd eat
Speaker 5: in my in my hotel room. And that's what we
Speaker 5: used to do when we was younger. You to all
Speaker 5: eat either in the bedroom, in the living room in
Speaker 5: front of television or stuff like that. So I was
Speaker 5: more comfortable doing that. But my problem was insecurity about
Speaker 5: ordering the food. So you know, it's intimidating. It was,
Speaker 5: and it was intimidating to the point where the manager,
Speaker 5: I've done it a few a few times, about three
Speaker 5: or four times, you didn't see me at dinner, and
Speaker 5: I remember in the morning he said, where are you.
Speaker 5: I'm not seeing you at the dinner. That's how I
Speaker 5: get together. And then I explained to him why, and
Speaker 5: then he kind of sorted that out for me. He
Speaker 5: had a word with them. You know, obviously, you know
Speaker 5: it didn't help because obviously when people it was it was,
Speaker 5: it didn't help. But then I just I just blasted
Speaker 5: through it. And so offer the back of that, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, you start to because you get into a
Speaker 5: situation where you can go to nice restaurants and so
Speaker 5: when I love it.
Speaker 2: So when you talk about being excellent at your sport,
Speaker 2: being able to do what you do so well and
Speaker 2: that you are on a team, and then going to
Speaker 2: a meal time was painful, and it was painful because
Speaker 2: you were made to feel unable to feel it in.
Speaker 5: Theory, to be honest, if it was about I was
Speaker 5: twenty one. In fact, it just turned twenty two when
Speaker 5: I joined Crystal Palace, so it was very late for me.
Speaker 5: A lot of my experiences started to come as learning
Speaker 5: on the job, about mixing with people, different people, worldly people,
Speaker 5: you know, knowing you know, even just the knife and
Speaker 5: forks from you know outside in you know, knowing what
Speaker 5: to do. You know, you sit there and you're nervous,
Speaker 5: and so those were the kind of intimidating things about
Speaker 5: going to a restaurant or eating with people that used
Speaker 5: to really frighten me because I never we ate on
Speaker 5: our laps literally all the way through.
Speaker 2: It's obviously was your mother working. Was there a table
Speaker 2: where you could sit.
Speaker 5: No, the kitchen wasn't big enough for a table for
Speaker 5: the four of us, So it was my it was
Speaker 5: my mom, my stepdad, my older brother, me and my sister.
Speaker 5: So you know, there wasn't enough space for all of
Speaker 5: us to sit and have that dinner and have that chat.
Speaker 5: We've never done that. You know, that's something that's happened
Speaker 5: to me later in my life.
Speaker 2: Would you tell me about Arson Venger?
Speaker 5: Wow? The thing with him, Ruphy, is that he was
Speaker 5: how can I say, a visionary, a visionary in the
Speaker 5: way he came and changed the diet. Are we talking
Speaker 5: about nineteen ninety six, ninety five ninety six when he
Speaker 5: got there, and you know, food for Arson Vinger was
Speaker 5: fuel to perform. He came in and he changed the
Speaker 5: diet from steak and chips and anything you wanted to
Speaker 5: proper food, like everything that is good for you. But
Speaker 5: the thing what it was with all the vegetables and
Speaker 5: the rice and the chickens steamed, you know, no seasoning,
Speaker 5: no salt, no salt, no seasoning, no nothing. All we
Speaker 5: could do is drink water and eat this bland food.
Speaker 2: Where was he from.
Speaker 5: It's kind of Austrian French, it's on that border. And
Speaker 5: when he came in, it's the first time I realized
Speaker 5: that it's not about liking what you're eating. It's the
Speaker 5: fact that you have to be eating this for that
Speaker 5: slow sugar release that you need when you're performing at
Speaker 5: a level where you need your energy and your energy
Speaker 5: has to be there constantly. This is why sweet things
Speaker 5: and certain things to shoot you up like that during
Speaker 5: the game, you'll have to come down because if you
Speaker 5: shoot up, you have to come down. So this is
Speaker 5: why pasta and broccoli and cabbage and carrots and all
Speaker 5: those vegetables they give you that slow sugar that burns continually,
Speaker 5: so you can stay at a certain level and you
Speaker 5: can continue to perform. And it was very difficult at
Speaker 5: the start, but when you started to see everybody doing it,
Speaker 5: and you could see and obviously we had vitamins to
Speaker 5: go alongside that. But when you saw everybody starting to
Speaker 5: do in it and enjoying it, then they're taking it
Speaker 5: into their home lives. They do the same at home.
