Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2: Come with me into the River Cafe. You see the
Speaker 2: pink wood oven in the distance, the yellow kitchen cocktails
Speaker 2: are being made, proshutto is being sliced, and there's the
Speaker 2: quiet buzz for the beginning of an evening food and
Speaker 2: friends in a beautiful space. Welcome to River Cafe Table
Speaker 2: four with me, Ruthie Rogers. I'm sitting here with Edward
Speaker 2: nfl and you're the editor of Vogue.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: We're looking at the Thames, we're looking at the blue sky,
Speaker 2: and most of all, we're looking at people who've been
Speaker 2: not able to come to a restaurant for five months, eating,
Speaker 2: talking and having a wonderful time. And that's what we're
Speaker 2: going to have.
Speaker 3: Edward.
Speaker 2: We had your party, welcoming party to London at the
Speaker 2: River Cafe to welcome you here. It was a very
Speaker 2: beautiful party. I remember something about that night, which was
Speaker 2: we were talking about whether we could do ravioli as
Speaker 2: a premi and there was a conversation saying, well, you know,
Speaker 2: fashion people don't eat carbs, they won't eat pasta. Nobody's
Speaker 2: going to eat the ravioli. Not only did they eat it,
Speaker 2: they had seconds, gongs, and thirds and put on more
Speaker 2: ravioli on the plate.
Speaker 3: It was a really magical even one of my really
Speaker 3: much cool evenings of my life because remember the issue
Speaker 3: came out.
Speaker 2: Tell Us about that, tell Us about the first issue.
Speaker 3: It was a love story really to Great Britain, the
Speaker 3: country that sort of took my family in and took
Speaker 3: me in. And we celebrated everybody from Naomi Campbell to
Speaker 3: Steve McQueen to Cake Moss and we had Adua on
Speaker 3: the cover.
Speaker 2: It was a beautiful night. And I think people, you know, again,
Speaker 2: over food, over find the food. You wanted to be
Speaker 2: sharing plates, You wanted people to have antipacity.
Speaker 3: People, there's a misconception of fashion people don't eat, But
Speaker 3: that's not true.
Speaker 2: That's not true, And so what do you feel about
Speaker 2: food and fashion? Is the idea that in order to
Speaker 2: look good and clothes, you have to be thin, or
Speaker 2: you have to look elegant, you have to be a
Speaker 2: certain look or models have to look a certain way,
Speaker 2: and that would mean denial of food. It would say,
Speaker 2: in order to look that way, don't eat. Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: that strong?
Speaker 3: Historically, you know, to be fashionable should eat When you
Speaker 3: look at at least my Vogue anyway, it's everybody's welcome,
Speaker 3: you know, all shapes, all sizes or colors. And what
Speaker 3: I love now is three years later when you look
Speaker 3: in all the other magazines, everybody's also welcoming in all
Speaker 3: the other magazines. That that strict thing of being able
Speaker 3: to be a certain size, being sized zero is the
Speaker 3: perfect that doesn't exist anymore. Even the idea of being
Speaker 3: a model's changed. How you can be short, you can
Speaker 3: be covey, you can be you know, you can be disabled. Literally,
Speaker 3: to watch that industry change, for me, it's one of
Speaker 3: the great things about you know, doing my job.
Speaker 2: Well, do your job, but you made that. You did
Speaker 2: it out of empathy and sympathy and knowledge of yourself,
Speaker 2: and so I think that you have to take the
Speaker 2: credit for that, you know, in a beautiful way. But
Speaker 2: has it been a struggle to get you make it
Speaker 2: sound rather seamless that this is what's happened another mate,
Speaker 2: But it has it been a struggle for stores or
Speaker 2: for designers?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean designers now know that they've missed out
Speaker 3: on a whole market from size forteen to sixty they've
Speaker 3: missed out. Why would you want to miss out on
Speaker 3: a section of a population that can make your business
Speaker 3: even better. So now designers have really sort of like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, they've wisened up. Okay, I just knew
Speaker 3: that the world we lived in just wasn't that just
Speaker 3: wasn't that world anymore? You know, you have you have
Speaker 3: to be a certain size or or a certain color
Speaker 3: or yeah, and I love the new generation.
