Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Whilst campaigning and then serving as President of the United States,
Speaker 2: Barack Obama relied on Matthew Barzen, asking him to run
Speaker 2: the two thousand and twelve campaign, and then appointing him
Speaker 2: Ambassador to Britain during the heady days of the Scottish
Speaker 2: independence and Brexit referendums. Matthew, with his wonderful wife Brooke,
Speaker 2: redefined the special relationship by bringing art, music, and most
Speaker 2: of all fun to the Ambassador's residence, Wingfield House. Recently,
Speaker 2: Matthew has written The Power of Giving Away Power, a
Speaker 2: must read book for a soul. He's in Kentucky right now,
Speaker 2: I'm in London. But if there is a special relationship
Speaker 2: between the US and the UK, there is definitely a
Speaker 2: special relationship between Matthew Barzin and myself. Matthew, would you
Speaker 2: like to read the recipe that you chose to read? Yes?
Speaker 3: I would be honored.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Fried artichokes serves four eight artichokes the small purple Italian
Speaker 3: winter variety are best for this recipe. Two lemons, two
Speaker 3: tablespoons plain flour, tepot zero zero is best one liter
Speaker 3: sunflower oil. To prepare the artichokes, cut off the stem,
Speaker 3: then carefully pull away the outer leaves until you get
Speaker 3: to the pale green heart. Cut off the tip, cut
Speaker 3: into quarters, and remove the center choke. Place the pieces
Speaker 3: in water with slices of lemon. Combine the flour with seasoning.
Speaker 3: Drain the artichokes and shake dry in a sieve. Toss
Speaker 3: into the flower mixture. Keep the oil to one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty degrees celsius in a deep pot. Add the
Speaker 3: artichokes and fry until light brown. Drain on kitchen paper,
Speaker 3: Season and serve with lemon.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Matthew, Why of all the recipes of all
Speaker 2: the books, did you choose deep fried art of chicks.
Speaker 2: I'm so thrilled to do because it's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things to eat. So tell me why it's yours.
Speaker 3: Well, I love to eat them, and then I had
Speaker 3: the great honor of being able to prepare them when
Speaker 3: you let me. I mean cook is a strong word.
Speaker 3: You help let me participate in the magic that is
Speaker 3: the River Cafe one Sunday morning, and I was put
Speaker 3: in charge of the fried artichokes, or a piece of
Speaker 3: the fried artichoke process. And you know, it's funny. As
Speaker 3: I read it out loud, it says, you know, carefully
Speaker 3: pull away the outer leaves. That's actually not that hard
Speaker 3: until you get to the pale, green heart, and there's
Speaker 3: something beautiful about that. This was the tricky part. Cut
Speaker 3: off the tip, cut into quarters, and then remove the
Speaker 3: center choke, which sounds straightforward, but if you don't remove
Speaker 3: it enough, you have that nasty stuff in there. And
Speaker 3: then I started getting paranoid, and your nice member of
Speaker 3: your team was gently telling me to remove more of
Speaker 3: the choke. Then I went overboard the other way, and
Speaker 3: then there's barely anything left to eat, and so trying
Speaker 3: to find that balance was a challenge, but that's why
Speaker 3: I picked it.
Speaker 2: And what are your memories of that day?
Speaker 3: Beautiful Sunday morning. I got to put on the cool
Speaker 3: white chef's jacket, so that was cool, and then I
Speaker 3: got on my little station and I had the water
Speaker 3: with lemon, and I was amazed by the calm. And
Speaker 3: it's funny. It reminded me when I first got to
Speaker 3: go to the West Wing. I had seen the West
Speaker 3: Wing on the television show, which I loved, and then
Speaker 3: movies and in the movies they always show it as
Speaker 3: like hustling and bustling and it's kind of loud, and
Speaker 3: it was just really calm. And I felt the same
Speaker 3: way about the River Cafe kitchen on a Sunday morning,
Speaker 3: before any of the guests arrive, it's just wonderfully calm
Speaker 3: and joyful.
Speaker 2: It's very rare for us to have someone in the
Speaker 2: kitchen because kitchen is a dangerous place and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of sure, however calm it seems. But I think
Speaker 2: you have always been, as I said from our first conversation,
Speaker 2: really interested in food, in cooking and the process of
Speaker 2: cooking food. Yes, let's go back to the early days.
Speaker 2: Who cooked in your house when you were growing up?
Speaker 2: What was food like in the bars and house?
Speaker 3: Food? Was it changed? Because my parents got a lot
Speaker 3: of things changed in my life when my parents got divorced.
Speaker 3: I should say at the outset, I have a wonderful
Speaker 3: mother and a wonderful father, even though when I'm about
Speaker 3: to say sounds a little strange, which is when I
Speaker 3: was eleven years old, they got divorced, and in the summertime,
Speaker 3: my favorite thing to do was to go down to
Speaker 3: this little cottage, little series of cottages in Cape Cod,
Speaker 3: but it was my father's family's place, and so, for
Speaker 3: understandable reasons, my mother was not keen post divorced to
Speaker 3: go down there. And I said, well, that's too bad
Speaker 3: for you that you got divorced. I'm still going, and
Speaker 3: they somehow listened to my eleven year old self. So
Speaker 3: I spent Monday through Friday all summer when I was
Speaker 3: eleven by myself, and then my father would come down
Speaker 3: on weekends. And so he was a really good cook,
Speaker 3: and his mother, who at this point had died, my grandmother, Mariana.
Speaker 3: She was a really good cook and he sort of
Speaker 3: learned it from her, And so my memories of cooking
Speaker 3: were sort of learning to cook for myself and then
Speaker 3: learning to cook for friends to try to get them
Speaker 3: to come over so I'd have someone to hang out
Speaker 3: with during the week. And then the most fun was
Speaker 3: on Friday nights, all the grown ups. So my father
Speaker 3: would drive down, my aunt and uncle would drive up
Speaker 3: from New York, and all these grown ups would arrive
Speaker 3: and be tired after a long work week, and I
Speaker 3: would make them dinner.
Speaker 2: What would you make? Do you remember?
Speaker 3: I do? I made gosh, what do we call it?
Speaker 3: It was poached chicken breasts in Vermouth with sort of
Speaker 3: prescudo and cheese and sage. It was sort of like
Speaker 3: chicken sealtumboca, but not really that a tow. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: and I did it and they were so unbelievably appreciative.
Speaker 3: It wasn't very good, but they just thought, I mean,
Speaker 3: they didn't have to cook it, so that was a
Speaker 3: big bonus for them and that appreciation.
Speaker 2: And what age were you eleven? You were eleven? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's very young. And it's also a performance, isn't it
Speaker 2: that you had to know it's.
Speaker 3: Totally a performance. And I got applause and that felt
Speaker 3: good and encouragement. So that those were some early memories.
Speaker 2: In these conversations, I'm always touched by the presence or
Speaker 2: influence of a grandmother, even sometimes more than the parent
Speaker 2: that the people have memories. Tell me about your grandmother.
Speaker 3: She died when I was ten or nine maybe, and
Speaker 3: so I didn't know her when knew were as a
Speaker 3: kid would know a grandmother, and she was quite formal,
Speaker 3: but in the kitchen she was a really good cook
Speaker 3: and chef, and she passed on to my father, and
Speaker 3: then he passed on to me. Now this isn't New England, right,
Speaker 3: So this is not and you remember back then, I
Speaker 3: mean there aren't lots of choices of what you got
Speaker 3: in the grocery store. So she had this curry recipe
Speaker 3: which I loved and I thought it was the only
Speaker 3: kind of curry. Now I've learned more. But I got
Speaker 3: invited when I was ambassador to compete in up in
Speaker 3: Bradford in the International Curry Cookoff. It was really fun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they did something and so as a stunt or whatever,
Speaker 3: the embassy people like, oh, he likes to cook, he'll
Speaker 3: cook the curry. So I cooked my grandmother's curry recipe,
Speaker 3: which he'd gotten from a British friend, and they brought
Speaker 3: in some amazing chef from India and they were cooking
Speaker 3: proper curry and I was cooking the sort of water
Speaker 3: down curry and embarrassingly it had and there was lots
Speaker 3: of Muslim participants and guests and judges, and her recipe
Speaker 3: for curry had three quarters of a cup of vermouth,
Speaker 3: which of course would not be appropriate to serve, and
Speaker 3: so without telling me, they substituted in white grape juice
Speaker 3: instead of vermouth, and it was the most disgusting curry.
Speaker 3: So I came in last place. Did you come in
Speaker 3: the last place? Yeah? Yeah, I mean just absolute last,
Speaker 3: and I deserved that.
Speaker 2: Because it's also interesting that your grandmother in that period
Speaker 2: of time encouraged your father to cook.
Speaker 3: Yes, And back to the divorce, I mean so I
Speaker 3: never associated my father really with cooking until after they
Speaker 3: got divorced. But then he would have us every other weekend,
Speaker 3: and he really made cooking a big deal. We got
Speaker 3: to each rotated. I'm one of four children, and we
Speaker 3: got to pick what he would cook, and we could
Speaker 3: say anything like I want fried Wanton's and he'd say okay,
Speaker 3: and he'd figure out how to cook them, and so
Speaker 3: that became a nice ritual.
Speaker 2: It's rather beautiful that he chose that way through food
Speaker 2: to express love and to express I'm giving you attention
Speaker 2: on my weekend as a father, do you think, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So you had this childhood of being between and cooking
Speaker 2: for yourself age eleven, performing for other in the kitchen
Speaker 2: for your family, and then what happened when you sort
Speaker 2: of started living on your own as a student. Did
Speaker 2: you carry that with you when you left home.
Speaker 3: I really didn't. There was like this whole I was
Speaker 3: gonna say dark period, but that's sort of dramatic in it,
Speaker 3: not with bad connotations, but I mean I don't think
Speaker 3: I through college and then I lived out in San
Speaker 3: Francisco and the sort of dot com internety days, and
Speaker 3: I had a one room apartment that had a little
Speaker 3: kitchen on the side, and I don't think I ever ever,
Speaker 3: I mean toasted a piece of toast or made a
Speaker 3: cup of tea. I mean, I just didn't use it.
Speaker 3: We all just sort of ate out. Wasn't very healthy.
Speaker 3: And so until I met my lovely wife, Brooke, who
Speaker 3: by the way, sends her love to you, Ruthie. And
Speaker 3: then we moved in together and she had a tiny kitchen.
Speaker 3: I mean you could fit you know, one person in
Speaker 3: it maybe, And we started going to the farmer's market.
Speaker 3: And then I started cooking again, and I started back
Speaker 3: after ten years of not cooking or eight or whatever,
Speaker 3: with scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, ushrooms and time nice and
Speaker 3: scrambled eggs. I think is a great demonstration because I've
Speaker 3: tried to teach my kids all are interested in cooking.
Speaker 3: And so it's been fun kind of trying to pass
Speaker 3: that along. And the point and you've made it to
Speaker 3: me and other who are amazing chefs that you could
Speaker 3: just tell you can certainly taste, but even before you taste,
Speaker 3: you can just look at a plate and tell if
Speaker 3: something was cooked with love or not. And there's something
Speaker 3: about scrambled eggs. Just do the love test on three
Speaker 3: different plates of scrambled eggs. You can tell.
Speaker 2: You can tell it's an ingredient, isn't it? It is?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that it's an ingredient.
Speaker 2: Oh that's good. We're living and you were living in
Speaker 2: San Francisco and eating out a lot. So what was
Speaker 2: it like eating out? Did you explore coming from New
Speaker 2: England and the family and the kind of things you
Speaker 2: had there? Was it? What was it like eating out
Speaker 2: in restaurants for you?
Speaker 3: Restaurants? You know? Growing up? I mean it was it
Speaker 3: was a huge deal to go to one. I mean
Speaker 3: there wasn't one in our town, but there was one
Speaker 3: in the next town, and so we really looked forward
Speaker 3: to it. And so to have a city with so
Speaker 3: many right nearby and making money so you could go
Speaker 3: to them. It didn't have to ask for permission. That
Speaker 3: was really fun. And back then there was a famous
Speaker 3: Visa commercial that just ran during every football game that
Speaker 3: showed the Fog City Diner. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: remember that anyway, So it turns out where I worked
Speaker 3: at CNET was four hundred yards from the Fog City Diner.
Speaker 3: I was like, I can't believe it really exists, and
Speaker 3: I got to go in and so I love that.
Speaker 3: And then a really famous place called, oh gosh, now
Speaker 3: I'm forgetting the name, Buena Vista, which was like a
Speaker 3: famous Irish coffee place that was right near where we lived.
Speaker 3: So that was good memories of San Francisco.
Speaker 2: And I think restaurants it's quite telling the way someone
Speaker 2: actually is in a restaurant kind of. I think that's
Speaker 2: why people like going on first dates sometimes in a restaurant,
Speaker 2: because it does tell you something about the person, do
Speaker 2: you think, Well.
Speaker 3: It does, and I'm reminded that the first So I
Speaker 3: got set up with my now wife Brooke on a
Speaker 3: blind date and I got good points. I picked a
Speaker 3: hipster call val twenty one in San Francisco, which was
Speaker 3: in the mission Valencia and twenty first, which is where
Speaker 3: it got its name, and it wasn't sort of the predictable,
Speaker 3: preppy kind of place that she thought I might take her.
Speaker 3: So I get some early points. But then Ruthie I
Speaker 3: did something terrible. The server comes around and says, you know,
Speaker 3: here's the wine list. Would you like a bottle of wine?
Speaker 3: And this is a blind ad first aid, and I
Speaker 3: don't know why I did it, but I said, no,
Speaker 3: that's okay, Brook, if you want wine, you can have
Speaker 3: a glass of wine. I'm going to have a bud light.
Speaker 3: And she went back and she told her father, who asked, like,
Speaker 3: how is the date, and she said, oh, he's a
Speaker 3: nice guy or whatever. But he didn't split a bottle
Speaker 3: of wine. He ordered a bud light and I had
Speaker 3: a glass of whatever she had and he's like, oh, dear, okay,
Speaker 3: well there are many fish in the sea.
Speaker 2: Move on.
Speaker 3: So it almost ruined it. It almost ruined.
Speaker 2: Reverse exactly, Yes, the reverse. Yeah, people, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: But there you are. How many years later that was
Speaker 2: h twenty five? Yeah, and what about when you just
Speaker 2: mentioned before about the White House and the West Wing,
Speaker 2: And I remember in the series the West Wing, there
Speaker 2: was always a scene in the canteen downstairs, wasn't there
Speaker 2: Toopy and the Josh and they were all meeting over
Speaker 2: the food and the canteen. What was food like in
Speaker 2: the White House? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well I never worked there, so I got some friends
Speaker 3: of mine. Would you have the White House mess which
Speaker 3: is really cool and sort of neat and because of
Speaker 3: the show, it's great. And then there's the place sort
Speaker 3: of under the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which is just
Speaker 3: deeply unremarkable and just sort of like a cafeteria like
Speaker 3: anywhere else. But it is fun and all you know,
Speaker 3: you want to save the little napkin with the White
Speaker 3: House logo and the little Aminam. You're just sort of
Speaker 3: like you become a little bit like a child in
Speaker 3: a good way.
Speaker 2: I hope when you went to Sweden was that food?
Speaker 2: What was the food?
Speaker 3: Gosh? Did I love the food like herring? I mean,
Speaker 3: if you had asked me if I liked herring going
Speaker 3: into it, I would have said no. And now I
Speaker 3: adore it. The mustard herring and the sort of just
Speaker 3: regular pickled herring and the sour cream and chives. I
Speaker 3: think it is so I love and herring for breakfast.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, you know, that's there.
Speaker 3: And then Swedish meatballs were fun to try to learn
Speaker 3: how to cook, and then they're famous. You know how
Speaker 3: some countries have the famously sort of disgusting to most
Speaker 3: people food. And our wonderful driver named Bjorn, who is
Speaker 3: just an amazing, amazing driver. He's an amazing historian and
Speaker 3: loves the culture. And he's from a part of Sweden
Speaker 3: called Sunsvaal, where my mother had spent her summer abroad
Speaker 3: when she was sixteen, and so I grew up hearing
Speaker 3: this story and I heard it sort of misheard it.
Speaker 3: So I heard that in Sweden and Sunsvaale they take
Speaker 3: fish and they bury it for one hundred years and
Speaker 3: then they unearthed it and they eat it. Now that
Speaker 3: is not true, but the kernel of truth was sir strumming,
Speaker 3: which means sort of sour herring, and it comes from
Speaker 3: the herring at the bottom of the barrel and it
Speaker 3: is a delicacy. And so we had Bjorn serve it
Speaker 3: to the children and to me and to Brook and
Speaker 3: it is like if you open it, like there are
Speaker 3: rules against opening a can of this stuff in an
Speaker 3: apartment building because people will just wretch. Yeah, there is
Speaker 3: there's a lot of death in that can, and it's
Speaker 3: pretty grim. I haven't learned to like it, but the
Speaker 3: kids were troopers. They all ate it, and I did too,
Speaker 3: And so I said to Burn on the way back,
Speaker 3: to close off these serres drumming story, I said, I said, well,
Speaker 3: it's rotten fish, and he very sweet. He's just like,
Speaker 3: it is not rotten. It is controlled spoilage, controlled spoilage.
Speaker 3: And I thought that was such a nice distinction. And
Speaker 3: then his comparison was, you know, gorgonzola or French blue
Speaker 3: cheese or whatever that you don't call that rotten cheese,
Speaker 3: although you could call it that, but that's a different
Speaker 3: framing of the same product.
Speaker 2: I like that contained controlled spoilage and spoilage. After Sweden,
Speaker 2: you went and you campaigned for President Obama, and presumably
Speaker 2: you traveled all over the United States, and what would
Speaker 2: you eat on the campaign trail?
Speaker 3: I gained so much weight roofye on that campaign, and
Speaker 3: at the end of the campaign, thank goodness, we won.
Speaker 3: But it was a lot different from you were on
Speaker 3: that campaign too, that first campaign in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Anyone involved, wherever they were London, back home in America,
Speaker 3: they would also have described it as like this amazing
Speaker 3: sort of wave that we were all surfing and it
Speaker 3: just felt magic twenty twelve, and I'm so proud of
Speaker 3: the work we did. It was not a wave to
Speaker 3: be surfed. It was really kind of like a slog
Speaker 3: and so that kind of stress for me. Anyway, we
Speaker 3: would go to this place called Wildberry at the base
Speaker 3: of Chicago headquarters with my friend Rufe and Sam and
Speaker 3: Kevin and a lot of people, you know, and we
Speaker 3: would just eat there and we would eat really unhealthily.
Speaker 3: And so at the end when we won, their sort
Speaker 3: of thank you gift to me was a framed and
Speaker 3: signed menu from Wildberry because we had just overeaten there
Speaker 3: for you know, throughout the campaign. And so then my
Speaker 3: lovely daughter Eleanor at the time, said right after that,
Speaker 3: she said, Daddy, you have a really cozy tummy, and
Speaker 3: she sort of pushes at my belly and I was like,
Speaker 3: oh gross. It was like a lovely way of I mean,
Speaker 3: you could frame it differently and it was kind of
Speaker 3: like controlled spoilage of weight gain and cozy tummy. And
Speaker 3: then I thought, okay, I need to really lose weight,
Speaker 3: so I did, which I had never really done a
Speaker 3: diet or anything like that before, but then I did
Speaker 3: and that worked.
Speaker 2: So and so from Sweden to the wild Berry, back to.
Speaker 3: London and then to London and then the food was
Speaker 3: great again thanks to you, and the food was.
Speaker 2: Great at Winfield House. Did you did you influence them?
Speaker 2: Did you talk about the kind of food as an
Speaker 2: American ambassador that you wanted to serve at Windfield House?
Speaker 3: Well, I remember I had a phone call with my
Speaker 3: predecessor because there are certain questions you sort of can't
Speaker 3: ask the State Department, or you don't feel comfortable, sort
Speaker 3: of petty householdie things you didn't want to really bother
Speaker 3: them with. And I said, well, look, if it's a
Speaker 3: Saturday morning and I just want to wake up early
Speaker 3: and make the kids pancakes, and you know, do I
Speaker 3: do that in the upstairs little kitchen? Ad do I
Speaker 3: do it in the big kitchen downstairs? That kind of thing?
Speaker 3: And he laughed and he's like, you are never going
Speaker 3: to set foot in that kitchen. And I knew that
Speaker 3: he was, you know, he wasn't into cooking. And I
Speaker 3: was like, no, no, no, you don't understand, Like I'm into
Speaker 3: that thing. I certainly will, but he was more right
Speaker 3: than wrong in the sense that there was a wonderful
Speaker 3: team there who did it. I mean I did go in.
Speaker 3: I never really cooked there, you know. I would say,
Speaker 3: can we try this? And they were amazing, but I
Speaker 3: didn't really do And I really miss cooking because that
Speaker 3: was to the earlier point about my father. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was a way I tried to show love to
Speaker 3: my kids and I was gone a lot, you know,
Speaker 3: out every night, and was sensitive and they picked up
Speaker 3: on that because they're smart and perceptive, and so I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 3: at least I can cook and try to show, you know,
Speaker 3: if I'm missing their games or whatever, at least I
Speaker 3: can cook. But I kind of couldn't, so that was
Speaker 3: too bad.
Speaker 2: But I remember the food was very good there. You're
Speaker 2: going to the residence with you and Brooke was always
Speaker 2: it was warm, and it was it was also there
Speaker 2: was a formality, which we wanted. We wanted that formality.
Speaker 2: I always felt that I liked that expectation of going
Speaker 2: to the residents of the American Ambassador. But we had fun,
Speaker 2: you know, and you made being an ambassador of fun
Speaker 2: and you made us feel welcome. And I can remember
Speaker 2: the meals, and I can remember you taking me into
Speaker 2: the kitchen to meet the cooks. And you know, my
Speaker 2: grandchildren can remember the chocolate fountain. You know, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I did have a You did bring something very very
Speaker 2: important to the food when filled out.
Speaker 3: Well, that team was amazing and I'm glad that worked.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember, you know how everyone loves like
Speaker 3: sea salt chocolate, and there's just that sort of salty
Speaker 3: sweet magic or popcorn with you know, milk doudgs in
Speaker 3: it or whatever. And so I felt that the formality
Speaker 3: of the place was so obviously formal and kind of
Speaker 3: intimidating to people, and so we would have fun doing
Speaker 3: the sort of fancy silver trays, except with paps blue
Speaker 3: ribbon cans on them, you know. So it's just sort
Speaker 3: of like sweet and salty, formal, informal, and trying to
Speaker 3: mash that stuff up I thought was a way to
Speaker 3: not be overly informal, but also sort of lighten up
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 2: And now you know, you've left us and London is
Speaker 2: a sadder place, and you're in Kentucky. But what about
Speaker 2: food in Kentucky? What about food? And Louville?
Speaker 3: We have an amazing food scene here in Louisville. And
Speaker 3: I don't know that this is true, but when I
Speaker 3: moved here, I was told that there is something like
Speaker 3: more restaurants per capita here than you know, let's say,
Speaker 3: any other American city. And yeah, it's great food. And
Speaker 3: then the joke is, if you come here, I mean,
Speaker 3: people will be like everything has bacon in it. And
Speaker 3: our mutual friend James, when he came was joking, and
Speaker 3: as a Jewish guy, he was sort of like, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, is there anything not with bacon? And then
Speaker 3: at this restaurant they had bacon ice cream, which you know,
Speaker 3: proved his point. And I was like, no, not everything
Speaker 3: has and I was like, oh, well, yes they do.
Speaker 3: But I'm cooking as we speak, Ruthie, what do you
Speaker 3: make it? I am doing a slow cooker. I don't
Speaker 3: want to. Don't judge me, but I am making doctor
Speaker 3: pepper slow cooker pulled pork shoulder. It's sort of like
Speaker 3: cherry coke. But the root flavor I am told is
Speaker 3: actually prune. Now, for reasons that are obvious to everybody,
Speaker 3: they don't market it as prune soda because that wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: But it's sort of like cherry coke kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So I've never done this before. I am trying it
Speaker 3: and my hope is that it'll be delicious. But we'll see.
Speaker 2: You know, you've written a book, The Power of Giving
Speaker 2: Way Power. And when you were writing it, did you
Speaker 2: have a way of working and eating? Is that change
Speaker 2: the way you ate and worked? How did you write?
Speaker 2: And tell us also about the book?
Speaker 3: So the Power of Giving Away Power, How the best
Speaker 3: Leaders learned to let go is in a nutshell about
Speaker 3: the lost habits of interdependence. And I talk about two
Speaker 3: different ways of thinking about power. One I call the
Speaker 3: pyramid top down, in, out, up, down, even bottom up,
Speaker 3: and that we get trapped in that pyramid, and that
Speaker 3: there is an alternative to that. And I call it
Speaker 3: the constellation, a way of looking at yourself and those
Speaker 3: around you. You're your own self, You're a star and
Speaker 3: everyone around you is a star. And what kind of
Speaker 3: combinations can you make to make things more useful and
Speaker 3: more powerful than you ever could all by yourself. It
Speaker 3: actually comes from the American logo, which you can see
Speaker 3: on the back of a US one dollar bill. There's
Speaker 3: that funny pyramid with the mini little pyramid with the
Speaker 3: all singeye on top, and then there's the other side,
Speaker 3: the US Seal, and it's got the eagle that everyone
Speaker 3: remembers the shield. But right above the eagles head is
Speaker 3: this thing they called the constellation. And this was supposed
Speaker 3: to be the crest and the overall essence of the
Speaker 3: whole thing, and it's called the radiant constellation. And underneath
Speaker 3: that radian constellation is where our famous national motto goes,
Speaker 3: epluribus unam from many one and you could say, hey,
Speaker 3: from many bricks one pyramid. I think that would be
Speaker 3: an incredibly depressing world, and too often we act that way.
Speaker 3: But it's supposed to be from many stars, one constellation.
Speaker 3: And that's how you can get unity without demanding uniformity.
Speaker 3: You can get all the energy from diversity without succumbing
Speaker 3: to division if we choose to think of ourselves and
Speaker 3: those around us as stars in a constellation. And so
Speaker 3: when I walk into the River cafe, I see this
Speaker 3: constellation of talented people and of the customers eating there.
Speaker 3: It's the opposite of hierarchical and the way you run
Speaker 3: that place. So it's an inspired constellation to me, as
Speaker 3: the process of writing it, eating was kind of the reward.
Speaker 3: I mean, I basically write all morning and just drink
Speaker 3: a lot of coffee and write and eat. At the end,
Speaker 3: I got my days writing down and then I could
Speaker 3: go enjoy something to eat. And I'm trying to kind
Speaker 3: of stick with that.
Speaker 2: When we talk about food and children and family, we
Speaker 2: talk about being together, the influence of food, the connection
Speaker 2: through food, and I think my memory is being together
Speaker 2: in Tuscany with your children and making zucchini flowers and
Speaker 2: making believes and cooking together. We hadn't seen each other
Speaker 2: for a few months. You'd been in the United States,
Speaker 2: I'd been here. We've all been doing what we did.
Speaker 2: And I think the first thing you arrived at about
Speaker 2: four o'clock in the afternoon at five and said we're starving.
Speaker 2: You'd come, I think from Sardinia, and it was just
Speaker 2: in immediacy, and also it was for me a way
Speaker 2: of being with your children in the kitchen and doing
Speaker 2: something together, connecting. So I think if food is a
Speaker 2: connection and it's a way of expressing our love, it
Speaker 2: is also a comfort, yes, And so we when we're hungry,
Speaker 2: we when we want to show off, we eat, when
Speaker 2: we want to have a laugh, but sometimes we eat
Speaker 2: for comfort. So is there a food that you turn
Speaker 2: to for comfort?
Speaker 3: I do, and it's probably it's back to when I
Speaker 3: was eleven and this was the other thing I would
Speaker 3: cook for the grown ups when they came on Friday night,
Speaker 3: and it was harder for me, and I still it
Speaker 3: is probably my number one comfort food, and it is
Speaker 3: chicken parmesan. I mean sort of New England, you know,
Speaker 3: not fancy. I mean, you know, breaded, fried and then
Speaker 3: put in the oven. And I just love that. So
Speaker 3: that's what I will eat if someone else will cook
Speaker 3: it for me, or I will make it myself.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Matthew.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the go to shop
Speaker 2: Therivercafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.