Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: It may not.
Speaker 3: Seem obvious at first, but tennis and cooking have a
Speaker 3: lot in common. Chefs and tennis players are both rigorous
Speaker 3: preparation in the kitchen, court side rituals. When the match
Speaker 3: begins or when the restaurant doors open, both need to
Speaker 3: be ready, focused and adaptable. Meeting Maria Sharapova at a
Speaker 3: grand dinner in Milan, I discovered a food lover whose
Speaker 3: story off the court is as amazing as her performance
Speaker 3: on it. In nineteen eighty six, pregnant with Maria and
Speaker 3: wanting to protect her, her parents fled Belarus, escaping the
Speaker 3: Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A few years later, she and her
Speaker 3: father moved to Florida with just seven hundred dollars and
Speaker 3: not a word of English. Every year must be an
Speaker 3: anniversary for someone like Maria, who hit her first tennis
Speaker 3: ball age four, was spotted by Martina Navratlova aged six,
Speaker 3: and became one of only ten women in history to
Speaker 3: win a career Grand Slam. But this year is especially special.
Speaker 3: Maria is celebrating twenty years since winning against Serena Williams
Speaker 3: becoming at age seventeen a Wimbledon champion. Today, we're here
Speaker 3: in the River Cafe to celebrate as a businesswoman. She's
Speaker 3: uniquely creative and inspiring other magical ingredients needed in a
Speaker 3: kitchen or a tennis court. We're here together, two women
Speaker 3: talking about food and memories, with stories to tell, and
Speaker 3: maybe before we finish, we'll have a celebratory chocolate nemesis
Speaker 3: with twenty candles.
Speaker 1: I genuinely cannot believe that Ruthie Rogers just did an
Speaker 1: introduction on me.
Speaker 3: It's so specially we just kind of love at first
Speaker 3: sight at that dinner because we were in Milan at
Speaker 3: the Montclair Dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we just kind of it.
Speaker 1: Was a very charming evening. Was his name is dark
Speaker 1: and moody, a little bit eerie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then it was toward the end of dinner, when
Speaker 1: I think things were wrapping up, I came across even
Speaker 1: a hallway, maybe the bathroom line.
Speaker 3: I think it was. It was in that corner, and
Speaker 3: then they ever know and that's where we go. But
Speaker 3: it was it was a lovely it was for Remy Raffiniyes.
Speaker 1: Who've gotten to know in the last few years and
Speaker 1: you as well, And what a charming, very charming man
Speaker 1: and has done incredible things with Montclair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was just a very joyous atmosphere in
Speaker 3: the room. I thought everybody was there to celebrate him,
Speaker 3: to celebrate each other over food.
Speaker 2: When we talked last week about.
Speaker 3: Doing this, I you know, we always start with a recipe,
Speaker 3: and there's something about hearing someone you know, we've done
Speaker 3: Nazy Pelosi or al Gore, people who would never think saying,
Speaker 3: take it tomato and squash it, you know. And so
Speaker 3: when I asked you what you wanted to cook, you
Speaker 3: said that you'd like to do a recipe that reminded you.
Speaker 1: Reminded me of my grandmother. Yeah, yes, the years that
Speaker 1: I spent in her kitchen.
Speaker 3: You chose the recipe with potato potatoes. Said there was
Speaker 3: a potato.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a potato.
Speaker 1: My mother makes these delicious potato pancakes as a treat.
Speaker 1: And if it's a holiday or you know, every on
Speaker 1: my birthday, she usually likes to make potato pancakes. And
Speaker 1: then Alexander orders a little jar of caviar and that
Speaker 1: is our that's our ultimate and absolutely sour cream.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, these are potatoes lu Cheesi because it comes
Speaker 3: from well. Luca is a beautiful city in Tuscanes, near Pisa.
Speaker 2: Would you like to read the recipe.
Speaker 1: Roast potatoes from Luca Potato luchesi. One kilogram of waxy potatoes,
Speaker 1: one medium red onion, finely sliced careful with your fingers.
Speaker 1: Six scarlet cloves, peeled and kept whole. Four sprigs of
Speaker 1: fresh rosemary and sage, and one glass of dry white
Speaker 1: wine extra virgin olive oil. Let's preheat the oven to
Speaker 1: two hundred degrees. Peel the potatoes and cut into thick slices.
Speaker 1: Put into the cold water to wash off excess starch,
Speaker 1: then drain, pat dry and put in a large mixing bowl.
Speaker 1: Add the onion. Onions are my favorite, by the way,
Speaker 1: Yes show its and onions. Onions with potato is just
Speaker 1: the best combination. So add the onion, garlic and herbs
Speaker 1: to the potato bowl and the rest of the ingredients
Speaker 1: and toss well. Choose a baking tray large enough for
Speaker 1: the potatoes to be spread out in one later, cover
Speaker 1: with foil and bake in the oven for twenty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Remove the foil, then using the back of a large
Speaker 1: cooking spoon. Break up the potatoes and herbs to make
Speaker 1: a rough mash. That's the fun part. Drizzle with olive oil,
Speaker 1: return to the oven and roast for thirty minutes or
Speaker 1: until the potatoes are brown and crisp on top and
Speaker 1: still light and fluffy underneath. Serve cut into slices.
Speaker 3: So it's not a take a pancake, but we tried
Speaker 3: to find the recipe that way.
Speaker 1: It sounds delicious, it is. Can you please sign this
Speaker 1: recipe for me?