Speaker 2: I mean you're aren't they the new generator? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so welcoming and so so open. So
Speaker 3: you know, the industry's changed, and it's not perfect, but
Speaker 3: at least they're now you know what happened last summer,
Speaker 3: you know, black lives matter, and so now you know,
Speaker 3: companies are now realizing because they have to hire people
Speaker 3: from diverse backgrounds behind the scenes and not just so
Speaker 3: to watch. It's changed slowly. It's quite great. You know,
Speaker 3: conversations about have been had now never would have been
Speaker 3: had ten years ago. We deal with sort of topics
Speaker 3: that real women are passionate about.
Speaker 2: Because you grew up in Ghana, So tell me about
Speaker 2: the food of Ghana.
Speaker 3: What do you spent my first sort of eleven twelve
Speaker 3: twelve years in Ghana, and I remember everything being spicy.
Speaker 3: I remember everything being peppery. I remember, you know, lots
Speaker 3: of sort of carbohydrates and lots of soups, lots of garne.
Speaker 3: Soups are very different because you need actual meat in them,
Speaker 3: so like a chicken soup or a lamb soup. You know,
Speaker 3: I remember just literally cheering through bones and skin, and
Speaker 3: that's really comforting for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think food. You know, we always talk about
Speaker 2: food being a connection, food being delicious, food being adventurous
Speaker 2: and exciting, but it is comfort and it's and the
Speaker 2: memories that you have. Who would your mother, would your
Speaker 2: mother cook for you?
Speaker 3: My mother didn't cook so much what my grandmother did,
Speaker 3: so growing up in Ghana, my grandmother would always cook,
Speaker 3: and she would always cook in these huge I think
Speaker 3: that's why I love going to restaurants. She would always
Speaker 3: cook in these huge pots, and she'd never cook for
Speaker 3: just a family. It would be aunts popping in, uncle's
Speaker 3: popping in. There's something about Ghana the minute food is
Speaker 3: ready to go, all of a sudden, your aunts and
Speaker 3: uncles are pet out of nowhere. So food for me
Speaker 3: became sort of a way of socializing as a very
Speaker 3: very shy kid. And to this day, you know, going
Speaker 3: out coming to the river cafe just just fills me
Speaker 3: with I don't know, happiness.
Speaker 2: Really, did your grandmother live with you?
Speaker 3: She lived with us, and then we moved to England.
Speaker 3: She didn't live with us when we moved to England,
Speaker 3: but when we got to England, my brother took over
Speaker 3: cooking duties. And again, you know, it was always sort
Speaker 3: of fairy meatium.
Speaker 2: And your mother didn't cook.
Speaker 3: She was a seamstress. She was busy working, just busy
Speaker 3: making club. I mean, pretty much what I do now.
Speaker 3: She just worked all the time. My brother would cook
Speaker 3: sometimes and my sisters would take time.
Speaker 2: What about your father never cooked?
Speaker 3: I never. I don't cook either. Somehow I missed the
Speaker 3: cooking Jean. But I can really eat.
Speaker 2: So I was. If you have the eating Jean very often,
Speaker 2: if you have the eating Gean, then you do need
Speaker 2: to learn to cook, because sometimes if you don't have
Speaker 2: somebody to cook for you, you're in restaurants. You do, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why you love restaurants.
Speaker 3: Food is love and love is food.
Speaker 2: Did you grow up in the city.
Speaker 3: I grew up in love with Grove West London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about Gona.
Speaker 3: We grew up in the military base called Burma Camp.
Speaker 2: Was your father in the military, So it.
Speaker 3: Was really weird growing up in Africa but not really
Speaker 3: living in the city, but living in a military base
Speaker 3: because my dad was in the army. So it was
Speaker 3: kind of a surreal kind of upbringing. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: we moved to London and we lived first we lived
Speaker 3: in sort of Victoria for a few months or was
Speaker 3: it the Chelsea Barracks. Then we moved to Lubwick Grove
Speaker 3: and that's when life really begun. Oh my god, Jamaican
Speaker 3: food rise and peace check in.
