Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with
Speaker 1: Montclair in.
Speaker 2: The last few days, telling friends my next podcast guest
Speaker 2: was going to be Anthony Scaramucci. Everybody had a reaction,
Speaker 2: a big one. How amazing, Ruthie, How did that happen? Ruthie?
Speaker 2: Lucky you, lucky us to listen to the two of you.
Speaker 2: When will it come out? In my career, I've been
Speaker 2: a chef and an author and now a podcaster. In
Speaker 2: his career, Antony has been a President's communication director in
Speaker 2: the White House, a financial genius founding Sky Capital, and
Speaker 2: the host of the Rest Is Politics US podcast. We
Speaker 2: both had our ups and downs. His may have been
Speaker 2: higher ups and maybe downer downs. But we're not here
Speaker 2: to compete. We're here to talk about food, party politics,
Speaker 2: food and party parties, food and family, food and memories.
Speaker 2: Up to date, spent about ten minutes with Antony, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel that way for me. The night we
Speaker 2: met in the River Cafe was an immediate connection. I
Speaker 2: agree with my friends. How lucky am I to have
Speaker 2: him here today? How lucky am I to share stories?
Speaker 2: How lucky am I to kind of feel he's my friend?
Speaker 3: Well? I mean, the feeling is it's very very sweet introduction.
Speaker 3: I didn't prepare an introduction, but I just want you
Speaker 3: to know that I'm a super fan of yours. And
Speaker 3: the night that I had here was very memorable one
Speaker 3: for me because I came with Jason Fox, who's a
Speaker 3: legend here for the SAS show. I did the American
Speaker 3: version called Special Forces, and so he dunked me in
Speaker 3: a car and he trapped me in the car and
Speaker 3: pushed me out of a helicopter, set me on fire.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know what the hell I was
Speaker 3: doing in that show.
Speaker 2: But he took you to the River caf That part
Speaker 2: of the risk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no, The River Cave was the dessert after
Speaker 3: brutalizing me in the desert. We were out on the
Speaker 3: Wadi Rum desert. The show's ten days at age fifty eight,
Speaker 3: I made it through six of them, so I was
Speaker 3: proud of myself. But it was hard.
Speaker 2: What did you eat? Do you remember?
Speaker 3: Oh? Terribly terribly.
Speaker 2: I lost.
Speaker 3: I lost probably we'll go by killer. I lost ten pounds.
Speaker 3: I don't know, ye, yeah, I bought probably six kilos.
Speaker 3: I mean it was a shit on a shingle corned
Speaker 3: beef and on toast boiled eggs. It was terrible of
Speaker 3: franks and beans. They were giving you sort of sas
Speaker 3: food rations for the day, unlimited amount of water, but
Speaker 3: the food was terrible.
Speaker 2: What do you think you took away with you?
Speaker 3: You know, it's a great question. I think when you
Speaker 3: go through something like that and it's a minor thing,
Speaker 3: you get a lot more empathy for people that are
Speaker 3: actually out in that desert for eighteen months, or they're
Speaker 3: out there serving the country, whether it's the UK or
Speaker 3: the US, and they're making a sacrifice to keep people safe.
Speaker 3: I mean, you get a lot more empathy. The other
Speaker 3: thing is, I think your life's happiness comes from your
Speaker 3: expectation management.
Speaker 2: And tell me about expectation managed.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're sleeping on a cot in one hundred
Speaker 3: and five degree weather in a canvas tent, and you've
Speaker 3: got a little pillow this big and a little tiny uh,
Speaker 3: and you're freezing at night because the temperature goes to
Speaker 3: one oh five to forty eight. These are Fahrenheys, of course,
Speaker 3: and you start freezing. You're like, you know, you learn
Speaker 3: to appreciate what you have. You learn to appreciate the
Speaker 3: comforts that you have. I do you know, I'm a
Speaker 3: big believer that life is about expectations. Lower expectations, higher positivity,
Speaker 3: higher outcomes.
Speaker 2: I think it's also interesting me, but you brought up
Speaker 2: was about empathy, because there's all thinking about empathy so
Speaker 2: much right now, especially since someone whose name I don't
Speaker 2: actually like to mention on the podcast, which is Elon Musk,
Speaker 2: said that liberals had too much empathy. I saw someone
Speaker 2: wrote something in response to that and said, you know,
Speaker 2: empathy is he said, he wrote, I used to try
Speaker 2: and think what was evil? How do you define evil?
Speaker 2: And then he said, thinking about it, I think evil
Speaker 2: is when you have no empathy. And it turned out
Speaker 2: that it was signed by someone who was it Nuremberg,
Speaker 2: you know, judge at Neuremberg. And it made me think
Speaker 2: about how empathy. If we don't have empathy, what do
Speaker 2: we have. I think it's so well, crucially.
Speaker 3: I think that's it, you know, I mean, ultimately the again,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm sharing a lot of my personal follows.
Speaker 3: I'll share it with you. I get the most joy
Speaker 3: out of helping other people. I think that's an axiom
Speaker 3: for most people. I tell people, you know, I have
Speaker 3: an older brother that has an experienced drug addiction in
Speaker 3: his life. He's going in and out of rehab. He
Speaker 3: is figured out a way to stay sober by helping
Speaker 3: other people. He's a sponsor. He's a phone call away
Speaker 3: from someone that's depressed or in need of something, or
Speaker 3: trying to help somebody stay off of whatever the drug
Speaker 3: is that they're addicted to. And I think when you're
Speaker 3: helping people, you're at your best. And if you're helping people,
Speaker 3: your empathetic tours whatever their struggle is, you know. And
Speaker 3: so to me, I think empathy is the whole thing
Speaker 3: empathy is. But a lot of these norses is frankly,
Speaker 3: they don't have a lot of empathy. There are people
Speaker 3: political leaders and whatnot that they objectify people and they're
Speaker 3: just in their field of vision. Do either do a
Speaker 3: transaction that's favorable or unfavorable, and then they're immediately discarded
Speaker 3: like it's it's almost like a video game for a
Speaker 3: lot of these people, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: And the other one that you talk about is resilience.