Speaker 2: With love?
Speaker 3: We talk about this quite often about how much we
Speaker 3: really respect and love women who cook. You know that
Speaker 3: that cooking is a way of sharing, it's a way
Speaker 3: of expressing love. But we also have to really respect
Speaker 3: and admire the women who don't you know.
Speaker 2: And that you know, And that's and I do.
Speaker 3: And I think that I have a friend whose father
Speaker 3: would never let her in the kitchen because he didn't
Speaker 3: want her to cook. And I was sort of slightly
Speaker 3: equated to learning how to type, that, you know, growing
Speaker 3: up in the sort of seventies and thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: we were women who were going to work that if
Speaker 3: we learned how to type, we'd be secretaries. Yes, and
Speaker 3: Luckily my mother forced me to go to typing school.
Speaker 2: Now that we all use laptops, you.
Speaker 3: Know, knowing how to type, But there are as women
Speaker 3: sort of categories that were thrust into and we're judged
Speaker 3: whether we're a good mother by the way we cook
Speaker 3: or a good wife by the way we cook.
Speaker 2: Very much, but now I think it's it's also.
Speaker 3: I think everything we're looking at and we're also looking
Speaker 3: at men and how they cook and how they shop, yes,
Speaker 3: and even cooking as a form of seduction, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I think if some I think if some of
Speaker 1: my relatives, I mean my mother, when you ask her
Speaker 1: if she enjoys cooking, I think her answer is no,
Speaker 1: but she enjoys cooking knowing that somebody will enjoy it. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so she and when she cooks every the process is meticulous,
Speaker 1: like she does it in advance, She does it off
Speaker 1: of a recipe. She makes sure that it's very precise.
Speaker 1: And I think that also seeing her go through that
Speaker 1: process taught me a lot about discipline, because cooking, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's different ways to cook. Right you can just take
Speaker 1: ingredients from the refrigerator and just whip it right up.
Speaker 1: But her process was very meticulous and in particular and
Speaker 1: the ingredients that she chose based off recipes, and she
Speaker 1: wanted to know that if it worked for someone, it
Speaker 1: would work for her if she did it well, and
Speaker 1: her kitchen is always clean. And I think that's, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the energy that she that she taught me to
Speaker 1: perform with, is that you have to put everything that
Speaker 1: you have. You have to do it with a way
Speaker 1: of discipline and time and get it done and know
Speaker 1: that you have no regrets in the end.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: I would say that very often about Julia Child Cookbooks,
Speaker 3: American cookbook writer, that she did it.
Speaker 2: It was so precise.
Speaker 3: She never said, take a ripe tomato, but she would say,
Speaker 3: take a tomato that's you know, two inches wide and
Speaker 3: four inches high.
Speaker 2: Put it in a dish.
Speaker 3: It but it was it was like science, right, and
Speaker 3: therefore you never had a failure because if you followed it,
Speaker 3: you know that, and that gave you the confidence to
Speaker 3: then be able to not follow the rules well.
Speaker 1: And even if you did fail, I think there's you
Speaker 1: would carry a sense of knowing that you you performed
Speaker 1: it at your very best, because then you don't, you
Speaker 1: don't you're not looking back and regretting, which is one
Speaker 1: of the worst feelings that you may have in that voice. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that says, oh I didn't prepare enough or I didn't
Speaker 1: do that enough. At least when you prepare the very
Speaker 1: best that you could that you know, and in my sport,
Speaker 1: that was so important as doing you know, we just
Speaker 1: briefly discussed it, but doing your homework and going overboard
Speaker 1: with your homework so that you know, no matter what result,
Speaker 1: because you know, you show up on the day and
Speaker 1: things can go wrong. Yeah, you can be as prepared
Speaker 1: as you want to be. You know, you can be
Speaker 1: as confident as you want to be and as you are,
Speaker 1: and you did everything to your best knowledge and ability
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't work out. But at least that's
Speaker 1: you know, you know, that's like and that happens, but
Speaker 1: you did everything to get to that moment. You did
Speaker 1: it one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Gives you resilience as well. I think if you have that.
Speaker 1: I love that word.
Speaker 2: I love it too. I was saying that.
Speaker 3: You know, now, everybody talks about teaching and it's very
Speaker 3: very important their children's self esteem and what I sometimes
Speaker 3: think self esteem is overrated. But anyway, it's that's another
Speaker 3: cop But I do think resilience if I could, and
Speaker 3: I've seen it in this restaurant. I've seen the times
Speaker 3: that we've had hard times or different issues, and they're
Speaker 3: the one who are just able to not not to
Speaker 3: hide it, not to shun it away, but to take
Speaker 3: it and then you know, carry on, which is I
Speaker 3: think I.
Speaker 1: Was so nicely surprised to see how young your stuff is.
Speaker 2: They are, they are, I think they, you know, some
Speaker 2: of them. It's interesting. It used to be that in
Speaker 2: the kitchen you.
Speaker 3: Had chefs who started very very young, and sometimes academically
Speaker 3: were challenged, and so they found a skill that they
Speaker 3: could do, which is great. Now we have that and
Speaker 3: they're you know, questioned. Looking at Adriana, I think I
Speaker 3: studied history and got a degree and then.
Speaker 2: Always knew she wanted to cook.
Speaker 3: It's very performance led a restaurant, you know, the curtain
Speaker 3: so compared probably comparison very sport, but also to theater.