Speaker 2: I mean, so that exposure, it's very It's interesting how
Speaker 2: people leave there. You know, we've talked to lots of
Speaker 2: people in these conversations who say that they had the
Speaker 2: home cooking for the first you know, the student years
Speaker 2: are growing up, their memories of their parents and then
Speaker 2: and then there was a kind of explosion of food
Speaker 2: and adventure and trying, trying. But did you before we
Speaker 2: leave Ghana, did you bring Ghanian food with you? What
Speaker 2: was that the food that you still ate when you
Speaker 2: came with you to a foreign country. How old were
Speaker 2: you when your game twelve. Oh you were twelve, But.
Speaker 3: I remember I always say I felt as if I
Speaker 3: lived in two countries. I mean, if anybody who's been
Speaker 3: an immigrant will let you know, we'll attest to this.
Speaker 3: You're literally you're at home and you're eating the flavors
Speaker 3: of Ghana and you're having things like fool food and
Speaker 3: what it's like a dough gana. It's sort of made
Speaker 3: out of a lot of pop so like you know,
Speaker 3: corn start into pup with soups, so you're having that,
Speaker 3: and then the many you leave your house, you're in
Speaker 3: England where you have sausage road and you have chips
Speaker 3: and you have pork pie. So I just love this duality.
Speaker 3: Is really the person I am today is made from
Speaker 3: that duality in every aspect of mine. And it started
Speaker 3: with food gone I felt, you know, at home, I
Speaker 3: was eating garate food. I felt garner, you know, parents
Speaker 3: speaking Ghanaian. And then the midune I left the house,
Speaker 3: I would be in England with food that I loved,
Speaker 3: comfort food. So yeah, my life's just been like that.
Speaker 2: And would you bring friends home to experience?
Speaker 3: Bring friends home? But Garan food is quite specific. You
Speaker 3: either take to it or you don't and friends will
Speaker 3: coming to They always love jello rice. I don't if
Speaker 3: you know what jelo of rice is. It's this famous.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a tomato rice. And there's a competition
Speaker 3: between Garnians and Nigerians. It's for thee wars who makes
Speaker 3: the best. So friends will come and they don't eat that.
Speaker 2: But it's so it's rice with tomato, did you say.
Speaker 3: With tomatoes and spices and so in the colors sort
Speaker 3: of orange like an orange color. But it's very famous.
Speaker 2: And what's the Nigerian version.
Speaker 3: Nigerians think this tastes better than ghani, especially whole war's
Speaker 3: going on about it. I would have said that.
Speaker 2: And I have to have a little rice off.
Speaker 3: And I remember a lot of ockry and everything, and
Speaker 3: I never had I never ate salads growing up. Every
Speaker 3: kind of you know, ganem vegetable was always cooked, you know,
Speaker 3: cooked and stirred and beaten to an end of his life.
Speaker 3: So eating salads was always.
Speaker 2: But would you go to the market, would there be markets?
Speaker 3: Would you get your mother every Saturday? Will take me
Speaker 3: to Brixton Market. They had a sort of big African. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you could buy meat, you could buy you know, fish,
Speaker 3: you could buy clothes, and every weekend was spent with
Speaker 3: my mom. We were very close in Brixton, and I
Speaker 3: remember just Bob Marley, the music of Bob Marley and
Speaker 3: Peter Touch that really made up my early teenage years.
Speaker 3: But and then my mom will be looking through the meats,
Speaker 3: essentially trying to find the best cuts and the best.
Speaker 2: I think that, as you say, every immigrant. My family
Speaker 2: came from Eastern Europe, you know, to the United States,
Speaker 2: to New York, and they cooked the food of their country.
Speaker 2: And food is culture. It's it tells you the story.
Speaker 2: When you arrive in a country and you go to
Speaker 2: the market, it tells you about the culture. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to River Cafe, Table four. In each episode, my guest
Speaker 2: reads a recipe they've chosen from one of our cookbooks.