Speaker 5: Then all of a sudden, you're realizing this is for
Speaker 5: us to perform to the best of our ability, to
Speaker 5: the point where when you go to restaurants you'd almost
Speaker 5: feel guilty to have anything that wasn't going to enhance you.
Speaker 5: You know, ars Vengas, he had no problems after the
Speaker 5: game for you to have a sugar rush like a
Speaker 5: donut or something. But then Monday or is that you've
Speaker 5: got to be back on that. You train really.
Speaker 4: Hard it's tough.
Speaker 5: And then what happens is is that you realize that
Speaker 5: if you're not eating right, you're not taking the vitman's right.
Speaker 5: You will see that you are, you're lagging behind the
Speaker 5: guys who are doing it religiously, to the point where
Speaker 5: again you go into a dressing room, Rufie, and you
Speaker 5: know it is very competitive, very competitive, especially when you
Speaker 5: go into a dressing room where you're trying to attain
Speaker 5: and achieve everybody. The margins are very small. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: practice and we're trained to a level where we say, well,
Speaker 5: they better be training as hard as we are, because
Speaker 5: if not, we are going to destroy them. And that
Speaker 5: is what we were striving for.
Speaker 7: On the mains, while we've got these beautiful, really sweet
Speaker 7: grapes at the moment which pass so well with the grouse.
Speaker 2: And there's turbot and sea bass, oh my worms, fish
Speaker 2: you can have everything. We have had people come and
Speaker 2: order everything on the until they stay for a month
Speaker 2: or per month. Yeah, name Judy Dench is not just
Speaker 2: a national and international treasure. She's an interplanetary treasure. If
Speaker 2: there is life on Mars. They're talking about her most
Speaker 2: recent performance. I always say a recipe is half science
Speaker 2: and half poetry, and so we're going to skip the
Speaker 2: science and read the poetry. How about that?
Speaker 8: Yes, well, I would love to have read a recipe,
Speaker 8: or even given you a recipe, but we'll come to
Speaker 8: that later. But you are talking to the worst cookie
Speaker 8: in Britain. And wasn't a sonic about food? But I
Speaker 8: just know this one poem, but it's some Hilaire Belloc,
Speaker 8: and it's about Henry King, Henry King, Henry King.
Speaker 2: Here he goes.
Speaker 8: The chief defect of Henry King was chewing little bits
Speaker 8: of string. At last he swallowed some that tied itself
Speaker 8: in ugly knots inside. Physicians of the utmost fame were
Speaker 8: called at once, But when they came, they answered, as
Speaker 8: they took their fees, there is no cure for this disease.
Speaker 8: Henry will very soon be dead. His parents stood about
Speaker 8: his bed, lamenting his untimely death. When Henry cried with
Speaker 8: latest breath, Oh my friends, be warned by me that breakfast, dinner,
Speaker 8: lunch and tea are all the human frame requires. With that,
Speaker 8: the wretched child expires.
Speaker 2: The wretched child. So as he worketh this poem, he
Speaker 2: was quite a lectural Bellock, wasn't he. He liked to
Speaker 2: tell everyone what to do and children how to be polite.
Speaker 8: It's ather sad, it was rather grim.
Speaker 2: I think, well it's beautiful. I think it's you know,
Speaker 2: there's a message, right, don't snack? Is that the message?
Speaker 2: Or you might don't snack? So doing the menus. Eliza
Speaker 2: had a blank sheet of paper she came in the morning.
Speaker 2: It's rather like your house. You go in the fridge,
Speaker 2: you see what's there, you see what's been ordered. You've
Speaker 2: sort of also, you know, we're always thinking about what
Speaker 2: I always think, what would I want to for lunch today?
