Speaker 1: He's going to read his day. Hello, you're recording from
Speaker 1: the Naisi, okay, So I'll just read this little thing
Speaker 1: and then we can't talk. Today. I've come to New
Speaker 1: York and I'm in one of my favorite places in
Speaker 1: the world, the Museum of Modern Art, a place that
Speaker 1: I have treasured since a young child from upstate New York.
Speaker 1: Beautiful spaces that are welcoming and exciting are crucial. That
Speaker 1: is what we do in our own small way at
Speaker 1: the River Cafe. And what Glenn Lowry has done here
Speaker 1: in a big way over the past thirty years. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Thirty years eight? Okay? I say, over almost
Speaker 1: thirty years as director, he's transformed the collection, broaden the collection,
Speaker 1: and turn the museum into a space where people cannot
Speaker 1: only look at beautiful art, but meet sit in the
Speaker 1: garden and eat delicious food. Glenn and I like to
Speaker 1: bring the world of art and food together. At the
Speaker 1: River Cafe. We're doing projects with Ed Ruschet and Damien Hurst,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite drawings is a self portrait.
Speaker 1: Ellsworth Kelly drew the River Cafe bathroom and a message
Speaker 1: so I twombly left me on a menu after a
Speaker 1: long lunch. If we have brought art to food, Glenn
Speaker 1: has brought food to art with a fabulous restaurant, the
Speaker 1: modern and small cafes throughout the building. Glenn is a
Speaker 1: close friend of the River Cafe and a close friend
Speaker 1: of Richard and mine. Today we're going to discuss food
Speaker 1: and art, Art and food, our love for both and
Speaker 1: our love for each other.
Speaker 2: So great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I said I was coming to the museum
Speaker 1: and we'd be doing this interview surrounded by the greatest
Speaker 1: start in the world, and I'm looking at four black
Speaker 1: wolves two stories down.
Speaker 2: We'll have to do something about studio.
Speaker 3: They can know.
Speaker 1: That's great. Actually, do you spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: down here?
Speaker 2: Do you record exodically? We were, you know, we we
Speaker 2: we used to do a lot of audio guides in house,
Speaker 2: and so we needed a recording studio for that. Now
Speaker 2: they're produced all over the place, and so it's a
Speaker 2: little bit different.
Speaker 1: Do you have a podcast as museum have a podcast?
Speaker 2: We have a thing called Post which is online. It's
Speaker 2: not really a podcast, but we do a number of conversations.
Speaker 2: Is probably a better way of putting it in podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually did a little audio one for the
Speaker 1: Custin Show. They came and asked me to talk about
Speaker 1: because my father was a great friend of Philip Gustin.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You didn't know that. Oh yeah, I grew up in
Speaker 1: Woodstock and so Philip was in our house all the time. Actually,
Speaker 1: they liked the food my mother was cooked, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think music. His wife was a poet and
Speaker 1: fill up the painter. What about artists and food.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think they go together. I can't tell you
Speaker 2: the number of artists that I know who are either
Speaker 2: fanatic about the food they cook or just love to
Speaker 2: go out side Twombly. I mean, yeah, you know, lunch
Speaker 2: was side Twombly or dinner with side Twombly was always
Speaker 2: a feast.
Speaker 1: And what was it like? What are your memories?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: My memories were being out you know above Geita with
Speaker 2: Sigh and some small hilltop town where Nicola had found
Speaker 2: a fabulous restaurant and you know, lunches that would go
Speaker 2: on for two or two and a half hours. But
Speaker 2: the food would be absolutely spectacular. Of course, one of
Speaker 2: the great things about Italy is the tiniest place can
Speaker 2: produce the most delicious meal.
Speaker 1: When you see a three star Mischlin in Italy. I
Speaker 1: always sort of avoid it. You want to go to
Speaker 1: those small Oh yes.
Speaker 2: The magic for me of traveling around Europe in general,
Speaker 2: but particularly Italy is the serendipitous encounter with a place
Speaker 2: that you'd never even heard of that creates a meal
Speaker 2: that you'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Okay, So did you ever live in Italy as talking
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: No, Alas, I mean I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: in France. You know, I am, in fact French. So
Speaker 2: now is well you have to go back to Livingstein.
Speaker 2: And my father was German, my mother was French. They
Speaker 2: met during the Second World War. But I regained my
Speaker 2: French citizenship a year ago.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you were born in France, so is that
Speaker 1: why or is it through your mother?
Speaker 2: Through my mother? I was born in New York.
Speaker 1: Because I have a son who was born in Paris,
Speaker 1: and I ever think, great, he's going to be you know,
Speaker 1: can have French citizenship, but you have to live in
Speaker 1: France between the ages of eighteen and twenty two. I e.
Speaker 1: Go to the army, right, you know, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's changed. But that's cool that you've got
Speaker 1: French citizens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I've always felt French.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a strange thing that because my mother spoke to
Speaker 2: me in French from the moment I could speak, and
Speaker 2: because we spent every summer there, and I have lots
Speaker 2: of friends. I went to the Universitated cornob when I
Speaker 2: was younger. It's in the blood, yeah, but and I
Speaker 2: think what's in the blood is a lot for food, love,
Speaker 2: for all those things that were in the soul of France.
Speaker 1: Did she cook?
Speaker 2: My mother is a great cook. Is a great cook.