Speaker 3: Let go, and it's already and it's collaborative. I note
Speaker 3: that if you don't chop the chilis, the sauce chef
Speaker 3: doesn't have it to make use sauce doesn't have the chilies.
Speaker 3: If you're late for work, it's very often not the
Speaker 3: bosses have crossed, but your colleague.
Speaker 2: Yes, another alloticed.
Speaker 1: Another similarity with sport and particularly in tennis. And then
Speaker 1: you know, being working at a restaurant is that when
Speaker 1: the curtains close and all the you know, all the
Speaker 1: people leave, it's just you and in this very quiet
Speaker 1: and eerie place, which if you think about leaving the
Speaker 1: center court and walking back through a tunnel and going
Speaker 1: into the locker room where you are, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: fairly lonely, right, It's just you and your bag, and
Speaker 1: you go in the shower and you know you have
Speaker 1: some of your rivals and compatriots in there, but it's just,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's very intimate. And just a few
Speaker 1: minutes prior to that, you were in a room that
Speaker 1: was you know, in this arena that was full of
Speaker 1: thousands of screaming fans, and then it's.
Speaker 3: Just you tell me how that relationship was between your
Speaker 3: grandmother and her mother and cooking.
Speaker 1: My mother was a very young mom. She she wasnt
Speaker 1: when she was nineteen, so she yes, I'm an only child,
Speaker 1: and she was still in university at the time, and
Speaker 1: so you know her mom. Between she she had a
Speaker 1: job in a local market. Oh, I was a local
Speaker 1: in Sochi, so She which is aware, which is in
Speaker 1: the south of Russia. It's on the Black Sea. I
Speaker 1: was born in Siberia while my mother was pregnant with me.
Speaker 1: Actually both of my parents are Belarussian. But during Chernobyl
Speaker 1: and the explosion, my parents moved to Siberia. I had
Speaker 1: some close relatives there and so they found out that
Speaker 1: would be a safer place for my mom to give birth.
Speaker 1: That so at twenty she gave birth to me. So
Speaker 1: we were very young, a very small family, and we
Speaker 1: were very close until this day. We remained that way.
Speaker 1: My mother has been a huge influence in my life
Speaker 1: because so much of what I did was about sport,
Speaker 1: but so much of her influence was outside of the court.
Speaker 1: Like she of course she was very involved in making
Speaker 1: sure I did the right thing in my career, but
Speaker 1: most of her influence was making sure that I did
Speaker 1: my homework, Was that I studied well, Was that I
Speaker 1: immersed myself in a different world that wasn't connected to sport,
Speaker 1: that I was curious and interested and different.
Speaker 2: What did your father do?
Speaker 1: My father had a little construction firms and around the country,
Speaker 1: and he was traveling quite a bit, so he you know,
Speaker 1: we would actually rarely see him because he was working
Speaker 1: full time. As my mom was young and was raising.
Speaker 2: Me, and so you grew up in Sibery.
Speaker 1: Grew up in Siberia for the first two years, and
Speaker 1: then at two years old, we moved to Sochi.
Speaker 2: Why did they choose it?
Speaker 1: Sochi was known for a place where a lot of
Speaker 1: people from the north of Russia would come to relax
Speaker 1: and go on their summer holidays. And they had these
Speaker 1: sanatoriums where you'd spend several weeks getting healthy and swimming
Speaker 1: in the sea of doing you know, natural therapies because
Speaker 1: a lot of people that worked in oil and coal mining,
Speaker 1: you know, they would go to just breathe fresh air.
Speaker 1: And it was a very warm city in the summer.
Speaker 1: It reminded me very much of Florida.
Speaker 3: Actually, the River Cafe cafe, steps away from our restaurant,
Speaker 3: is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
Speaker 3: chiambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
Speaker 3: ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts come in
Speaker 3: the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
Speaker 3: No need to book, see you here. The food in
Speaker 3: Russia is very regional, but what it had been different
Speaker 3: in Belarus to Soshi.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember that the tastes of the food being
Speaker 1: very different and both you know, my grand no, my
Speaker 1: grandmother's food was very flavorful because it had a very
Speaker 1: rich profile. You know, there are a lot of stews
Speaker 1: and a lot of soups, and you know, within a
Speaker 1: borshe I mean there's more than ten ingredients. You had
Speaker 1: the beets and the peppers and the meat, and you know,
Speaker 1: a few spices and and then I went to the
Speaker 1: United States and it was a grilled piece of chicken.
Speaker 1: It was a very different experience. And I missed sour cream.
Speaker 1: I grew up eating sour cream on everything, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it was ketchup.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was born in upstate New York in Woodstock, and
Speaker 3: my father the real treat wol He would take us,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of once a month to New York
Speaker 3: and he'd drive and we'd see the ships, and then
Speaker 3: we'd see a musical and then.
Speaker 2: We would go to the Russian tea room.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that was the tradition of a samovar drinking
Speaker 1: tea is such a I mean, anytime I would enter
Speaker 1: my grandparents' house, they would have they would cut a
Speaker 1: piece of rye, like a big, big rye bread and
Speaker 1: they would cut it in many slices. They would put
Speaker 1: a thick of butter and then red caviar because that
Speaker 1: was the cheaper than black caviar. And it was welcoming
Speaker 1: your family was they were so proud, like to see
Speaker 1: their granddaughter walk through the door and and their their
Speaker 1: children and that was I just I remember this beautiful
Speaker 1: plate and presentation is everything. You know. The china was.