Speaker 3: I'm going to read the recipe for the veal shin
Speaker 3: slow cooked with birollo and sage. Serves eight people. You
Speaker 3: need two veal shins, extra virgin olive oil, a bunch
Speaker 3: of fresh sage, four bay leaves, four garlic clothes peeled,
Speaker 3: one bottle of burrollo, three hundred and fifty grams peeled
Speaker 3: plump tomatoes drained of their juices very important. The longer
Speaker 3: this cooks, the better. You need to preheat your oven
Speaker 3: to two hundred degrees centigrade. Heat an oven proof pot.
Speaker 3: Then you season the shins with sea salt and black pepper.
Speaker 3: Add five tablespoons of olive oil and the chintz to
Speaker 3: the pot and fry until brown, all over, turning the
Speaker 3: shins every few minutes. Add the sage bay and garlic.
Speaker 3: Pour in the wine. Put the shins in facing down,
Speaker 3: Add the tomatoes and cover with greaseproof paper. Transfer the
Speaker 3: pot to the oven. After one hour, turn the shins
Speaker 3: over and reduce the temperature to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: degrees centigrade. Cover and cook for a further two hours,
Speaker 3: based in the shins a couple of times to keep
Speaker 3: the meat moist. The veal shins are ready when the
Speaker 3: meat falls away from the bone, serve with the marrow
Speaker 3: from the bone.
Speaker 2: Ah, thank you beautifully read. If all you know the
Speaker 2: recipes that you've cooked from the River of Cafe book,
Speaker 2: and that you've eaten in the River Cafe, I think
Speaker 2: you have had feel a lot. You do have it
Speaker 2: when you come in. But was there something? Was it?
Speaker 2: The comfort? What was it that made you choose this
Speaker 2: recipe amongst all the others.
Speaker 3: I mean, I find feel very comforting anyway, Like I
Speaker 3: love comfort food, you know, whether it's veal, I'm definitely
Speaker 3: a carnival but it reminds me great memories of my
Speaker 3: grandmother and my mother sort of, you know, cooking always meats.
Speaker 2: I think that, as you say, every immigrant my family
Speaker 2: came from Eastern Europe, you know, to the United States,
Speaker 2: to New York, and they cooked the food of their country.
Speaker 2: And I think that you bring It's interesting that you
Speaker 2: said it, because you do bring. The food is cultures.
Speaker 2: It tells you the story when you arrive in a
Speaker 2: country and you go to the market. It tells you
Speaker 2: about the culture. And you know, as an immigrant, maybe
Speaker 2: particularly first generation, we'll bring it with them.
Speaker 3: We never went to restaurants. There were so many, there
Speaker 3: were six of us. So I remember the first time
Speaker 3: I went to a restaurant. I think it must have
Speaker 3: been about sixteen, when I started modeling, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is what'd you do here? Being
Speaker 3: quite frightened.
Speaker 2: But was a restaurant do you remember? Do you remember
Speaker 2: the restaurant?
Speaker 3: It was in Lubrick Grove definitely. It was a Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 3: It had two seats. It was next to the next
Speaker 3: to the chief stage group to station. I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name. It was really famous. It was then about
Speaker 3: thirty years Yeah, and you know, you get a little
Speaker 3: take when you sat. It wasn't probably a proper restaurant,
Speaker 3: but you set, you have three tables and you sit
Speaker 3: there and it felt so glamorous. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that it's interesting if we look out side
Speaker 2: here and we see the ease at which you know,
Speaker 2: people are sitting in a restaurant where they bring their children.
Speaker 2: And for me as well, it was a special occasion
Speaker 2: going to a restaurant. I lived in Upstate New York.
Speaker 2: You went for somebody's birthday anniversary. And I think it's
Speaker 2: been such a radical change for you know, for for
Speaker 2: us that you see the way restaurants are used, and
Speaker 2: so after that first experience in a restaurant and you
Speaker 2: love it, and that what happened.
Speaker 3: I mean I was a modeling so then I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of traveling and sort of having new
Speaker 3: friends and you know, living with Judy Blame and so
Speaker 3: my whole life changed. But I remember those first few
Speaker 3: sort of times that I ate up my house.
Speaker 2: Did you travel to when you were modeling? Where did
Speaker 2: you get? Paris?
Speaker 3: And the first place I went to was New York
Speaker 3: sort of burgers and yeah, oh my god, New York
Speaker 3: is so milkshakes and those huge steaks that they have steaks.