Speaker 1: She is, okay, tell me about her cooking.
Speaker 2: So she was a self taught cook. She was not
Speaker 2: somebody who grew up cooking. But when she came to
Speaker 2: the United States and subsequently married my father and then
Speaker 2: had children, she had to learn to cook. And she
Speaker 2: started by just following cookbooks. And in her words, it's
Speaker 2: not actually that difficult. You just follow the recipe precisely until.
Speaker 1: You unless it's River Cafe cookbook rug, but.
Speaker 2: Until you get confident enough to play right. And she
Speaker 2: she we grew up in a house where food was everything.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the very beginning. So where were you born.
Speaker 2: I was born in New York City, but I grew
Speaker 2: up in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Is your father involved with Williams No.
Speaker 2: My parents met because they loved to ski, and so
Speaker 2: I was born in New York. My sister was born
Speaker 2: three years after me, and shortly thereafter they decamped to Williamstown,
Speaker 2: which is in the Berkshire northwest corner of Massachusetts, because
Speaker 2: it was in ski country, so they just moved on
Speaker 2: a whim and so that's where I grew up. What
Speaker 2: was his job, I follow was an engineer, so the
Speaker 2: weekends were for skiing, and as a child we grew
Speaker 2: up skiing every weekend and eventually became a racer and
Speaker 2: it was part of my life in France for all
Speaker 2: over I was on the ski team of the university
Speaker 2: and I was also racing on sort of the lower
Speaker 2: level of the FIS circuit. So it's all good. I
Speaker 2: still ski, but not nearly as much or the way
Speaker 2: I would like to. I mean, it's pure pleasure, but
Speaker 2: it's difficult when you live in New York City and
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 1: A day job whisky. As a family, it's always been
Speaker 1: our thing of our holiday. Where do you school holidays? Well,
Speaker 1: we've gone back over and over again to Courchevell to
Speaker 1: the to Valet, you know, because you can go from
Speaker 1: Corshevell over mary Belle to you know, Valtorol and that's
Speaker 1: a very very good skier and has children. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of been our family sailing and skiing, but you know,
Speaker 1: our part is much more the skiing. And I was
Speaker 1: I have skied in this in vil and in Aspen
Speaker 1: and recently in Tellyride, and we could go back to
Speaker 1: food in that case, because there's no comparison, dare I
Speaker 1: say between the food that you get on the mountains
Speaker 1: in France. You know, that was a real awakening. This
Speaker 1: was someplace they don't let you drink on the slopes, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's terrible.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, for all of the great restaurants
Speaker 2: this country has today, and it does state the fact
Speaker 2: that ski culture here hasn't generated the kind of ambience
Speaker 2: that you have in Europe. We had for years and
Speaker 2: years and years an apartment in majev so that's where
Speaker 2: we would ski, and before that in Valdize when my
Speaker 2: parents were younger, and you know, you'd spend the morning
Speaker 2: skiing hard and then you'd find a little place to
Speaker 2: have lunch and it would be a spectacularly delicious lunch,
Speaker 2: simple but delicious. And then you go, you know, throughout
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, for instance, and you go to these ski
Speaker 2: resorts and you see these signs that say fine food
Speaker 2: served here, and the only thing that was certain is
Speaker 2: that the food wasn't fine. It's just a different it's different.
Speaker 1: We used to say, we used to fit a bit
Speaker 1: of skiing in between, you know, good food.
Speaker 4: Richard was absolutely passionate about the food and the because
Speaker 4: he's loved ski.
Speaker 1: Till he was about eighty six. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: who makes wine in Tuscany, mister Bonnicassi, he's called, He said,
Speaker 1: is Richard skiing? I said, well, you know, he's finding
Speaker 1: it a bit difficult now that he's sort of in
Speaker 1: his early eighties. He said, oh, tell him to continue,
Speaker 1: because I went through that in my early eighties and
Speaker 1: then it came right back in my late eighties.
Speaker 2: Just requires patience. My mother's skied till she was ninety,
Speaker 2: and every year from about eighty four or eighty five
Speaker 2: till she stopped, she would buy new skis in a
Speaker 2: new outfit and you'd say, Mom, but you only take
Speaker 2: one run a year. That the great run like it
Speaker 2: matters to me.
Speaker 1: So back to the food your mother was cooking when
Speaker 1: you were saying about cookbooks, because I learned to cook
Speaker 1: through Julia Child, which is probably later, but I always
Speaker 1: say reading Julia Child was it was like a science cookbook.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It gave you exactly the measurements, exactly the size of
Speaker 1: the bowl, the spoon, the amount. It was so precise
Speaker 1: and almost you couldn't make a mistake, and that gave
Speaker 1: you the freedom to then experiment on your own. Do
Speaker 1: you know what your mother used Julia Child.
Speaker 2: She did lots of other cookbooks, but I mean I
Speaker 2: ended up getting one of her copies of Julia Child.
Speaker 2: She had several that you know, it was tattered, actually
Speaker 2: in pieces. But I think that's what you learn about cooking,
Speaker 2: that it becomes fun when you have the confidence to
Speaker 2: an away go off piece to start experimenting and inventing,
Speaker 2: as well as following the directions. And also that you
Speaker 2: can't really make a terrible mistake. Yeah, people worry that
Speaker 2: it won't taste exactly the way they want it to,
Speaker 2: but every time you do something, you learn a little
Speaker 2: bit about what you've done that lets you do something else.