Speaker 1: They would take out their most beautiful china. And they
Speaker 1: didn't have much. I mean they didn't grow up with
Speaker 1: a lot of money. They didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 1: But you know when they would sit at a table,
Speaker 1: there's everything had a meaning. The food had a meeting
Speaker 1: and a purpose, and it was it was about having
Speaker 1: a nice time and sharing memories and laughs and just
Speaker 1: being a family over food of having conversations. And I
Speaker 1: really missed that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you create that in your own you try.
Speaker 1: It's it's there's nothing like going to your grandmother's home.
Speaker 1: I know, there's really there's really not I also have
Speaker 1: a more minimal approach to decoration and the way I
Speaker 1: set a table, and it's quite a contrast to thinking of,
Speaker 1: you know, arriving at my grandmother's house, where everything is
Speaker 1: more oriental and detailed, and there's you know, even even
Speaker 1: the way that she serves, and there's just there's a lot.
Speaker 2: You went to Miami with your father.
Speaker 1: I went there with my father because my mom couldn't
Speaker 1: get a visa for the first two years, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't planned. It was just difficult to obtain the visa,
Speaker 1: and so I spent the first two years, you know,
Speaker 1: just eating takeout food. The only thing I remember him
Speaker 1: cooking was white rice because he was because he would
Speaker 1: wake up super early because my training would be early,
Speaker 1: and he would find, you know, random jobs that he
Speaker 1: could take, and most of them were on golf courses.
Speaker 1: Because he had a construction background. He did a lot
Speaker 1: of jobs on golf courses and his work would start
Speaker 1: super early. So he would make rice for me while
Speaker 1: I was still sleeping in the morning, and he would
Speaker 1: leave it in the pan and he would put it
Speaker 1: under a pillow, and so when I would wake up,
Speaker 1: I would eat this rice as my breakfast on my own.
Speaker 1: I would put some milk in it.
Speaker 3: So you were at seven, though, Yeah, and he was
Speaker 3: already trained.
Speaker 1: I was already training.
Speaker 2: How did that happen?
Speaker 1: My father enjoyed the sport. He's not a He's no
Speaker 1: brilliant athlete, although he claims to be. I grew up
Speaker 1: going to tennis practice with him because he enjoyed the sport.
Speaker 1: He played at a leisure level. He played with his friends.
Speaker 1: This wasn't so che Yes, yes, we only moved to
Speaker 1: the United States because of tennis. It was very specific
Speaker 1: to going to this very famous academy in Florida where
Speaker 1: a lot of tennis players went and and it was
Speaker 1: mostly because there's a huge facility and you have other
Speaker 1: kids your age that you play with, you have some
Speaker 1: of the best coaches in the world going there, and
Speaker 1: you just don't need to leave, which for an athlete
Speaker 1: is incredibly important, just to have a base where you
Speaker 1: feel like, I'm just focused on this one craft. I
Speaker 1: do it every day, I have no distractions. And it
Speaker 1: just happened to be in the middle of nowhere in Florida.
Speaker 3: Did they think about feeding children who are athletes in
Speaker 3: a certain way or was it.
Speaker 1: I honestly just think they cared about making money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that.
Speaker 1: Time food wasn't a priority for athletes.
Speaker 2: I talked to Savannah Leaf. She know Savannah Leaf, I don't.
Speaker 2: She's great.
Speaker 3: She was an Olympic volleyball player and she's now a
Speaker 3: filmmaker and an artist and wonderful. And we were talking
Speaker 3: about when and how the awareness of food and athletic
Speaker 3: ability forty years ago it was.
Speaker 2: Not no big deal. Yeah, that people didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't think they told what they would eat prior
Speaker 1: to a match or after a match. It just wasn't.
Speaker 1: And now players travel with their own chefs because it's
Speaker 1: it's become a critical component of an athlete's life, right,
Speaker 1: because the difference of number ten in the world to
Speaker 1: number one in the world is very small. And so
Speaker 1: you know, having you know, having a perspective that's different
Speaker 1: to others, you know, or having a game plan that's
Speaker 1: smarter than others, right, or treating your body like it's
Speaker 1: it's an incredibly important tool, is vital.
Speaker 3: How did you merge the academic with the athletic when
Speaker 3: you were a child of seven and they were and
Speaker 3: they had it must have been regulated, no, to give
Speaker 3: you an academic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it was something once my my mother arrived, besides
Speaker 1: giving me a fresh haircut and changing all my clothes
Speaker 1: because she said, what is what is your father buying you?
Speaker 1: And cooking home, home cooked meals? She was I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, education was was a big part of her contribution.
Speaker 1: And even even when it came to high school, I was,
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, and she sourced because I traveled
Speaker 1: so much as a teenager, she knew I couldn't go
Speaker 1: to a you know, a school in Bradenton, Florida. That
Speaker 1: we'd have to find a school that I could do online,
Speaker 1: and she sourced a place. It wasn't very it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a popular school. But I finished high school, you know,
Speaker 1: I finished that that part of my academics while I
Speaker 1: was traveling and competing and playing at Wimbledon. And she
Speaker 1: would when when the school would send all the books,
Speaker 1: my mother would cut it in four portions for each
Speaker 1: each semester and she'd put it in a folder and
Speaker 1: she would print all the material that I had to
Speaker 1: execute and I would travel, you know with these you know,
Speaker 1: quarter a quarter of books with me.
Speaker 2: You have exams.
Speaker 1: Did you have had exams online? Yes? I thought school
Speaker 1: was a really healthy distraction for me. Our studying was
Speaker 1: because it taught me things that tennis could never teach me. Art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just understanding that there are things outside of
Speaker 1: hitting a yellow you know, fluffy ball, or history or
Speaker 1: mathematics and numbers, the discipline of you know, coming back
Speaker 1: after a match and being in a hotel room in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere and sitting down in your hotel
Speaker 1: room at this little desk and taking out your material
Speaker 1: and taking your mind off of the grind of the
Speaker 1: tour and practice, you know, and being with my father
Speaker 1: all the time and listening, you know, to his advice
Speaker 1: on the tennis court. It was an escape for me
Speaker 1: to study, and so I really loved the process of it.
Speaker 2: Did your father always travel with you.
Speaker 1: He traveled with me until I was twenty one, and
Speaker 1: then I won my third Grand Slam, and then I
Speaker 1: wanted to do it on my own. He was still heavily,
Speaker 1: very much involved in my career and we speak almost daily.
Speaker 3: Were you becoming aware of food? What made you a
Speaker 3: better athlete? Depending on what you ate to kind.
Speaker 1: Of travel, was what you know brought out my curiosity
Speaker 1: and food. My food choices when I was young were
Speaker 1: very simple and only because we didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money. They were flavorful, you know, once my mother arrived,
Speaker 1: because she would make the meals herself, and I just
Speaker 1: felt comforted by the fact that, you know, I had
Speaker 1: someone at home cooking for me. And when I'd come
Speaker 1: back from practice, first thing I would do is you know,
Speaker 1: she'd give me this long rope and I had to stretch,
Speaker 1: and then I had to hang off a rod just
Speaker 1: to loosen my body because there was so much physical exertion.
Speaker 1: She didn't know anything about fourhands or back ends, but
Speaker 1: she knew that my body was at a young age,
Speaker 1: was going through a lot, was going through such intense workouts,
Speaker 1: and she just wanted to make sure that I that
Speaker 1: I was stretching. Yeah, so this was her ate.
Speaker 2: She also watched.
Speaker 1: She wasn't interested in a way that she she thought
Speaker 1: or studied or how it would have you know, how
Speaker 1: I would feel after what would I be energized by
Speaker 1: the food. She just wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 1: was fed. That was her goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you wrote a rather beautiful sentence which when we
Speaker 3: talked about management. I don't know where we found this,
Speaker 3: but it said, did you do enough and more to
Speaker 3: prepare for your next opponent. You've taken a few days off,
Speaker 3: your body's losing that edge, that extra slice of pizza.
Speaker 2: Better make up for it with great morning session.
Speaker 3: And that is that the metaphor of a pizza, the
Speaker 3: idea of a pizza.
Speaker 2: It's the balance of discipline.
Speaker 1: No, it's a It's a balance of giving yourself a
Speaker 1: break in life, but being disciplined and courageous and taking
Speaker 1: chances and knowing that life is not all rainbows and
Speaker 1: you know, butterflies and great moments, life is hard, and
Speaker 1: accepting the fact that it is hard and that you're
Speaker 1: going to face, you know, moments of discouragement, of low confidence,
Speaker 1: of people having difficult opinions of you. It's part of
Speaker 1: the ups and downs, and especially in athletics, especially in
Speaker 1: a world where you know you're in journalism, where you're
Speaker 1: constantly judged for how you perform, even if you win.
Speaker 3: By the way I suppose you did you go from
Speaker 3: the rise in the morning to a different breakfast. Tell
Speaker 3: me about your eating regime if you were playing a game, So.
Speaker 1: Eating as an athlete is about keeping things clean. It's
Speaker 1: about clean ingredients. It's understanding you know, when does your
Speaker 1: body need more protein and when does your body need
Speaker 1: more carbs? You know, with are you loading on you know,
Speaker 1: more energy? Thirty minutes or an hour before you go
Speaker 1: out on court? How long did you play for it?
Speaker 1: Did you was your match an hour or was your
Speaker 1: match three hours? And to be honest, it's not even
Speaker 1: about you can have a set schedule and you can
Speaker 1: have an idea of what you're going to do and
Speaker 1: how you're going to prepare and what you're going to eat.
Speaker 1: But I think what makes the best teams in the
Speaker 1: best ap athlete as being able to pivot based on
Speaker 1: how things go and reacting on the occasion. So if
Speaker 1: you just competed and you know, you thought you was
Speaker 1: the first round, you thought you were gonna win easy,
Speaker 1: but all of a sudden, your opponent had an incredible
Speaker 1: day and you end up winning, but it was three
Speaker 1: hours long. Your recovery now is completely different than what
Speaker 1: you thought would be just in forty five minutes an
Speaker 1: hour match. It's all clean, It's just it's more about
Speaker 1: the quantity shift of what you were eating prior to
Speaker 1: a match. It was very simple those vegetables. Back to
Speaker 1: the rice, it was white rice and a clean piece
Speaker 1: of chicken. I actually look back at those meals and
Speaker 1: I think of them as very lonely because the food
Speaker 1: was very lonely, and I've I've grown to love food
Speaker 1: so much that it it felt like I wanted better options.
Speaker 3: It describes the solitary nests of your career and so
Speaker 3: there are you're playing with canst about it. You've surrounded
Speaker 3: by people, But is there a sense of being quite solitary.
Speaker 1: I think everybody handles that differently. I think some people
Speaker 1: enjoy that they're part of this larger and more than
Speaker 1: life energy that's surrounding them in a stadium environment, I
Speaker 1: think a very special feeling. But I always performed best
Speaker 1: when I was calm within myself. Like of course, this
Speaker 1: positivity and then the things that your fans shout when
Speaker 1: you're down in a match and the encouragement that you
Speaker 1: hear is one of the best feelings in life. But
Speaker 1: when you're going through a three hour match inside of yourself,
Speaker 1: you need to feel that you are calm and collected,
Speaker 1: that you can handle negative comments, that you can handle
Speaker 1: positive ones. And unfortunately you have to treat the negative
Speaker 1: and the positives almost like they are the same, so
Speaker 1: that you don't go through these ranges of emotion during
Speaker 1: a match. Right that you're collected, you're you're strong, you're
Speaker 1: you're positive. And so when I felt like I was
Speaker 1: just that the best version of myself is it didn't
Speaker 1: matter what people said during.
Speaker 2: A match, or do you hear it?
Speaker 1: Do you hear you hear everything? It's hard to block that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it goes back to acceptance. I think accepting
Speaker 1: the fact that people will always have always said this,
Speaker 1: but people will have different opinions of you as a player,
Speaker 1: as a person, as whatever you say and how you
Speaker 1: say it, people react differently to it. And and a
Speaker 1: big part of being an athlete is, you know, is
Speaker 1: having to read things about yourself and accepting that is
Speaker 1: a big It's something that I had to learn and
Speaker 1: I learned it the hard way from a very young age.
Speaker 1: When you win Wimbledon at seventeen years old and people
Speaker 1: still find tough things to say about you or your
Speaker 1: family or criticize you in any way, it takes time to,
Speaker 1: you know, to get comfortable with that fact.
Speaker 3: Did you have good friends or do you always have
Speaker 3: different circuits and different Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was really hard to make friends. And at the core,
Speaker 1: I was a very tough competitor and they could have
Speaker 1: been the nicest opponent in the world, but I had
Speaker 1: to think that they were a terrible human being, even
Speaker 1: though they were extremely nice to me. Mentally, I knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's whoever's strongest. It's not even just
Speaker 1: who's physically strongest.
Speaker 3: Did you when you traveled, did were you able to
Speaker 3: experience other cultures?
Speaker 1: Well, an athlete, I didn't, I really didn't. I remember
Speaker 1: this fondly. Many years ago. I went on a date
Speaker 1: with someone and it was one of our first few dates,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the places that we traveled to,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, He's like, wow, I mean
Speaker 1: they're so you are so lucky. You haven't really visited
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, you've you've competed in some of
Speaker 1: the biggest, best cities in the world, but you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about them really, And you know, there are
Speaker 1: places that I hadn't been to, like Venice in Italy,
Speaker 1: or even Barcelona, or you know, cities that you'd think
Speaker 1: of course, you know it'd be on my list and
Speaker 1: I've visited them several times, but I hadn't and so
Speaker 1: and it really opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was absolutely right, like I, How lucky am I
Speaker 1: that I've yet to experience these cities from a different
Speaker 1: perspective than I had all these years.
Speaker 3: I always just think that I used to be envious
Speaker 3: of people who'd never been to Venice because I could
Speaker 3: never remember seeing Venice for the first time because I
Speaker 3: was young when I went. And then you think, I
Speaker 3: just say, Wow, somebody's going to get to this place
Speaker 3: as an adult and see.
Speaker 2: This incredible city I had.
Speaker 3: I had a kid last summer, I was a Vedics
Speaker 3: and a friend of mine bought his six year old child.
Speaker 3: We did this huge visit of Vedas. We went everywhere
Speaker 3: around Vedice and I said to him, how how Nicholas,
Speaker 3: And he said, what do you think of Venice? He said,
Speaker 3: not enough canals, He'll never remember.
Speaker 1: I went to Venice in December of last year, and
Speaker 1: I brought my mom along with me. It was one
Speaker 1: of the most magical trips that a mom and a
Speaker 1: daughter could take in the chilly nights.
Speaker 3: What month of theo was December December. Oh, I love
Speaker 3: Venice in December.
Speaker 1: It was so special. It didn't matter if it was
Speaker 1: rain or shine or wind or cold. It just felt right.
Speaker 1: And I think the company helps in the food and
Speaker 1: the views. And I think that that's been one of
Speaker 1: our best trips that we've done together.
Speaker 3: As we used to go every December, the first weekend
Speaker 3: of December, and I remember thinking we did it for
Speaker 3: a sat to kind of be together for a sad memory.
Speaker 3: And I thought if it was a perfect place to go,
Speaker 3: because if you went to Rome and it was raining,
Speaker 3: you'd think, oh, it's raining. If you go to Venice
Speaker 3: and it's ray and it's rainy, it kind of fits
Speaker 3: in Melancholia but also joy Magic.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite restaurant in Venice?
Speaker 3: And I like Ilkhovo, which is nice. I like Carampane,
Speaker 3: I like Testieri. There are those restaurants, but I have
Speaker 3: to say when people ask me my favorite three restaurants
Speaker 3: in Venice, I usually say Harry's Bar, Harry's Bar and
Speaker 3: Harry's Bar.
Speaker 1: The corner table that's magical.
