Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2: A few months ago, my good friend Lorne Michaels texted
Speaker 2: me to say that Tina Fay was coming to London
Speaker 2: to star in the movie. He knew I would love
Speaker 2: her from the first meeting. It became a friendship formed
Speaker 2: with food. Tina arrived at our house with a beautiful
Speaker 2: box of chocolates for me, as brought up to do
Speaker 2: by her mother, and I brought home a River Cafe
Speaker 2: Lemon tart for her. The first dinner, I made slow
Speaker 2: cooked tomato pasta. She ate two portions and then we
Speaker 2: played cards. Did I think baby?
Speaker 3: It was three?
Speaker 2: I'm actually, you know, being polite. Of course, millions of
Speaker 2: us have shared food with Tina Fay in thirty Rock,
Speaker 2: which he wrote and starred in, and even her name
Speaker 2: Liz Lemon was food related. Sandwiches never to be shared,
Speaker 2: hard cheese eaten at midnight, advice given to John McEnroe.
Speaker 2: I'm where to buy the best cupcakes in New York City.
Speaker 2: Her obsession with hot dogs resulting in a food warning
Speaker 2: from the street vendor, a snl, A brandy husband devouring
Speaker 2: a cake. While discussing riots and weekend update and who
Speaker 2: could forget the cafeteria scene in the movie, She wrote, mean, girls, Well,
Speaker 2: you've just been in the River Cafe kitchen. What was
Speaker 2: it like?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's the most beautiful dance happening in
Speaker 4: the kitchen, everyone working so perfectly.
Speaker 5: I'm Sean Winnowen and I'm the executed chef at the
Speaker 5: River Cafe. Today we're making tomato tellier renni with Tina Fee.
Speaker 5: So we're going to make a tegler Reni with the
Speaker 5: slow cup tomato, sauce and butter. Which is probably one
Speaker 5: of Route's secrets is adding the butter to it.
Speaker 2: Aha.
Speaker 6: Now we know.
Speaker 4: We love about a half a cup of butter, you know,
Speaker 4: one person portion. Oh it's not it, yeah, only because
Speaker 4: we can't court right into my mouth here.
Speaker 2: At the station.
Speaker 4: It's gorgeously Michael marry a non human entity.
Speaker 2: I would marry this.
Speaker 4: Plus thank you for joining for that.
Speaker 2: Thank you you're here doing.
Speaker 4: I'm acting in a movie called A Haunting in Venice,
Speaker 4: directed by Sir Keneth Branna. It's when Agatha Christie inspired
Speaker 4: murder mystery and it's been very fun to be here
Speaker 4: shooting in an ensemble with some really great actors Michelle
Speaker 4: Yo and Jamie Dornan and Kamilka Tan and Kelly Riley.
Speaker 4: And it's just been fun to be basically on the
Speaker 4: Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. I've just been inside
Speaker 4: that ride for three months because we're on this set
Speaker 4: that's like a spooky old Venetian palazzo in the dark
Speaker 4: all day, every day for three months.
Speaker 2: Is the culture of filming in Britain in Europe in
Speaker 2: London very different? And back to food, fo is it
Speaker 2: a different food culture that it is a little different.
Speaker 4: Our lunch is our hours are very civilized here. We
Speaker 4: stopped every day at six on the dot, which at home,
Speaker 4: depending on who you're working for, you could drift into
Speaker 4: eight o'clock, ten o'clock, one am, you could work really late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we s done.
Speaker 4: Our lunch is very short. It's only half an hour,
Speaker 4: which was sort of we weren't used to it at first,
Speaker 4: but none I grew to really like it because then
Speaker 4: you don't kind of lose momentum. Usually you come back
Speaker 4: from Americans that you come back from lunch a little
Speaker 4: sleepy and you have to get a coffee. But this
Speaker 4: was a half hour lunch and then back in and
Speaker 4: just everyone offering you tea, constantly drinking so much tea,
Speaker 4: which is nice tea and digestives.
Speaker 2: Is there a food scene in it?
Speaker 4: I didn't get to do any on camera eating.
Speaker 2: Oh that's shame.
Speaker 4: There was a nice thing on set, which was again
Speaker 4: because food is the only way to communicate with people.
Speaker 4: Because the cast we're all from different places, we started
Speaker 4: kind of sharing our favorite unique snacks from our countries,
Speaker 4: which started because somehow it was Halloween when I first
Speaker 4: got here, and I was talking about candy corn, and
Speaker 4: of course no one here knew what that was, and
Speaker 4: so I had a friend bring me a couple bags
Speaker 4: of candy corn to share, and we started taking a poll.
Speaker 4: We'd give it to the Brits and film their reactions,
Speaker 4: and people thought it was disgusting, which I respect.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: But it was a great conversation starter when we were
Speaker 4: all new to each other and we were like kind
Speaker 4: of an icebreaker. And then other people started bringing in
Speaker 4: a woman waking A Yoshihara is our head of our
Speaker 4: hair and makeup department, and she's Japanese, and so she
Speaker 4: started bringing in Japanese candy and we were trying like
Speaker 4: and some were great, some were disgusting. So she had
Speaker 4: these plump candy that looked like a children's vitamin. I
Speaker 4: apologize to anyone loves these, but she was so amused
Speaker 4: to film each of us trying them, and it's so
Speaker 4: funny that something could be a complete comfort treat to her.
Speaker 4: That to my palette was horrible. And same with the
Speaker 4: candy corn. And then some of the Brits started bringing
Speaker 4: it was getting closer to Christmas, and Kelly Ryland brought in.
Speaker 4: She said, this is the cheap chocolate that we grew
Speaker 4: up with quality street mixing chocolates. And then Emma Laird
Speaker 4: was bringing different kinds of crisps. And then we kept
Speaker 4: asking Camille Catan, who's French, like you know what's unique?
Speaker 4: What kind of weird candy can you bring? And she
Speaker 4: was like, I don't know what I can bring. And
Speaker 4: then she brought by the way, why am imitating her?
Speaker 4: Like she's Salma hiak like that, and then she Camille
Speaker 4: showed up with gorgeous cheese from France for the whole crew.
Speaker 4: She's like, we don't eat garbage. Yeah, so she brought
Speaker 4: this like gorgeous, gorgeous cheese. The one thing I used
Speaker 4: to love with it's Saturday Night Live. Saturday was the
Speaker 4: most fun day because it's the day where it's finally
Speaker 4: all happening and you can spend a lot of time
Speaker 4: being worried, and then Saturday you just have to kind
Speaker 4: of go down the slide, you know. And we would
Speaker 4: have these crew lunch dinner. I guess we'd sort of
Speaker 4: rehearse from one pm till about five thirty pm, and
Speaker 4: you'd go down to the NBC cafeteria and have lunch
Speaker 4: with everybody or dinner with everybody. That's one of my
Speaker 4: favorite memories of working there.
Speaker 2: Actually, when you're producing a film or a theater, do
Speaker 2: you think about what people are going to eat?
Speaker 4: I mean I always if I'm producing something, I want
Speaker 4: the food to be good and to be ample. And oftentimes,
Speaker 4: if you want to reward the cast and crew, you
Speaker 4: send more food. We send like food trucks, like pizza truck,
Speaker 4: coffee truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the food is.
Speaker 4: In my I believe food is the only reward in life.