Speaker 1: Did you participate with her in cooking.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't actually start cooking, strangely, until I met Susan,
Speaker 2: my wife, and her father was an extremely good cook,
Speaker 2: as well as her mother, of course, and he became
Speaker 2: a kind of role model for me because on the
Speaker 2: weekends he would do the cooking. He liked to cook
Speaker 2: Chinese food because he had represented Chinatown in Montreal as
Speaker 2: a Federal parliamentarian, and watching him cook and learning from
Speaker 2: him just stayed with me. And I met him when
Speaker 2: I was seventeen seventeen.
Speaker 1: Would meals be a very important part of your life
Speaker 1: sitting down to dinner at night? Did you all sit,
Speaker 1: you and your sister and your parents sit down meal
Speaker 1: cooked by your mother?
Speaker 2: Absolutely. We lived initially in a very small house and
Speaker 2: then eventually my parents moved to a larger house. But
Speaker 2: the meal was the key point in the day. And
Speaker 2: my mother what time would it be?
Speaker 1: Would it be would she'd go on French terms and
Speaker 1: have dinner at eight or would it be earlier school?
Speaker 2: It was earlier, you know, seven ish. I like to
Speaker 2: eat late. Now. I don't remember what I like to
Speaker 2: do when I was a child. I just ate when
Speaker 2: when the opportunity was there. But my mother, you know
Speaker 2: up until I was in seventh or eighth grade, maybe beyond,
Speaker 2: which would bring me lunch at school because she just
Speaker 2: didn't think the school would produce a good enough lunch.
Speaker 2: So as a child, you were both teased because.
Speaker 1: It was that embarrassing.
Speaker 2: It was horribly embarrassing. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 2: had a very good lunch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she'd actually bring it to you, or she'd give
Speaker 1: it to you to take.
Speaker 2: Sometimes she gave it to me. Sometimes she would.
Speaker 1: Be really embarrassing to have your mother come with a
Speaker 1: plate of but nice, so nice.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: My mother was is a fantastic mother.
Speaker 1: So she sounds great.
Speaker 2: And she believes that, you know, if you don't have
Speaker 2: a good meal, you're not going to have a good day.
Speaker 2: That's kind of where she's started that. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah puts you know, let's put it this way. A
Speaker 2: bad meal puts you in a bad meal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so you grew up in this house. Did
Speaker 1: you say your father cooked.
Speaker 2: No, My father once a year would make potato lotkis,
Speaker 2: which was the one thing he could make.
Speaker 1: Where did he learn that?
Speaker 2: I guess from his mother or his grandmother in Germany.
Speaker 2: But the kitchen was a disaster after that, So my
Speaker 2: mother was never that keen to have to do it
Speaker 2: because my father and cleaning up weren't actually synonymous. So
Speaker 2: latkis were delicious, but they were a treat to be
Speaker 2: had once a year.
Speaker 1: And so you grew up in this household of primarily French.
Speaker 2: Food, almost always Bogigno. My mother would cook a fabulous lamb,
Speaker 2: you know. Every once in a while she'd do, you know,
Speaker 2: a spaghetti of some sort, mostly spaghetti with meat balls.
Speaker 2: Very it was not her favorite thing to cook for
Speaker 2: some reason, but and my father loved meat, so we had,
Speaker 2: you know, probably the worst diet in the world. We
Speaker 2: had a lot of pork, beef, lamb, but always cooked,
Speaker 2: you know, even when it was a very simple my
Speaker 2: mother had a way of cooking it perfectly. I remember
Speaker 2: at some point a friend of hers told her about
Speaker 2: kind of salmon. It was not quite a smoke salmon,
Speaker 2: it was a cured salmon. So she started curing salmon
Speaker 2: that was spectacularly good. I mean everything she touched, yeah,
Speaker 2: turned out really well.
Speaker 1: I wonder if she could find the ingredients she wanted
Speaker 1: in Williamstown.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a store half hour forty minutes
Speaker 2: away that she would go to. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: gotten better over time, and now when I go there
Speaker 2: to visit her, you can get pretty much anything you want.
Speaker 2: But that certainly wasn't the case growing up.
Speaker 1: What we did our first book, Random House had a
Speaker 1: policy that whatever recipe you did had to be available
Speaker 1: to their cookbook editor who lived in Maine, that within
Speaker 1: fifty miles that she could get the ingredient. And now,
Speaker 1: of course with the Internet, it's all changed anyway. Everybody
Speaker 1: can get everything. Yeah, did you go to France in
Speaker 1: the summer? Did you go visit Where were your grandparents?
Speaker 2: So my grandmother lived in Paris, and my cousins, who
Speaker 2: also lived in Paris, spent the summers in Cannes, in
Speaker 2: the south of France, so we'd go and visit them.
Speaker 2: And then when I was eleven, was sent off to
Speaker 2: live in the summer with some friends of my parents
Speaker 2: in ex Leba in the Saboas, and I would go
Speaker 2: and live with them for a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 2: then I would go to ski camp for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, and then I would come back and live
Speaker 2: with them. So I had this kind of idyllic childhood.
