Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Today we're here at the can Lion Festival and its
Speaker 2: fopped the River Cafe Kitchen for a galley on the
Speaker 2: most beautiful boat in the harbor, which I'm happy to
Speaker 2: say is safely tied up. Bob Pittman is a captain
Speaker 2: sort of, as he is of so many great things.
Speaker 2: He created MTV, which changed the way we listened to music,
Speaker 2: and most recently, iHeartMedia, which changed the way we listen
Speaker 2: to everything else. Bob believes in stories. He's often said
Speaker 2: that everyone has one great story to tell. The first
Speaker 2: time we met, he told me some about growing up
Speaker 2: in Mississippi, the food his family cooked, and from an
Speaker 2: early age, his almost illegal passion for being a pilot.
Speaker 2: He spoke movingly and proudly about his father's brave commitment
Speaker 2: as an anti segregationist. In our short and recent friendship,
Speaker 2: I've learned from many about his generosity, his faith in
Speaker 2: new talent, and guess what else, his rigorous passion for
Speaker 2: producing Cassa Dragons tequila definitely my favorite. In the two
Speaker 2: years I've known him, I've heard nothing but admiration and
Speaker 2: love from everyone I've spoken to. I understand why. So
Speaker 2: you made this lemon ice cream, and I wonder whether
Speaker 2: you'd like to read the recipe.
Speaker 3: Of course, I'd like to read the roceperes I like
Speaker 3: it because the headline says Bob Pittman lemon ice cream,
Speaker 3: the only time I've ever my name associated with it
Speaker 3: with food. I like that. So the ingredients are finely
Speaker 3: grated zest of one and juice of three lemons makes sense,
Speaker 3: a cup of sugar, a half teaspoon of sea salt,
Speaker 3: two cups of double cream. It serves six, and you
Speaker 3: put it in a bowl. Mix in the lemon, zest
Speaker 3: and juice, sugar and salt with a spoon slowly, I'm
Speaker 3: sure slowly is important. Add the cream carefully, mixing with
Speaker 3: a spoon, and it will immediately thicken. You didn't put
Speaker 3: this is really simple stuff. This is absolutely my kind
Speaker 3: of recipe. You then put the ice cream mixture in
Speaker 3: the freezer and freeze it for two hours. It hardens
Speaker 3: up and then you have magic Try it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the thing about this ice cream is that
Speaker 2: you don't have to churn it.
Speaker 3: By the way, as a kid growing up in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: My grandmother had a churn and would make ice cream.
Speaker 3: And I loved the ice cream. I hated churning it.
Speaker 3: This was before the days of electric stuff. This is
Speaker 3: you turn it and turn it. When it got really hard,
Speaker 3: I call my older brother over. You turn it some
Speaker 3: and then we'd sort of put it away and we'd
Speaker 3: have the ice cream.
Speaker 2: So tell me about the churner. So we had the
Speaker 2: ice in the.
Speaker 3: Like a wooden tub, and it had a ice in it,
Speaker 3: and you put this metal container down that would hook
Speaker 3: onto the crank on top, put kosher salt all over,
Speaker 3: a big salt, just covered the ice with that, and
Speaker 3: you churn and churn and churn until it hardened up.
Speaker 2: And that was your grandmother, my grandmother. Did your mother
Speaker 2: then discover that you could actually put a plug in
Speaker 2: and today.
Speaker 3: That and we were probably too poor to buy one,
Speaker 3: even if there was one for sale. But it was
Speaker 3: perfect with my grandmother, who, by the way, at the
Speaker 3: same time was making crab gumbo that we'd been catching
Speaker 3: the crabs all day. She was from the Orleans and
Speaker 3: had this spectacular gumbo recipe. Start cooking about nine. We'd
Speaker 3: throw the crabs in about five, the ice cream you'd
Speaker 3: be ready about then she'd put the towel over, take
Speaker 3: the thing off, packet with ice while we ate the gumbo,
Speaker 3: and then we could have the ice cream for dessert.
Speaker 2: This is just because a lot of people I talked
Speaker 2: to really talk about their grandmothers as much as their mother.
Speaker 2: So you started out by talking about your grandmother. So
Speaker 2: why don't we go back to that about growing up
Speaker 2: with your grandmother cooking for you. She lived in your house.
Speaker 3: No, No, we just visited my grandmother often. They had
Speaker 3: a little house on a little bay in Mississippi called
Speaker 3: Bay Saint Louis called it the Camp, and we'd go
Speaker 3: visit them at the camp. And when we went there,
Speaker 3: my grandmother was a proper Cajun cook, and we had
Speaker 3: all that fabulous Southern and Cajun stuff. My mother was
Speaker 3: from northern Mississippi, originally a farm girl, so hers was
Speaker 3: more hardy, like you know, crowder peas butter beans. Crowder
Speaker 3: pea is sort of like a black eyep a little
Speaker 3: firmer and sort of dark all over it supposed to
Speaker 3: one speck of darkness. And my brother and I, every
Speaker 3: time my mother would go visit her family and come
Speaker 3: back home. She'd bring with her bushels of peas and butterbeans,
Speaker 3: and my brother and I hated it because we had
Speaker 3: to shell them all so that she can then freeze
Speaker 3: them for the winter. That's you know, as a kid,
Speaker 3: you don't want to sit around doing that stuff.
Speaker 2: So we're only in a distance of how many miles
Speaker 2: between northern and.
Speaker 3: Southern Mississippi, I should probably five hour drive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yet the cooking was so different.
Speaker 3: Very different, very different. When you were down near Louisiana,
Speaker 3: it was very spicy. When you're in the middle of
Speaker 3: Mississippi and up north it's very bland by the time
Speaker 3: you get to the top of the state. And by
Speaker 3: the way, all through the state there's barbecue which has
Speaker 3: a red sauce but is very sweet, and you just
Speaker 3: sort of slow cook the stuff on steamers and so
Speaker 3: it just sort of melts and then you slather that
Speaker 3: stuff on until it really turns to candy, put in
Speaker 3: that smoker and just let it go and go. And
Speaker 3: it was yeah, up north, but on the south it
Speaker 3: was more fried food. We gig for flounders. You go
Speaker 3: out with a white lantern and you'd look for them
Speaker 3: in the water and you gig them and then you
Speaker 3: pull them up in the flounders like it's a stick
Speaker 3: with a nail on the end of it that just
Speaker 3: stick them so you can get them and you pick
Speaker 3: them up from that they sort of burrow into the sand.
Speaker 3: But there are flatfish like a soul. So we do that.
Speaker 3: But my again, my parents and my grandmother, you put
Speaker 3: them in cornmeal, although everything's putting cornmeal, and you're throw
Speaker 3: in the deep fryer and you have this spectacular fried fish.
Speaker 3: Everything's fried. I had an uncle who said, I like
Speaker 3: him anyway, you fix it as long as you fry
Speaker 3: at last. So I think that was a great indication
Speaker 3: of Southern cooking.
Speaker 2: And do you think that black culture also contributed to this.
Speaker 2: I know that's something going on right now about the
Speaker 2: black community feeling that a lot of the Cajun cooking
Speaker 2: or the cooking of the South amidst their culture. Do
Speaker 2: you think that or do well?
Speaker 3: I think the Southern cooking and the Black culture were
Speaker 3: completely intertwined. I mean it was sort of all of one.
Speaker 3: And I spent time in Chicago and I love the
Speaker 3: South Side of Chicago. Soul cooking is the cooking out
Speaker 3: I grew up with and always share that affection for
Speaker 3: My other favorite is fried okra, where you cut the
Speaker 3: okra up, have a cast iron skillet, get the really hot,
Speaker 3: roll around in some corn meal and throw it in
Speaker 3: there and by the time it comes out it's crispy.
Speaker 3: I like a popcorn.
Speaker 2: You said something about being too poor to afford a churner,
Speaker 2: perhaps for the ice cream. Tell me about life in
Speaker 2: the Pittman household.
Speaker 3: I grew up. I didn't know we were port My
Speaker 3: dad was very well educated. He had his undergrad from
Speaker 3: University of Southern Mississippi, had a graduate school at Emory
Speaker 3: in Atlanta. My mother was a college graduate, which is
Speaker 3: also unusual for two parents at that era. And the
Speaker 3: family really valued smarts. My dad was a Methodist minister,
Speaker 3: so the church gave us a house and give us
Speaker 3: a very nice house. So we had a nice house
Speaker 3: as if we have a lot of money, and they
Speaker 3: would let you. They would let the ministers join the
Speaker 3: country club. So even though they had no money, they
Speaker 3: didn't have to pay. But we could go to the
Speaker 3: country club as if we have money. And so we
Speaker 3: had a decent lifestyle but little money. And but you know,
Speaker 3: in those days, you didn't miss it and you didn't
Speaker 3: know and all that wasn't flaunted on TV.
Speaker 2: And what was it? What was Yeah? How many are you?
Speaker 3: I had one brother, and I had a magical upbringing
Speaker 3: that I didn't realize how magical it was till I
Speaker 3: became an adult. I never in my life saw my parents.
Speaker 3: My parents have disagreements, They go, well, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I agree with that, Well, I don't know, why
Speaker 3: do you think that? And they would go through it.
Speaker 3: In our household, you couldn't say hate. We never hated anybody.
Speaker 3: We didn't hate anything. So that was sort of the
Speaker 3: dirty word of the house. And when my mom passed away,
Speaker 3: one of my cousins said, you know, the worst thing
Speaker 3: I ever heard your mother say about somebody was I
Speaker 3: wonder why they want to be that way. So that
Speaker 3: was her way of saying, that's not her favorite person.
Speaker 3: But everything was met with sort of an understanding and
Speaker 3: a gentility which I truly appreciate. My brother and I
Speaker 3: often talk about we definitely won the parent lottery, and
Speaker 3: you know, oh, yes we'd have money. We didn't have
Speaker 3: a lot of things, but I'll trade all that for
Speaker 3: what we had.
Speaker 2: Did you and your brother aren't you?
Speaker 3: Of course there were kids. And by the way, I
Speaker 3: wish I could say I didn't argue in my household,
Speaker 3: because I don't have that. I don't know what. I
Speaker 3: don't know how my parents managed to pull that off,
Speaker 3: and I think I didn't appreciate it until I became
Speaker 3: an adult.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of when I talked to Valerie Biden,
Speaker 2: who's President biden sister, and she said she was brought
Speaker 2: up in a household of Irish Catholics in Delaware where
Speaker 2: there was no argument. You just were not allowed to
Speaker 2: argue with your brothers or your sisters. That in the house,
Speaker 2: it was that you were you know, you defended each other.
Speaker 2: And I wonder about that because you just see that
Speaker 2: as so much of our life. I don't know about
Speaker 2: your children, but disagreement is okay. You know, it is
Speaker 2: okay to disagree, It's okay to take your position. But
Speaker 2: it's something very beautiful as well about the idea that
Speaker 2: somehow there was peace and you were in the house.
Speaker 3: Also a difference between arguing and personalizing something. It's one
Speaker 3: thing to debate it. I believe that you believe that,
Speaker 3: and will I don't know why you believe that. Let's
Speaker 3: figure out as opposed to you're bad, you're an idiot,
Speaker 3: you don't care, you're evil, and you know, if you
Speaker 3: avoid personalizing it, I think you go so far because
Speaker 3: you can continue the conversation.
Speaker 2: Bettlheim said a great thing I remember as young parent.
Speaker 2: He said that you don't ever say to a child
Speaker 2: you are something. You say you are behaving. So you
Speaker 2: don't say you are selfish. You say you are behaving
Speaker 2: in a selfish way, you know, and that makes apparently.
Speaker 3: A selfish act, and then you usually say, but I
Speaker 3: know that's not you. There's also in a hopeful tone
Speaker 3: to the child.
Speaker 2: So what we aspired to, there's a great coatoon in
Speaker 2: the New Yorker which your mother says, I'm going to
Speaker 2: get very angry at you in a very quiet and
Speaker 2: controlled way, which is also maybe not that. But back
Speaker 2: to the food. So you said your mother worked.
Speaker 3: My mother worked as a school teacher for some of
Speaker 3: my childhood and then was stayed at home mom after that,
Speaker 3: and so she would cook and cooked and ate at home. Right.
Speaker 3: Usually it was a somewhat like meal coume in eggs,
Speaker 3: piece of meat, piece of fish, some peas, beans, rice
Speaker 3: and uh, sort of these wholesome eating and they would
Speaker 3: probably could be fried stuff. But we also eat stuff
Speaker 3: like squirrel.
Speaker 2: Would squirrel like I've never eaten squirrel.
Speaker 3: Well, squirrel. I always think it. You know, people say
Speaker 3: something tastes like chicken. I always think something tastes like squirrel.
Speaker 3: Squirrels my reference meat. I'm kidding, but it is, uh,
Speaker 3: but it you know, it's a it's a much leaner
Speaker 3: meat than anything you probably get that's domesticated. But I
Speaker 3: always liked squirrel of.
Speaker 2: This, like, would you hunt them? Would you go to
Speaker 2: the squirrel No?
Speaker 3: No, you know, I can't buy them at the grocery store.
Speaker 3: But either I'd hunt them or somebody would bring some
Speaker 3: squirrel by because they've been squirrel hunting and uh. And
Speaker 3: occasionally people bring by dove or quail and eat that
Speaker 3: as well. Yeah, quail and venison. Yeah, it was always
Speaker 3: somebody would get a deer every winter, and then the
Speaker 3: butcher it and everybody have some venison for the winner
Speaker 3: venison sausage.
Speaker 2: I grew up in upstate New York, and I still
Speaker 2: have memories of the deer on the front of the car.
Speaker 2: Even the deer being brought back from the hunting, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you watch Bambi and could never take it right.
Speaker 3: Well, you get the wild boars. They didn't look so nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did your parents ever take you to a restaurant?
Speaker 3: We did, but there were not great restaurants. And bo
Speaker 3: Cava Mississippi Holiday and on Sunday was probably the best
Speaker 3: restaurant in town. There were catfish cabins which were great.
Speaker 3: So you go out there on the river and you'd
Speaker 3: eat the filet of catfish and hush puppies and French
Speaker 3: fries and are a corn meal that's fried, No, that's
Speaker 3: corn dog with a hot dog in it. But think
Speaker 3: of that without the hot dog in it, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: without the stick, and you're getting pretty close to a
Speaker 3: hush puppy. So there were things like that. There's sort
Speaker 3: of specialty places, but there were no in my day.
Speaker 3: There was no fine dining, and if there was, my
Speaker 3: family would know about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Talking about your father and segregation, can you tell
Speaker 2: me about that. Presumably when you went to restaurants they
Speaker 2: were segregated. It was your school segregated.
Speaker 3: When I started school in Mississippi in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 3: it was completely segregated. There were white schools and black schools.
Speaker 3: There were colored only for water fountains and bathrooms, and
Speaker 3: white onlies completely separate. In the twelve years I went
Speaker 3: to school, everything happened, and by my senior year in
Speaker 3: high school, my graduating class was about fifty to fifty
Speaker 3: white black. So it all happened in my school years.
Speaker 3: And there were people like my dad who were very
Speaker 3: supportive of change and working hard for it. There were
Speaker 3: people who were absolute racist and didn't want it, and
Speaker 3: then there was a group of people in between that
Speaker 3: knew it was the right thing, but they just they
Speaker 3: wanted to come slowly. I was talking to Jesse Jackson once,
Speaker 3: and Jesse was saying that the biggest problem they had
Speaker 3: in the civil rights movement were not the racists, because
Speaker 3: they could sort of deal with them. It was the
Speaker 3: people who wanted to go slow. And that's sort of
Speaker 3: human nature, I'm sure. So there was not bad people.
Speaker 3: They weren't terrible people. They just they were liked want
Speaker 3: things to change, and so I think you had to
Speaker 3: sort of overcome that inertia. You didn't necessarily have to
Speaker 3: convince them not to be racist. You had to commence
Speaker 3: them to go ahead and make the changes and make
Speaker 3: them more dramatically than you expected to be. Initially, in
Speaker 3: Mississippi to break through segregation, they did freedom of choice,
Speaker 3: so you could choose which school you wanted.
Speaker 2: To go to.
Speaker 3: So we have maybe ten black kids at our school
Speaker 3: and maybe ten white kids at the black school. Hardly integrated.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until the federal government basically said, look,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to bust kids or do whatever,
Speaker 3: but you're gonna have to mix the schools based on
Speaker 3: sort of the racial population of the area. And that's
Speaker 3: when the big change came.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're getting into another discussion, but that is
Speaker 2: the role of the federal government, wasn't it was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, we do you change hearts and minds first
Speaker 2: and then bring an integration or do you say we're
Speaker 2: doing this and you're going to have to change.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, and by the way, I don't
Speaker 3: think there was any looking back any other way. Probably
Speaker 3: would have been better to do it sooner, you know.
Speaker 3: I look at all these years. I was on Instagram
Speaker 3: with one of my friends, the people I went to
Speaker 3: school with who was black, and my senior year they
Speaker 3: closed down the black high school, merged it with the
Speaker 3: white high school, turned the black school into the middle school,
Speaker 3: and sort of moved everything into that building. And I
Speaker 3: was asking, I said, what did feel like? And he
Speaker 3: said I felt unwelcome? And I thought that was the
Speaker 3: interesting feeling about. You know, here are these kids that
Speaker 3: are forced to go somewhere new, into a new situation
Speaker 3: and not feeling like everybody's going, hey, welcome, let me
Speaker 3: show you around. So I think it's you know, been
Speaker 3: a struggle from that, but I think there are, you know,
Speaker 3: many people making great progress, and there's some people still
Speaker 3: resisting progress.
Speaker 2: And while you were growing up in this house and
Speaker 2: the food, you also started working, as I said when
Speaker 2: you told me the other night, at a kind of
Speaker 2: almost illegal age. I would have thought it was even
Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen.
Speaker 3: I had actually worked. Even when I was in the
Speaker 3: fifth grade. I got a job sweeping up a department
Speaker 3: store in town after the store closed. I'm sure that
Speaker 3: was illegal, But when I was fifteen, I needed the
Speaker 3: job to pay for flying lessons, and the only job
Speaker 3: I could find I just.
Speaker 2: Stopped flying lessons. Todaye fifteen you.
Speaker 3: Can solo at sixteen. So I wanted to get the
Speaker 3: money when I was fifteen, so that at sixteen I
Speaker 3: could start my flying career. And I tried to get
Speaker 3: a job bagging groceries, actually at to Pigley Wiggily, which
Speaker 3: was a very good paying job because they tipped you
Speaker 3: to bring the bags out to the car. And the jobs,
Speaker 3: as you imagine, we're all full. I tried to get
Speaker 3: a job at a men's clothing store, which everyone hung
Speaker 3: out at after school. And I had no jobs. And
Speaker 3: I walked in this radio station and asked a man
Speaker 3: named Bill Jones who owned the radio station, if I
Speaker 3: could have a job. And he said, do you get
Speaker 3: in trouble? Not really, you get good grades. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: get good grades. He goes, come in this room. He
Speaker 3: took me in a little studio. He had a real,
Speaker 3: real tape recorder. He turned it on record. He tore
Speaker 3: some wire to copy off these teletype machines he used
Speaker 3: to print the news constantly, and he said, read this.
Speaker 3: I read it. He listened to tape and goes, that's
Speaker 3: good enough. Go to New Orleans and get your third
Speaker 3: class radio telephone operator's license, which means I could then
Speaker 3: control the transmitter. And so I went away to New
Speaker 3: Orleans got it and that began my radio at age
Speaker 3: age fifteen making a dollar I think it was probably
Speaker 3: a dollar sixty five an hour minimum wage.
Speaker 2: Wow. Do you remember anything to do with food and
Speaker 2: you're ate garbage? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I was a very skinny kid. So I
Speaker 3: heard in my ear always eat, you need to eat more.
Speaker 3: We got to faten you up. So I would eat
Speaker 3: bags of potato, chips and candy and everything, so anything
Speaker 3: I wanted to eat, and just had a ravenous appetite
Speaker 3: for chunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And did that last?
Speaker 3: Well, it lasted until I started gaining weight and go, well,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, that's not a good idea.
Speaker 2: And when you left home, did you go to university?
Speaker 3: I went to college in Jackson, Mississippi. I was on
Speaker 3: the radio. I kept getting better and better jobs, and
Speaker 3: I had a job I worked in the afternoons in Brookhaven.
Speaker 3: On Sunday, I drove to Jackson and was on Sunday
Speaker 3: morning on the one o two point nine stereo rock
Speaker 3: and Jackson where we went. And that was a tasty
Speaker 3: track from Doctor John the Night Tripper. And before that
Speaker 3: you heard the doors and it was you imagine great radio.
Speaker 3: You would imagine people sitting in some you know, smoke
Speaker 3: field filled room. And then I got a job on
Speaker 3: the top forty station in town, which was the Pop station,
Speaker 3: and I did night times there. So at the college
Speaker 3: here in today, went there and I got completely bitten
Speaker 3: by the radio bug and decided this is going to
Speaker 3: be my career. Maybe as simple as because there were
Speaker 3: restlines ringing all the time, and there were girls in
Speaker 3: the other end of the request line. I mean, mom,
Speaker 3: you know a teenage boy and they go, hello, I'd
Speaker 3: like to meet you, and you go, what you're asking
Speaker 3: me to meet me? So I got buried. This was
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one seventy two. In nineteen seventy two, I
Speaker 3: sent away all these air checks, which are tapes of
Speaker 3: your radio shows, all these radio stations all over the
Speaker 3: country trying to get a job, and I got hired
Speaker 3: in Milwaukee. This eighteen year old kid. I've never been
Speaker 3: north of Tennessee, and I remember driving up. I loaded
Speaker 3: up my car, I drove up, spent the night in
Speaker 3: Saint Louis, and then I drove the rest of away
Speaker 3: the next day. And when I saw that Chicago skyline,
Speaker 3: I went, oh my god, what is that I've never
Speaker 3: seen anything like it. And I said one day, One day,
Speaker 3: I'm going to work in Chicago. And I went to Milwaukee,
Speaker 3: and the competitor in Milwaukee had a sister station in Detroit,
Speaker 3: and they hired me to go to Detroit to do
Speaker 3: tenant night till two in the morning. At that time,
Speaker 3: Detroit was the fifth largest city in the country. And
Speaker 3: I go, oh my god, I'm in absolutely the big time. Now.
Speaker 3: They didn't pay me any money, but I'm in the
Speaker 3: big time. So at age twenty, I went to Chicago
Speaker 3: NBC in Chicago and I'm the program director and I'm
Speaker 3: doing the afternoon show on the radio station. And I
Speaker 3: did the FM station there and then they sent me
Speaker 3: to New York to WNBC when I was twenty three.
Speaker 2: Those were very heady political times, late sixties, early seventies.
Speaker 2: Detroit was burning.
Speaker 3: Sixties and the sixties. I came there not much after that.
Speaker 3: The country was in turmoil, Nixon resigning, you know, everything,
Speaker 3: the draft. I escaped the draft because I have one eye.
Speaker 3: So I was four f so I was never going in. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I lost an eye as a child, my right
Speaker 3: eye lost an eye as a child in a horseback
Speaker 3: riding accident, so I was not going to be drafted.
Speaker 3: But I also had a They had a lottery for
Speaker 3: my age group, and I happened to get a good
Speaker 3: number for the lottery. Said the lottery numbers completely wasted
Speaker 3: on me, so the draft. But the draft was there
Speaker 3: every And by the way, I still had a draft
Speaker 3: card because too they get called up and get classified
Speaker 3: as four F you have to have the draft card.
Speaker 3: But that was going on. And remember we had the
Speaker 3: the oil embargo, so we had to wait days to
Speaker 3: get our gasoline. And it was just an inflation went
Speaker 3: wild and the economy went terrible and through the seventies.
Speaker 3: So I lived through all that. I didn't know what
Speaker 3: I was looking at. By the way, I'd never driven
Speaker 3: in snow until I got to Detroit and someone took
Speaker 3: me to a parking lot one day and taught me
Speaker 3: how to drive in snow. But I learned a lot.
Speaker 3: Did you do something bad?
Speaker 2: Going back to the food when you left is being
Speaker 2: cooked for by your mother, being shopped for, buying your mother,
Speaker 2: having wild squirrels, and then you were on your own.
Speaker 2: Did you just forget about the food that you've grown
Speaker 2: up with and grab what you could, and did you
Speaker 2: have an apartment where cook did you have a girlfriend
Speaker 2: who cooked for you? Did you have a domestic life,
Speaker 2: because you haven't described any domestic life.
Speaker 3: I was completely a fiend for working, and I was
Speaker 3: so ambitious that I wanted to put all my efforts
Speaker 3: into working. I would eat whatever I could. I'd eat
Speaker 3: stuff out of a can. I felt it was like
Speaker 3: a college student eating. But when I went to Milwaukee
Speaker 3: back then, the regional foods and that's the first time
Speaker 3: I ever saw a submarine sam which I go, what
Speaker 3: the hell is that thing? So I discovered submarine sandwiches.
Speaker 3: I think I ate my first pizza in Detroit and
Speaker 3: you like it? Yeah, I liked it. It was not
Speaker 3: what I expected, and I probably got to I went
Speaker 3: to Pittsburgh in Chicago, I think I was Chicago before
Speaker 3: ever he ate an artichoke, and I.
Speaker 2: Remember the first time I ate an artichoke. I was
Speaker 2: at Harvard at a party and somebody passed around. I
Speaker 2: literally didn't know how to eat it. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what it was that you took the leaf off, you
Speaker 2: know that that was something that.
Speaker 3: Was A girlfriend introduced me to the artichoke, and she
Speaker 3: had to explain to me as if I'm some simpleton
Speaker 3: how I would eat it. And I thought, wow, this
Speaker 3: is so advanced. I can't wait to go back to
Speaker 3: Mississippi and tell him about an ARTI choke.
Speaker 2: When you were at home, Was it a big event
Speaker 2: for your family?
Speaker 3: Whenever I would come home, the cast iron skill was out.
Speaker 3: My mother always made fried okre because she knew it
Speaker 3: was my favorite, and we would probably have some fried catfish,
Speaker 3: which was also mine. And for year I'm a pilot,
Speaker 3: and for years I would stop if I was doing
Speaker 3: a trip and going anywhere near Memphis, or I would
Speaker 3: stop in Memphis. I would have called my cousins before
Speaker 3: get one of them to bring me some catfish and
Speaker 3: some barbecue to the plane and get some fuel there
Speaker 3: and take off, and so I eat the Rendezvous or
Speaker 3: Corky's barbecue for years there in the fried catfish vallets.
Speaker 2: What do you like about flying?
Speaker 3: You know, that's a really good question. I was in
Speaker 3: the fifth grade in Mississippi. My dad had a friend
Speaker 3: who had an airplane two seater, and he took me
Speaker 3: up in that plane, and I remember that sensation of
Speaker 3: like you're going up in elevator, but you don't come down.
Speaker 3: You just keep going. And I looked down in the
Speaker 3: sense of control. And my grandfather worked for a man
Speaker 3: in picking You in Mississippi who had a big lumber
Speaker 3: mill and plant. My grandfather ran it for him, and
Speaker 3: he had a plane, and my dad's cousin, my grandfather's,
Speaker 3: was the pilot for it. So when I would go
Speaker 3: to picking You, and my grandfather would let me go
Speaker 3: out and crawl all over the plane and hang out
Speaker 3: with these planes. And I was just eating up with airplanes.
Speaker 3: No idea why, but it's just something about flying. And
Speaker 3: over the years always found that I'd get in that
Speaker 3: cockpit and whatever I'm thinking about goes away, and I
Speaker 3: think about flying and I look down at the ground.
Speaker 3: On cross country, I stop at these places to get fuel.
Speaker 3: I try and stop. I used to try and stop anymore,
Speaker 3: but used to stop in all these little towns. So
Speaker 3: I had planes that didn't go very far before we
Speaker 3: needed more fuel. And I would often borrow a crew car,
Speaker 3: and while they're refueling the plane, I'd go into town
Speaker 3: and go to a restaurant, buy something, look around.
Speaker 2: You find out the food of the place.
Speaker 3: I can still remember I went to stop the North
Speaker 3: Carolina once and went into town ordered some barbecue and
Speaker 3: they brought me out this meat with like vinegar on it,
Speaker 3: and I go, I'm sorry, I ordered barbecue, and they go,
Speaker 3: this is barbecue. I go, boy, I don't know what
Speaker 3: this stuff is. Well to me, it was to them
Speaker 3: that was perfect barbecue. Where was it in North Carolina?
Speaker 3: And I actually a friend I met years ago. I
Speaker 3: met him at a mutual friend introduced this in a
Speaker 3: barbecue restaurant and we start banning a little bit, and
Speaker 3: I go, he's from North Carolina. Go, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know what that stuff is you have, but that's
Speaker 3: not barbecue. So I threw down the gauntlet. And so
Speaker 3: he organized a party that summer and invited all of
Speaker 3: his friends from the South to bring the barbecue from
Speaker 3: their home state. And it was such a great and
Speaker 3: he did it for a couple of years, which great fun.
Speaker 3: And you know, you realize South Carolina has this mustard
Speaker 3: based barbecue. Texas has barbecue that looks like Mississippi. It's
Speaker 3: red barbecue, nothing sweet about it. And then you get
Speaker 3: very chilly Chile and then you get up to Missouri
Speaker 3: or somewhere like that, and it is barbecue, but it's
Speaker 3: not pork. It's beef, and everywhere else is pork barbecue.
Speaker 3: So what's your favorite Mississippi?
Speaker 2: Of course question, because I remember I also talked to
Speaker 2: Al Gore and he talked a lot about the barbecue
Speaker 2: in Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Actually, at that party, the first party, his daughter came
Speaker 3: with her husband, and I was going to get my
Speaker 3: barbecue from Corky's in Memphis, and they got Corky's, so
Speaker 3: I couldn't do that, and so I had to get
Speaker 3: my cousin, who his partner was one of these barbecuers,
Speaker 3: like Championship Barbecue where they take the rig out on
Speaker 3: the weekends and they'd do with the barbecue vessel, and
Speaker 3: so he made some and they flew it up and
Speaker 3: I had I won the award for the best barbecue,
Speaker 3: but I totally cheated. This guy's like a blue ribbon barbecuer,
Speaker 3: and we pulled this stuff out and so it was
Speaker 3: that's my connection to Al's barbecue as well.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's very male barbecuing? I always wonder
Speaker 2: whether it's it gives men an excuse to cook.
Speaker 3: I think I think grilling in the South was sort
Speaker 3: of a male activity that they would hang out around
Speaker 3: the grill outside and do it. I think it's changed
Speaker 3: a lot. I don't think it's quite that way anymore.
Speaker 2: And then did you have a family quite early on?
Speaker 2: Did you have children?
Speaker 3: And I was twenty nine when I had my first child, son?
Speaker 2: Where was that? What city?
Speaker 3: New York?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And was that also work obsessed? So that you
Speaker 2: did you think about food?
Speaker 3: Then I'm really still work obsessed. I tell people work
Speaker 3: is my golf. I quite enjoyed. It's like the most
Speaker 3: interesting puzzle you could possibly play a game and love
Speaker 3: playing it. And I often described to my kids. I
Speaker 3: read somewhere don't go home and complain about your work
Speaker 3: to your kids, because they'll say, if you hate it
Speaker 3: that much, why are you doing that instead of being
Speaker 3: with me? So you should actually be honest and say
Speaker 3: I really enjoy my work and then say, okay, well
Speaker 3: I understand why you do that instead of be with me.
Speaker 3: And so with that in mind, I used to tell
Speaker 3: my kid, you know, this is like the greatest video
Speaker 3: game in the world. In the morning, I can't wait
Speaker 3: to get them and start playing it. At the end
Speaker 3: of the day, I don't quite want to put it away, but.
Speaker 2: Did you eat when you work? Do you still stop?
Speaker 3: I have a terrible habit. Then when I start thinking
Speaker 3: and we start like okay, let's get in the room,
Speaker 3: let's start white boarding, I have to eat. I don't
Speaker 3: know what's the fuel in my brain. It's very bad
Speaker 3: for me because what I want to eat. And it
Speaker 3: was for years. They had a joke about how many
Speaker 3: bags of potato chips could I eat in an hour?
Speaker 3: And if there were cookies, I would eat. Everyone say
Speaker 3: oh everybody wants cookies. I would eat all the cookies.
Speaker 3: I would leave none for anyone else in a meeting
Speaker 3: and walking And now I try and modulate that with
Speaker 3: vegetables and something that's going to be good for me
Speaker 3: or some nuts.
Speaker 2: Were you too young for that kind of madmen to
Speaker 2: Martini lunch?
Speaker 3: I was just on the tail end of that. When
Speaker 3: I came to New York. In the media business, people
Speaker 3: drank every day at lunch and they had a bar
Speaker 3: in their office. And so if you came to someone's office,
Speaker 3: say hey, can I get you a drink? Let's talk
Speaker 3: about this, and I'll take a vodka. And people are
Speaker 3: like soust and there were people you would never ask
Speaker 3: for a decision after lunch, you'd avoid them, or there
Speaker 3: were people you always wait until after lunch to ask
Speaker 3: them for a decision. The people who were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: that's great, go ahead and do that. Those were the
Speaker 3: people you ask after lunch, and the others that got
Speaker 3: cranky to stay away from them, ask them before they
Speaker 3: go to lunch.
Speaker 2: So you did go out for working lunches.
Speaker 3: Oh yes. In New York he did, and back at
Speaker 3: twenty one Club across I was at the Warner Communications
Speaker 3: for many years, which was a Rockefeller Center. Before that
Speaker 3: was at NBC, which was also Rockefeller Center, and I
Speaker 3: would go over to twenty one Club. We also had
Speaker 3: a Warner by the time I rose up to be
Speaker 3: a high enough executive, we had a corporate dining room
Speaker 3: and that was a great luxury and something you don't
Speaker 3: see today. I mean, there would be hoppers on the
Speaker 3: wall and the chef would cook you anything you wanted,
Speaker 3: and it was sort of extravagant meals. And I'd say,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have time to go up there.
Speaker 3: Instead of ordering a sandwich, the chef would come down
Speaker 3: to my office and go, what would you like me
Speaker 3: to make for you to I haven't got it. So
Speaker 3: and so and so I could do this and this
Speaker 3: and this, say I'll take that.
Speaker 2: Henry Cravis, you know Henry Sure, he had a fantastic food.
Speaker 2: I was always so impressed with the food that he
Speaker 2: did in London. Well, I had one of the chefs
Speaker 2: in the River Cafe went to work for him. That
Speaker 2: anybody could have their choice. You could order a steak,
Speaker 2: or you could order a lobster. You could, and that
Speaker 2: the idea of actually feeding well the people who worked
Speaker 2: for you was an obligation and actually good for business
Speaker 2: because you gave people.
Speaker 3: In those days, it was the senior executives. It was
Speaker 3: a very limited perk. When I went to America Online,
Speaker 3: where I was president of America Online for a while,
Speaker 3: we had in our campus in Dulles, Virginia, we had
Speaker 3: a cafeteria and everybody got to eat there, and we
Speaker 3: provided food that seemed much more egalitarian and much fairer.
Speaker 3: And maybe the food wasn't quite as nice, but it
Speaker 3: was there as affordable. People didn't have to go off
Speaker 3: campus to go find a place to eat or bring
Speaker 3: their food in a bag.
Speaker 2: Richard, my husband always had a place for people to
Speaker 2: eat in his office. You know that there was a
Speaker 2: place where you could, you know, work on a drawing
Speaker 2: for a building and then go down and have lunch
Speaker 2: with the person that you were talking about it with,
Speaker 2: or you would meet. And Michael Bloomberg does that very
Speaker 2: seriously in his offices of actually providing free food.
Speaker 3: He was almost a pioneer of doing that at the
Speaker 3: level of which he did it. And you know, it's
Speaker 3: interesting because it changes today because you can get delivery
Speaker 3: like you never could before. I'm one of those people
Speaker 3: that if I'm in the office, I don't want to
Speaker 3: go out because I don't want to disrupt the work,
Speaker 3: and somebody just sort of slides a plate in front
Speaker 3: of me. If I'm meeting with someone, they'll ask them
Speaker 3: what would you like? And today in New York we
Speaker 3: order from great restaurants. Yeah, say whatever you want, we'll
Speaker 3: order for you.
Speaker 2: Tell that to me. I'm a restaurant. I have a restaurant.
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear these stories.
Speaker 3: But it was by the way. I don't know what
Speaker 3: the profit margin is, but probably not bad because there's
Speaker 3: no overhead except to getting the food to me. The
Speaker 3: ones I think are tougher. Whoever, those people are who
Speaker 3: are delivering? It can't possible been making any money?
Speaker 2: And what about your family children? As your parents sat
Speaker 2: down with you every night for dinner, did you do
Speaker 2: that with your children or you were working? Now?
Speaker 3: Well, I just found I don't know whether it's the
Speaker 3: busy New York life or whether it was our family,
Speaker 3: but I found everybody so wanted to eat when they
Speaker 3: wanted to eat, and sort of indulge that. And if
Speaker 3: I went out eat, I was going out at nine o'clock,
Speaker 3: not at their timetable. So I would sit with kids
Speaker 3: when they were eating in the afternoon for their dinner.
Speaker 3: And I think as they got older, they wanted to
Speaker 3: do this or that, and they wanted to do with
Speaker 3: the friends, and so it was not at all what
Speaker 3: the meal was for me.
Speaker 2: Are they interested in food? There? Kids? Are they cooking?
Speaker 3: My oldest son's a really good cook and very interested
Speaker 3: in food, knows a lot about it, has great knife
Speaker 3: skills and cooking skills, and knows how to do it.
Speaker 3: My daughter was always a great baker and enjoyed baking stuff.
Speaker 3: I was off sugar for about three years and for
Speaker 3: my sixtieth birthday, my daughter said, Daddy, if I make
Speaker 3: you a cake, Will you eat a piece? And I
Speaker 3: go sure. I ate that piece of cake and it
Speaker 3: triggered me and I eat ice cream that night. I
Speaker 3: eat the cookies, I eat everything, and I'm ten years later,
Speaker 3: I'm still not able to get off sugar for any
Speaker 3: more than a month or so. And my middle son
Speaker 3: is it doesn't like to eat, so it's like for
Speaker 3: him eating the chore.
Speaker 2: Can we have a moment on the tequila?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Okay, So tell me how that story started.
Speaker 3: Well, I had a house in San Miguelde Ende in Mexico,
Speaker 3: wonderful old you know, school World Heritage site up in
Speaker 3: the mountains north of Mexico City and the big ax
Speaker 3: Pat population, and there was a bootleg tequila in town
Speaker 3: that all the expats loved because it was so smooth.
Speaker 3: Most tequila has sort of that Wentz factor where you'd
Speaker 3: need some salt or lime making your face grimace, and
Speaker 3: this had none of that. It was smooth. It was
Speaker 3: like a great whiskey. And my son came to visit.
Speaker 3: He was working in Vegas at the time. He brought
Speaker 3: his buddy who ran a nightclub in Vegas, and we
Speaker 3: drank this stuff one night and this stuff came in
Speaker 3: a plastic jug, and his friend said. The next morning,
Speaker 3: he goes, you know, mister quitment, I sell Christal in
Speaker 3: my club for a thousand dollars a bottle, so I
Speaker 3: could get ten thousand dollars a jug for this. And
Speaker 3: I think, wow, there's a business idea. I'm just doing investing,
Speaker 3: then not really working that hard. I go back to
Speaker 3: New York a month or so later, and I sort
Speaker 3: of still thinking about it and sort of think, who
Speaker 3: do I know in this spirit's business? And the dance
Speaker 3: was really no one. Six months later I met a
Speaker 3: party in Brooklyn, meet this interesting Mexican lady, chatting for
Speaker 3: a while, and somewhere in the conversation I says, so
Speaker 3: what do you do for a living? She goes, I
Speaker 3: run Jose Quevo and North America. It's fate. Quit your job,
Speaker 3: come be my partner. Have a great idea. And she
Speaker 3: was sort of wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I mean,
Speaker 3: leaving a good career was tough for her. And about
Speaker 3: two months later I finally commenced her she should do it.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, naively, we'll just take this illegal stuff and
Speaker 3: make it legal and import it she calls me and said,
Speaker 3: by by bad news, said, I put that tequila through
Speaker 3: a test and guess what is not tequila? They mixed
Speaker 3: to aurguardiante and other stuff with it. So it's not
Speaker 3: nothing we can do with. But I have an idea,
Speaker 3: which she always does, because she's one of those people
Speaker 3: that there's never a problem. Just this problem and solution
Speaker 3: go together, and I go to Mexico. A couple of
Speaker 3: weeks later, she is convinced the master tequila maker of
Speaker 3: Mexico to come out of retirement to do one more tequila.
Speaker 3: And he takes this bootleg stuff and he go, there's
Speaker 3: a process I've always wanted to try on tequila. I'm
Speaker 3: certain I can make this out of one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of gobby, which makes it tequila. And so they I
Speaker 3: gave him some money for a lab. About nine months later,
Speaker 3: they came back with about six variations, and over the
Speaker 3: two day period, we drank them all and picked one.
Speaker 3: And that became consider going a shoven, which is our signature.
Speaker 2: And you picked the one that you thought.
Speaker 3: Was sort of the smooth, This had the most flavor.
Speaker 3: What makes Costa Dragonas so special is the way we
Speaker 3: make it. We preserve the flavor of the agabi. A
Speaker 3: lot of what you taste in tequila is that's sort
Speaker 3: of harsh taste and it's sort of the flavor has
Speaker 3: been burned out of the agabi, and in considragonas if
Speaker 3: you just smell it, you'll pick up pear notes, pepper, citrus, vanilla,
Speaker 3: and so the secret of it is preserving that flavor.
Speaker 3: And it's been great fun.
Speaker 2: Does it tempt you to do something else? Like wine?
Speaker 2: Would you want to buy it? No?
Speaker 3: If I had known how hard it is, I probably
Speaker 3: wouldn't have done this. What started as a lark wound
Speaker 3: up being, you know, a major project. But it's turned
Speaker 3: out well.
Speaker 2: And SOA we had it the other night at the
Speaker 2: River Cafe. I think tequila. Having lived in Mexico for
Speaker 2: four months, I really got used to having tequila with food,
Speaker 2: and not just Mexican food. I think it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just a drink that you can drink through, do
Speaker 2: you yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: So. You have houses all over, whether it's Jamaica or
Speaker 2: Mexico or New York and Miami, and what is when
Speaker 2: you go to those different places? Are you affected by
Speaker 2: the food as well? In Jamaica, do you crave something
Speaker 2: that will be remind you of Jamaica.
Speaker 3: I think when you go to a place, the food's
Speaker 3: a very important part of it. When I go to Jamaica,
Speaker 3: crave jerk. You can't get enough at Aqi saltfish for breakfast.
Speaker 3: There are unique foods there. And when I go to
Speaker 3: La There it's interesting. There is I live very near
Speaker 3: in Venice, Arawan, which is you know, probably what the
Speaker 3: most expensive grocery store was crazy, But it's fun and
Speaker 3: so we sort of play with the food there. Go
Speaker 3: to Malibu. It's mostly seafood that we have there, and
Speaker 3: you know, fresh farm vegetables. Miami has got everything now
Speaker 3: an interesting sort of food capital. New York, of course
Speaker 3: is New York. What do you want? And it's there?
Speaker 3: And I'm building a house in Portugal. That's sort of
Speaker 3: discovering the Portuguese cuisine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you have chefs in each No?
Speaker 3: No, no, I don't you just go Yeah, Casey, we'll
Speaker 3: hire somebody to come in and cook. But part of
Speaker 3: the funest cooking ourselves or going out to the restaurant.
Speaker 2: And if food is a sense of discovery, it's also comfort.
Speaker 2: My last question to you on this boat on our
Speaker 2: time together. Is if you were saying that you needed food,
Speaker 2: not to alleviate hunger or to remind you of a memory,
Speaker 2: but you needed comfort. Is there a food that you
Speaker 2: would turn to?
Speaker 3: Ice cream? Ice cream, ice cream, cookies, yea chocolate, okay?
Speaker 3: And if they're poisoned to me, I just have to
Speaker 3: keep them away. If I have them in the refrigerator,
Speaker 3: I'll say, I'm not going to have any and then
Speaker 3: I'll go through the refrigerator, literally look at the freezer
Speaker 3: and walk away, and then I'll get closer to it
Speaker 3: and then I'll open it up and look at it.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to resist that open it up. Then I'll go,
Speaker 3: I'll have one spoonful and then suddenly I've eaten the
Speaker 3: entire container of ice cream. And I'm absolutely, like, you know,
Speaker 3: addict kind of behavior with those comfort foods, and none
Speaker 3: other foods are like take it or leave it. But
Speaker 3: those are the ones that really get me. And by
Speaker 3: the way, and I guess when you say you know
Speaker 3: it's the comfort food, it's the ones that make me
Speaker 3: hate myself for eating them because it's so good and
Speaker 3: so delicious and feels so good and so addictive.
Speaker 2: It looks to me like you look pretty well, you
Speaker 2: talk beautifully. You're my new friend, and I would go
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love it. Thank you, You've given me great permission.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and thank you for great dinner.
Speaker 2: We had a great many more.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
Speaker 1: and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
Speaker 1: with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book
Speaker 1: has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
Speaker 1: host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
Speaker 1: for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for
Speaker 1: cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production
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