Speaker 3: And then I've got to Paris and French cuisine was incredible.
Speaker 3: I always found for cuisine was delicious, but a little
Speaker 3: too what's the word for me?
Speaker 2: Too heavy?
Speaker 3: And I loved Italian food. When I discovered Milan mind
Speaker 3: loved Italian food. I loved everything about it. I love
Speaker 3: Italian food.
Speaker 2: Do you see restaurants as places where you work? Do
Speaker 2: you work over food?
Speaker 3: You? No?
Speaker 2: Okay, I like that.
Speaker 3: Never for me to put those two together. Root it
Speaker 3: for me? For me workers work, and when I'm in
Speaker 3: a restaurant, I just need to have fun, enjoy myself,
Speaker 3: not have to worry. So, you know, even going out
Speaker 3: to a restaurants very special for me. I always dress up.
Speaker 3: I'm never walking to a restaurant and not dressed up.
Speaker 2: Look you look at you? Look at you dressed up?
Speaker 2: So what was that?
Speaker 3: Growing up a dad was like to get on a plane,
Speaker 3: you have to dress up. To go to a restaurant,
Speaker 3: you have to dress up, so you never see me
Speaker 3: in the restaurant.
Speaker 2: That's nice, that's nice. I mean, I don't mind what
Speaker 2: people wear when they come and and either they can
Speaker 2: come in a pair of you know, jeans and a
Speaker 2: T shirt. But there there are people who and you see,
Speaker 2: especially in the evenings, you do see people. And I
Speaker 2: sometimes say that to the waiters. I say, you know,
Speaker 2: people put a lot of effort sometimes to look really
Speaker 2: beautiful here, and so we also have to, you know,
Speaker 2: the effort that we make.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: So what do you do when you're on a shoot
Speaker 2: or you're working, you know, you just say, okay, guys,
Speaker 2: we'll see you in a couple of hours.
Speaker 3: Do you take a little Yeah, you sit and you
Speaker 3: eat and then you go back to I don't I
Speaker 3: don't eat and look at pictures or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I need that moment to It's one of the few
Speaker 3: times in the day that I have to enjoy myself.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Do you find that you can go out to lunch
Speaker 2: and to dinner, you might go. You just love it.
Speaker 3: When I lived in New York, I lived in New
Speaker 3: York for a while, I would be out lunch, sometimes
Speaker 3: breakfast too. I just love the whole experience of love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really do.
Speaker 3: I really love it. And I love sit looking at people,
Speaker 3: seeing what people are wearing, seeing just people having fun
Speaker 3: and enjoying themselves. It's almost like therapy for me. It's therapeutic.
Speaker 2: What did you do during lockdown? And we couldn't go
Speaker 2: to the restaurants the.
Speaker 3: First few weeks. Alec my partner cooked and he's very healthy,
Speaker 3: sort of sort of salads and sort of meats, and
Speaker 3: that was great. And then we discovered banana bread.
Speaker 2: Oh for me, about banana bread.
Speaker 3: Went out of the blue. Alex learned how to make
Speaker 3: banana bread and it was such a novelty. We ate
Speaker 3: it every single day for a month and now I
Speaker 3: can never look at it ever again. I'm done. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you started with the comfort of your grandmother cooking
Speaker 2: for you. And so if I were to ask you
Speaker 2: the question that I asked at the end of every interview,
Speaker 2: which is what is your comfort food? If you were
Speaker 2: feeling like life is tough, I've had a bad day,
Speaker 2: I've had I need I need to eat something. Is
Speaker 2: there a typical food that you would go to that
Speaker 2: would you just know if I have this it would
Speaker 2: make me feel better? So many Yeah, they can tell
Speaker 2: us a few of that. It doesn't have to be one.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 3: Something raci of rice and beans and chicken or something
Speaker 3: very just really comfort because my grandmother would make whenever
Speaker 3: I wasn't feeling well.
Speaker 2: She loved you through probably many ways, but through food.
Speaker 3: Food, My memories about just cooking. Yeah, that's all I remember.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful to visit the online shop of the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: Go to Shoptharrivercafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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