Speaker 2: In life good I like that, sure money, sure food.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We still have a wonderful lady who's no longer with
Speaker 4: us from an Angel who was in charge of what's
Speaker 4: called craft services on thirty Rock, which is you have
Speaker 4: your meals, you get in like there's a truck, there's
Speaker 4: catering does breakfast and lunch, but all the food that
Speaker 4: you just eat in between that all day there would
Speaker 4: just be a table in the hallway with food. And
Speaker 4: Angel had so much passion about her job. And she
Speaker 4: was Italian American from Staten Island and she would show
Speaker 4: up with these things. Would be like, Angel, what is this?
Speaker 4: She would just bring them these beautiful like whatever, like
Speaker 4: balls of matsarel, these crazy breads, what was that? Like
Speaker 4: rolled up art of choke bread and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: It was so much more than what you would normally get,
Speaker 4: like a bowl of apples and some candy. And this
Speaker 4: episode of thirty Rock, there's a whole storyline about the
Speaker 4: perfect sandwich. And there's this thing where I'm chasing a
Speaker 4: guy that I love through the airport but they want
Speaker 4: you don't go through, they want me to take my
Speaker 4: sandwich and that take no way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but first you have to describe that scene. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to do it because I think it is
Speaker 2: one of the great scenes and food.
Speaker 4: Thank you, I will say I as an actor, perhaps
Speaker 4: my only specialty is on camera eating. I commit to it.
Speaker 4: I'm looking great at it. And so this is a
Speaker 4: scene where Liz lemon Is. She's chasing her love interest,
Speaker 4: who is played by Jason Sadaikis, who you all may
Speaker 4: know is Ted Lasso, and I'm chasing through the airport
Speaker 4: and I've been also the other part of the stories.
Speaker 4: I've been trying to get the team stirs the union
Speaker 4: drivers to tell me where they get these great sandwiches.
Speaker 4: So I've got my special sandwich. And the security guard
Speaker 4: at the airport says, you have to leave the sandwich behind,
Speaker 4: you can't take it through, and I say no, women
Speaker 4: can have it all. And I'm going to eat this
Speaker 4: sandwich in one bite before I go through security. And
Speaker 4: I'm still going to catch the man. And so it
Speaker 4: came down to Angel, this woman who did our craft service.
Speaker 4: I said, Angel, this is a special assignment for you.
Speaker 4: I need you to make me the perfect sandwich. Normally
Speaker 4: it would have been the props department, but I said, Angel,
Speaker 4: You're going to make the sandwich and and I need
Speaker 4: it to be I need to be able to eat
Speaker 4: it in one bite. So she went to these bakers
Speaker 4: that she knew in Staten Island and had them custom
Speaker 4: make I don't know what it was, the softest, still
Speaker 4: a chest bread. And when I tell you that sandwich,
Speaker 4: I can remember to this day. That sandwich was so delicious.
Speaker 4: It was an Italian sub so it had like some
Speaker 4: salami and some what I would call gabba ghoul, some cheese.
Speaker 4: It wasn't a fake sandwich. And I ate it in
Speaker 4: one take, and I remembered saying they were like, we
Speaker 4: got it, and I was like, did we? Because if
Speaker 4: you need me to do it again, I am willing
Speaker 4: because it was so good.
Speaker 3: But it goes to angel because the bread.
Speaker 4: Like melted in my mouth.
Speaker 6: One of the most delicious things was very simple. We
Speaker 6: lived at five stories up in this tenement and my
Speaker 6: mother would throw in it, throw down in a brown
Speaker 6: paper bag, a kaiser roll smeared with a lot of
Speaker 6: butter and almost a whole tomato sliced and salted that
Speaker 6: and it was the most delicious thing. You'd catch it,
Speaker 6: and I'd always catch it. But one time I missed
Speaker 6: it and splat.
Speaker 2: Mel Brooks makes the world laugh. Watch the producers blazing
Speaker 2: saddles Young Frankenstein. Listen to the two thousand year old man,
Speaker 2: or read his autobiography All About Me, and you are
Speaker 2: guaranteed to find yourself laughing out loud. But for me,
Speaker 2: having known Mel for twenty five years, funny is not
Speaker 2: the first word I would use to describe this amazing man.
Speaker 6: Hungry, hungry. Before I forget, I would like to do
Speaker 6: my imitation of a cat. That is that is a
Speaker 6: perfect sound. It's hard to do, hard to do. I
Speaker 6: do it in Young Frankenstein. I think it's it's a
Speaker 6: dart throwing contest and one of the dots hits a cat.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: Let's begin at the beginning, earliest food memories. What do
Speaker 2: you remember from you know, your early days. Did your
Speaker 2: mother cook?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: My mother, okay, it was it was a standard Williamsburg,
Speaker 6: Brooklyn Jewish tenement food. So breakfast in the winter was
Speaker 6: always a hot cereal, cream of wheat or Rallston which
Speaker 6: was a kind of barige brown barridge, and then in
Speaker 6: the summer corn flakes, rice krispies or wheaties.
Speaker 2: What year would that have been? How old would you
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 6: That would be thirty five, I'd be around nine That's
Speaker 6: when I went my uncle Joe, shortest jew on earth,
Speaker 6: how short he was a character about four to four.
Speaker 6: And when when a taxi, a big checker taxi cab
Speaker 6: rolled down the streets of Brooklyn, and there was no driver,
Speaker 6: that was Joe. There was no driver. It was so
Speaker 6: short it get just about peer over the you know. Anyway,
Speaker 6: Joe took me because his friend Al was the doorman
Speaker 6: of the Alvin Theater on fifty second Street, and running
Speaker 6: at that same theater was Cold Porters Anything Goes. I
Speaker 6: had never seen a Broadway show. I was nine years old,
Speaker 6: and Uncle Joe took me to see Anything Goes. I
Speaker 6: was stunned. I was. I couldn't believe it, even though
Speaker 6: we were in the second balcony, was far away from
Speaker 6: the stage as you can get ethel Merman was too loud,
Speaker 6: No MIC's.
Speaker 2: She was just anything Goes? Did she say the mother?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the woman. It's on a ship, isn't it.
Speaker 6: And it's on the ship very good? Yeah. And Victim
Speaker 6: Moore was was the gangster the gang Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: It was so good. At the end, I nearly clapped
Speaker 6: my hands over. I just couldn't stop clapping and screaming
Speaker 6: and shouting. And then I got back an Uncle Joe's camp.
Speaker 6: I said to him, Uncle John, I'm not going in
Speaker 6: the garment center. Everybody at three sixty five South third Street,
Speaker 6: between on Hooper and Use, three sixty five South third Street,
Speaker 6: everybody in that building worked in the garment center. They
Speaker 6: were shipping clerks, they were cutters, they were designers, they
Speaker 6: were salesmen. They everybody I think on the street, these
Speaker 6: sixty one, three sixty three through sixty five, these tenements,
Speaker 6: everybody in the garment set. And I screamed at my
Speaker 6: uncle Joe, Uncle Joe, I'm not I'm not going into
Speaker 6: the garments that I'm not. I'm gonna go into the
Speaker 6: show business. I loved it. I loved it, you know.
Speaker 6: And it changed, but it did, and I did. And
Speaker 6: because he take.
Speaker 2: You to food, but do you take you out to eat?
Speaker 2: I always went to the theater as a kid. And
Speaker 2: then there was the meal afterwards, lunch, before it was
Speaker 2: a day out.
Speaker 6: We had some favorites that Uncle Joe would take us to,
Speaker 6: where one was called Gallagher Steakhouse. They had like half
Speaker 6: a cow in the window. I always had these half
Speaker 6: cows in the window you know, hanging gallaghers and the
Speaker 6: and the steak was incredible. And sometimes you go to
Speaker 6: Jack Dempsey's restaurant.
Speaker 2: And what was that?
Speaker 6: And it was great, but you know it was it
Speaker 6: was all meat, it was There never any fish in
Speaker 6: a restaurant. Yeah, And I never liked fish. I don't
Speaker 6: think I ever liked fish until I was seventy or
Speaker 6: eighty and I went to the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: And so really you never ate fish.
Speaker 6: I hardly ever ate fish as But.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me that you you describe a kind
Speaker 2: of modest home life in terms of going your food,
Speaker 2: but but you went out to restaurants.
Speaker 6: So what's while a lot of Jewish restaurants were called
Speaker 6: dairy restaurants and they serve stuff like blinches with sour
Speaker 6: cream and old dairy. You never mixed meat and dairy
Speaker 6: with something some religious nonsense.
Speaker 2: Did your grandmother cook for you?
Speaker 6: My grandmother cook?
Speaker 2: What did she cooks? Which grandmother? Your mother's mother's mother.
Speaker 2: I never knew, you never knew your father's.
Speaker 6: No, No, my father's grandmother. I did know. She did
Speaker 6: say to her meals best olden meals in Bensonhurst where
Speaker 6: they lived in a big one family.
Speaker 2: Did they come with their first generation?
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, they were. They were European.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so do you think your grandparents brought their
Speaker 2: food with them, the food culture.
Speaker 6: They cooked the same stuff. Mostly it was chicken, chicken
Speaker 6: and chicken soup.
Speaker 2: And uh, briscuit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they made brisket. Absolutely, they made brisket and brown potatoes.
Speaker 2: Do you know my grandparents came, They were They came
Speaker 2: from Hungary and Russia. And my father remembers my grandmother
Speaker 2: having in the lower East side a carp swimming in
Speaker 2: the bathtub that they would make it filter fish out of.
Speaker 2: So can you imagine having aok They would bring it
Speaker 2: a live fish.
Speaker 6: Live fish. We would get a live fish. My brother
Speaker 6: Bernie and I were usually one week. We loved and
Speaker 6: we called them already, and we fed them bread crumbs
Speaker 6: and we chased them around the bathtub. And then it
Speaker 6: was unspeakable. I can't even describe it. Irving, my older
Speaker 6: oldest brothers Irving and Lenny, held us back. We were screaming,
Speaker 6: don't kill him, and my mother would say we gotta eat,
Speaker 6: we gotta eat supper, and she'd kill audience, serve him.
Speaker 6: It was and we would cry and we ate him.
Speaker 2: And then would you get another carp and kill that.
Speaker 2: We got another carp It's so interesting that they had
Speaker 2: live fish swimming in the back in Yeah.
Speaker 6: They it's amazing that you had to say.
Speaker 2: My brother Michael, who you know, just wrote I have
Speaker 2: found that something my father had written about his memories
Speaker 2: of food and just living in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 2: But you weren't in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 6: The Lower east Side, an extension of the Lower east
Speaker 6: Side was Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: That was probably one step up, was it.
Speaker 6: Well, it was one step up if you put it
Speaker 6: next to a section brook called Bronzeville, East New York,
Speaker 6: and that was really where they coldstoves they don't even
Speaker 6: have guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we.
Speaker 6: Had electricity and way, I guess. So we were one
Speaker 6: step above Brownsbeil equal to the Lower east Side.
Speaker 2: In September, the River Cafe will be thirty six years old,
Speaker 2: and one of the great joys of having a restaurant
Speaker 2: for so long is watching the second generation and now
Speaker 2: even a third generation of our early customers grow up.
Speaker 2: Adwa's parents, Charles Boa and Camilla Lowther, have been part
Speaker 2: of the River Cafe family since we opened, and ad
Speaker 2: was gone from being a young child ordering pasta, butter
Speaker 2: and cheese and then playing in the garden space outside
Speaker 2: with her friends to a formidable woman focused on the
Speaker 2: political and social issues relevant today. After her own struggles
Speaker 2: with mental health and to support young women's wellbeing, she
Speaker 2: founded the organized Girls Talk, providing a safe space for
Speaker 2: girls to access resources, share experiences, create community, and feel
Speaker 2: less alone. A place to escape the chaos of.
Speaker 3: The every day.
Speaker 6: I think a.
Speaker 3: Beautiful phrase today.
Speaker 2: Ed was just come from the kitchen grilling scallops and
Speaker 2: frying zucchini. It's both moving and exciting for me to
Speaker 2: have Edward here.
Speaker 3: Oh that was so nice.
Speaker 2: Tell me about going to Vogue with Edward, because we did.
Speaker 2: When Edward Nfl became the editor, we did the party here.
Speaker 2: Remember that we had a party for him. I was
Speaker 2: a great party. You were the cover for his first year.
Speaker 7: That was mad, that Vogue party. I remember that like
Speaker 7: it was yesterday. I remember I was driving here and I,
Speaker 7: you know, Edward, and I still laugh about it now.
Speaker 7: It's like it wasn't naivety. I think it was just this.
Speaker 7: We were just doing something that felt very special to
Speaker 7: both of us. It was like this we were embarking
Speaker 7: on this new journey, and it wasn't necessarily that we were.
Speaker 7: We were completely naive to how the world was going
Speaker 7: to embrace it. You know, not only just people in fashion,
Speaker 7: but worldwide. You know, it really went and viral, do
Speaker 7: you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I think?
Speaker 7: And so as we kind of pulled up, I pulled up.
Speaker 7: I can't remember who I was in the car with.
Speaker 7: Maybe it was like my mom and dad and system.
Speaker 7: We pulled up the Shepherd's Bush roundabout and it was
Speaker 7: projected on Shepherd's Bush round about.
Speaker 3: What the hell is going on?
Speaker 7: And I looked on my phone and it was just
Speaker 7: like going mad and I actually like broke out into hives.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh my god, this is so much.
Speaker 7: I don't even know how to deal with this situation.
Speaker 7: I pulled up the River Cafe and Edwin and I
Speaker 7: just giggled.
Speaker 3: We could not stop laughing.
Speaker 7: I think we were both so overwhelmed by what had
Speaker 7: happened that we kind of just like could not stop laughing.
Speaker 3: It was mad. It still feels really.
Speaker 2: We all had Ravioli. We had this long discussion before
Speaker 2: whether all the Vogue people, the models and the actresses
Speaker 2: and the young beauties of today would actually have gluten carbs, cheese, butter,
Speaker 2: and whether we would serve it. And we did, and
Speaker 2: BO was actually really cool because we said, do you
Speaker 2: want to find out what people want? They get and
Speaker 2: now we're done with that. We're done with you know,
Speaker 2: if you have a food preference, We're just going to
Speaker 2: do the menu and what they eat. And everybody had
Speaker 2: ravili and everybody, a lot of people had seconds of
Speaker 2: REVIALI And yet the whole issue at the of being
Speaker 2: a model about your body, talk about being a woman
Speaker 2: in a profession that requires you to be a certain
Speaker 2: shape size.
Speaker 7: I think I don't remember being worried. I think there
Speaker 7: were moments when I was at school where I was
Speaker 7: kind of worried about what I looked like. Sometimes I
Speaker 7: didn't I wasn't at a girls' school, but you know,
Speaker 7: I lived in a house of women. So sometimes when
Speaker 7: someone would get a bit like weird with food or
Speaker 7: they'd have you know, issues, it kind of sometimes bleeds
Speaker 7: into everyone else within the community, do you know what
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 3: We see that all the time.
Speaker 7: And I think when I started modeling, I don't again
Speaker 7: remember feeling that pressured about it. I think I just
Speaker 7: felt like incredibly painful in my own body in general,
Speaker 7: So it wasn't necessarily like kind of weight related. I
Speaker 7: think there's always been like parts of my body that
Speaker 7: I haven't like loved, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 7: I've had to grow to love the.
Speaker 2: Are you the kind of person that can eat but
Speaker 2: not gain weight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I've always done lots and lots of sports.
Speaker 2: But were other models that you were with? What did
Speaker 2: you feel that to be a model you had to
Speaker 2: be a Yeah.
Speaker 7: I got weird with food for a period of time
Speaker 7: where actually when I got sober, and they call it
Speaker 7: that transference, you know, I think I was just trying
Speaker 7: to control something else.
Speaker 3: In my life.
Speaker 7: So I got a bit weird food when I was
Speaker 7: about twenty two. I think it was just control, to
Speaker 7: be quite honest, And and I think, wait for me,
Speaker 7: you know, if I'm myselfle with anxiety, you know, and
Speaker 7: so when I'm anxious, it just falls off. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 7: not the type of person sometimes I am eating, but
Speaker 7: it literally just falls off all the time. So sometimes
Speaker 7: I haven't even been like aware of like dropping way.
Speaker 7: I think I've always done a lot of exercise and
Speaker 7: a kind of now do pilates, so I used to
Speaker 7: build a lot of muscle, So my body has changed,
Speaker 7: like you know, over the course of like many years,
Speaker 7: I think, And so.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 7: Because I think when I got started modeling properly, I
Speaker 7: decided there was a part of me that hat that
Speaker 7: to do it, to really kind of walk into it again,
Speaker 7: I had to take on. It was almost like a
Speaker 7: It wasn't necessarily that I felt like that, but I
Speaker 7: had to be like, this is who I am, do
Speaker 7: you know what I mean? Like take it or leave it,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. I'm not gonna be sucked
Speaker 7: into this idea that I should be thinner or look
Speaker 7: a different sort of way for you to kind of
Speaker 7: appreciate me or want me. So I had to and
Speaker 7: that's not exactly how I felt all the time, but
Speaker 7: I had to sort of fake it to make it so.
Speaker 7: It wasn't necessarily I think I've always I don't know.
Speaker 7: I was speaking on the pod, my own podcast about
Speaker 7: this the other day. I think, I wonder if my
Speaker 7: relationship with myself will ever be.
Speaker 3: What I wanted to be.
Speaker 7: Whilst I model, I don't know if I have a
Speaker 7: to a certain extent, a healthy relationship with myself, but
Speaker 7: I wonder if my relationship with my body will ever
Speaker 7: be what I want it to be as long as
Speaker 7: I'm kind of within the industry. And yes, it has
Speaker 7: changed like drastically, do you know what I mean, the
Speaker 7: likes of amazing people spearheading different sorts of movements. But
Speaker 7: you know, we only have to kind of look at
Speaker 7: certain photos or fashion shows and we see the kind
Speaker 7: of the.
Speaker 3: Pressure that's play and I almost find it painful.
Speaker 2: I haven't been to that many catwalk shows. I think
Speaker 2: it probably it has when you see you know how
Speaker 2: and kind of serious and all that. You know, I know,
Speaker 2: it's there to just showcase the clothes, and so it's
Speaker 2: like being a hanger, but there is something as a
Speaker 2: woman to see women doing that job is a little
Speaker 2: bit yeah.
Speaker 7: And also when you know that someone's like kind of
Speaker 7: unwell yeah, whatever that looks like for different people. When
Speaker 7: you know someone's kind of suffering with and you know,
Speaker 7: disordered eating, but they are praised and celebrated within the
Speaker 7: industry and they work even more. It's that in itself
Speaker 7: is an uncomfortable thing to get your head around. I
Speaker 7: think that's where sometimes the pressure for me lies. It
Speaker 7: isn't that I want to be onwell, it's just the
Speaker 7: fact that I see people doing well because of it.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: And that's a that's a mad thing to get your
Speaker 7: head around.
Speaker 2: When I told my friends that I would be recording
Speaker 2: a podcast with Rick Rubin this weekend, the responses were rapturous,
Speaker 2: what wow, incredible and can I come? It was the
Speaker 2: same in the River Cafe the other day when Rick
Speaker 2: was there. Grown men trembled, women found excuses to hover
Speaker 2: near his table. Chefs could barely grill the sea bass.
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin is a decade long creative force with a
Speaker 2: voice and influence that carries immeasurable weight. Co founder of
Speaker 2: def Jam, winner of seven Grammys. As a friend in
Speaker 2: music told me, Rick is unique together with discovering, mentoring
Speaker 2: creating beautiful music with artists such as Adele Eminin, Beastie Boys,
Speaker 2: Public Enemy, Run DMC, and for me, most movingly Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2: His values, principles and kindness guide everyone he comes close to.
Speaker 2: Tell me what happens when you go into the studio.
Speaker 2: You've eaten definitely, I've eaten before and now the way
Speaker 2: it used to work for the majority of my life.
Speaker 8: I would wake up, do whatever I would do before
Speaker 8: going into the studio, but once I would go to
Speaker 8: the studio, that would be it for until I was
Speaker 8: time to go to bed. So I would spend the
Speaker 8: majority of my time, and which also means in those
Speaker 8: days working in New York, it'd be a small room
Speaker 8: with no windows, and I would be there for as
Speaker 8: long as you know, until the sun came up, and
Speaker 8: then I would walk or take a taxi home. So
Speaker 8: the majority of my life, I would say, for at
Speaker 8: least twenty five years, was being in a small dark room.
Speaker 8: So I had very little life outside of a recording
Speaker 8: studio because I worked so much so long. Now I've
Speaker 8: found a way and just through doing it enough understanding
Speaker 8: what's important for me to be there for, what's not
Speaker 8: important for me to be there for. And now I
Speaker 8: tend to have lunch, go to the studio, work from
Speaker 8: maybe one till six.
Speaker 2: And what do you do when you say you were.
Speaker 8: Listen to music and then talk about what we can
Speaker 8: try next. Sometimes we do it right then, and sometimes
Speaker 8: we're making a list of things to try after I
Speaker 8: leave in the evening. It depends. I always have anxiety
Speaker 8: when a project starts, because I never know what's going
Speaker 8: to happen. We don't go in with any script. I
Speaker 8: prefer to go in when we have songs. But then
Speaker 8: there are a million ways to present a song. So
Speaker 8: there's always this sense of what's going to separate this
Speaker 8: body of work from the rest of the artist body
Speaker 8: of work and everyone else's work. And I don't know
Speaker 8: what that is going in, So it's a real experiment
Speaker 8: and we come in and I'm nervous until something good happens,
Speaker 8: like ah, And then if that thing that's good, even
Speaker 8: if it's a even if it doesn't end up this way,
Speaker 8: if it's a clue of what the whole vision of
Speaker 8: the project can be, even if it's not what it is,
Speaker 8: I feel better because at least there's a solution, even
Speaker 8: if it doesn't end up being the solution, there's a
Speaker 8: possible solution.
Speaker 2: And that feels good because I was reading about the
Speaker 2: way you work, and you said that you start with
Speaker 2: an empty sheet. You know that you basically start with nothing, yes,
Speaker 2: and then you move from nothing to what you're going
Speaker 2: to record that day or work in my own little way,
Speaker 2: in my own little restaurant, we come in with an
Speaker 2: empty sheet of paper? Can we write the menu? Of course,
Speaker 2: there are things that we always know.
Speaker 3: We'll have montsarell.
Speaker 2: We always know that we'll have four pastas, and we
Speaker 2: always know that we'll have two dishes on the grill,
Speaker 2: two dishes in the wood oven, then two dishes to roast.
Speaker 2: But it does start with an empty sheet. And do
Speaker 2: you have a parallel in that?
Speaker 8: Absolutely? I come and we usually start by listening to
Speaker 8: any ideas that the artists have. Whatever they are, they
Speaker 8: could be. It could be a song. They may play
Speaker 8: a whole song and then talk about how to do it,
Speaker 8: or they may play a demo of a whole worked
Speaker 8: out arrangement of a song with musicians and everything. They
Speaker 8: may come in and with a riff, you know, just
Speaker 8: a little snippet of a song, or a melodic idea
Speaker 8: or a lyrical idea, and then we talk about ways
Speaker 8: of fleshing it out and what are the next stages
Speaker 8: and what can it be. Sometimes they'll come to me
Speaker 8: with a whole body of work, like an album's worth
Speaker 8: of things that are in various stages of completion, and
Speaker 8: then we listen and see is something that we can
Speaker 8: Is this a starting point that we could build off of,
Speaker 8: or is this almost like a recipe that we could
Speaker 8: use to start from scratch? You never know it really is,
Speaker 8: and then the experiments begin. We try different things, and
Speaker 8: I like the idea of in the case of where
Speaker 8: someone brings in something, I like the idea of stripping
Speaker 8: back the elements and listening to what's there and even
Speaker 8: if it wasn't done in an intentional way for the
Speaker 8: way that it's going to be used. Sometimes you find
Speaker 8: very interesting things that if you were trying to do it,
Speaker 8: you might not do. It could be very interesting to
Speaker 8: listen to.
Speaker 2: It's also trust, isn't it that they trust what you're
Speaker 2: saying to them, or they trust what your thoughts.
Speaker 8: It's like if I gave you two dishes of food
Speaker 8: and I asked you to taste them and ask you
Speaker 8: which one you like better. The only right answer is
Speaker 8: the one that you like better. Do you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying? There is no right answer. It's with taste.
Speaker 8: It's you taste this, You taste this, Tell me which
Speaker 8: one you like. There's no same tell me there's no
Speaker 8: there are no wrong answers in taste. It is I've
Speaker 8: been lucky that when I'm true to my taste, other
Speaker 8: people have liked it. It's not the case for everybody,
Speaker 8: but that's the best chance we have is to make
Speaker 8: the thing that we love and hope that someone else
Speaker 8: loves it. If you do something that you don't like
Speaker 8: with the idea that someone else might like it, what
Speaker 8: are the odds that's going to be good? Then no
Speaker 8: one might like it, at least at least I like it,
Speaker 8: you know, and I can go to sleep knowing it's
Speaker 8: the best I could do. I love it. If no
Speaker 8: one else likes it, it's okay. A certain person plays
Speaker 8: a guitar piece and it's beautiful, and another person plays
Speaker 8: the same guitar piece and there's this other magical dimension
Speaker 8: to it that you can put a finger on. You
Speaker 8: don't know why it's I don't even know if it
Speaker 8: better's the right words. You don't know why it's different,
Speaker 8: because technically it looks the same. But one of them
Speaker 8: you want to hear over and over and over again
Speaker 8: forever and you're filled with wonder. And the other one
Speaker 8: it's the same notes in the same order, at the
Speaker 8: same speed, played with great dexterity, but it doesn't have
Speaker 8: this other life to it, and I would say the
Speaker 8: same with food.
Speaker 2: It's the same with the recipe, isn't it that you
Speaker 2: can say I always say that a recipe is part
Speaker 2: poetry and part science. Yes, and that the science is
Speaker 2: the cord of a teaspoon of baking powder or three
Speaker 2: tablespoons of sugar. And yet, as you say, the way
Speaker 2: it's stirred, in the way it sifted, the way it's
Speaker 2: put in the past.
Speaker 8: So I have a question for you, how difficult is
Speaker 8: it to keep the consistency of the quality of the
Speaker 8: food with different people involved over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that we have
Speaker 2: very few chefs, so it's not a big kitchen, and
Speaker 2: we don't have what you're doing in Los Angeles when
Speaker 2: I was in kitchens that you have one head chef
Speaker 2: and a lot of chefs on the line. So there
Speaker 2: is a kind of communication really.
Speaker 6: Of how you do it.
Speaker 2: But is that is what I look for every time
Speaker 2: if you come to eat, My fears is that you know,
Speaker 2: I'm grilled sea bass coming to the table going to
Speaker 2: be the way it was the night before, and you know,
Speaker 2: and very often when you're on the past, the head chef,
Speaker 2: I don't know how it is in music, but the
Speaker 2: head chef is the last person to see the plate
Speaker 2: that goes out. And it's tricky because sometimes you just
Speaker 2: keep sending it back to the chef who didn't quite
Speaker 2: get it right, and you're taking away their confidence, you're
Speaker 2: diminishing them, and you're destroying them. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you know that you don't want to send something out,
Speaker 2: so it's a constant, you know, judgment. How can you
Speaker 2: tell a musician who's just the one that didn't play
Speaker 2: the guitar the way? What do you do with someone
Speaker 2: who's played something that isn't How do you give that?
Speaker 8: I do my best to cast the people that can
Speaker 8: do the work, and if not, I'll do it again
Speaker 8: with someone else.
Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the musicians and their food.
Speaker 2: As there a musician that you actually.
Speaker 8: That one of the things that because the nature of
Speaker 8: the recording studio is this place you go to and
Speaker 8: sometimes you spend a long time knowing what you're doing,
Speaker 8: and sometimes you spend a long time trying to figure
Speaker 8: out what you're doing or waiting for the thing to
Speaker 8: come that you're there to do, but you don't know
Speaker 8: what it is yet. So eating in the studio is
Speaker 8: a standard. And one of the things about Shangri Laud,
Speaker 8: the studio that I have in Malibu, is most studios
Speaker 8: have one runner, maybe two, and we have lots of runners.
Speaker 8: And when people come and order food, food comes very quickly,
Speaker 8: which historically in studio you'll order lunch and it might
Speaker 8: not come for two hours, whereas for whatever reason, at
Speaker 8: Shangra lab's very creature, comfort oriented, and we get really
Speaker 8: good food really fast, and sometimes we and have a
Speaker 8: chef because there's a kitchen. If you ever saw the
Speaker 8: movie The Last Waltz, the band are in the kitchen
Speaker 8: at Changra La, that's.
Speaker 2: The You came into my house today and the first
Speaker 2: thing you said was let's eat. Yes, you did quite quickly.
Speaker 6: Is the habit.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine once said that his family had
Speaker 2: a rule that there should be no longer than forty
Speaker 2: five seconds when someone walks into your house that they
Speaker 2: have a drink in their hand. And actually, what I
Speaker 2: think that does is actually very nice, because it means
Speaker 2: you're stopping what you're doing and you're giving somebody something
Speaker 2: when they come in the house, you know, And I
Speaker 2: think that means something. And so are the artists that
Speaker 2: you do associate more with food than others. But then
Speaker 2: Johnny Cash, he eat.
Speaker 8: Johnny Cash loved a restaurant in Los Angeles called the Ivy,
Speaker 8: and wherever he would come to town, we would always
Speaker 8: go to get it to the Ivy.
Speaker 2: They're very few people who, even if you rarely see them,
Speaker 2: stay close to your heart. For me, it's Wolfgang Puck.
Speaker 2: I'm often asked who inspired Rose and I when we
Speaker 2: opened the River Cafe, and the answer is Wolfgang. Before
Speaker 2: he created Spago, the choice for choosing a restaurant was
Speaker 2: eat delicious food, but be sure to dress up and
Speaker 2: be prepared to feel intimidated by the soumeier chef or
Speaker 2: just the atmosphere in the room, or eat less well,
Speaker 2: but go out and have fun in a lively, exciting,
Speaker 2: friendly place. With Spago, Wolfgang taught us we could do both,
Speaker 2: and he turned the world upside down. He made pizzas, luxurious,
Speaker 2: airport food, delicious wood ovens for cooking, and took chefs
Speaker 2: out of basement kitchens so diners could see them and
Speaker 2: they could see the diners. A few months ago, he
Speaker 2: came to the River Cafe for dinner with his family.
Speaker 2: To everyone working there, it felt like a visit from
Speaker 2: the gods. For me, it was a visit from a
Speaker 2: man I loved, but rarely see a man who is
Speaker 2: close to my heart.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your family. Did you grow up with
Speaker 2: good food?
Speaker 9: You know, it's very interesting.
Speaker 10: My mother was a chef, a professional chef, but she
Speaker 10: didn't own a restaurant. She worked for a small hotel
Speaker 10: on a beautiful lake in Carinthia, which is the southern
Speaker 10: part of Austria next to Italian Slovenia, And so she was.
Speaker 9: A good cook.
Speaker 10: And my stepfather was a coal miner and totally crazy
Speaker 10: and alcoholic and everything, and my mother was like an angel.
Speaker 10: I don't know how the young and the young get together,
Speaker 10: but it's impossible. And when I was fourteen, I had
Speaker 10: to decide what to do, because you're the school finished.
Speaker 10: At fourteen, I was finished with school and we didn't
Speaker 10: have the money to go to Vienna to study. I
Speaker 10: actually wanted to be an architect, did you yeah, But
Speaker 10: then we didn't have the money to go.
Speaker 9: So then my mother found me a job.
Speaker 10: As an apprentice. My stepfather said, cooking, it's not a
Speaker 10: profession for man. You should be a cap and or
Speaker 10: you should be a mason, or you should be a
Speaker 10: mechanic or whatever cooking is for women. And he said
Speaker 10: you're good for nothing, because I hated to help.
Speaker 9: Him and everything.
Speaker 10: So I still remember when I left, which was fifty
Speaker 10: miles away where I was starting my apprenticeship, and I
Speaker 10: was fourteen years old.
Speaker 9: I went to the train station with.
Speaker 10: A little suitcase and then I take the train and
Speaker 10: as I was walking out the house, he say, oh,
Speaker 10: you're good for nothing. You're going to be back in
Speaker 10: a month, and then cry for money and everything. I said,
Speaker 10: I'm never.
Speaker 2: Coming back at age fourteen.
Speaker 10: At fourteen, yeah, And then I go there. I started
Speaker 10: my apprenticeship and the chef there was as crazy as
Speaker 10: my stepfather. So I went from to the next and
Speaker 10: you know, what do you doing it in the kitchen
Speaker 10: here in the kitchens? Yeah, he was drunk all the
Speaker 10: time too, and screaming like crazy, throwing think like crazy,
Speaker 10: like it happened in the old time more than you think.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: And so like three or four weeks into my apprentic
Speaker 10: the ship on a Sunday. Sunday lunch was always the
Speaker 10: busy day, and I was doing the potatoes and making
Speaker 10: the mashed potatoes. That was like my job, and peeling
Speaker 10: onions and carrots, watching the spinach. And we ran out
Speaker 10: of mashed potatoes. We run out of potato potatoes. And
Speaker 10: at the end of the service, he's queened like crazy,
Speaker 10: Oh your good for not saying we'll go back home.
Speaker 10: So he told me, okay, you're fired, go back home
Speaker 10: to your mother. And I was saying, I said, I
Speaker 10: cannot go back home with my special my stepfather.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So that was probably the worst day in my life.
Speaker 10: So I went on the thing and I said I'm
Speaker 10: going to jump in the river and kill myself. And
Speaker 10: I was fourteen years old. You know, I did not
Speaker 10: say I said I cannot go back home. So I
Speaker 10: was standing on the river there looking down and said,
Speaker 10: what will happen if I die?
Speaker 9: You know, what is happening? Or what is hell? Or what?
Speaker 9: And it was all these thoughts were going through my head.
Speaker 10: And then after a while, I said, you know what,
Speaker 10: I'm just going to go back to more and see
Speaker 10: what happened. So I went back back to the restaurant.
Speaker 10: Back to the restaurant, so I bent. I couldn't sleep
Speaker 10: all night. I went really early to the restaurant. Then
Speaker 10: the apprentice who was both me came and told me that.
Speaker 10: I said, oh, you're back. He was so happy.
Speaker 9: I said, I don't have to build potatoes.
Speaker 10: So he hit me down in the vegetable seller and
Speaker 10: I was peeling potatoes there. And after a few weeks
Speaker 10: the chef comes down and sees me and start screaming
Speaker 10: what you're doing here? He said get out of here,
Speaker 10: and screamed, and that was saying. And then I said,
Speaker 10: I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving, and then he called
Speaker 10: the owner. The owner was a little had a little
Speaker 10: more empathy and sent me to They had another small
Speaker 10: hotel in town, and they said, maybe it goes over there,
Speaker 10: and there had they had a lady who was the chef,
Speaker 10: and she said, just do your job and be quiet
Speaker 10: and don't do anything stupid and everything will be fine.
Speaker 10: And sure enough I stayed there for three years, did
Speaker 10: my apprenticeship, and after that I left for France.
Speaker 2: When you think of your own children, don't you. We
Speaker 2: think about how we treated four ten year old, how
Speaker 2: you treat your children. I saw you the night you
Speaker 2: came in with your children, and I saw the parenting.
Speaker 2: I saw the love, I saw the kindness, patience, and
Speaker 2: then you just think what you had been through. You know,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. We had a young woman who worked for
Speaker 2: a very famous restaurant in London and she said that
Speaker 2: she was once taking soufles out of the oven and
Speaker 2: the chef came over and put a frying pan over
Speaker 2: her head and said, if these soufles don't rise, this
Speaker 2: frying pan's going to be on your head. And I said,
Speaker 2: what you should have done is put the soufles back
Speaker 2: in the oven, gone, got your coat, left the restaurant
Speaker 2: and gone to the police. You should go to the
Speaker 2: police because that is abuse. But you know, somehow that
Speaker 2: idea that somehow, because everybody's under pressure in a kitchen
Speaker 2: it's okay, it's not okay. It's old fashioned and it's wrong.
Speaker 10: Yeah, physical abuse wrong, Emotional abuse is totally wrong. And
Speaker 10: I think one of the lessons I learned from them,
Speaker 10: I said, I know, I want to be like my stepfather,
Speaker 10: and I never want to be like the first chef
Speaker 10: I worked for, because I think they did the opposite.