Speaker 1: It's such a regional cooking, isn't it The food that
Speaker 1: you would eat in Paris or Normandy, It wo'd be
Speaker 1: different from Brittany and from excell and France, from the
Speaker 1: south of France, and it was very different.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's that whole idea of teoir, that everything has
Speaker 2: some kind of deeply rooted local dimension to it that
Speaker 2: you can almost smell sometimes. Right, it's in the earth
Speaker 2: and in the way things are made. So you can
Speaker 2: have a chicken from Bresse in the savoir and it
Speaker 2: won't taste the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to have curiosity as a chef. Did she
Speaker 1: cook a lot with butter? I mean, I love butter.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting because we have an Italian restaurant where
Speaker 1: everybody's meant to love olive oil, and we all do.
Speaker 1: But when you get chefs around the table and we
Speaker 1: talk about cooking with butter, you know it's so delicious,
Speaker 1: isn't it?
Speaker 2: Creasy Messo never entered the house ever. Maybe why my
Speaker 2: father had a heart attack at sixty.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did he survived in many good years after that. But no,
Speaker 2: my mother cooked very traditional French food all the way through,
Speaker 2: so her Bogignon was a very rich red land sauce,
Speaker 2: and in the same way that she'd make a rule with,
Speaker 2: you know, the best butter she could find.
Speaker 1: Yeah, growing up with this food, the French culture, going
Speaker 1: to Paris, you know, extremely elegant way of eating, going
Speaker 1: to the savoir. How did this affect you? I mean,
Speaker 1: did you have a standard of eating, of going out,
Speaker 1: going to restaurants.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting. I wasn't that conscious of it as
Speaker 2: a child, because in fact, it just seemed normal. But
Speaker 2: I realized by the time I was seventeen or eighteen
Speaker 2: or even twenty, that one I loved going to restaurants.
Speaker 2: Two I loved to eat. That there was a certain
Speaker 2: kind of pleasure that came with a meal that you
Speaker 2: couldn't find otherwise in it. And a meal that had
Speaker 2: been thoughtfully put together was even more interesting than something
Speaker 2: quickly assembled. And when I met Susan and we met
Speaker 2: when I was seventeen, what did you meet? We met
Speaker 2: in Grenod. I was there to race and she was
Speaker 2: there to study, and so somehow we got together. And
Speaker 2: our favorite restaurant when we lived in Gronold was a
Speaker 2: little Vietnamese place called the Poda La. I still remember
Speaker 2: it vividly. This is like fifty years ago, but it
Speaker 2: was exquisite Vietnamese food, and you learned quickly. And I
Speaker 2: hadn't really had Vietnamese food before it had some Chinese food.
Speaker 2: You learned very quickly, at least I learned very I
Speaker 2: have eclectic taste. I love Indian food and I love
Speaker 2: Vietnamese food. I love new tastes that are unfamiliar. And
Speaker 2: then you try to understand how how did that taste
Speaker 2: come about? What had to happen to make chicken with
Speaker 2: lemon grass taste the way it does. And sometimes these
Speaker 2: things just sit in your mind, like I can remember
Speaker 2: that restaurant as if it were literally yesterday. I actually
Speaker 2: remember most meals I've had.
Speaker 1: I think people, that's what we enjoy about doing this,
Speaker 1: is that food triggers. It's like a piece of music.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I can hear a song and remember where I was
Speaker 1: standing when I heard that piece of music. And I
Speaker 1: think food for many of us, maybe not is a
Speaker 1: trigger for memory, isn't it Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Because it's olafactory, right, It's got smell to it, it
Speaker 2: has taste to it, it has texture to it has location. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: you know, having the river cafe, which I have to
Speaker 2: say this is not an advertisement. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: say it's my favorite restaurant in London.
Speaker 1: It should come now.
Speaker 2: You know, I was supposed to be in London, but
Speaker 2: I had a back operation that threw my schedule off,
Speaker 2: so I'll be there in the New York.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a great season, and that's maybe now we
Speaker 1: should be the recipe because I thought it was really
Speaker 1: interesting that, you know, when you think about all the
Speaker 1: seasons of food, we love when something goes and something
Speaker 1: you know, when the fennel goes and then you have peas,
Speaker 1: or you know, the melons go and you can't bear it,
Speaker 1: but then you have peaches. But for me as a cook,
Speaker 1: I really look forward to the autumn. I think the
Speaker 1: autumn is almost a cook's time when you have the
Speaker 1: dark pumpkins. In England we have grouse, we have partridge
Speaker 1: and now at last the porcini are really good and
Speaker 1: we just yesterday gout white truffles are amazing. So it's
Speaker 1: a very good season right now. So AS really pleased
Speaker 1: that you chose a recipe which I love, which is
Speaker 1: I think from the first book pasta with tomato and
Speaker 1: a dried porcini mushroom.
Speaker 2: So you start with seventy five grams of dried porcini mushrooms.
Speaker 2: I'm already salivating because I love porcini, four tablespoons botlive oil,
Speaker 2: three garlic coves, peeled and sliced, one tablespoon of fresh
Speaker 2: time leaves, two tablespoons of parsley finely chopped, one dried
Speaker 2: chili crumbled, eight hundred gram tin of peeled plum, tomatoes
Speaker 2: drained of their juices. One hundred twenty milli liters of
Speaker 2: double cream. Can there ever be too much double cream?
Speaker 2: I'm just asking, Is that possible?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So we could add more to it.
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty grams of parmesan, freshly grated, two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty grams of conchili, pasta sea salt and
Speaker 2: freshly ground black pepper, and extravergin olive oil. So you
Speaker 2: start by soaking the mushrooms in hot water for twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Heat the olive oil in a pan and fry the
Speaker 2: garlic gently with thyme, parsley, and chili. Add the porcini
Speaker 2: and cook to combine the flavors. Add the tomatoes. Cook
Speaker 2: together gently until the tomatoes have thickened. Add the cream,
Speaker 2: season then remove from the heat and stir in half
Speaker 2: of the parmesan. Cook the pasta and oiling salted water,
Speaker 2: then drain thoroughly. Add to the sauce with the remaining parmesan,
Speaker 2: stir well, add more parmeasan and extra virgin olive oil,
Speaker 2: and delight in the taste.
Speaker 1: Do you make a lot of pasta? I do, so
Speaker 1: what is some of the what are you cooking now? So?
Speaker 2: Last night I made a pasta that I sort of
Speaker 2: add libed on that we like, which is broccoli rob
Speaker 2: and spicy sausage. Is very simple pasta pasta.
Speaker 1: Did you use with it?
Speaker 2: I just use linguini, something that just pulls the sauce
Speaker 2: a little bit, and it's just like super simple. Broccoli
Speaker 2: rob gives a little bitter taste, but it's super easy.
Speaker 1: Do you buy the sausage meat out of the sausage
Speaker 1: or do you cook the sausage and then crumple it.
Speaker 2: I take the wrapping off the sausage and cook it
Speaker 2: that way so it crumbles up. And I always put
Speaker 2: a little bit of wine in and you know, some
Speaker 2: cheese and.
Speaker 1: That just for the two of you do you entertain?
Speaker 2: We do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your If I come to dinner at the
Speaker 1: Lowery House, what would it be like?
Speaker 2: Nine times out of ten it's going to be some
Speaker 2: form of lamb. We have a great producer of lamb
Speaker 2: where we live in Canada. I mean just really epically
Speaker 2: good lamb. And so we'll either grill it roasted cubit
Speaker 2: and make shish kebabs, but mostly I like to do
Speaker 2: a spit turned wood fired leg. This pretty hard to beat.
Speaker 1: And how many people do you invite?
Speaker 2: There are five of us with my children. Then when
Speaker 2: we're up in Canada, Susan's brothers and sisters and cousins
Speaker 2: are there, so we're usually at the get go between
Speaker 2: twelve and fifteen. Then if we invite some friends over
Speaker 2: pick we get to fifteen or twenty, so it can be.
Speaker 1: A be a big Are you in the kitchen well yourself? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you know? The River Cafe has a shop. It's
Speaker 1: full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbook,
Speaker 1: bos Linnen Napkins, kitchen were toad bags with our signatures,
Speaker 1: glasses from Venice, chocolates from Durin. You can find us
Speaker 1: right next door to the River Cafe in London or
Speaker 1: online at Shopthrivercafe dot co dot uk. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the museum Monarch, because I started out by saying that
Speaker 1: food and art and art and food, and I have
Speaker 1: to say I was saying to Zad before that. I'm
Speaker 1: often ask in these question as you know, what's your
Speaker 1: greatest luxury or you know what is your luxury? And
Speaker 1: I always say, you know, you can keep your cavea,
Speaker 1: or you can keep your champagne, maybe even a white truffle.
Speaker 1: But for me, going to a museum when it's closed
Speaker 1: is the greatest luxury. And I've had that luxury and
Speaker 1: it really is to see art. But I have to
Speaker 1: say that two weeks ago I was here and my
Speaker 1: kids were here, and we all came here and it
Speaker 1: was packed. It was full of people. There were babies
Speaker 1: and children and people lining up, and actually I found
Speaker 1: it so beautiful, so exhilarating to walk in. I think
Speaker 1: all these people want to do is come to the
Speaker 1: Museum Modern Art. They could have gone to Central Park.
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful day. They could have gone a
Speaker 1: boat down the river. They could have gone to a
Speaker 1: football game. And I've been fine, But they were here,
Speaker 1: and I love that, you know, I love that so
Speaker 1: many people were here, and you know, congratulations, because I've
Speaker 1: been to museums that are packed and you want to
Speaker 1: run out the door. But it felt really good, and
Speaker 1: I'm not just flattering you. It really did feel a
Speaker 1: special to be here.
Speaker 2: Well, I love it. I mean, the reason that I
Speaker 2: enjoy working in the museum is because I love the
Speaker 2: engagement between art and people. Right. I love to think
Speaker 2: about art, to talk to artists, to look at art,
Speaker 2: to write about art, to just meditate around art. But
Speaker 2: I also feel that when you work with objects in
Speaker 2: space with people, they come alive in a different way
Speaker 2: and there's an incredible thrill and exhilaration really that comes
Speaker 2: when you see people enjoying an exhibition or an installation,
Speaker 2: or encountering a work of art they weren't expected to
Speaker 2: see or not even knowing that it existed. And you'll
Speaker 2: notice as you move around our museum that we've played
Speaker 2: a lot with where we locate benches. Originally, when I started,
Speaker 2: benches were always put in the middle of a room
Speaker 2: because you assumed that circulation was the most important thing
Speaker 2: and you didn't want to interrupt people's ability to move around,
Speaker 2: and a brilliant art historian that we were working with
Speaker 2: just before our last expansion said, you know, if you
Speaker 2: want people to look at art, put the bench in
Speaker 2: front of the object and they'll actually sit there and
Speaker 2: look at what's on the wall, as opposed to sitting
Speaker 2: on a bench and looking at their cell phone. So
Speaker 2: we tried. We didn't actually believe her, but we tried
Speaker 2: a few little experiments. She was completely right. So now
Speaker 2: when I walk through the museum, what I love is
Speaker 2: that you'll actually see two or three or four people
Speaker 2: seated together, strangers looking at a work of art and
Speaker 2: talking to each other about it. And it's that sense
Speaker 2: of community that gets created in the space of a
Speaker 2: museum that makes it so rewarding to be here. So
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you enjoyed it, because I get turned
Speaker 2: on to a museum and see people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it was really exciting to see that. But I
Speaker 1: also think that Richard did the Pompatouo with Renzo piano.
Speaker 2: Brilliant and broke and broke the old mold and created
Speaker 2: the new mold.
Speaker 1: Well, he did that music well. The very early, very
Speaker 1: first idea of the escalator on the outside was that
Speaker 1: you could come to a museum and not go look
Speaker 1: at the art, you know, they could just take a
Speaker 1: ride up the escalator, have a good time and then
Speaker 1: maybe one person would say, oh, I'd like to go in,
Speaker 1: or maybe everybody would want to go in. But there
Speaker 1: was a restaurant always, you know, George is quite a
Speaker 1: well known restaurant. Renzo Piano in Chicago has a restaurant
Speaker 1: named after him, of course, called Tertzo Piano. So it's
Speaker 1: a player on the word piano, Piano, the third Floor
Speaker 1: and Renzo Piano. And here you have the Modern with
Speaker 1: Danny Meyer. What it was your idea of putting a
Speaker 1: really important restaurant in a museum.
Speaker 2: So it goes back to this very simple equation that
Speaker 2: looking at art is an incredibly pleasurable exercise and eating
Speaker 2: at a museum should be equally pleasurable, and that there
Speaker 2: was no excuse not to have an outstanding restaurant at
Speaker 2: the museum, even though until we did The Modern, I
Speaker 2: can't think of another museum that had a really great
Speaker 2: restaurant and restaurants that were adequate, but not a place
Speaker 2: that in and of itself was a draw. So working
Speaker 2: with Danny and we interviewed dozens of restaurant tours. I mean,
Speaker 2: actually it was quite a lot of fun because we
Speaker 2: spent six months trying out restaurants all over town.
Speaker 1: And then what year was it?
Speaker 2: This goes back to two thousand and three when we
Speaker 2: started to really put this all together, and then when
Speaker 2: we met Danny and understood first of all that Danny
Speaker 2: loves art. He comes from a family of collectors, he
Speaker 2: grew up around museums, so he's totally comfortable with the
Speaker 2: culture of museums. He's also an incredibly generous individual, but
Speaker 2: he also loves hospitality and fine food, and so the
Speaker 2: combination was perfect. And we actually set out with Danny
Speaker 2: to say, can we actually build the best restaurant imaginable
Speaker 2: for anyone, forget whether or not it's a museum. And
Speaker 2: to his credit, he has really done a spectacular job.
Speaker 2: As you know, it has a casual side to it
Speaker 2: and a more formal side, but the food has always
Speaker 2: been fabulous. And now we have a young chef, Tom
Speaker 2: who is just knocking it out of the park.
Speaker 1: And what is your involvement?
Speaker 2: Our involvement is really quite passive. I mean, obviously, if
Speaker 2: we see things that are troublesome. We talked to Danny,
Speaker 2: but it is really a Danni Meyer restaurant. He and
Speaker 2: his food group Union Square Hospitality Group are responsible for
Speaker 2: operating it, managing it, and we have been consulted when
Speaker 2: there have been changes in chefs, which is very nice
Speaker 2: of Danny. But it's really a Danni Meyer restaurant at MoMA,
Speaker 2: as are the cafes.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the cafes, So the cafes.
Speaker 2: Are really designed to be first of all, a completely
Speaker 2: different kind of price point, so that more affordable, much quicker, faster,
Speaker 2: less extensively prepared food so you can get in and
Speaker 2: out relatively quickly, but still a place where you can
Speaker 2: get a great panini or a great rigatoni al pomodoro
Speaker 2: that's memorable that you can actually say, well, that was
Speaker 2: the best panini I've had in a long time. And
Speaker 2: they've worked very well. I have to say that the
Speaker 2: menus are quite on the sixth floor. It's a very
Speaker 2: small menus or super simple, a few appetizers, fehumanes and
Speaker 2: a couple of desserts. Cafe two, which is the larger
Speaker 2: of our cafes, has a much broader menu, and then
Speaker 2: of course the Barroom and the Modern are full scale operations,
Speaker 2: but I can honestly say I've never had a bad
Speaker 2: meal at any of those places. And it's not just
Speaker 2: because they know who I am. It's because Danny really
Speaker 2: pays attention to the quality of the food.
Speaker 4: Constant question that's interested in the way you describe the
Speaker 4: restaurants and the cafes and the Edibyshire show is obviously
Speaker 4: on the moment, which is just fantastic and everything. I
Speaker 4: would like enough to interview him. Last year in Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: I had his image of him in his studio in
Speaker 4: the desert, very contemplative by himself creating his artwork. What
Speaker 4: do you think it's like for him to come here
Speaker 4: and see it viewed in these very very busy spaces
Speaker 4: and the restaurants and the cafes. Do they like that
Speaker 4: or do they think it should be more sort of
Speaker 4: spiritual in the way all contemplative?
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: I think most artists, and certainly artists of Ed's stature,
Speaker 2: who enjoyed long and very successful careers. You know, you
Speaker 2: make art to share it with people, and I think
Speaker 2: one of the pleasures of working with the curator is
Speaker 2: you have an interlocutor who can help you see your
Speaker 2: own art, perhaps in new and different ways, but who
Speaker 2: can also tell a story with it for a public
Speaker 2: perhaps that you're unfamiliar with. And I think Ed was
Speaker 2: a little doe eyed. You know, he's a very love
Speaker 2: he's such a such an unassuming man. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not that he's without ego, it's that he's just a
Speaker 2: gentle person who doesn't assert himself in space. And yet
Speaker 2: of course he's incredibly successful. And I think he was
Speaker 2: a little doe eyed when people came for the opening
Speaker 2: and it wasn't one or two people, but it was
Speaker 2: hundreds and then thousands of people, all of them absolutely
Speaker 2: goggle eyed at what he had achieved.
Speaker 4: And I think he was like, Wow, I can't tell
Speaker 4: you how people are talking about the chocolate Room.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a great cutorial device.
Speaker 4: It's sort of just absolutely can bring.
Speaker 1: It to chocolate room. What was it like for the
Speaker 1: museum to have that?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, it was incredibly complicated to experiment
Speaker 2: with how to do it. The chocolate room is a room.
Speaker 2: It was a kind of conceptual piece that Ed did,
Speaker 2: I think first in nineteen seventy two or seventy four,
Speaker 2: and it consists of hundreds of sheets of paper that
Speaker 2: have been coated in chocolate. So the room has a
Speaker 2: certain tonality shades of brown. But more importantly, it has smell,
Speaker 2: and a deep, rich chocolate e smell that over time
Speaker 2: tempers a little bit, so it doesn't smell today exactly
Speaker 2: the way it did a month ago. But you begin
Speaker 2: to smell it before you can see it, which is
Speaker 2: what I like. So you're kind of pulled along by
Speaker 2: this associative smell of chocolate that doesn't feel like it
Speaker 2: should be in an exhibition. And then you see this
Speaker 2: room and you marvel at the fact that actually it's chocolate,
Speaker 2: but it's not chocolate you can eat. You're never going
Speaker 2: to take one of those pieces of paper and chew it.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of experimentation of what kind
Speaker 2: of chocolate would produce the right kind of tint, and
Speaker 2: how would it sit on the paper, and how did
Speaker 2: the paper have to be treated so that the chocolate
Speaker 2: would remain because the chocolate retains a kind of monochromatic
Speaker 2: flatness to it, but if it started to show pooling
Speaker 2: of oil and modeling, it would be very different that
Speaker 2: that kind of flatness would begin to discision.
Speaker 4: I thought it was like being in some monks sell
Speaker 4: Actually it's very strange experience. You have that richness of
Speaker 4: the chocolate, but also that austerity of the space.
Speaker 2: Right, and and those sheets they're pinned right, so the
Speaker 2: sheets have a three dimensional quality to them. They're not
Speaker 2: glued to the wall. They flutter a little bit.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
Speaker 1: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o, wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You talked about your mother and father and your grandmother
Speaker 1: and Susan food.
Speaker 2: What about your children so interesting? My eldest son is
Speaker 2: a non eater. I mean he eats only because his
Speaker 2: body needs it. Our daughter is an art historian, a curator.
Speaker 2: She just opened a beautiful show of an artist, a
Speaker 2: Columbian artist, Delsi Morello. She loves to cook. She loves
Speaker 2: to cook, and she learned from her both of her grandmothers,
Speaker 2: from her mother, from her father. She's a fantastic cook.
Speaker 2: And it turns out our youngest son, the one who
Speaker 2: is now a journalist and working in Jerusalem, also loves
Speaker 2: to cook, and so Susan is constantly sending them recipes,
Speaker 2: reminding them what to do.
Speaker 1: You have your mother's recipes.
Speaker 2: So long ago, my mother made one of the great
Speaker 2: Kishas in the world. I mean truly a show stoppingly delicious,
Speaker 2: simple quiche laur and it still makes, you know, a
Speaker 2: cheesecake that I've never tasted better, but it is as
Speaker 2: light as a soux fle And she has shared the
Speaker 2: recipes with us on many occasions as we asked for them.
Speaker 2: But what I've learned for my mother is, and this
Speaker 2: happened with the Keish verses, she gave us the recipe
Speaker 2: and then let's say three months four months later, I said, Mom,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I lost her recipe. Can you
Speaker 2: give it to me again? And she gave it to me,
Speaker 2: and it was like, but I don't remember you telling
Speaker 2: me about the tablespoon of flour. And what I learned
Speaker 2: is that my mother will divulge a recipe, but never
Speaker 2: one hundred percent of the recipe, so it's just little trick. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: it's her little trick. Then you got to write each
Speaker 2: one of them down and merge them together until you
Speaker 2: get the whole recipe.
Speaker 1: One of you should do it because it's a treasure.
Speaker 1: You know, when you meet people who they say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: my mother left me you know, a little book of
Speaker 1: her recipes, and my grandmother left me a book, it
Speaker 1: means a lot.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, and then there you know, I think as children,
Speaker 2: you grew up with those tastes, right, those tastes means
Speaker 2: something to you, and then your children memory have those
Speaker 2: memories of their grandparents because of the taste of eating
Speaker 2: the cheesecake at your grandmother's that she cooked just for you. Right,
Speaker 2: those things are special.
Speaker 1: So here we are New York, which has incredible amount
Speaker 1: of restaurants. I'm actually rather ignorant of New York restaurants
Speaker 1: because either when I come it's a hurry, or I
Speaker 1: eat with my family or friends in their houses. What
Speaker 1: do you look for in a restaurant and what restaurants
Speaker 1: do you particularly enjoy?
Speaker 2: So I look for places that are casual. I'm not
Speaker 2: necessarily that interested in a formal meal, though on occasion
Speaker 2: that's that's nice. That are casual with outstandingly good food,
Speaker 2: Places that really care about the quality of the food,
Speaker 2: how it's prepared, how it's presented, and that make you
Speaker 2: feel welcome even if you've never been there before, and
Speaker 2: you know it's a trick, right. You can have a
Speaker 2: really good meal and you're treated miserably and you probably.
Speaker 1: Won't go back again.
Speaker 2: You can have a mediocre meal where you've been treated
Speaker 2: extremely well when you might go back. So when you
Speaker 2: have a place that treats you really well, that understands
Speaker 2: what the welcome should feel like, and the food is
Speaker 2: exceptionally good, then you remember, right, it just gets seered
Speaker 2: into your mind. You say, well, that's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite places. Of course I'm going to go there.
Speaker 1: And in New York where coming name names yeah becomes
Speaker 1: are nice.
Speaker 2: There's a restaurant that used to be seen down on
Speaker 2: Chambers Street and then it closed and as a result
Speaker 2: of the pandemic, but it reconstituted itself as Chambers. It's
Speaker 2: an outstanding restaurant. The food is just always incredibly well prepared,
Speaker 2: and it's small and cozy. People treat you really well.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite restaurants in the city.
Speaker 1: Glen the question that we ask, and I'm sorry this
Speaker 1: is coming to an end, and we could do part two.
Speaker 1: When you come to the River Cafe, you could show
Speaker 1: us how to cook lamb and if food alleviates hunger,
Speaker 1: or as you say, if you're an athlete and you're
Speaker 1: going to ski down a mountain or ride a bicycle
Speaker 1: up a hell, or if you're going to feed your
Speaker 1: children or you're in the country, it is a pleasure
Speaker 1: to share. It's something that is healthy, it's something that
Speaker 1: makes you work better and think better. But it also
Speaker 1: is comfort. And there is a time in all our
Speaker 1: lives when we need to turn to food for comfort.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, that's my last question to you
Speaker 1: today in New York is if you're going to food
Speaker 1: for comfort, what would that be.
Speaker 2: There's nothing for me like a good slice of pizza.
Speaker 2: I just take this and I like to make pizzas.
Speaker 2: There's so much fun to cook and just you know,
Speaker 2: a simple pizza, a little bit of tomato sauce, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe some mozzarella, a leaf or two of basil, keep
Speaker 2: it simple. I could eat that non stop all day long.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's have pizza.
Speaker 2: Question and wait, do you have a good pizza for you? Well,
Speaker 2: this is one of the things New York does, so
Speaker 2: you know, the people in New York get really bulshy
Speaker 2: about pizza. So Roberta's is, you know, buying large considered
Speaker 2: yeah in Brooklyn, sort of the gold standard. And I
Speaker 2: like cooking my own pizzas. Honestly, there's something actually almost
Speaker 2: alchemical about a pizza, right because of the heat of
Speaker 2: the oven and the way both heats from below and
Speaker 2: the convection above. And once you once you free out
Speaker 2: how to get the taste you want, then you can
Speaker 2: replicate it. But if I need to, if I have
Speaker 2: this urge, this kind of when I have that deep
Speaker 2: urge for a slice of pizza, honestly, almost any slice
Speaker 2: will do. Around here. There's a place called Angelo's. It's
Speaker 2: not anything you wouldn't necessarily travel across the country for,
Speaker 2: but when you really need a good slice of pizza,
Speaker 2: it works.
Speaker 1: Thank you. And you know, if food is art and
Speaker 1: art is food, and museums or restaurants and restaurants or museums.
Speaker 2: And chefs are artists.
Speaker 1: And thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Thanks So it's great, well and love we have time
Speaker 5: to go and see the modern before leaving the museum.
Speaker 2: Thanks, look at me.
Speaker 1: And so we're just doing a podcast play And then
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say a few.
Speaker 2: Words that.
Speaker 1: You should if you're working here.
Speaker 4: Ruthie's Table for is produced by Atimi Studios.
Speaker 2: For iHeartRadio is hosted by Ruthie Rogers. It's produced by
Speaker 2: William Lensky.
Speaker 4: Our executive producers are Zad Rogers and Fay Stewart.
Speaker 3: Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore.
Speaker 4: Our production coordinator is Bella Selini. Special thanks to everyone
Speaker 4: at The River Cafe.