Speaker 8: Or I'm so you're not coming to my house Bridge
Speaker 8: and I beg you are.
Speaker 7: I was so excited to make this beautiful clam taggerini,
Speaker 7: which I know is one of Ruthie's favorite pastors, where
Speaker 7: we cook the bongolay in advance with garlic and parsi
Speaker 7: stalks in chili, and then we pick all the clams
Speaker 7: out of their shells and reduce the white wine and
Speaker 7: the olive oil and the butter, and then we toss
Speaker 7: that through fresh handcut taggoerini, which is one of my
Speaker 7: favorite things that I've ever had at a bit of
Speaker 7: a cafe. And we've also got this amazing slow cooked
Speaker 7: pheasant and partridge sauce which is a ragou that we
Speaker 7: make with lots of different wildbirds at this time of year,
Speaker 7: and we put chestnuts and mince panchatta in and that's
Speaker 7: really wonderful.
Speaker 8: Now we're really talking.
Speaker 2: We do write our menu every day.
Speaker 8: It makes it special and exciting, which is what a
Speaker 8: restaurant should be and isn't very much.
Speaker 2: What was it like when you came to London and
Speaker 2: food wise? Were you on a budget? Did you have
Speaker 2: to cook?
Speaker 4: Eat out?
Speaker 2: What did you do? Never? Never?
Speaker 8: I have to tell you a story when I was
Speaker 8: awarded the OB and my agent at the time had
Speaker 8: been in Central with me, Julian Belfridge. He came down
Speaker 8: to lunch and I gave him lamb cutlets. I made
Speaker 8: an enormous effort. He finished them and whatever I gave
Speaker 8: him I can't remember for a dessert. And he sat
Speaker 8: back and he said, well, I'll tell you something, Judy,
Speaker 8: He said, you didn't get the Obe for cooking. Nothing
Speaker 8: like having a support of It's good to be told,
Speaker 8: isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's good? There was What did you eat? There you
Speaker 2: are going to.
Speaker 8: When we were old that when we got well, when
Speaker 8: we got to central, Oh, it was it was glorious.
Speaker 2: We used to go to it.
Speaker 8: Was somewhere in Kensington High Street. But we used to
Speaker 8: also go to a restaurant called a Capernina in Soho
Speaker 8: and that was the greatest treat.
Speaker 2: So that was Italian food. That was Italian food. It
Speaker 2: was absolutely and it was affordable. You could do so
Speaker 2: they are on a student budget.
Speaker 8: Just about just about it. But it were nice to
Speaker 8: be taken there. I must say, that was an enormous treat.
Speaker 2: Do you remember a kind of multicultural restaurants? You remember
Speaker 2: Indian because a lot of you know, the cheapest food,
Speaker 2: certainly when I came in the sixties was Greek, Indian, Chinese.
Speaker 8: I mean that was a huge treat to be able
Speaker 8: to eat, you know, to eat Chinese and as always say, Italian,
Speaker 8: and it was.
Speaker 2: A real luxury.
Speaker 8: And suddenly to be able to go to go or
Speaker 8: be taken to somewhere and you have the luxury of
Speaker 8: really the choice of things to have to eat. And
Speaker 8: you know, I'll never take that for granted.
Speaker 3: I don't think.
Speaker 2: Last week I spelled on a paddel with Vanessa King,
Speaker 2: or celebrating International Women's Day. Listening to Vanessa that evening,
Speaker 2: it became apparent that it really wasn't necessary for the
Speaker 2: rest of us to be there. It was her views
Speaker 2: on social justice, women in business, creativity and leadership that
Speaker 2: everybody wanted to hear most of all me. Her path
Speaker 2: towards Chief Business Officer of Conde Nasty International is a
Speaker 2: story of a young girl from Kenya a chieving remarkable
Speaker 2: amount in a British world through sheer, intelligence, motivation and determination.
Speaker 9: The way is that vocals is each magazine kind of
Speaker 9: dominates a floor.
Speaker 4: So I worked on GQ for years.
Speaker 9: I was running that business and I was that's the
Speaker 9: first floor, and then you graduate up in Bogue's a
Speaker 9: fifth floor. There was always this idea that nobody eats
Speaker 9: at Vogue, you know, so people would deliver you'd see
Speaker 9: in the reception of Vogue House, you know, cakes and
Speaker 9: these amazing things being delivered, and we'd all sort of scoff, Oh, well,
Speaker 9: you know they'll be in the bin. No one eats
Speaker 9: them up there. And actually it's a big misconception because
Speaker 9: we were, yeah, we work really hard. It's a really
Speaker 9: hard working team, the Vogue team. I still now I'm
Speaker 9: overseeing all of the brands at Conde in US, but
Speaker 9: I still sit with Edward on the fifth floor and he.
Speaker 4: Loves to eat. We love to eat.
Speaker 9: We love to plan a dinner. We love to incorporate
Speaker 9: a bit of our culture into dinner. So even when
Speaker 9: we did his wedding, his wedding was at long leads
Speaker 9: and it helped him to plan that.
Speaker 4: It was amazing. But we were saying, you know, we.
Speaker 9: Need to have John Off in there, which caterist can. Yeah,
Speaker 9: we did, and we had you know, he loves spicy
Speaker 9: food anytime he comes here, or can I have chili
Speaker 9: and chili island, So we had chili sauces and everything.
Speaker 9: So it's talking about food eating. A lot of times
Speaker 9: he and I will eat our lunch at desks across
Speaker 9: from each other. So he'll have steam vegetables and you know,
Speaker 9: some fish or chicken or something, and I'll have sushi.
Speaker 9: But we sit together and eat it if we're doing
Speaker 9: a working lunch. Otherwise I'm out with clients.
Speaker 2: Where were you born?
Speaker 9: So from the very beginning, I was born in Kenya,
Speaker 9: in Nanuki. My father is Kenyan and my mother is
Speaker 9: from Saint Kits in the Caribbean, s and Kittenita's tiny
Speaker 9: into the islands, and they met here in London. It's
Speaker 9: kind of a strange pairing in the seventies, and it
Speaker 9: was quite a radical relationship.
Speaker 4: There's because.
Speaker 9: At that time Africans and people from the Caribbean did
Speaker 9: not spend that much time together. They certainly didn't end
Speaker 9: up in relationship. And London is the great sort of
Speaker 9: unifying space, right It's a true melting plot I think
Speaker 9: in the world. They met here, they fell in love,
Speaker 9: and my mother moved with my father to this strange
Speaker 9: land where she knew no language or the culture. Lots
Speaker 9: of her family didn't speak to her because of the move,
Speaker 9: and indeed lots of his family didn't speak to him
Speaker 9: because someone, yeah, from a different culture, and he was
Speaker 9: a very eligible bachelor. Was it a small village, quite
Speaker 9: a small village, yes, and it's in a sort of
Speaker 9: mountainous area. His family were in Coffee, so yeah.
Speaker 4: Quite rural. But they were very well off.
Speaker 9: But my mother had a very difficult time settling in there.
Speaker 9: And this is where food comes in, because she was
Speaker 9: encountering women who didn't understand her literally and figuratively. She
Speaker 9: only spoke English, and they often spoke five languages, you know,
Speaker 9: and so the language barrier was there. She didn't speak Swahili,
Speaker 9: she didn't speak the dialect as well, and so food
Speaker 9: was her way to connect with people. She used to
Speaker 9: say to me, it's quicker to learn addition than to
Speaker 9: learn a language. And I think one of the most
Speaker 9: ingratiating things you can do in a new culture is,
Speaker 9: you know, know some basic words to greet people. And
Speaker 9: she looked at food in the same way. If you
Speaker 9: could cook the food really well, it was a show
Speaker 9: of respect. So she learned to cook, which I also
Speaker 9: found strange because she had cooks and nannies and all
Speaker 9: of those things.
Speaker 4: But she loved to cook.
Speaker 2: And she loved to cook before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my grandmother was a great cook.
Speaker 2: And grandmother and Saint Kitts.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we're all over the place. But two we
Speaker 9: went to live with my grandmother. My mother and father
Speaker 9: got divorced. My mother came back to London to try
Speaker 9: and re establish herself by a house and all of
Speaker 9: those things, and we stayed in Saint Kit's with her,
Speaker 9: visiting frequently with my grandmother so I was very young,
Speaker 9: so I was stuck to her all the time. And
Speaker 9: she is definitely the most powerful sort of figure in
Speaker 9: my life.
Speaker 4: My mother's a very powerful figure. We're very close. When
Speaker 4: my grandmother is almost my heart, you know, and.
Speaker 9: I gosh, I'm welling up even talking about her. It's
Speaker 9: because when we spoke about this. No, she's not, but
Speaker 9: she's very much alive in I think about her every day,
Speaker 9: not only through food, but also just her advice was
Speaker 9: amazing because it's so funny. It's really evocative thinking about this,
Speaker 9: I'm getting emotional.
Speaker 4: No, it's kind of happy to you know.
Speaker 2: What was her food?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Describe was she in the kitchen all day long?
Speaker 9: I don't remember her not wearing an apron or some
Speaker 9: sort of overalls. So she made food that was needed,
Speaker 9: constant nurturing, you know.
Speaker 4: Her house was also.
Speaker 9: Where everyone dropped in, so my sister and I lived
Speaker 9: there on and off. Four of my cousins lived there,
Speaker 9: my uncle's children, and then she was sort of everyone's grandmother.
Speaker 9: So her house was Oh, it was so fun. It
Speaker 9: was a wash with children all the time, and I
Speaker 9: was the youngest, so I was always with her. I
Speaker 9: slept in her bed, and I was literally on her
Speaker 9: apen strings.
Speaker 4: So her food was very rich. It was like.
Speaker 9: Almost like a warm embrace, you know, hearty, and lots
Speaker 9: of sort of stews and meats and heavily marinated delicious
Speaker 9: comfort food dumplings, and you know, sort of starchy, delicious things.
Speaker 9: And she kept her own little farm, at least it
Speaker 9: felt like a farm to me. She grew her own vegetables,
Speaker 9: She had her own fruit tree. She would graft her
Speaker 9: own strains of mango. She grew herbs and things that
Speaker 9: people would come and visit her to buy. And she
Speaker 9: kept her own animals. And I used to help her
Speaker 9: tend to those little gardens. And then she'd make up
Speaker 9: these amazing dishes from food, and she'd tell me stories
Speaker 9: of the food as well.
Speaker 2: So did she grow up in poverty or did she
Speaker 2: grow up any Yes, she did.
Speaker 9: And I look at sort of my life now, which
Speaker 9: is so much on her shoulders, and all of the
Speaker 9: opportunity I have now, and I think about how important circumstances.
Speaker 9: So she was a really intelligent woman. She was the
Speaker 9: most prolific reader I ever knew. She was either cooking
Speaker 9: or reading. But she was forced to leave school at fourteen.
Speaker 9: Her mother was a She also had a slightly strange
Speaker 9: parentage in that her father was.
Speaker 4: Previously a slave and her mother.
Speaker 2: Was So your great grandfather was a slave, yeah in
Speaker 2: syn kids, Yeah, and probably like the Civil warab Yeah.
Speaker 9: But her mother, which is really strange, was a Portuguese
Speaker 9: woman from a slave owning family, so it's really really
Speaker 9: unusual that way around. And her mother was not very
Speaker 9: maternal at all, and so they fell upon hard times.
Speaker 9: Her mother was seen, I think as having made bad decisions,
Speaker 9: and so she didn't grow up surrounded, as I understand it,
Speaker 9: by lots of love, and so she created this love
Speaker 9: loving world. But the reason that it's important at how
Speaker 9: she grew up is her food was very much work
Speaker 9: of food.
Speaker 4: You know, she made food.
Speaker 9: That they would have made for men and women who
Speaker 9: worked picking cotton. She was picking cotton fourteen years old
Speaker 9: in the fields, and then after that taking books under
Speaker 9: the house to read them in the evening and cooking
Speaker 9: and supporting the households and so on. So she had
Speaker 9: this really eclectic upbringing where she really valued education and
Speaker 9: missed her opportunity, I think, to have a full education.
Speaker 4: But food was also the key joy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so would you sit down? Would you go
Speaker 2: to school and then every evening come home and sit
Speaker 2: down for dinner? Would that be a dinner on the
Speaker 2: table for you? Yes?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So we would have great mounds of kind of
Speaker 9: rice and vegetables and these kind of incredible and everybody
Speaker 9: would pile in and pour in and go for second plates.
Speaker 9: It wasn't a very formal sit and the table was
Speaker 9: also off the kitchen, so it was kind of part
Speaker 9: of the action, and it was just a really lovely
Speaker 9: way to be connected with the people around you.
Speaker 2: I'm often asked if it's intimidating cooking for celebrities who
Speaker 2: come to the River Cafe. My response is that the
Speaker 2: guests who really worry me are other chefs. It's a
Speaker 2: bit like that today, as I'm about to interview the
Speaker 2: interviewer mary Ella frost Rop, especially since I was watched
Speaker 2: the subject for Guardian's Lunch with mary Ella, Mariella wrote,
Speaker 2: despite such eloquence, Ruthie is a disaster of an interview.
Speaker 2: My questions get longer as her answers get shorter, and
Speaker 2: inevitably end with a question for me. She's all, don't
Speaker 2: you think and do you find and have you noticed?
Speaker 2: But I'm reminding myself that I'm not here with Marielle
Speaker 2: the journalist.
Speaker 4: But Mariella, my good friend.
Speaker 6: A friend of mine, gave me a job in his
Speaker 6: recording studio and so I did that until I left
Speaker 6: for London. In Dublin, yeah, that's when I met you know,
Speaker 6: all of the people that we have in common. I
Speaker 6: recorded U two's first demo tapes when I was yeah,
Speaker 6: fifteen and he was seventeen. He hates it when I
Speaker 6: remind him that he's older. But yeah, that was all
Speaker 6: when I was working at Keystone Studios. But after my
Speaker 6: father died, I took the ferry from Dunleary with my.
Speaker 2: Friend in London. Oh, you had another friend.
Speaker 6: She didn't know she she just had an address for us.
Speaker 6: There was a she had some Irish friends who were
Speaker 6: living in a squat or friends of friends who were
Speaker 6: living in a squat in Stoneleigh Street in West London,
Speaker 6: actually not very far from here, off Latimer Road. And
Speaker 6: we arrived there on a bright summer sunny morning and
Speaker 6: were greeted at the door by just this crowd of
Speaker 6: Irish men mostly And I was like married, What was
Speaker 6: the point in coming all the way here if we're
Speaker 6: just going to live with the whole house full of
Speaker 6: Irish people. But they were incredible to us and made
Speaker 6: they were so hospitable. Sixteen sixty, she's eighteen, and they
Speaker 6: gave us a room that there was already two of
Speaker 6: them living in, but we were allowed to share it.
Speaker 6: I mean, there were amazing days. You know. I think
Speaker 6: it was a really great time to be young. You know,
Speaker 6: there was huge adversity, but at the same time life
Speaker 6: just felt full of possibility and you could afford to
Speaker 6: rent places for cheap.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: We were only in the squad for about three months
Speaker 6: and then I got a job at the Blushes on
Speaker 6: the King's Road. I don't know if it's still There
Speaker 6: was a wine bar and it used to be so
Speaker 6: amazing on a Saturday. Then you know Bob Geldof and.
Speaker 2: Paula because they live right around the corner, and they used.
Speaker 6: To arrive on a Saturday morning at about eleven o'clock
Speaker 6: at the tube station on the King's Road and then
Speaker 6: they would promenade up the King's Road and they would
Speaker 6: be followed by this sort of retinue of it was
Speaker 6: like a medieval you know. It was like Henry the
Speaker 6: Eighth that arrived and all these people would be following
Speaker 6: along in their wake, and again it was like theater watching,
Speaker 6: you know, and it was punk and it was just
Speaker 6: incredible and exciting.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what you ate at the time? Would
Speaker 2: you would you go to restaurants or would you cook
Speaker 2: at home? Or would you I'd cook it at home.
Speaker 2: I'd cook at home.
Speaker 6: Food wasn't great, and you know, it wasn't and I
Speaker 6: didn't really care so much. I mean, I was so
Speaker 6: obsessed with just survival and getting on, survival and getting on.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was the nineteen seventies. It was quite
Speaker 6: a bit of sort of beef berging yr and you know,
Speaker 6: black Forest getter, nothing to write home about. Everyone was
Speaker 6: eating spaghetti bolonnaise because that was very exotic and Italian,
Speaker 6: but not Baudelais nouver. That was always quite exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I remember that through the eighties, but not so much
Speaker 6: the food.
Speaker 2: Really. Did you have a domestic life as well? Did
Speaker 2: you live with anybody and have to think about a
Speaker 2: kitchen or food or bringing shopping home or did you
Speaker 2: just basically food? Was you smoked and so I spoke
Speaker 2: and drag Botel nouve.
Speaker 6: But I did get married when I was eighteen to
Speaker 6: another lost soul who's a wonderful and old friend of
Speaker 6: mine now called Richard Jobson, who was the lead singer
Speaker 6: in this punk band called the Skids.
Speaker 2: Yeah Skids, Great, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Into the valley working for the Yankee Dollar.
Speaker 4: Come on.
Speaker 2: Anywhere.
Speaker 6: But Richard was a really interesting and unusual character. He
Speaker 6: was another lost kid. He's left home at sixteen. He had,
Speaker 6: you know, huge intellectual aspirations, many of which he went
Speaker 6: on to realize a huge determination. And I think we
Speaker 6: sort of fell together out of loneliness and we tried,
Speaker 6: you know, we gave it our best shot for two kids,
Speaker 6: and we stayed together till I was twenty one, so young.
Speaker 6: So we had a domestic life then and very rudimentary.
Speaker 6: I used to make things like grilled pork chops with
Speaker 6: mustard on them, and a lot of potatoes, spaghetti bolonnais.
Speaker 2: Cookbooks, do you remember using.
Speaker 6: I had the Constant Spry cookbook that my mum had
Speaker 6: given me because that was sort of her bible.
Speaker 2: She came from an English family.
Speaker 6: She's half Scottish, half English, was Scottish, she was Scottish really,
Speaker 6: but she learned, you know, we used to.
Speaker 4: She used to.
Speaker 6: She taught me how to make love scass, which is
Speaker 6: a it's a very rudimentary Norwegian stew, which is beef
Speaker 6: and potatoes but cubed very small and cooked in their
Speaker 6: own broth for quite a long period of time. And
Speaker 6: she used to make these things called milkering, which are
Speaker 6: that's sort of yogurts basically that Norwegians used to make.
Speaker 6: And it was very weird because both she and my
Speaker 6: stepmother used to make these yogurts. Once I left her
Speaker 6: house and went went to live with my dad, every
Speaker 6: cupboard you opened would have yogurt, you know.
Speaker 2: Breeding. Yeah, was your father's second wife.
Speaker 6: She wasn't They weren't married, but I mean Sheian, No,
Speaker 6: she was Irish, but you obviously had an interest. They
Speaker 6: all wanted to impress one. He had this thing, you know,
Speaker 6: which clearly worked for every woman in his life. And
Speaker 6: I don't think my mum and my stepmother were the
Speaker 6: only ones either, So yeah, he had a.
Speaker 2: Cooking for you know, seduction as well that people can remember.
Speaker 2: Can you remember me or where you wanted to impress
Speaker 2: somebody and you cooked.
Speaker 6: I've never cooked when I wanted to impress.
Speaker 2: Were you're joined by Judy Dirk, she said the same
Speaker 2: thing