Speaker 10: And I said, you know, if somebody that makes a mistake,
Speaker 10: somebody does something wrong, I'm going to show them how
Speaker 10: to do it right.
Speaker 9: And sometimes it takes.
Speaker 10: More than once, but you want to teach people. And
Speaker 10: I think for me that was really an important part.
Speaker 10: And later on I opened its cooking school, so I
Speaker 10: had to teach people.
Speaker 2: No. And so you got on the train and went
Speaker 2: to where did you went to? France?
Speaker 9: So then I went down there France.
Speaker 10: I went to Dijon first and worked in a restaurant
Speaker 10: called Trofezon. I was seventeen, seventeen, Yeah, so said I
Speaker 10: have a son now seventeen. I said, wow, if he
Speaker 10: would go, tell me tomorrow he's going to work in
Speaker 10: Mexico City or somewhere. Let's say, I don't know. If
Speaker 10: not by yourself, I'm gonna send a shutout for you.
Speaker 10: And so I went to France and then I was
Speaker 10: working there, and after like a year or so, I
Speaker 10: started to speak French. I didn't speak it at the beginning.
Speaker 10: And then we had a party at a restaurant and
Speaker 10: it was because we got a star.
Speaker 9: In the gid mischland right and had a store. It
Speaker 9: just got a new style. It didn't have one but
Speaker 9: the go down.
Speaker 10: And then I took one of these red books, looked
Speaker 10: through it, and I said, oh shit, there it's one star,
Speaker 10: two stars, three star restaurant. So I said, I'm not
Speaker 10: going back to Austria before. I don't work in at
Speaker 10: least in a two star, hopefully in the street star.
Speaker 10: So I wrote to Bocus to throw go to La
Speaker 10: sal Or Total. You know all these famous three star restaurants.
Speaker 10: The first one who said yes was Raymondally at Bomagnier in.
Speaker 2: Provence, Abomania.
Speaker 9: Yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an amazing restaurant. But he
Speaker 9: was on hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 10: He was the most amazing personality. Not only he started
Speaker 10: cooking when he was like fifty professional when he was
Speaker 10: fifty years old, but he was so passionate about the ingredients.
Speaker 10: He had a lot of land there too. He had
Speaker 10: six gardeners who bought like the best cavayon melon or
Speaker 10: strawberries or peas or green beans, really small.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 10: So it was really an amazing experience to have somebody
Speaker 10: at that age.
Speaker 9: He was already seventy years old.
Speaker 10: But he was so passionate, and you know, going back
Speaker 10: and forth in the dining room, and then he used
Speaker 10: to come into the kitchen with Elizabet Taylor and who
Speaker 10: all of us young guys looked at her and said,
Speaker 10: oh my god. A one time he came in with
Speaker 10: Marcelo Mastroiani and Katherine de Nerve, and I said, oh
Speaker 10: Jesus Christ, I want to feel like him. So I
Speaker 10: stayed there for two and a half years, and he
Speaker 10: was the first person actually who respected me and says,
Speaker 10: you know what, He made me feel good.
Speaker 2: Last night, after dinner in the River cafe, I sat
Speaker 2: with the chefs. Usually we talked about the evening service,
Speaker 2: what happened, who came, what we cooked. But this time,
Speaker 2: knowing he was coming to the kitchen today, we spoke
Speaker 2: about our guests, your term Atolangi. They've all the chefs
Speaker 2: read his books, they've all eaten in his restaurants, and
Speaker 2: like me, love his food. In short, they were thrilled
Speaker 2: he was coming. We both live and work in culture
Speaker 2: as far from where we were born. Today we will
Speaker 2: talk about separation and connection, Eastern and Western family and friends.
Speaker 2: I did read that your first word was was it
Speaker 2: the Israeli word for Hebrew word for soup?
Speaker 11: Well, it is the kind of the little dumplings that
Speaker 11: go into the soup, so it has the word soup
Speaker 11: in it. Yeah, it was something I think my mom
Speaker 11: used to spread on the table while we were waiting
Speaker 11: for the food, and I just used to kind of
Speaker 11: grab them and eat them.
Speaker 2: And So, going back then, starting at the very very beginning,
Speaker 2: tell me about your early childhood in terms of food
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 11: You know, yeah, so I grew up in Jerusalem and
Speaker 11: the food in Jerusalem. At that point, can.
Speaker 2: I just ask you, were your parents born in.
Speaker 11: Israel or My parents were born in Europe just before
Speaker 11: the Second World War, so, and they immigrated with their
Speaker 11: parents as little kids just before the war in nineteen
Speaker 11: thirty nine. My mother was from a German family, so
Speaker 11: they were German Jews, and my father were they were
Speaker 11: an Italian family from Florence.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so my dad was born in Florence and they
Speaker 11: met in Israel and they so, yeah, they met in
Speaker 11: Israel years later.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 11: Jerusalem was so I grew up in a very kind
Speaker 11: of a non traditional Jewish home, very secular food wise,
Speaker 11: Like we had pork, which nobody was unheard of.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 11: My mom had that butcher in Jerusalem, the one and
Speaker 11: only one that sold pork, but it was under the
Speaker 11: counter and the brown bag. Yes, she used to come
Speaker 11: and buy a ham, and we used to get ham
Speaker 11: sandwiches for school. But you know, we were not allowed
Speaker 11: to say what's in our sandwiches and we were not
Speaker 11: allowed to share it with friends. So the cover story
Speaker 11: was that it was a turkey where it was a
Speaker 11: very pink turkey.
Speaker 2: Great woman, very woman to come from Germany. She was
Speaker 2: from Germany, so she probably had pork in Germany.
Speaker 3: I was not going to give that up.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, there were various secular you know, and so
Speaker 11: she just had to have poor. But it was you know,
Speaker 11: the stories about these things they sound quite you know inoccuus,
Speaker 11: but actually it was quite. It was a big deal.
Speaker 11: So that butcher and when people found out that he
Speaker 11: was selling pork, you know, his shop was vandalized and
Speaker 11: you'd have like people would like like glue in his locks,
Speaker 11: so he couldn't open the shop the next day, et cetera.
Speaker 11: It was in Jerusalem. Food is not a neutral distance,
Speaker 11: you know, like all those decisions, all those things that happened,
Speaker 11: political implications.
Speaker 2: What year would this have been?
Speaker 11: So this was so I was born in sixty eight,
Speaker 11: so we're talking about the seventies and.
Speaker 2: Eighties, so late as that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So the food culture of the
Speaker 11: city was the food of the immigrants from wherever they came,
Speaker 11: the Jewish immigrants, but also the Palestinian population, which was
Speaker 11: so such a rich, wonderful culinary history. And I feel
Speaker 11: that I grew up in this world in which we
Speaker 11: ate very European food. At home, my father was cooking
Speaker 11: traditionally Italian dishes, and my mom was kind of an
Speaker 11: international cook, but with a very Germanic approach to cooking.
Speaker 11: But outside, you know, when we went out, we used
Speaker 11: to have Palestinian food Arabic food, and that's the mix
Speaker 11: that I grew up having, and I always thought that
Speaker 11: I was quite lucky to have had been exposed to
Speaker 11: all those kind of foods from quite a young age.
Speaker 2: Could your father find ingredients that he wanted for Italian.
Speaker 11: Cooking, Yeah he could, so, first of all, had they
Speaker 11: used to have food, like I remember my grandparents, because
Speaker 11: they couldn't really separate themselves from their Italian background, so
Speaker 11: they used to have food sent to them, so we
Speaker 11: had to. We used to get like anchovy paste and
Speaker 11: olive oil and biscuits and cookies and things. So they
Speaker 11: always get these packages of Italian produce that arrived in Parmesan.
Speaker 11: They lived about an hour from where we lived in Jerusalem.
Speaker 11: They lived in the suburb of Tel Aviv, and I
Speaker 11: used to come to their house as a kid with
Speaker 11: my dad and the smell was just completely different. It
Speaker 11: smelled of Italy in so many ways. So they kept
Speaker 11: the Italian connection going on. And they used to travel
Speaker 11: in the summer because they had a house in the
Speaker 11: hills outside Florence that we used to go to when
Speaker 11: I was growing up, So we had a lot of
Speaker 11: a lot of that. So in between the Italian and
Speaker 11: the Palestinian and the German influences, I've kind of had
Speaker 11: all that because.
Speaker 2: I often think that I often say that in my
Speaker 2: history as an interviewer that many of the people, especially immigrants,
Speaker 2: talk more about their grandparents' food than their parents. That
Speaker 2: if you've moved from your culture to another culture, the
Speaker 2: mothers probably tried and adapt. So if you have a
Speaker 2: family from Ghana coming from Ghana to London, the mother
Speaker 2: would try and kind of still remember her food she
Speaker 2: grew up with, but would try to adapt. Children completely
Speaker 2: adapted and would have the food of their friends, but
Speaker 2: the grandparents when he went to their house. They would
Speaker 2: cook the Danaan food or the Italian food. And my
Speaker 2: mother in law left Italy for London pre war, and
Speaker 2: her father, who's kind of Florentine site aristocrat, would send
Speaker 2: her candied oranges every month. You know that she craved
Speaker 2: those kind of Italian the Italian food of your culture totally.
Speaker 11: And the only difference is that in Israel at the time,
Speaker 11: there wasn't like a cuisine as such. It was because
Speaker 11: it was just so early on and it was just
Speaker 11: so new and so young, So a national cuisine has
Speaker 11: not evolved. There was a Palestinian the Palestinian food was
Speaker 11: extremely evolved, but what people would call Israeli food is
Speaker 11: something that evolved later. But when I was growing up,
Speaker 11: there was the food that Polish Jews would have cooked,
Speaker 11: or Russian Jews, or Libyan Jews, or Moroccan Jews or
Speaker 11: Iraqi Jews. Those each one had their own cuisine. But
Speaker 11: I always like to say, like in Jerusalem was like
Speaker 11: survival of the fittest, you know, like the best food
Speaker 11: from every culture would surface and we'd have, Yeah, that's
Speaker 11: really great.
Speaker 2: So you would have the Sephardic and you would have
Speaker 2: so you'd.
Speaker 11: Have the Sephardics, you know, salads and like and messes,
Speaker 11: and you'd have like the bubbkas that would come from
Speaker 11: the anaz and and in some ways like some restaurants
Speaker 11: in Jerusalem these days that then when you go, that's
Speaker 11: what's featured, you know, like the best of every culture
Speaker 11: that makes up the city.
Speaker 2: Did your parents take you to restaurants?
Speaker 3: Did you go out?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we didn't have we didn't have great restaurants
Speaker 11: in Jerusalem in the sense in the way we have now.
Speaker 11: So this whole, this whole revolution in food has not
Speaker 11: happened yet, so we ate when we ate out. We
Speaker 11: used to go to Palestinian restaurants. So the war just
Speaker 11: happened not long before the nineteen sixty seven war in
Speaker 11: which Israel occupied East Jerusalem. So in some ways this
Speaker 11: is the pre traumatic times. You know, it was all
Speaker 11: very new and obviously it was complicated, but it was
Speaker 11: relatively peaceful. So I remember we used to go travel
Speaker 11: a lot into the West Bank. We used to go
Speaker 11: to Napolis to Jericho to have bron to have meals.
Speaker 11: So we used to go to Jericho and have like
Speaker 11: incredibly little meals. Oh, we would have these spreads off
Speaker 11: delicious things that you find. Some of them you'd know,
Speaker 11: and some of them you wouldn't, so from you know,
Speaker 11: like hummus or in Labana, you know the strained yogurt,
Speaker 11: but you'd also have like local herbs that'd be sauteed
Speaker 11: in garlic and olive oil. They have incredible so they
Speaker 11: have wonderful oranges, so you'd have orange juice freshly squeezed
Speaker 11: a bit like Seville's, like they have some of them
Speaker 11: that are cooking and some of them mostly for juicing
Speaker 11: because it's so hot and humid, it's like perfect for
Speaker 11: citrus and lamb on the grails, so they have to
Speaker 11: cook lamb on open grill and right dishes like my cluba,
Speaker 11: like upside down rice cakes and bulgar salads. And it
Speaker 11: was the wrong an amazing wonderful olive oil, wonderful olive oil,
Speaker 11: and great freshly baked breads, pizza breads, and and other
Speaker 11: variations on that fiend. Because of Palaestinas cook their bread
Speaker 11: in a taboon, which is that you know, that kind
Speaker 11: of ceramic oven or earthenware oven. So all that was there,
Speaker 11: and I really have really really strong memory of driving
Speaker 11: down to Jericho and just having all these wonderful foods
Speaker 11: and coming back, but also in Jerusalem, I have such
Speaker 11: strong memories of the of these flavors.
Speaker 2: That's a question that I ask everyone if there's a
Speaker 2: food we know, people that we turn to for comfort
Speaker 2: and places we go for comfort, But if there's something
Speaker 2: that you would want to eat? Is there a food
Speaker 2: that you reach for when you really need comfort?
Speaker 11: So I have to say that from all the things
Speaker 11: that I've had, it's things that my father used to cook,
Speaker 11: or my Italian grandmother she used to make. And it's
Speaker 11: not just because I'm at the river fam saying that
Speaker 11: she used to make chi ala Romanah.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 11: And it's the one smell that I have. As you know,
Speaker 11: people talk too much about, you know, those you know,
Speaker 11: moments of childhood, but this is really one that stands
Speaker 11: so strong in my mind. In my head, that is
Speaker 11: the thinly spread semolina and yoki on a tray dotted
Speaker 11: with butter and cheese, and it would go under the
Speaker 11: grail and all and since they did get great cheese
Speaker 11: from Italy and they had great parmigiano and they she
Speaker 11: would put that under the grill and it would just
Speaker 11: smelt and that kind of semolina soft, you know, milky,
Speaker 11: with the grated cheese, melted cheese on top. It's just
Speaker 11: it's just such a childhood favor and that is definitely
Speaker 11: the one that brings the most comfort to me. And
Speaker 11: I've never managed to do it as not even remotely
Speaker 11: as good as she's.
Speaker 2: I know, well, we'll try and make it for if
Speaker 2: I know, we would have put it on the menu. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: especially we have it on very often when we have
Speaker 2: white truffles because it's one of those delicious recipes, which
Speaker 2: it's still just without white truffles, but it does take
Speaker 2: because it's like it's almost going to be like a
Speaker 2: cheese and they are so delicious. So we're going to
Speaker 2: go ahead and have lunch in the River Cafe now
Speaker 2: without Jockey and Romana. For the next time we do,
Speaker 2: we'll definitely have so yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, great than.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.