Speaker 3: You can't figure out it's just sitting there and think
Speaker 3: it has the room because it has low ceilings there
Speaker 3: are no windows. It's kind of everything should be wrong
Speaker 3: the minute you go in there. I think it's possibly
Speaker 3: because it's a bar and you walk straight in. There's
Speaker 3: no entrance, so you walk straight in. I think the
Speaker 3: tape I've really spent a lot of time with analyzing it.
Speaker 2: I think that the tables.
Speaker 3: Are very low, and so you feel quite, you're not
Speaker 3: reaching out, you're trying to and everybody's together in there,
Speaker 3: and the food is so.
Speaker 1: Good, it's so good. It's consistent. Yeah, and consistency in
Speaker 1: restaurants is challenging. I'm sure you. Yeah, you come across
Speaker 1: that off and they're they're always consistent. In the Bellini,
Speaker 1: I mean, you cannot say no to the.
Speaker 2: I love I love a bar. So let's go to head,
Speaker 2: let's go, let's go, go commer, let's go. It's December, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's a day.
Speaker 3: It's a day we have and I hope we have
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of listeners.
Speaker 2: Everybody's we have. Baby.
Speaker 3: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
Speaker 3: please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
Speaker 3: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o, wherever you get
Speaker 3: your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: So right now you are working with Monk Laire.
Speaker 1: I'm working with.
Speaker 3: I.
Speaker 1: During my career, I from a very early age I
Speaker 1: recognized that ten of was so much more than just
Speaker 1: a sport. It was a really an opportunity to create
Speaker 1: a platform, an opportunity to be curious and to be
Speaker 1: picky about the people that I get to work with
Speaker 1: and the brands I get to align myself with. And
Speaker 1: I would, you know, I would ask to be and
Speaker 1: to go in a room where they would do meetings
Speaker 1: that you know, where the talent is usually not involved in.
Speaker 1: But I felt like, you know, by getting my nose
Speaker 1: in there, I learned so much for these smart people.
Speaker 1: And I knew that as a woman tennis wouldn't last forever,
Speaker 1: that I would want a family, especially since I had
Speaker 1: such a strong, you know, relationship with my young mom,
Speaker 1: and I wanted, you know, a child of my own.
Speaker 1: And also realistically, you can get injured any day, and
Speaker 1: knowing that if that one sport, and you know, you
Speaker 1: put all your stones in this one bucket and you
Speaker 1: have to find other avenues, right And I love to work.
Speaker 1: I love to work hard, and so I got a
Speaker 1: chance to meet brilliant people in the business world, and
Speaker 1: that led me to my role at Montclair on the
Speaker 1: being on the board there and and continue to learn
Speaker 1: from I mean from Remo who's had I mean just
Speaker 1: significant experience and success in what he's built and done
Speaker 1: with With Montclair, I now get to work with the
Speaker 1: Aman Hotel Group. We're curating wellness retreats around the world
Speaker 1: that their properties are first one is going to be
Speaker 1: in September at Almonzaou in Greece.
Speaker 2: And Greece it's a three on the mainland.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's It's a three three, three night program where
Speaker 1: I'm bringing in people that I've worked with in the past,
Speaker 1: some of my trainers. You know, I look back at
Speaker 1: my career, the years of playing, and I had an
Speaker 1: exquisite team that would basically set a schedule for me,
Speaker 1: Like in the morning, you wake up, you you know,
Speaker 1: you measure your your heart rate variation, you go have breakfast,
Speaker 1: you go do a warm up, you know, you loosen
Speaker 1: up your body, you go train. And when I retire,
Speaker 1: I realized that I have to make those decisions for myself.
Speaker 1: So when I was curating this program, I thought, how
Speaker 1: amazing to be able to show up and have this
Speaker 1: few days just completely set for you.
Speaker 3: Right, So you're working with Aman, you're working with Montclair.
Speaker 1: And I'm a mother and your mother.
Speaker 3: Tell me about feeding your baby? How does he does
Speaker 3: he like to eat?
Speaker 2: Does he.
Speaker 1: I've yet to find find his true talent yet, but
Speaker 1: food is I think is one of his passions. That
Speaker 1: he loves food. I mean, he says nam nyam is
Speaker 1: his favorite phrase. He just walks around the entire day
Speaker 1: and just says, nam nam.
Speaker 3: What about tell us we haven't talked about your husband,
Speaker 3: tell us about.
Speaker 1: We're not married yet, but tell me about you.
Speaker 2: I called him speak phrase that tell me?
Speaker 1: But I'd like I call him my husband because I
Speaker 1: feel like he's my husband, but we're not officially married.
Speaker 3: So tell me about food in your lives with him?
Speaker 3: Does he love to eat?
Speaker 1: We're big foodies. I mean we just recently on my
Speaker 1: birthday we went to the Baths County in Spain and
Speaker 1: did an entire trip around food because that was It's
Speaker 1: one of our great passions. And when we met, I
Speaker 1: feel like so many of our we've come from very
Speaker 1: different backgrounds. You know, he grew up in you know,
Speaker 1: having a proper education and spending his early years in
Speaker 1: the luxury space with LVMH and Kruge Champagne and then
Speaker 1: and then moving into the art world, so more of
Speaker 1: a polished upbringing, and I came from much more grittier
Speaker 1: perspective where sweat and tears, and we we met around
Speaker 1: the art world. I enjoy collecting art. It was a
Speaker 1: big passion of mine. And he started an online auction
Speaker 1: site and a mutual friend put us in touch, and
Speaker 1: so conversations started around art and moved into food and
Speaker 1: then life, and then all of a sudden, we felt
Speaker 1: like we had so much chemistry and connection around what
Speaker 1: we've experienced in life, even though they came from completely
Speaker 1: different backgrounds and perspectives, and and that's been it's been
Speaker 1: nice to share that with our son, you know, our
Speaker 1: different cultures and you know, I always feel like in teamwork,
Speaker 1: whether it's your sport or whether it's your career, whether
Speaker 1: it's family, if you have you have different ways of
Speaker 1: getting to one destination. But if your vision is the
Speaker 1: same and aligned, then that's what makes that story really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Where do you live like we live in California and
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, I realize and you have it.
Speaker 3: That's right, because I do remember reading about you love
Speaker 3: the shopping for the food my market market.
Speaker 1: It's one of our favorite things to do is just
Speaker 1: going to a local farmers market, taking our son and
Speaker 1: using the stroller as my food basket and trying all
Speaker 1: the you know, local ingredients and then going and getting
Speaker 1: you know, the fresh fish from the pier and the
Speaker 1: fresh oonie. It's really it's one of our favorite things
Speaker 1: to do over the weekend.
Speaker 2: And do cook yourselves. Both we do myself.
Speaker 1: So Alexander, he loves to cook, but he doesn't like
Speaker 1: a lot of help because I think I'm I provide
Speaker 1: too many suggestions. It sounds like a marriage, it does exactly.
Speaker 1: So when he cooks, he prefers that I just you know,
Speaker 1: get a drinker. Just watch him from the sidelines quietly.
Speaker 1: And I was so impressed. He We invited another couple
Speaker 1: over and he made a Thanksgiving meal all by himself,
Speaker 1: pretty much. I did something with the potatoes. I think
Speaker 1: I helped him prepare, but he, you know, he looked online.
Speaker 1: He looked through a few recipes and he's like, this
Speaker 1: is what I'm doing. He got all the groceries, not
Speaker 1: at the end of it, I was like, this was
Speaker 1: really good. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 3: Entertaining is tough to the performance. You know, you have
Speaker 3: people coming and you're going to take.
Speaker 1: Get nervous about entertaining because I'm a perfectionist and he's
Speaker 1: He's definitely much more comfortable with the concept because he
Speaker 1: comes from a larger family and he comes from a
Speaker 1: world of inter haining and throwing gatherings together people of
Speaker 1: all different walks of life, and so he makes it work.
Speaker 1: I just hone in on so many details that I
Speaker 1: get a little stressed about the outcome, and I'm so
Speaker 1: worried about each guests and you know, and I also,
Speaker 1: I know I hate this, but I asked my guests
Speaker 1: to take their shoes off because I love you know,
Speaker 1: this Japanese sanctuary of a house, and I just I
Speaker 1: know there, you know, guests are going to be annoyed.
Speaker 1: It's fun. So I'm like, I need to get everyone's slippers.
Speaker 1: It's so annoying. I'm annoying the fruits of the vegetables.
Speaker 1: I have to get slippers. Yeah, So it's we're a
Speaker 1: fun combination.
Speaker 2: Do you get a restaurants much or do you lessly.
Speaker 1: We don't eat out too much. We eat out a
Speaker 1: lot when we travel. I love the curation on Yolo Journal.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with that site, but
Speaker 1: Yolanda Edwards puts together a really beautifully curated list of
Speaker 1: I think you've contributed to her Hughes letter, but I
Speaker 1: love her selections of places. So we share. We do
Speaker 1: a lot of research on where on the city that
Speaker 1: we're going to.
Speaker 3: We were talking about before about talking and listening, and
Speaker 3: one of the questions that we ask everyone is a
Speaker 3: food is love, If food is sharing, a food is memories,
Speaker 3: if food is your generations from your grandmother to your mother,
Speaker 3: to yourself and to your son.
Speaker 2: It also is comfort.
Speaker 3: And I think that I would like to ask you
Speaker 3: when you need and I hope you don't need it
Speaker 3: very often, but when you want food as comfort to
Speaker 3: make you feel better, is there a food that you
Speaker 3: would go to for that.
Speaker 1: I would go to my mom and I would ask
Speaker 1: her to make crepes creps craps, Yeah, and I would
Speaker 1: ask her to make it with a local jam, whether
Speaker 1: it's a strawberry or a cherry, and I just put
Speaker 1: a large spoon of the jam onto the crepe and
Speaker 1: roll it and eat several of them. Yeah, that's my
Speaker 1: comfort food.
Speaker 2: I'd love that sounds delicious.
Speaker 3: I'd like to read something that you wrote before we
Speaker 3: end this, beautifully written talking about future, about what we're
Speaker 3: doing about every day, about how we live. And you
Speaker 3: wrote that relentless chase for victories, though that won't ever
Speaker 3: diminish no matter what lies ahead. I will apply the
Speaker 3: same focus, the same work ethic, and all of the
Speaker 3: lessons I've learned along the way. And I think that
Speaker 3: is a beautiful marriage of past and future and present.
Speaker 2: And so thank you so much for coming today, Ruthie.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: We covered a lot.
Speaker 1: Now let's go eat.
Speaker 2: Let's go eat. Thank you. I think we have a cake.
Speaker 2: Don't need to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Yay. I love cake.
Speaker 3: I love you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair