Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is now a book Paul McCartney, Michael Kay,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, David Beckham, China fey Elton John and many more.
Speaker 1: It's full of stories, beautifully designed, and a celebration of
Speaker 1: the way food connects us all. It's available now wherever
Speaker 1: you buy your books.
Speaker 2: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Every time I come to Paris, I remember a beautiful
Speaker 2: time in my life. In nineteen seventy one up to
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, Richard, my husband, and I lived here
Speaker 2: while he and Renzo Piano were building the Pompidou Center.
Speaker 2: We were young and we worked together. I as a
Speaker 2: graphic designer, he is an architect. Our lives and our
Speaker 2: work were completely intertwined. Dorothy Boissier understands that world. Together
Speaker 2: with her husband Patrick Shiels, she has spent the last
Speaker 2: twenty years creating exquisite buildings across the world. They are
Speaker 2: partners at home and partners at work. Today we're at
Speaker 2: Bonclair's beautiful flagship store on the Chancelise, designed by Darsay
Speaker 2: and Patrick. We will talk about Paris. We'll talk about partnership,
Speaker 2: and of course we will talk about food and really
Speaker 2: what it means to build something with someone you love.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you here, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: She grew up with your mother and father in Paris,
Speaker 1: in Paris, in Paris, in Paris. So my father was
Speaker 1: from Normand if we go to food.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love butter, I'm fresh, I.
Speaker 1: Love this, I love this. I love when it's really.
Speaker 2: I do too. I supposed to because we cook Italian food. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, whenever you have chefs around the table and
Speaker 2: we start talking about the food. We love French food.
Speaker 2: And butter is.
Speaker 1: Good when you see the butter in the pants. Starting
Speaker 1: to sound exactly.
Speaker 2: So tell me about your father. He came from Normandy
Speaker 2: and came to get from.
Speaker 1: Normandy and to Paris. So he was working a lot,
Speaker 1: always working, working, walking, very hard. And I didn't see
Speaker 1: a lot my father. I was with my two sister,
Speaker 1: my mother. Dinner was more the children.
Speaker 2: Tell me that, yeah, I love French French at that time.
Speaker 1: At that time, the children were more eating before kitchen.
Speaker 1: And you had a cook, ye, mother cook. I never
Speaker 1: I think I never saw my mother cooking.
Speaker 2: Good for her. Everybody always says to me. You know,
Speaker 2: my mother cooked, She made him amazing food. My grandmother cooked,
Speaker 2: And of course I'm a cook, and I expressed a
Speaker 2: lot of my love for my children through cooking. But
Speaker 2: I sometimes I really do respect women who somehow, you know,
Speaker 2: just decided if they could many can't, they were not
Speaker 2: going to cook. So that was your mother exactly.
Speaker 1: So she wasn't cooking. My grandmother wasn't cooking.
Speaker 2: And so you grew up in this life. You went
Speaker 2: to school and went to Paris. Do you remember the
Speaker 2: food that the cook would make for you? Was it
Speaker 2: a very tradition? Ah Cevell, tell what cevella is?
Speaker 1: How do you say in English? Rains for children?
Speaker 2: At that time?
Speaker 1: You had to eat negrette and things like that, And
Speaker 1: did you mind that I didn't really like it? You
Speaker 1: didn't like it?
Speaker 2: And would you go to Normandy sometimes and have the food?
Speaker 2: You remember the food from.
Speaker 1: Their food, specially cheese. Butter is incredible there, the big
Speaker 1: piece of butter.
Speaker 2: And you just take it.
Speaker 1: Once told my mother in law for her first meal,
Speaker 1: she came to the Italian and she came to dinner
Speaker 1: at our house, and I made a huge effort to
Speaker 1: make her a really good dinner to impress her.
Speaker 2: And when she left, she looked at me. She said,
Speaker 2: that was a very very good dinner, Ruthie. But you
Speaker 2: know anybody can cook with butter. Yeah. Thanks so, but
Speaker 2: that's why you stopped.
Speaker 1: Never, my mom told me, don't eat this, don't eat that.
Speaker 2: Never.
Speaker 1: I wasn't obsessed by food. I could eat cakes.
Speaker 2: I could eat everything. So your father, you spent your
Speaker 2: childhood with your father.
Speaker 1: My father until eight years old. Yes, And after my
Speaker 1: father father died and I grew up with my stepfather
Speaker 1: that I loved.
Speaker 2: And so do you know anything about their love story? Man?
Speaker 1: I think my mother they met in an airport and
Speaker 1: they talked to each other, and I think something happens.
Speaker 1: But you know, he was the kind of man my
Speaker 1: mother told me that when they were going to restaurants
Speaker 1: going back, she could find lots of message from women
Speaker 1: in his pockets. Just even leaving the restaurant, the women
Speaker 1: were putting.
Speaker 2: Did they have children? Your mother never?
Speaker 1: No, Because she met him. I think she was thirty eight.
Speaker 1: There were they had like twenty twenty five years of difference.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see. And he was a very handsome man.
Speaker 1: He had from his grandmother an incredible collection of art
Speaker 1: period questionistist, and his father was an antiqure, so he
Speaker 1: had this passion about the decor and also the art.
Speaker 1: And he lost his mother very early.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 1: He grew up with his grandmother. She was an incredible woman.
Speaker 1: She was a friend of Bona, of all those artists Ofisolar,
Speaker 1: who was a very important collector at that time. So
Speaker 1: we were in the nineteen twenties and this man on
Speaker 1: Gasola had like six thousand paintings of Picastle Sizan. He
Speaker 1: was the man to really help all those painters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't easy for them, like go gn and he
Speaker 1: died quite early, and he gave half of his collection
Speaker 1: to this woman, the grandmother of my stepfather, and she
Speaker 1: kept them and she kept she did at that time.
Speaker 1: I heard that she didn't like them. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: like in the storage. And so she was also painted
Speaker 1: by Renoirona. So even my stepfather, you can see the
Speaker 1: big paintings, he's like small, like five years old, and
Speaker 1: she's there with the mother, the grandmother. So it's really
Speaker 1: a thread of culture. Yes, I was loving especially looking
Speaker 1: at all the books, the auction art books and trying
Speaker 1: to know which one is which ones? So art antiques
Speaker 1: were always around me. I think it may be educated
Speaker 1: a little bit my eye and I thought I could
Speaker 1: do I could study art, and it's this way. I
Speaker 1: arrived in a school called Peningens in Paris, Dragon and
Speaker 1: for me it was a real discovery.
Speaker 2: What did you discover?
Speaker 1: What was that I discover? Drawing? I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to draw. I had around me only young people who
Speaker 1: were drawing. Since they were so little, they were all
Speaker 1: genius about that, and I was so I had to
Speaker 1: It was like a new language for me, starting from zero,
Speaker 1: so little by little I had to understand. But as
Speaker 1: I was used with my eye to look at arts design,
Speaker 1: I was very curious. When you left home, you were
Speaker 1: still in Paris, always in Paris, in Paris, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can feel that, always in Paris, Paris. And then did
Speaker 1: you live at home still when you went to art
Speaker 1: school or did you have I was still living at
Speaker 1: home and when I left the house, twas difficult for me.
Speaker 1: Doesn't tell me about it.
Speaker 2: Very difficult.
Speaker 1: I was in love with a man that I met
Speaker 1: at seventeen yea and he really really he wanted me
Speaker 1: to live with him. I accept after five years. It
Speaker 1: was difficult for me to live the house.
Speaker 2: When you lived with your boyfriend an apartment, did you
Speaker 2: become a bit more domestic would you? Yes? I did?
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, I did.
Speaker 2: Did he as well?
Speaker 1: I think he was more looking for a woman who
Speaker 1: that Yes, So after that I took a quite different.
Speaker 2: Type of man.
Speaker 1: Yes, And what would you do? Would you have parties?
Speaker 1: And yes, you're in Paris. Yes, but I was taking
Speaker 1: the book of trying to do the perfect.
Speaker 2: That's of butter, you know, lots of you always call
Speaker 2: potatoes butter with potatoes exactly. Yeah, I know that's true
Speaker 2: very well.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to be intent, trying to be
Speaker 1: the best house house Fife.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and maybe not No. And to Paris and
Speaker 2: you went to art what was it? What were the
Speaker 2: other students like in art school?
Speaker 1: Art school, you go a lot to museums, you work
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot, a lot at night always.
Speaker 2: How did you segue from that to being a designer.
Speaker 1: You have to decide after two years you want to
Speaker 1: do graphic or into your design. So I took into
Speaker 1: your design. I loved I think I loved the idea
Speaker 1: of a scene a theater, dickal lighting, people moving into
Speaker 1: a dickal I remember I was, I had, I was
Speaker 1: going a lot to opera Abastia and I saw this opera,
Speaker 1: Madame Butterfly by Bob Wilson. Oh, yes, and I had
Speaker 1: I had a shock because you can see. I mean
Speaker 1: it's almost all the arts were concentrate on the scene,
Speaker 1: plus the music. But I love this idea of creating
Speaker 1: a sort of sort of movie in a way, doing
Speaker 1: design into your designers that because you really create the deco.
Speaker 1: You have the light, but you have the people inside.
Speaker 2: And did you go to the cinema lot? Cinema big
Speaker 2: influence on you at the time. Yes, interesting films coming.
Speaker 1: Especially Patrick, my husband, he was he's really an artist
Speaker 1: and when I met him, he I was discovering a
Speaker 1: new world of art, of movies. Of really he was
Speaker 1: at Pompidou I think every week.
Speaker 2: This was in the eighties or.
Speaker 1: Yes, more or less, more or less nineties nineties. He
Speaker 1: was coming from Marseilles. He was born in Paris. He
Speaker 1: hated Paris.
Speaker 2: It was very difficult for him, so.
Speaker 1: He was every weekend at how did you meet? We
Speaker 1: met after school at our first job. Christian Interi, a
Speaker 1: designer and he arrived with his long hair, the belt,
Speaker 1: with the bull and me I was like the perfect
Speaker 1: Parisian and uh.
Speaker 2: At first sight? Did you almost? Yes?
Speaker 1: I remember he showed me his book, you know, on drawings,
Speaker 1: and he was so talented. I was impressed and I
Speaker 1: always thought I have to work one day with him,
Speaker 1: and after I joined him and we worked together.
Speaker 2: And did he love food? Did do you like he
Speaker 2: loves food? He does from Marseille he had.
Speaker 1: He has a mother who is cooking incredibly well. She
Speaker 1: was born in Algeria, so she can cook everything Africa African,
Speaker 1: but super French and with nothing.
Speaker 2: Could you be with somebody, though, who didn't love to eat?
Speaker 2: Because you love to eat?
Speaker 1: You, I love to eat, but very little. I cannot
Speaker 1: eat a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that doesn't matter how much you care. It
Speaker 2: could care about what she eats.
Speaker 1: It's what I told Patrick, he needs to eat the
Speaker 1: whole piece of chocolate. I told him just eat one piece,
Speaker 1: you keep it in your mouth and that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's that's a battle you might never
Speaker 2: win as an older women, tell you your husband how
Speaker 2: to eat a bar of chocolate? What about when you're
Speaker 2: designing a restaurant, how do.
Speaker 1: You What we love is that when we have the
Speaker 1: chef with us to really build the project.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that the chef is so important?
Speaker 1: He really has his vision on how we see the people.
Speaker 2: Into the room, the way he liked them.
Speaker 1: To be seated close not close? Is the kitchen opened?
Speaker 1: Do we want to see what he's doing? So it's
Speaker 1: it's very important. It's also a lot of body language,
Speaker 1: the way you see it. What also you touch if
Speaker 1: you feel well not well, how do you look?
Speaker 2: What is your view?
Speaker 1: And in a restaurant, you're staying one hour and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like in a shop where you would and
Speaker 1: a very important time as well.
Speaker 2: You might be sitting at a place to talk to
Speaker 2: somebody very intimately, or having a meeting, or you might
Speaker 2: be celebrated or you might be unhappy.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this and when we started doing restaurants, it
Speaker 1: was almost the first project we did was for the
Speaker 1: Hakkasan restaurants. Yes, yes, And you know him and I
Speaker 1: think he was the first one to understand that a
Speaker 1: restaurant was something much more than a restaurant, that it's
Speaker 1: it's really a moment where people do much more than
Speaker 1: just eating. And he explaineds. Really, how important is when
Speaker 1: you enter if the if the corridor it's narrow, not narrow?
Speaker 1: Do you touch the people when you walk? What is
Speaker 1: the feeling of your table? You see all those details,
Speaker 1: the height of your seating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that's very important.
Speaker 1: It's very important. It started with the harrys Bar.
Speaker 2: I was going to say that exactly. It's just going
Speaker 2: to say that. It was just we had exactly the
Speaker 2: same thought because I you know, you go into Harry's
Speaker 2: Bar in Venice, you wonder why is it so beautiful?
Speaker 2: It's in a room with an ugly seil. It's a
Speaker 2: room that has no windows, it has a room that
Speaker 2: has you know, the walls don't look on to any
Speaker 2: of you, and yet it's one of the most beautiful
Speaker 2: places to sit. And my friend, we probably know Andre Bela, yes,
Speaker 2: will tell you that it's the height of the table
Speaker 2: shop that you and I mean I always used to
Speaker 2: think that it also. I love the idea rather like
Speaker 2: a bar, there's no entrance. You just go through the
Speaker 2: sacking doors and you're there. Do you have a favorite
Speaker 2: one that you've designed that you go back to.
Speaker 1: We did one the two years go for an Sophie Peak.
Speaker 2: Back O.
Speaker 1: It's a back our restaurant in Hong Kong. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting project because the space was very high level
Speaker 1: in a tower, so quite low ceiling, not a big place,
Speaker 1: so the space was not so interesting. But we we
Speaker 1: had to create the show and and Sophie told us
Speaker 1: the kitchen has to be the center.
Speaker 2: So it's an open.
Speaker 1: Completely open And it's easy to say that because we
Speaker 1: all say it all most of the time, say that,
Speaker 1: but really doing it, and when you are guest, being
Speaker 1: a part of the kitchen is something different.
Speaker 2: Our kitchen and no, never well, we have to pan tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I think I'm taking a ten thirty two. Yes I'm coming.
Speaker 2: I would really love you to come. Thank you. You need to.
Speaker 2: You know, it's constantly in your mind how people are
Speaker 2: going to feel in your restaurant. Restaurant is very open,
Speaker 2: it's very way. I always call it very democratic that
Speaker 2: it's just one large room, but they're where people choose
Speaker 2: to sit, and people come over and over again, know
Speaker 2: the kind of table they want, where they want to
Speaker 2: and some people just walk in and say, you know,
Speaker 2: where should we go and they don't care. My husband
Speaker 2: could never sit in a restaurant facing a wall, so
Speaker 2: we'd all pile into a restaurant, sit down. Then he'd
Speaker 2: come in and we'd all have to get up and move.
Speaker 2: So the idea of the open kitchen became very popular,
Speaker 2: and people often say to me, you know, where did
Speaker 2: you get the idea from an open kitchen? And of
Speaker 2: course I look a lot towards California. Yeah, Alice Walters
Speaker 2: and Wolfgang Puck did it. But it also became the
Speaker 2: way I think contemporary architects in the probably in the
Speaker 2: late sixties seventies started seeing spaces inside as being communal
Speaker 2: that you didn't sell me like your mother would have
Speaker 2: to go into another room and quick the meal and
Speaker 2: then she wouldn't see her children until the performance at dinner. Instead,
Speaker 2: there were kitchens that were open. They were part of
Speaker 2: the living room. So if we're thinking about food and
Speaker 2: recipes and designing kitchens, we also cook sometimes or we eat,
Speaker 2: or we buy food that will make us feel calmer
Speaker 2: or comfortable and in the end sustained by a feeling
Speaker 2: of happiness. And so if you needed to think about
Speaker 2: food in that way and you wanted comfort, is there
Speaker 2: a food that you would you go for? Yes?
Speaker 1: A hot chocolate, hot chocolate, but in a nice cup.
Speaker 2: Okay, what would the cup look like? Not too big huh, almost.
Speaker 1: Like a teacup, but a little bit bigger, quite thin
Speaker 1: the port and I love when the chocolate is in
Speaker 1: the special pot.
Speaker 2: Also what's a special pot?
Speaker 1: You know, the chocolaty. So it's a pot which has
Speaker 1: a wooden stick, yes, that you can move steering set,
Speaker 1: so the chocolate is not going to be solid, so.
Speaker 2: It's just I leve.
Speaker 1: Also what is around it? I mean a little bit
Speaker 1: of cream. You can add some smaller chocolate balls, so
Speaker 1: you can add things.
Speaker 2: M and you do this quite often when you needs
Speaker 2: this is what you would go for.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't need it.
Speaker 2: I think you're just saying that so you can have
Speaker 2: your hot chocolate exactly. I think it's really good.
Speaker 1: I love when we lived in Paris, we used to
Speaker 1: go to Angelina on the river and they had the
Speaker 1: chocolate that was so thick that you couldn't pour it
Speaker 1: from the from you literally would stand do it like
Speaker 1: that and we come out and then you have the No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't too it was good, but you have to
Speaker 1: add a lot of queen.
Speaker 2: Then you add the cramp fresh, and so we used
Speaker 2: to go there and Carolography there having his and all
Speaker 2: these characters and the address of it, I know the
Speaker 2: addresses called two to six rivally that's weather person. And
Speaker 2: we used to say we used to remember it by saying,
Speaker 2: if you had too much, you'd be too too sick. Ay, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go too too sick. But it was what I think.
Speaker 2: The hot chocolate is a beautiful choice of conflict. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you so muchly, thank you, thank you. Ruthie's Table
Speaker 2: four was produced by Robbie Hamilton, Zad Rogers and Ruthie Rodgers.
Speaker 2: This has been an atomized production for I Heartmedia.