Speaker 2: So we have empathy, but we also have resilience. And
Speaker 2: I've been through quite a lot in the last ten
Speaker 2: years as all as of Heath, and I thought, actually,
Speaker 2: if you can teach your children resilience, I think that's
Speaker 2: a great gift to have in life. That you you
Speaker 2: have to be able to cave in as well, you have.
Speaker 3: To be able to Is it teachable?
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 3: With my children. My observation, I guess, is that they're
Speaker 3: observing you. I can say things to them, but it's
Speaker 3: not going to really matter. It's your actions that are
Speaker 3: going to be things that happened. So when I got
Speaker 3: fired from the White House, which was a brutal time
Speaker 3: for me, Ruthie, if you're ever having a bad day
Speaker 3: and you're listening to this podcast, I want you to
Speaker 3: imagine my day on the thirty first of July twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: I got I asked fire from the White House, blown
Speaker 3: into Pennsylvania Avenue, skinned alive by the media, rolled in margarite, assault,
Speaker 3: and I was on the Santa Monica promenade. Don't know
Speaker 3: if you've ever been out there at that open door
Speaker 3: promenade on third and fourth Street. And my son at
Speaker 3: that time, he's thirty three now, but he was twenty five.
Speaker 3: Then he put his arm around me and he said, Dad,
Speaker 3: are you going to be okay. It was the first
Speaker 3: time in my life where my son was parenting me
Speaker 3: as opposed to be parenting him, and I didn't really
Speaker 3: remember the feeling if I was going to be okay
Speaker 3: or not, but I remember what I said to him.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, going to be okay. Watch what I
Speaker 3: do with this. And I think it's very important for
Speaker 3: kids to see their parents get through things, whatever they
Speaker 3: may be, because then in their mind they have space
Speaker 3: for their own failures. They have space for whatever they
Speaker 3: come up short on in their lives where they can say, Okay,
Speaker 3: well that's happened to my mom or happen to my dad,
Speaker 3: and they were able to get through it. I can do.
Speaker 3: I find a lot of my very wealthy friends. They
Speaker 3: sanitize their life, Ruthie. They have a life that goes
Speaker 3: up into the right. It's a perfect story. They made
Speaker 3: no bad decisions. I can't tell you the number of
Speaker 3: billionaire memoirs that I've read where I'm a gas that
Speaker 3: the perfection of all their choices, and then you look
Speaker 3: at their kids, and their kids are always eclipsed by
Speaker 3: all that, and it creates great insecurity. I just think
Speaker 3: it's super important for your children to see your fallibility,
Speaker 3: your mistakes, but also your grind, your ability to get
Speaker 3: up and get going after your.
Speaker 2: Mistakes, the resilience that you have now. I bet your
Speaker 2: son said to you, how are you going to cope
Speaker 2: what you described as one of the worst imaginable situations
Speaker 2: of being fired? What was that? Tell me what that
Speaker 2: was like?
Speaker 3: First of all. First of all, I deserve to be fired.
Speaker 3: We can talk about that too. Is you have to
Speaker 3: be accountable. I should have never taken that job. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a joke inside the family. I mean, my
Speaker 3: wife hates trust.
Speaker 2: That's what the job was.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I was the White House communications director for
Speaker 3: eleven days. My I mean, my wife hates Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: like almost as much as Milania hates him. So I mean,
Speaker 3: that's like way up here. And so I mean, and
Speaker 3: she told me not to do it. And this is
Speaker 3: a real cautionary tale. I did it for ego related reasons.
Speaker 3: I had grown up in a blue collar family. I
Speaker 3: went to Tufton Harvard Law School. I had started to
Speaker 3: successful businesses, sold one in my late thirties, and so
Speaker 3: I had some financial independence. And now I had a
Speaker 3: chance to work for the American President. And the funny
Speaker 3: thing about this is just a side of my bad
Speaker 3: judgment or my immaturity. My mentor, who I totally respect,
Speaker 3: was about ten years older than me, was given a
Speaker 3: big job in the administration, and in December he called
Speaker 3: me to say he wasn't taking it, and I said what,
Speaker 3: And he said, no, I'm not going to take it.
Speaker 3: I spent enough time with Trump to know that we're
Speaker 3: like oil and water and it's going to end badly
Speaker 3: for me if I take the job. And my ego's
Speaker 3: in the right place and I'm not going to take
Speaker 3: the job. But that wasn't me, Ruthie. I took the
Speaker 3: job because my ego and my pride were driving me
Speaker 3: to the notion that I was going to work in
Speaker 3: the White House and help solve some problems and work
Speaker 3: on policy and help people. I mean, it was a
Speaker 3: little bit of idealism in there, but what there really
Speaker 3: was was a lot of ego centers. It was filling
Speaker 3: the self narrative of me, and it was quite detrimental.
Speaker 3: I mean, Deirdre and I almost got divorced. I missed
Speaker 3: the birth of my fifth child I was in It
Speaker 3: still pains me to talk about it, but I'll share
Speaker 3: it here. James was born on July twenty fourth, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: It was a Monday. I was with President Trump at
Speaker 3: the Boy Scouts event in West Virginia. Deersa and I
Speaker 3: were fighting. She was due on August eighth or ninth,
Speaker 3: and she was delivering prematurely, a couple of weeks early.
Speaker 3: And there's a sixty mile no fly zone around Air
Speaker 3: Force One. So an Air Force One comes into an area,
Speaker 3: they have fighter planes, but they also have you know,
Speaker 3: you can't go over Air Force One. You can't fly
Speaker 3: over that airspace. And so it was an impossibility to
Speaker 3: get back to New York. So I missed the birth
Speaker 3: of my son. So you have to imagine this week.
Speaker 3: I'm working for President Trump. It is not going well
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of internescent fighting in the White House.
Speaker 3: Trump is doing things that a lot of us are
Speaker 3: looking at same ways. I don't want to be involved
Speaker 3: with that. Fighting with him, and I get fired, almost divorced.
Speaker 3: Missed the birth of my son. So again, if you're
Speaker 3: having a bad weekend, he was having a bad week,
Speaker 3: give me a call. I can tell you about a
Speaker 3: really bad week. But we should take it back to food.
Speaker 3: But I'm just saying, do.
Speaker 2: You know I agree? I know? Okay, tell me who
Speaker 2: eats better the Democrats for the Republicans.
Speaker 3: I had one meal with Trump in the White House,
Speaker 3: in the Blue Room. It was on a Wednesday. And
Speaker 3: you know how I know it was a Wednesday. Was
Speaker 3: only there for one Wednesday, we kid, so I know
Speaker 3: it was a Wednesday. So I had beef Wellington. The
Speaker 3: son of a bitch is going to lift the five
Speaker 3: hundred years old He eats well done meat with ketchup. Okay,
Speaker 3: but the chef in the White House was making a
Speaker 3: beef Wellington and he loved it. I think he had it.
Speaker 3: You know, I had like two out of five weekday nights,
Speaker 3: and so I had beef Wellington with him in a salad.
Speaker 2: What else did you mean with him?
Speaker 3: You know he likes hav Me had Hamburger's on the campaign.
Speaker 3: Remember I did nine months of campaigning with Trump, so
Speaker 3: it was a tremendous amount of fast food. Did you
Speaker 3: ever hear Jimmy Johns the fast food place? So Jimmy
Speaker 3: Johns is like a Midwestern sandwich shop. It's like all
Speaker 3: cold cuts. I mean, it's unbelievable that his orderies are
Speaker 3: still flowing. I mean, this guy eats McDonald's french fries,
Speaker 3: quarter pounders with cheese, Jimmy John's cold cuts.
Speaker 2: Do they seem to enjoy it? Does he say they're
Speaker 2: savoring it? Or is it just getting the food down?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, he is a fast food maniac. By the way,
Speaker 3: I mean, he'll come off. He would come off the
Speaker 3: plane where a campaign, he'd be like asking the cops
Speaker 3: where the burger king was and he'd like, what do
Speaker 3: you want from burgering? I'm like, I don't want anything.
Speaker 2: Was campaigning with the Democrats.
Speaker 3: Like, well, here's the problem with the Democrats.
Speaker 2: He's a good cook.
Speaker 3: By the way, she's she's she's a great cook. She's
Speaker 3: an incredibly nice person. She's a very smart person. But
Speaker 3: they did her a disservice because you can't you have
Speaker 3: whatever you think of Trump. At the time that she
Speaker 3: was running against him, he was arguably the most famous
Speaker 3: person in the world, or one of the most famous
Speaker 3: people in the world, and she had one hundred and
Speaker 3: seven days to get to know the Americans and the
Speaker 3: Americans to get to know her. But also she was
Speaker 3: working with Joe Biden's team. She's not her own team.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like her office is based in Delaware, it
Speaker 3: wasn't based in northern California. So this was a tremendous disadvantage.
Speaker 2: Did you travel with her?
Speaker 3: So I went to I went to Philadelphia with her
Speaker 3: for the debate. The first of all, let me let
Speaker 3: everybody on at Thirty of Them series, I'm a lifelong Republican.
Speaker 3: The Republicans have so much envy for the Democrats. Gonna
Speaker 3: tell you why. Okay, people are gonna hate me for this,
Speaker 3: but they that Democrats have the celebrities that Democrats have,
Speaker 3: the artists, the Democrats have the cool people in the culture. Okay,
Speaker 3: the Democrats have more fun. Their parties are better, the
Speaker 3: entertainment is better, the food is better. The Democrats have
Speaker 3: the culture, which is why Trump is pissed off of
Speaker 3: them all to which is why he you know, decapitated
Speaker 3: the Kennedy Center, right because you know, the Democrats look
Speaker 3: at him, or the artists look at him like a
Speaker 3: knuckle dragging ogre, and so you know he's gonna, I guess,
Speaker 3: bruise them by taking over the Kennedy Center. And like
Speaker 3: you know, he knocked out board members of the Kennedy
Speaker 3: Center were giving tens of millions of dollars of donations
Speaker 3: to the arts and to the performing arts in the country.
Speaker 3: And so he's not going to replace that money. He's
Speaker 3: not going to give anybody his money. That's not how
Speaker 3: he operates. So and by the way, you know, we're
Speaker 3: in the United Kingdom. You're not allowed to compare Trump
Speaker 3: to these fascists. So I'll try not to do that.
Speaker 3: But Mussolini did dead took over the arts. What happened
Speaker 3: to Mussolini in the end? People turned on him, right,
Speaker 3: So I mean, you do enough crazy stuff over time
Speaker 3: that people will turn on you and.
Speaker 2: The message you're giving us all because.
Speaker 3: I think it's you. I mean you're doing people are
Speaker 3: doing very crazy things in the United States right now.
Speaker 3: Listen to the Boss, Listen to Bruce Springsteen. They'll tell
Speaker 3: you what I.
Speaker 2: Was really proud of him, because I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of thought going on, is how do we oppose
Speaker 2: what is the opposition right now? You know, how do
Speaker 2: we express our frustration or disdain or anger for what
Speaker 2: our country is representing?
Speaker 1: Right now?
Speaker 3: So how would you let me? So let me say
Speaker 3: something I think it's important. This is original programming for
Speaker 3: me because I haven't really shared this with anybody. Think
Speaker 3: about my life experience. I was with Trump, and I
Speaker 3: was with Trump seeing something, and then it was manifesting
Speaker 3: and overlaying what I saw on President Trump. And so
Speaker 3: what did I see? I saw a group of people
Speaker 3: in our country, the United States, who were feeling economically
Speaker 3: left out this twenty sixteen. In my neighborhood, I would
Speaker 3: describe the neighbor I grew up in as economically asper.
Speaker 3: My father didn't make a lot of money, but he
Speaker 3: certainly thought its kids would go on to make some
Speaker 3: money and live the American dream. It was upward mobility,
Speaker 3: I would say. When I was campaigning with President Trump
Speaker 3: and I was by accident with him because I was
Speaker 3: with Jeff Bush Jet Bush lost, he asked me to
Speaker 3: go work for him, and so I accepted. I mean,
Speaker 3: I made a lot of mistakes, but perhaps that was
Speaker 3: the first one. But what I saw is very relevant
Speaker 3: for twenty twenty five because I'm sure it's happening here
Speaker 3: in the United Kingdom. There is a feeling of lower
Speaker 3: and middle income people that they're not getting ahead for
Speaker 3: their children. Forget about themselves for a minute, my dad
Speaker 3: economically aspirational. Today, same person, they're feeling economically desperational. They
Speaker 3: don't have the same living standards that they once had
Speaker 3: in blue collar America. And by the way, when I
Speaker 3: was with the president President Trump in twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 3: priced my dad's wages and I told him that those
Speaker 3: ways are now down twenty six and a half percent
Speaker 3: in real terms, that would put my family not in
Speaker 3: a small house, but renting somewhere, possibly on an EBT
Speaker 3: or governmental assistance card. And so there's a real dilemma
Speaker 3: going on in the country now. He unfortunately has taken
Speaker 3: advantage of it for his own personal purposes, and those
Speaker 3: people are galvanized to him because they don't feel there
Speaker 3: are other alternatives. There haven't heard anything from the establishment
Speaker 3: politicians in thirty years. You know, those people's grandparents voted
Speaker 3: for Linda Johnson, they voted for Jack Kennedy. Maybe the
Speaker 3: great grandparents voted for FDR, but the Democrats left them.
Speaker 3: The Republicans were never with them. And so Trump's populous
Speaker 3: message has galvanized a lot of people. And of course
Speaker 3: you've had the Democrats make a lot of missteps in
Speaker 3: terms of the way they handle the last election. But
Speaker 3: there's it would be remiss of me not to bring
Speaker 3: up the dilemma, why are fifty percent of the United
Speaker 3: States voting with him? There were forty of us that
Speaker 3: worked for him, that begged people not to vote for him.
Speaker 2: I would say the disaffection and the you know, the separation,
Speaker 2: the feeling of being abandoned for the class of America
Speaker 2: who felt that the society they were promised, the expectations
Speaker 2: they thought they would have, were played to by a
Speaker 2: populist who did it through racism, through status division, through divisions.
Speaker 2: So if they wanted that ianization, would they go for
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? That said, I understand what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, but we'll do it through what you said,
Speaker 2: through empathy. We'll care about the people who don't have
Speaker 2: health care, or care about the people who are waiting
Speaker 2: at the border to have a new life. Instead of
Speaker 2: saying these people do not deserve this, we were angry
Speaker 2: at these people. And that's what that's what's what I
Speaker 2: think was manipulated by is that. It's a long conversation,
Speaker 2: but I think there were two ways to go. There's
Speaker 2: the and you worked for com you worked for the Democrats,
Speaker 2: and I know there's so many problems, but I work.
Speaker 3: I worked for her. I helped her on the debate prep.
Speaker 3: I spent hours with her team uh in her debate preparator.
Speaker 3: Iways just say this, Bernie was too far to the
Speaker 3: left for the US left. The country is a primarily
Speaker 3: centrist country in some ways center right. Hillary Clinton would
Speaker 3: have been a very good president, but she unfortunately doesn't
Speaker 3: have the personality for our time. You know, maybe she
Speaker 3: could have if she campaigned in a different era. This
Speaker 3: is a hiring decision that's based on popularity. Now, you
Speaker 3: know it's not a hiring decision that's based on qualifications.
Speaker 3: Having a popularity contest versus sitting around in a boardroom
Speaker 3: trying to make a decision.
Speaker 2: Did you think she would win?
Speaker 3: I got that wrong. I thought she was gonna win.
Speaker 3: Alistair Campbell and I Rory Stewart actually bet money on it.
Speaker 3: I traveled in enough areas of the Swings days to
Speaker 3: see her momentum and her rallies were building, and I
Speaker 3: thought she was gonna win. I was very surprised by
Speaker 3: the results. But remember he won by like one and
Speaker 3: a half points. He only won by three hundred thousand votes.
Speaker 3: You know, but the Democrats did something, and if Democrats
Speaker 3: are listening, it'd be really mad at me. But I
Speaker 3: did Gavin Newsom's podcast that I told him this, how
Speaker 3: do you let Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy out of
Speaker 3: your party? As an example, Lennon Johnson would have never
Speaker 3: done that. Okay, Joe Biden And it turns out it
Speaker 3: was probably Joe Biden's staff, now that we're learning about
Speaker 3: Joe Biden. But he gets disinvited from the Electric Vehicle summit.
Speaker 3: What are you guys doing? Lindon Johnson had one of
Speaker 3: the best lines ever. Let's get all the elephants into
Speaker 3: tent this way. If they have to take a piss,
Speaker 3: they piss out of the tent. Don't let an elephant
Speaker 3: outside of the tent that could potentially piss into the tent.
Speaker 3: Elon and Bobby Kennedy really helped Donald Trump more than
Speaker 3: people realize.
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Speaker 3: So I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. My
Speaker 3: mother ever went to college. So I grew up in
Speaker 3: Port Washington, which is on Long Island. Some very wealthy
Speaker 3: areas there, but like in places like Greenwich or Port Washington,
Speaker 3: Great Neck, there are also blue collar areas. I mean
Speaker 3: there's places where you got to put the landscapers and
Speaker 3: the sheet rock people and the plumbers. And so my
Speaker 3: dad was a union guy. He was a crane operator
Speaker 3: in the town. So he's spent forty one years as
Speaker 3: a construction worker. Smoker, drinker, super hard guy, not gonna
Speaker 3: bes anybody. So he was very tough on us as kids. Three.
Speaker 3: I have an older brother and a younger sister. My
Speaker 3: mother was a cosmetologist. Okay, so when I go on
Speaker 3: TV I have my makeup, she will call me and
Speaker 3: tell me I've got the wrong color. Your Mac number
Speaker 3: five is my you know, cosmetology like cosmetics, and so
Speaker 3: we rarely saw her on Saturdays because she was with
Speaker 3: bridal parties on Saturdays making them up. And she worked
Speaker 3: at a local nail salon and sold cosmetics and did
Speaker 3: makeup artists basically. But those are my parents' jobs, super
Speaker 3: hard working, very tight, lots of tight financial situation, a
Speaker 3: lot of middle class upbringing. I would never dishonor my
Speaker 3: parents by telling you I grew up poor. I did
Speaker 3: not grow poor. We had a great middle class upbringing,
Speaker 3: but a small house, you know, and we had you know,
Speaker 3: I mean had a little hallway kitchen with a sixpansive
Speaker 3: beautiful kitchen here we had my mother had this little
Speaker 3: hallway kitchen, and then off the kitchen there was a
Speaker 3: little vestibule that had a round table that really could
Speaker 3: fit six, but we always had eight to ten people
Speaker 3: shoved into.
Speaker 2: The table, friends and family.
Speaker 3: Family, and I have a big the neighbor I grew
Speaker 3: up in. I have about twelve cousins that grew up
Speaker 3: alongside of my brother and sister. So so my grandmother
Speaker 3: was alive. She was a huge cook, took everything.
Speaker 2: She the first generation to come from its.
Speaker 3: First generation got to the US in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 3: My other grandparents got to the US a little earlier
Speaker 3: than that, but she was eighteen and nineteen twenty three
Speaker 3: she married my grandfather. Obviously he was from the same
Speaker 3: town as her. It was an arranged marriage, and so
Speaker 3: he went to Italy, back to the town he was from,
Speaker 3: and him and his mom and dad selected my grandmother
Speaker 3: and they did some kind of agreement, and believe it
Speaker 3: or not, there was a dowry and all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 3: and she moved to New York had three children.
Speaker 2: Her coming from a town in Italy into a country
Speaker 2: you didn't know what the.
Speaker 3: Man you didn't couldn't couldn't, couldn't speak the English, read
Speaker 3: ill progress. So you grew up in upstate New York.
Speaker 3: You remember, do you remember what town in the Gascock?
Speaker 2: And before that, I was from Monticello. I was born
Speaker 2: in Monticello.
Speaker 3: Probably know those towns well because I have a house
Speaker 3: in Green County, a house by window Mountain. But anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, she comes. She's ten years younger than my grandfather.
Speaker 3: They have three kids. My two uncles go to the
Speaker 3: Second World War. My uncle Anthony, who I'm named after,
Speaker 3: was a Normandy beach survived. It was wounded in a
Speaker 3: town in France on the way to Paris. Was in
Speaker 3: an army hospital for about two months. I rejected the
Speaker 3: opportunity to get disc George and he fought in the
Speaker 3: Battle of the Bulge and then he went on to
Speaker 3: Potsdam and so he had an incredible story in the war.
Speaker 3: My other uncle got to the war for the Battle
Speaker 3: of the Bulge as well. But I'm from a family
Speaker 3: of Italian immigrants. On both sides. It was old school stuff, Ruthie.
Speaker 3: We're talking about stepping on grapes at about we're talking
Speaker 3: about in a bathtub. I can remember my uncles and
Speaker 3: grandfather wash your feet and you get up on the grapes,
Speaker 3: you step, crush him down. They scoop all that up,
Speaker 3: put it in a press. I mean this wine we
Speaker 3: were see you and I are old enough to remember
Speaker 3: the tropicana class charge. You remember, Okay, so my grandfather
Speaker 3: was probably forty proof red wine. Okay, we're talking about
Speaker 3: like grape spike, grape juice, and I can remember, but
Speaker 3: I just remember I remember getting drunk on it at
Speaker 3: age eight or nine. I mean he would he would
Speaker 3: put it in a glass tropic cana I just thought
Speaker 3: it was grape juice. I was drinking it was getting
Speaker 3: drunk off the sub. But but we had we had pigs.
Speaker 3: Slaughter the pig.
Speaker 2: You'd make in your garden.
Speaker 3: No, he would, No, he would in Port Washington. He
Speaker 3: would go buy the pig from one of the farms.
Speaker 3: He would cook it or cure it, or you know,
Speaker 3: take the legs off and make pursude. He'd wrap it.
Speaker 3: You'd have a little area of the you have a
Speaker 3: little section of the grandfather, my grandfather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 3: And so I mean we this was made made projutto
Speaker 3: homemade naughkey. Uh, I can still And when I go
Speaker 3: to Rios, and I know you're familiar with rails. When
Speaker 3: I go to Raos, I tell those guys up there
Speaker 3: to taste like my nana's meatballs from the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Is that same way that they processed the meat. They
Speaker 3: fry it a little bit, they poach it a little bit,
Speaker 3: they put it in the sauce.
Speaker 2: And so this is your grandmother who came from the
Speaker 2: small town, came to America. A man who made prescuto,
Speaker 2: carried on this Italian culture putting bacci.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my uncles played the accordion. Remember this is some
Speaker 3: old school stuff. I mean, so I a song el progress.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is the other thing about growing
Speaker 3: up like that. No Italian spoken by any of our
Speaker 3: cousinme because my grandmother was strict about it. The you know,
Speaker 3: the Italians, as you know, were discriminated against when they
Speaker 3: came in. There were signs in this no Nina, no
Speaker 3: Italians need apply. So we you know, my grandmother was
Speaker 3: very strict about us speaking Italian. My parents speak Italian.
Speaker 3: My uncles, of course spoke Italian, they're not a deceased,
Speaker 3: but none of us spoke Italian. But they were old
Speaker 3: school people. I mean, you know, when I'm sixty one now,
Speaker 3: when I think about that time in my life. Even
Speaker 3: though my father was rough on us and he was
Speaker 3: a hard blue collar guy, not educated, there was a
Speaker 3: family atmosphere that was very solidifying. I think you learn
Speaker 3: from your family what they care about. And my grandmother
Speaker 3: had one of the best lines ever, which I always
Speaker 3: say to my kids, what other people think of you
Speaker 3: as none of your business. And it's very important to
Speaker 3: tell kids, especially in the age of social media, because
Speaker 3: they can get on the social media and it can
Speaker 3: give them a distortion of what's going on in the world.
Speaker 3: They can feel insecure or left out or have fomo.
Speaker 3: And the message from the nineteen twenties and thirties is
Speaker 3: an immigrant Italian relax. You know what I mean? You know,
Speaker 3: don't care. Mel Brooks has a great line which I
Speaker 3: always tell the kids, You'll relax. None of us are
Speaker 3: getting out of your life. You relax, you're fire from
Speaker 3: a job, who cares, have a step back in your business. Relax.
Speaker 2: An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
Speaker 2: chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
Speaker 2: the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos to
Speaker 2: our podcast, a Question an Answer episode with me and
Speaker 2: our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your
Speaker 2: question to Questions at Rivercafe dot co dot org. Okay,
Speaker 2: and you might just be our next great guest. On
Speaker 2: Ruthie's Table four, it's interesting about food and food and memories.
Speaker 2: And you talk about you know your grandmother in a
Speaker 2: way that there are probably many many ways to describe
Speaker 2: your grandmother who did but you also your memories are
Speaker 2: of the food you had. I can picture your mother's kitchen.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you might tell me about how
Speaker 2: food is in your house right now.
Speaker 3: Listen. I mean food is the center of everything in
Speaker 3: the family like ours. I mean, my wife is also
Speaker 3: Italian mother, and my wife is actually has Norwegian and
Speaker 3: German in her genealogy, but her grandmother was Italian and
Speaker 3: her mother was raised in an Italian culture. So our
Speaker 3: house is also as that Italian thing where everything is
Speaker 3: sort of centered around food. But I will say this
Speaker 3: to you, that something that I miss that we really
Speaker 3: try to get back to, which is really hard in
Speaker 3: our current culture, which is what we're doing right now.
Speaker 3: We're at the table, we have no phones, we're eating,
Speaker 3: we're talking to each other, We're locked in, and I
Speaker 3: really benefit from that as a kid, you know, with
Speaker 3: my grandparents in the room where my you know, my
Speaker 3: grandmother had some of the best lines. I always tell
Speaker 3: people my grandmother used to say to us that the
Speaker 3: best among us, and she said it in Italian. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't even know how to say it in Italian, but
Speaker 3: it translates like this, the best among us choose not
Speaker 3: to judge human frailty so harshly. It's not a beautiful
Speaker 3: way to think about people. And then you know the
Speaker 3: other thing that she always said to us, which I
Speaker 3: try to take with me. She's very religious. She was
Speaker 3: very Roman Catholic. She went to church, confession, communion, the
Speaker 3: whole thing. But she really believed in karma. She was like,
Speaker 3: if you do, you know, be the first one to give,
Speaker 3: you know, don't you know. And I'm bastardizing it now,
Speaker 3: I'm making it more modern. But it was like, a
Speaker 3: don't be transactional, be nonlinear in life, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, do a favor for somebody without them asking,
Speaker 3: or you know, hand the extra dollar to somebody that
Speaker 3: may need it. There was a generosity about her that
Speaker 3: I tried to take with me. She was also a maid,
Speaker 3: so I always say this to my kids. You know,
Speaker 3: when I'm in a hotel, I'm always leaving money in
Speaker 3: the room because it could be somebody's grandmother. You know.
Speaker 3: I think about my grandmother, what she had to do,
Speaker 3: the wrisk she had to take to come to the
Speaker 3: United States, marrying somebody she really didn't know, building a family,
Speaker 3: but also had to work. It was a dual income
Speaker 3: family to survive. But she couldn't get a job and
Speaker 3: she didn't speak English, so she was turning beds, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I think about that all time, and I
Speaker 3: think people have to put in perspective their lives and
Speaker 3: treat the other people around them with some level of kindness.
Speaker 3: And that's something you're great at, which is why your
Speaker 3: restaurant is learning. The food is great, but you're great
Speaker 3: at that. But when I think about food, that is
Speaker 3: part of that giving thing, you know, like I'm always
Speaker 3: I mean, if you come to my house, you're gonna
Speaker 3: eat to the point of explosion, right, because.
Speaker 2: We have to make sure it's about sharing. It's also
Speaker 2: about comfort, isn't it. So you know, if we think
Speaker 2: that food alleviates hunger or it makes us feel connected
Speaker 2: to people we might not know, taste this. Try this.
Speaker 2: One of the nice things I love is being at
Speaker 2: the past and seeing people eating with their children often
Speaker 2: or with each other, sharing food, tasting each other's food,
Speaker 2: responding to it. It's also it is comfort.
Speaker 3: And so you know, for my grandmother to come to
Speaker 3: your restaurant, it would be the luxury of luxuries, right
Speaker 3: because she cooked it. She cooked it from scratch, then
Speaker 3: she cleaned up, you know, and so if she came
Speaker 3: here and she didn't have to cook it, and she
Speaker 3: didn't have to clean up. It was a great experience.
Speaker 3: I got to tell this story before we leave because
Speaker 3: it's about American Italian American patriarchy. So my old boss,
Speaker 3: who's a great guy, I was on the Golden Sack
Speaker 3: sales desk. He was a Jewish guy from San Francisco.
Speaker 3: He's like, mooch, your grandmother and your mother they cook.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, they cook. He says, all right, you
Speaker 3: do Sunday you do Sunday meals? I said, yeah, we
Speaker 3: do Sunday meals one o'clock on a Sunday after church.
Speaker 3: All right, I want to impose my fiance on your mother.
Speaker 3: I got to come out and have an old school
Speaker 3: Italian home cooked meal. You're welcome anytime. And so he
Speaker 3: came up to the little house with the litanoleum, you
Speaker 3: know Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch called, wanted the
Speaker 3: paneling back. I mean, that's the house I grew up in.
Speaker 3: And we were at that little table verse six where
Speaker 3: we had eight people there or ten, and my mother
Speaker 3: cooked up a storm. My sister was there helping her.
Speaker 3: And when the meal was over, my sister and mother
Speaker 3: got up and they started cleaning. Okay, did I get
Speaker 3: up and start cleaning? I did not, And his fiance
Speaker 3: got up and started cleaning, and Gary looked over me says,
Speaker 3: you're not going to get up and helped them clean,
Speaker 3: and I looked at them. I said, no. That never
Speaker 3: dawned on me. Okay, it was so patrioical. Okay that
Speaker 3: literally didn't get it, didn't get up. And so we're
Speaker 3: now fast forward to where we are today. Right. I
Speaker 3: always try to remind people we've come a long way
Speaker 3: from that experience, but some of us grow up like that,
Speaker 3: So go a little easy on us. So we're doing
Speaker 3: the best weekend. I mean, I'm I'm all about the equality,
Speaker 3: I'm all about the whole thing. But in a traditional family,
Speaker 3: that's how it went down, and there was no there
Speaker 3: was even a discussion about it. But I was twenty
Speaker 3: seven or twenty eight years old when it dawned me, Wait,
Speaker 3: you're doing You need me to watch that vision having
Speaker 3: made ruthy, I've changed diapers.
Speaker 2: I watched, But you haven't read your recipe yet. We
Speaker 2: like to tell people how to make, how to do
Speaker 2: a recipe, and you can change it you can read
Speaker 2: it any way you want.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I'm I mean, this is linguini with
Speaker 3: fresh and dried oregano. But there's also some amazing red
Speaker 3: Datorini tomatoes in this. So it's two handfuls of fresh
Speaker 3: oregano finally chopped, twenty five grams of dried oregano on
Speaker 3: the branch and the leaves are crumbled. And then these
Speaker 3: Daturini tomatoes. There's twelve red Daturini tomatoes. They are quartered
Speaker 3: and seeded, but they're not cooked yet, and that's one
Speaker 3: of the more brilliant things about this dish. There are
Speaker 3: twelve yellow Dati tomatoes. They're quartered and seeded. And then
Speaker 3: there's one hundred milli liters of extra version olive oil.
Speaker 3: And then this is the kicker, which makes the thing
Speaker 3: taste amazing. It's one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, which
Speaker 3: you can taste it in the sauce. It is absolutely delicious.
Speaker 3: Two hundred and fifty grams of linguini. Of course, we're
Speaker 3: going to cook Dad al Dante, and here's what we do.
Speaker 3: You take the red wine vinegar. This lists of recipe.
Speaker 3: It's important that you serve this on hot plates, but
Speaker 3: you mix the fresh and dried oregano together, combined the
Speaker 3: tomatoes with extra version olive oil, the red wine vinegar,
Speaker 3: and sea salt and black pepper. So he mixed all
Speaker 3: of that up. Then you set that aside to marinate.
Speaker 3: If I set that right, marinate, cook the linguini and
Speaker 3: a generous amount of boiling salted water. Then drain and
Speaker 3: return to the pan. Toss with the oregano mixture and
Speaker 3: the marinated tomatoes until very hot. Then, sirve, But I
Speaker 3: noticed something that your chef did which I thought was awesome.
Speaker 3: He took some of the water which was loaded with
Speaker 3: salt and some of the starch from the pasta, and
Speaker 3: he poured that into the saute, which gave it a
Speaker 3: little bit of a thickening quality, and added a little
Speaker 3: dash of salt. So I thought that was majestic. So
Speaker 3: this is linguini with fresh and dried oregano. And I
Speaker 3: don't know how did I do? Did I say that? All?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So well, and I'm ready to eat. The guy did
Speaker 3: another another portion of that, so my head can explode
Speaker 3: from the shirt that I'm wearing. Yeah, so amazing.
Speaker 2: My last question to you, because I was starting to
Speaker 2: talk about what food means to us, and it means
Speaker 2: memories of your family. It means sharing with your children,
Speaker 2: teaching them values and feeling empathy, resilience. It can all
Speaker 2: be your grandmother's kitchen. What if you needed to have
Speaker 2: comfort food, you told me you love peanut butter and jelly,
Speaker 2: which is fine. One of my guests, Austin Butler, when
Speaker 2: he was I asked him his comfort food. He remembered
Speaker 2: eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with his mother
Speaker 2: before she died, and that was something he meant to him.
Speaker 2: But I think we do go to food for comfort.
Speaker 2: You've had the need of comfort, you have had need
Speaker 2: for comfort in your life.
Speaker 3: Were huge awesome Butler fans. By the way, my son
Speaker 3: has a close relationship with him, and I mean door
Speaker 3: that guy. But here's what I would say to you
Speaker 3: for me and food, and I think you'll get this
Speaker 3: because you ethereally have this. When I think of food,
Speaker 3: I do think of my grandparents, and I do think
Speaker 3: of the preparation, but I also think of the simplicity.
Speaker 3: And I think it's very very important for people, whatever
Speaker 3: they're doing in their life, whatever they're aspiring to, some
Speaker 3: things are going to go well. Other things are not
Speaker 3: going to go well. But food for me is that anchor.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of what is important. And I'm going
Speaker 3: to send you I did this thing for Vox Media
Speaker 3: and they said, okay, so what did you do after
Speaker 3: you got fired?
Speaker 2: What I do?
Speaker 3: I flew to Italy? Why do I fly to Italy?
Speaker 3: Because the Italians know they're going to die, they already
Speaker 3: had their empire. They're going to serve me a slice
Speaker 3: of pizza. I'm gonna eat some pasta and have a
Speaker 3: glass of red wine. Who gives a shit about getting fired?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And the point I'm making is that food for me
Speaker 3: in my life has been like the anchor to the simplicity,
Speaker 3: the anchor to that low expectation that man, can I
Speaker 3: just have this meal? And I want to tell you
Speaker 3: this story and I hope it makes the podcast. A
Speaker 3: deceased friend who is a Holocaust survivor, and I was
Speaker 3: a young man and I was working at Goldman Sachs
Speaker 3: at the time, and he was a Holocaust child refugee.
Speaker 3: He met his wife in the refugee camp in Europe
Speaker 3: before they were sent to the United States into a
Speaker 3: foster situation. He ended up marrying her, and he had
Speaker 3: the indelible ink on his forearm. And he was the nicest,
Speaker 3: loveliest person, literally you could imagine. And I used to
Speaker 3: go to dinner with him at a local Italian restaurant
Speaker 3: and I'm going to show you something with my hand,
Speaker 3: and for the people are listening to audio, I'll explain
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. When the plate got served, Ruthie, he
Speaker 3: would look over at me, wash my hand. He would
Speaker 3: go like this. He would go like this, and this
Speaker 3: sweeping of his hand, looking at the abundance on the plate.
Speaker 3: He was sending a message to me. He was like Anthony.
Speaker 3: I was in a refugeek. I was in a concentration
Speaker 3: camp as a young kid, got rickets. They didn't feed me.
Speaker 3: Now I'm in the United States. He had this beautiful
Speaker 3: wicker furniture company that he built, and he was a
Speaker 3: multi millionaire many times over. And every time the plate
Speaker 3: landed in front of him, Ruthie, he took his hand
Speaker 3: and he sweeped it over the plate, like acknowledging the
Speaker 3: miracle of the abundance and the simplicity of that meal.
Speaker 3: We need to think about that in our lives, you know,
Speaker 3: we have to. When the plate hits and we're able
Speaker 3: to eat it and we're nourished by this beautiful earth
Speaker 3: that we're living on. Think of that man who started
Speaker 3: his life, the early part of his life in a
Speaker 3: concentration camp, and how grateful he was for that meal.
Speaker 2: Gratitude. I'm a gratitude. I feel gratitude to you for coming.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, and though it's great to be here,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair