Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, hope you well. Sorry to be familiar. I
Speaker 2: just am because I'm ill. They always look like.
Speaker 3: He's quite familiar, is that guy?
Speaker 2: Hell?
Speaker 4: I can't say how many times when arriving in the
Speaker 4: River Cafe in a taxi the driver will turned around
Speaker 4: to me and say, is this the restaurant where Jamie
Speaker 4: Oliver cooked the other day? One even informed me that
Speaker 4: the River Cafe was owned by Jamie, and I thought,
Speaker 4: why correct him? He is a prodigal son or the
Speaker 4: brother who knows that when he walks in the door
Speaker 4: of the restaurant, he is.
Speaker 2: Home, not the old day. When was the last time
Speaker 2: you're here?
Speaker 3: I try and get here at least two or three
Speaker 3: times a year if I'm lucky, and I have to say,
Speaker 3: it's a bit like therapy really see Charles.
Speaker 2: Which always makes me very happy.
Speaker 3: We normally go through the same old jokes and then
Speaker 3: crack onto a bit of new news, friends and family.
Speaker 2: But there's lots of nostalgia, isn't there.
Speaker 5: I think one of the things you always said is
Speaker 5: that you love the reset of coming back to the
Speaker 5: River Cap something you and Beggsy always said, Yeah, as
Speaker 5: you go out into the world, and then it's quite
Speaker 5: nice to get back to your roots and taste a
Speaker 5: bit of that, get that River Cap experience again.
Speaker 2: It's like being home, which is lovely.
Speaker 4: Jamie came to work with us when he was just
Speaker 4: about twenty, I guess almost thirty years ago. Rose Gray
Speaker 4: interviewed him for the job and as it always said,
Speaker 4: it was love at first sight.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Euthie. Well, I love that. I remember the
Speaker 3: first time Rose interviewed me.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker 3: Well, I had been working at the Nil Street restaurant
Speaker 3: for a year and a half and I knew it
Speaker 3: was time for me to move on. And I just
Speaker 3: read this book, the first River Cafe book Blue, and
Speaker 3: it just like changed everything. It was like it's like
Speaker 3: a moment because just from a design point of view
Speaker 3: and a feeling point of view and the black and
Speaker 3: white reportage photos and it was.
Speaker 2: Like fresh air.
Speaker 3: And I knew I had to get there, so I
Speaker 3: phoned up and I came in. I was quite skin
Speaker 3: and I had my first suit that was a really
Speaker 3: cheap suit. Honestly, it was if it had gone near
Speaker 3: a candle. We had gone up in flames so quickly,
Speaker 3: and I turned up in a suit with a terrible
Speaker 3: tie because my dad always said, like make an effort.
Speaker 3: And I remember the headshef at the time and all
Speaker 3: the chef's looking around just thinking like he's in a suitcase.
Speaker 2: You don't really wear suits the customers. But we definitely
Speaker 2: bonded on.
Speaker 3: I think Ravioli was the place that we kind of
Speaker 3: connected and then the rest was history.
Speaker 4: Then did you come straight up?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I couldn't wait.
Speaker 3: And it was like it was an amazing time because
Speaker 3: you know, obviously you always look back with romance, but
Speaker 3: it was an amazing time in Britain. And the River
Speaker 3: Cafe was on fire and had come from, you know,
Speaker 3: such humble beginnings. But was this extraordinary, unconventional restaurant doing
Speaker 3: incredible things run of course by and Ruth in the
Speaker 3: amazing team, but you know, cool Britannia, the music scene,
Speaker 3: the fashion scene, the photography scene, the art scene. I
Speaker 3: remember cooking with you for a new labor before they
Speaker 3: got in, and during that they got in, and and
Speaker 3: I remember the Millennium Dome as a sketch on a tablecloth,
Speaker 3: and I remember it as a as a model that
Speaker 3: was just a few meters away from the pastry section
Speaker 3: while making chocolate Nemesis.
Speaker 2: And then I remember the real one, and.
Speaker 4: Did you do you remember I was I was nineteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was nineteen years old and I came here
Speaker 3: and I was.
Speaker 4: Ninety ninety eight, ninety eight, yeah, maybe ninety eight, but
Speaker 4: nice memriag wondered Blair when the election wasn't ninety seven.
Speaker 4: And then, as you said, there were the kind of excitement,
Speaker 4: a kind of melding also politics and food and as
Speaker 4: you say, culture and excitement. I certainly remember Rose calling
Speaker 4: me up. I think I was away clearly when you were.
Speaker 4: When you came through an interview in the suit, I
Speaker 4: would have remembered it. And she said, you know, Ruthie,
Speaker 4: this one you're going to love. This is you know,
Speaker 4: this is somebody.
Speaker 2: I was so keen.
Speaker 3: I was so keen, and it felt like a family
Speaker 3: straight away, and I'd grown up obviously in a family restaurant.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: My last bit of advice from my dad to me
Speaker 3: was like, just whoever you work for, just treat their
Speaker 3: business like yours. And you haven't got one job, You've
Speaker 3: got every job. If the phone rings picks it up.
Speaker 3: If your floor needs moping, mop it. And I remember
Speaker 3: just sort of coming to the River Cafe and it
Speaker 3: actually felt like a family, which is actually it is
Speaker 3: more rare than it's not that common even now in restaurants.
Speaker 3: What you and Rose were doing was so untraditional from
Speaker 3: what the kind of machine teaches. So I felt like
Speaker 3: I was being liberated.
Speaker 4: Well, your friend Ed Baines once said that, you know,
Speaker 4: when he came to work for us, he said, you
Speaker 4: know that song, I did it my way. Well you
Speaker 4: should say we did it were away and we didn't
Speaker 4: know what we were doing, but we just knew that
Speaker 4: we were doing it our work.
Speaker 3: But you were right right, because I think what had
Speaker 3: happened is I mean, I feel like I can look
Speaker 3: at it objectively now, but like training is fine, but
Speaker 3: it's it's for consistency, and you have structure, and it's
Speaker 3: it was very male dominant, and which is very testosterone dominant.
Speaker 3: And to go from that typical training and typical kitchens
Speaker 3: to you and Rose was the most visceral, emotional, maternal,
Speaker 3: common sense logical thing that ever happened to me. Ever,
Speaker 3: and and because you were you, I mean, I know
Speaker 3: you know what has happened here a special but when
Speaker 3: you're an outsider coming in, it was it was like
Speaker 3: someone had invented a new type of music. And I
Speaker 3: remember the sheer worry of writing a menu at say
Speaker 3: three point thirty for customers coming at six, because normally
Speaker 3: your trains do like monthly menus, and here we are
Speaker 3: doing two a day every day. And I remember just
Speaker 3: doing the jobs list, and I remember seeing like you'd
Speaker 3: have random people bringing in like overly Caesar mushrooms and you, well, Rob,
Speaker 3: I start, we'll put them on now, and it's like,
Speaker 3: but we just put no now, and like nothing everything
Speaker 3: was now, and it was all about freshness, and that
Speaker 3: energy was I remember. I remember thinking about crying for
Speaker 3: about three weeks, not because of you or the team,
Speaker 3: but just because of the stress of a new menu
Speaker 3: twice a day was completely outside of what I knew.
Speaker 3: But then you get used to it, and I learned
Speaker 3: what you created was thinkers, Yeah, people that could adjust
Speaker 3: and react to seasons and everything that was happening in
Speaker 3: the industry was about protocol and structures and safety, whereas
Speaker 3: we I don't know. It was so exciting to have
Speaker 3: two women as bosses and owners. I think very male
Speaker 3: driven kitchens, and I'm not saying this for any effect,
Speaker 3: like quite aggressive, often flooded with drugs, and it was
Speaker 3: quite scary. Yeah, And I knew those kitchens and I'd
Speaker 3: worked in London and abroad and things like that, so
Speaker 3: it was you know, even when I come in today,
Speaker 3: you can see there's this lovely fifty to fifty balance
Speaker 3: of them. And that's the holy grail I think. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think if you skew one way or the other,
Speaker 3: you can get issues, but.
Speaker 2: You know, it's but the thinking was so different. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it also helped us so much having chefs
Speaker 4: who worked in other kitchens, because neither of us. Rose
Speaker 4: did a bit with McNally's in New York and a
Speaker 4: bit with Carlucci. But somehow I remember the joy of having,
Speaker 4: you know, young people who had actually experienced other kitchens
Speaker 4: or contributed to us, who taught us, you know.
Speaker 3: The yin and yang of you and was really a
Speaker 3: precious one as well, because you're you crossed over in
Speaker 3: the middle, but you had strengths on other sides, and
Speaker 3: that was quite.
Speaker 2: Interesting to see a great partner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, you know, like also having the
Speaker 3: open kitchen where there was that connection with the customer.
Speaker 4: Remember we used to answer the telephone and take reservations
Speaker 4: when maybe it was before the time, but I literally remember, no,
Speaker 4: I remember writing it down. You know, it's a table
Speaker 4: for four, table for six, you know. And then going
Speaker 4: back to kind of stirring the the televant in my head.
Speaker 4: But if we go back, because you talk, you spoke
Speaker 4: about your father, and you speak about, you know, the
Speaker 4: way you grow up. And just even in the first
Speaker 4: five minutes of conversation, he's present and he's telling you,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's to wear a tie, or to
Speaker 4: be curious, or to treat a restaurant in a certain way.
Speaker 4: So why don't we maybe begin also a little bit
Speaker 4: at the beginning with the ol of our household. So
Speaker 4: how many siblings do you have?
Speaker 2: I have one sister ancestor. She's a year younger than me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And so when you were growing up, who did
Speaker 4: the cooking? Was it your mother? Father she did?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean dad was a chain chef and he'd started
Speaker 3: really young and also grew up in a pub that
Speaker 3: did very good food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his father.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they still have Yeah, they had have a
Speaker 3: pub called the Plow and Sow in Paglesham, which is
Speaker 3: in a dead end near the River Blackwater, which is
Speaker 3: where we used to get sea bass from Ben's Fish and.
Speaker 4: Then fish yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Yeah and West Mersey Oysters. Yes.
Speaker 3: So that's where Dad grew up. And I was born
Speaker 3: actually in South Fuckington, in South Fuckington in Grays, Essex,
Speaker 3: so right in the estuary of Essex and got devastated
Speaker 3: in the war. And Dad was the youngest license holder
Speaker 3: in the country at the time. I believe he was seventeen. No, no,
Speaker 3: I think in those days you could have it a
Speaker 3: bit younger. He was at least eighteen, but I think
Speaker 3: he was even younger. And then he had me at twenty.
Speaker 3: So as soon as I was born, we got a
Speaker 3: tatty old pub that was beautiful in a little village
Speaker 3: called Clavering and it was a sixteenth century pub and
Speaker 3: I obviously grew up there, but Dad, I mean I
Speaker 3: remember a few things.
Speaker 2: That stuck out.
Speaker 3: So the chalkboards were daily, so that gave me some
Speaker 3: sort of connection with the river cafe changing daily. The
Speaker 3: game was local, the fish was only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 3: Lots of live crabs and lobsters and whole fish, whole
Speaker 3: animals coming in to be butchered. He had a brigade
Speaker 3: I only ever remember a brigade of at least six
Speaker 3: on a shift. And the pastry was a proper pastry
Speaker 3: of sort of Anglo French Swiss style. Am yeah, well
Speaker 3: I thought it was normal, but of course even now
Speaker 3: it's not normal. And you know, typical would have been
Speaker 3: freezers full of stuff you could reheat. And he was trained, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he really I mean he didn't go to school
Speaker 3: much as a child, but he got a Student of
Speaker 3: the Year at South End College and went and worked
Speaker 3: in France as well, so he was kind of he
Speaker 3: had a really good start. But he ran the pub,
Speaker 3: and I remember little things like the head chef was
Speaker 3: paid more than he paid himself, and I remember as
Speaker 3: a child going with that carb be right, and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: we've got to invest in the quality and get the
Speaker 3: brigades steady. And of course these are all real things.
Speaker 3: But it had a bar side and then it had
Speaker 3: a restaurant side, which meant there was slightly two tones
Speaker 3: of cooking with food, yeah, and quite Anglo French cooking,
Speaker 3: so kind of things that you would get I guess
Speaker 3: at the Wolseley or kind of like rules, you know,
Speaker 3: classics like simply cooked game and beautiful over souls, you know,
Speaker 3: cooked how you.
Speaker 2: Liked it, but everything homemade.
Speaker 3: So that was I just wanted to go to London
Speaker 3: for five years so I could learn some things then
Speaker 3: come back and run apart.
Speaker 4: I remember, actually I remember you kind of very really
Speaker 4: quite late. You were always really interested in the pub.
Speaker 4: Did your mother work there as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was a classic land lady in the sense
Speaker 3: of that's not like an east Enders land lady, like
Speaker 3: it's quite a glamorous role. And mum was very glamorous.
Speaker 3: All I remember with my mum honestly was she'd get
Speaker 3: ready for two hours, the smell of that hair spray
Speaker 3: from the gold canister, and rollers, always enrollers, and then
Speaker 3: this and always in sort of like nineties, and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden this outfit came on and the
Speaker 3: hair was out, and then she'd go down about eight fifteen.
Speaker 2: Two hours oh.
Speaker 3: And and just work in the locals and it was
Speaker 3: a busy pub. And I think, I guess, in a
Speaker 3: sort of cheesy sense, we went from a working class
Speaker 3: family to a classic middle class family in about thirteen years.
Speaker 4: The cooking for you and your sister, how would she
Speaker 4: do that? Between rolling her hair?
Speaker 3: She would do all the books, all the high Well,
Speaker 3: Mum would do the hiring and Dad would do the firing,
Speaker 3: and often Mum had to run after people that Dad
Speaker 3: had fired to rehire them because he hadn't dealt with
Speaker 3: the problem quite right. But Mum mainly did like classic
Speaker 3: things really, like, you know, did you live in the pub? Yeah? So,
Speaker 3: like my bedroom was not much bigger than this room,
Speaker 3: which is like two and a half by four. Of course,
Speaker 3: it was sixteenth century, so there's gaps all around the edges.
Speaker 3: So everyone smoked such a lot. So you know, God
Speaker 3: forbid I ever do get anything unhealthy with my lungs.
Speaker 3: But if it was, it was because I had passive
Speaker 3: smoking as a child.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 4: You lived over so would you you had a diving
Speaker 4: room and a kitchen or not?
Speaker 2: Really there was.
Speaker 3: There was two bedrooms in a front room, but in
Speaker 3: the front room we had a little table, so we
Speaker 3: Mum would cook down in the commercial kitchen in between shifts.
Speaker 4: She would cook dinner for you and your Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: They cooked well and Mum still cooks well today and
Speaker 3: Dad still cooks well, but dad they're both retired now,
Speaker 3: and which they did in lockdown.
Speaker 4: So you can you can imagine living upstairs from this pub,
Speaker 4: having your parents.
Speaker 2: You know, always customers a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but of course I worked at the weekends for
Speaker 3: pocket money.
Speaker 2: What did you do?
Speaker 3: I started up bottling up, which is replace certain. Well,
Speaker 3: you go and look at the bar after a busy night,
Speaker 3: and you look at all the empty shelves and if
Speaker 3: you're lucky, you can see a little round marks where
Speaker 3: all the bottles had sat, and you'd count them and
Speaker 3: then you'd replace them, and then you'd recycle the bottles.
Speaker 4: How old were you when this was going on? Nine?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was in the wash up by ten.
Speaker 3: And the wash up involved a lot of vegge preps,
Speaker 3: so not dissimilar to at the River Cafe when you're
Speaker 3: picking the herbs and all the stuff. And then I
Speaker 3: really wanted to get into the kitchen, so I was
Speaker 3: probably fully in the kitchen by about eleven. And they
Speaker 3: had sections, so they had veg starters, mate, and they split.
Speaker 3: You'd have someone putting food in the oven, someone taking
Speaker 3: it out and serving it and then a pastry section.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean i'd probably by the time I
Speaker 3: was sixteen, I'd done the rotation of the kitchen maybe
Speaker 3: three times. So I remember having to develop a skill
Speaker 3: to teaching cooking. When I say teaching, like if you
Speaker 3: had a twenty one year old come in from college
Speaker 3: to get a job, as it's a commie chef, I'd
Speaker 3: be fourteen and I'd have to train him. And obviously,
Speaker 3: when you're fourteen, you haven't got a hair on your chin,
Speaker 3: and these twenty one year olds looked like men. So
Speaker 3: I had to sort of develop a way of teaching
Speaker 3: without getting a slap that make them feel like they
Speaker 3: were teaching themselves, and like teaching like well you left
Speaker 3: or right handed? Okay, work from left to right.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So this is this dish, and we prep this and
Speaker 3: prep that, and we put that, put that on ice,
Speaker 3: and you know, just try and set it up for
Speaker 3: service so the service can flow. And I, obviously, being young,
Speaker 3: I was cocky as well, so I often ended up
Speaker 3: in the freezer. I often ended up with like why
Speaker 3: because I've been maybe back, like somebody puts you in
Speaker 3: the free freezer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I close the door.
Speaker 2: And sit on it shin.
Speaker 3: It was a bit like the shining. If I'm honest,
Speaker 3: I'm sure it was illegal. I'm sure it was with love.
Speaker 3: But I'd finish shifts and take my jacket off and
Speaker 3: there'd be clothes pegs with like there'd be like one
Speaker 3: hundred clothes pegs and a few signs saying very unkind things.
Speaker 4: Does your father know they would?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he felt it was a kind of
Speaker 3: initiation of some description. So of course, by the time
Speaker 3: I was eighteen, I was well versed to stuff.
Speaker 4: Wow, I think that I do you think that might
Speaker 4: go on now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think.
Speaker 3: I think wherever you have teams and institutionalized sort of training,
Speaker 3: which I think kitchens have been, that there's that going on,
Speaker 3: and it can be for best or for worst. I
Speaker 3: think it's you posted something with your your team and
Speaker 3: it was very clearly a fifty to fifty split of
Speaker 3: men and women. I reposted it because.
Speaker 2: It's me Well, it was so powerful.
Speaker 3: The balance is so important in a really happy kitchen,
Speaker 3: and if it's one hundred percent men or hell breaks loose,
Speaker 3: and you know, if you can get to twenty percent,
Speaker 3: that's amazing.
Speaker 2: But fifty to fifty is definitely the h that's the think.
Speaker 4: There is a feeling that I mean, it's something that
Speaker 4: I've always said that when people call up and say
Speaker 4: a journalist might say, Wow, it's it's so hard being
Speaker 4: a chef. It's so stressful, and I go, it must
Speaker 4: be really hard being a journalist. You know, God, it
Speaker 4: must be so stressful, because in a way you want
Speaker 4: to take our profession and have it not be different
Speaker 4: from other professions. You know, the kind of myth that
Speaker 4: because we have to do you know, service so quickly,
Speaker 4: or we have difficult customers, or chefs are yelling, that's
Speaker 4: so old fashioned in a way. And now, certainly the
Speaker 4: young people who work in the River Cafe're just not
Speaker 4: going to put up with that anymore.
Speaker 2: I think just we're over that.
Speaker 3: I think as a kid that struggled in school, and
Speaker 3: as an adult now with kids sort of looking at
Speaker 3: where AI and technology and all the things that are
Speaker 3: going to happen around learning and how that's going to
Speaker 3: check affects learning in schools in the future. I think,
Speaker 3: what I can I can thank you for a thousand things,
Speaker 3: but one of the things that is most precious that
Speaker 3: you and Rose taught me and the institution the family
Speaker 3: that you create was how to think for yourself. So
Speaker 3: that's really interesting because learning stuff is learning stuff, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of what happens in school, but problem solving
Speaker 3: and resilience and reacting to weather, which is therefore seasons,
Speaker 3: which is therefore ingredients, which is therefore the two shifts
Speaker 3: today that you know, Like it was really interesting as
Speaker 3: a young chef, I would watch brilliant chefs come out
Speaker 3: of Michilin Star kitchens and they go and do their
Speaker 3: own thing, and they'd be doing versions of the same
Speaker 3: thing that they left. And if you look at the
Speaker 3: family tree that's come from the River Cafe, I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess Sam and Sam from Morrow is a really
Speaker 3: good first example, Like you can see River Cafe through
Speaker 3: their heart and their soul. But it's they did this
Speaker 3: incredible North African you know, and they not only went
Speaker 3: into restaurants, they opened pizzerias and sandwich but they just
Speaker 3: did brilliant things and you created thinkers, and I think
Speaker 3: that's different. I always tell people there's ways to run
Speaker 3: a kitchen. One is sort of through fear, and one
Speaker 3: is through family.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and family is a bit slower, but you get
Speaker 3: much more back in return, and fear is very efficient,
Speaker 3: but you get so little back.
Speaker 2: In the long run. I feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3: That carl you chose. Was really interesting time for me
Speaker 3: because it was in the Nil Street.
Speaker 4: Restaurant signed by Terrence Conrad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and next door to the Neil Street I mean
Speaker 3: the Neil Street was famous for mushrooms and late night
Speaker 3: serving because of the opera house. The kitchen was hidden
Speaker 3: in the basement, so you didn't see much light all day,
Speaker 3: so I was pretty vitamin D deficient. And you know,
Speaker 3: Antonio was the wonderful character at the front door, smoking
Speaker 3: a cigar, having a little a little whisky or something,
Speaker 3: but not really in the kitchen. But Gennara was in
Speaker 3: the kitchen and he was an incredible drawer. But he
Speaker 3: didn't work in the restaurant. He worked in the very
Speaker 3: first Carluccio's Deli, driven by Priscillaccio, who was Antonio's wife,
Speaker 3: And that was really interesting because the kitchens were shared.
Speaker 3: And I did nine until three, and then I did
Speaker 3: six until one in.
Speaker 2: The morning every day every day.
Speaker 3: But then I did a third shift, which was three
Speaker 3: until seven with Gennaro.
Speaker 2: So I did a third secret.
Speaker 4: Shift and how many how that was like I was.
Speaker 2: But I was so young I could do it.
Speaker 3: I mean I couldn't do it now, but I was
Speaker 3: only really there to learn from Gennaro. And you know,
Speaker 3: I knew I just had to make bread with Gennaro. Really,
Speaker 3: so I'd asked Antonia. He said no. So I thought, well, look,
Speaker 3: if I'm here till one, I can get the ovens on,
Speaker 3: I can get the temperatures on, I can weigh out
Speaker 3: all the flowers, I can get all the kind of
Speaker 3: I kind of configured everything so he could work quicker,
Speaker 3: and because I thought, poor man is getting up at
Speaker 3: crack door and every day. So and one of the
Speaker 3: clever things I did with the bread was all the
Speaker 3: stale bread from that day they would finally whack, making
Speaker 3: too very fine bread crumbs to dust the trays.
Speaker 2: We have to get a lovely crunch.
Speaker 3: And I'd sack about one hundred trays up to make
Speaker 3: all these different breads, and I'd draw a little froud
Speaker 3: messages in there and sort of like say good good
Speaker 3: morning Gennaro, and just just to befriend him, because I
Speaker 3: didn't know Hi at that stage, and as soon as
Speaker 3: we became friends, he said, oh, don't worry about Antonio,
Speaker 3: just come in. But it was an amazing I mean,
Speaker 3: the restaurant was great. It was very traditional, slightly northern
Speaker 3: Italian stuff. But what happened at night was amazing. Like
Speaker 3: at four o'clock they had ding dong and there'd be
Speaker 3: thirty policemen that would come.
Speaker 4: In and four in the morning.
Speaker 3: Four in the morning before in the morning and I
Speaker 3: get up there, open them up. There's police out here, Gennaro, let.
Speaker 2: The bastards in.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh okay, and all these coppers were coming.
Speaker 3: But the clearly it was their home. They sat down
Speaker 3: as if it was their front room. They went behind
Speaker 3: the bar. They started making espressos and we'd reheat the
Speaker 3: stale bread from the day.
Speaker 2: Before, give them the dale stuff.
Speaker 3: We eat it, and then we give them some light
Speaker 3: honey and some jam and they'd be very happy and
Speaker 3: they would you think I'm making it up, But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was kind of great.
Speaker 4: British Bobby, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it happened anymore, but
Speaker 3: that sound like the good old day. Yeah, But they,
Speaker 3: I mean they were very romantic and I think you
Speaker 3: did give me a good base to tiptoe into the
Speaker 3: River Cafe, and but the River Cafe really was where
Speaker 3: my heart was at.
Speaker 4: You know. One of the amazing trajectories was when we
Speaker 4: did a film called what was it called Christmas at
Speaker 4: the Christmas at the River Gervet, and that was a
Speaker 4: film that you know, really I remember you know you
Speaker 4: fried mushrooms, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we did.
Speaker 3: I think Porlketta and Ritolo. And then I think I
Speaker 3: was on hots too one night. And obviously I can
Speaker 3: look at it back now sort of seeing because you,
Speaker 3: I think, correct me if I'm wrong. You were filming
Speaker 3: for a couple of weeks, the show that you were making,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't so sposed to be working that night.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I ever told you this. I
Speaker 2: don't know that.
Speaker 3: So the night that I was in the background of
Speaker 3: your program, I wasn't supposed to be working. I was
Speaker 3: off and my wife, Jewels was off as well, and
Speaker 3: she worked at the River Cafe on the front of house.
Speaker 3: We hadn't had a night off together for ages and
Speaker 3: the phone rang about four o'clock and one of the
Speaker 3: team had gone sick.
Speaker 2: Jewels, you know, with all the best in the world.
Speaker 2: I had to come and put the shift in, but
Speaker 2: that's when.
Speaker 3: The crew was there, and actually they were kind of
Speaker 3: in the way because I was catching my tail because
Speaker 3: I was an hour and a half late for the
Speaker 3: shift to cover someone and I was running Hot two, which,
Speaker 3: as you know, is one of your busiest sections. I'm
Speaker 3: sure it still is now. But it was free to
Speaker 3: misso tagleateeley if I remember with Girols and Risotto, I do,
Speaker 3: I do remember, and the slow pork of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't think anything of it. And the night went
Speaker 3: out on TV like many months later, maybe six months later.
Speaker 3: Possibly I didn't know I was in it because I
Speaker 3: was working. But then the phones started to ring the
Speaker 3: next day, literally the next day.
Speaker 4: I came in. I would say that I came in
Speaker 4: that morning and said, wow, Jamie, you did a really great,
Speaker 4: great thing with those mushrooms. You were amazing on television.
Speaker 4: And then the phone rang, and I remember where it was.
Speaker 4: The phone used to hang up on a hook in
Speaker 4: the kitchen just when you came in. It was before
Speaker 4: we had the really open kitchen, and it was a
Speaker 4: call for you from Pat Lewellen came over to me
Speaker 4: like Ruthie. Somebody just called me up and asked me
Speaker 4: if I wanted to do a screen test? What's a
Speaker 4: screen test? Should I go? And we didn't know anything,
Speaker 4: and then they said, Ruthie. The newspapers called up and said,
Speaker 4: do I want to do a column?
Speaker 2: Can I go? We had, sure, Jamie. And then a.
Speaker 4: Supermarket is called up, could I go? And I say
Speaker 4: that within a very short time, you had a column
Speaker 4: in a newspaper, a television show, an advertising campaign with
Speaker 4: the supermarket and they knew, they knew that you could
Speaker 4: do all this, and you showed them that you could and.
Speaker 2: You did it.
Speaker 3: I mean, when I think about it, I mean I
Speaker 3: remember when I had my twenty years anniversary and there
Speaker 3: was loads of people together, and to think that it
Speaker 3: really genuinely does come back to that phone court four
Speaker 3: o'clock saying can you cover?
Speaker 4: What was it like from being a chef in the
Speaker 4: river cap Who was around you, who was protecting you?
Speaker 2: Who was going I.
Speaker 3: Didn't, Yeah, I didn't really have any protection for a while.
Speaker 3: Everyone was perfectly lovely. But I'd done the first book,
Speaker 3: like I couldn't write or type, so I did it
Speaker 3: in dictaphone the responsibility of delivering it is like a nightmare.
Speaker 2: And then it was the naked chef for the first view.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so that was with the television show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was it was kind of
Speaker 3: like a year later. At least it was because what
Speaker 3: happened was they pitched, they pitched like a little show
Speaker 3: reel to Channel four and it sat with them for
Speaker 3: like six months and then they passed on it. It
Speaker 3: then went to BBC two and Mark Thompson commissioned it
Speaker 3: in seven days. So I think, like, you know, knowing
Speaker 3: what I do about commissioning now, I think there might
Speaker 3: have been a gap and like they probably had a
Speaker 3: BBC sort of remit for representing a wide group of
Speaker 3: people when I was a bit younger.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm making this up. By the way, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: I have asked him since because he runs The New
Speaker 3: York Times. Was he left, and he just said, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I think he just he just said, I
Speaker 3: just had a feeling and I took a call on it.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't happen that often.
Speaker 3: I mean, and TV is not as they're not they're
Speaker 3: very risk averse and normally if you're on Teley, I mean,
Speaker 3: how do we not come up with the Naked Chef?
Speaker 2: Which is I remember writing down what I.
Speaker 3: Would and wouldn't do on TV and it said, you know,
Speaker 3: stripping down restaurant food to its bear essentials.
Speaker 2: And stripping and bear a turenned me to the Naked Chef,
Speaker 2: which is was that your title? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I didn't come up with it, but before that, the
Speaker 3: working title was falking gorgeous, So thank god, I think,
Speaker 3: I mean, both both were looking quite shady, but I
Speaker 3: think Naked Chief just got away with it, and probably
Speaker 3: more than anything, hit a moment and a sound and
Speaker 3: a time and again, like I think timing, Timing is
Speaker 3: an interesting master, isn't it? But it was, it was interesting.
Speaker 3: It was a bit of a whirlwind, I think it was.
Speaker 3: It felt like being in a pop band. And I
Speaker 3: think because I was younger and I wasn't married at
Speaker 3: that point, it was very larry. And thankfully I had Jewels,
Speaker 3: who's obviously been with since I was eighteen, and was
Speaker 3: you know, my rock, and I had good friends in
Speaker 3: the business, and I had you and Rose, and I
Speaker 3: have Mum and Dad, so I felt like safe enough
Speaker 3: right now, I did the Naked chef in my holiday time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I think I worked here until half until
Speaker 3: the end of season two. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I've still got that vesper.
Speaker 3: Do you know you got nigged and I ended up
Speaker 3: buying my own vestper back off eBay, off of a
Speaker 3: friend of a friend of a criminal. You've still got it,
Speaker 3: still use it. It just makes a slightly different sound
Speaker 3: going up the hill than it used to, slightly more strained.
Speaker 4: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 4: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 4: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 4: your podcasts. Thank you. I went saw an interview with
Speaker 4: a great interview Michael Parkinson with George Best and Beckham
Speaker 4: and George Best talked about the difference between his vulnerability
Speaker 4: when he became you know, huge figure and he had
Speaker 4: no one, There was no one. He went from being
Speaker 4: a kid kicking a ball to being somebody that was
Speaker 4: followed by paparazzi and given deals. And now when you
Speaker 4: think you know the kind of surround that you have
Speaker 4: of agents and pr and it's a very you know.
Speaker 3: Quite well, but only through naivety and passion. I guess
Speaker 3: is I looked after myself pretty early. I had an
Speaker 3: agent for a bit and she was fantastic, but like
Speaker 3: I knew she had many people, and I knew I
Speaker 3: was one of many. So I sort of started the
Speaker 3: production company. We didn't know what we're doing. Early employed
Speaker 3: someone to look after me from like a legal point
Speaker 3: of view. So I did that. I think that gave
Speaker 3: me a lot of freedom in the early days. And
Speaker 3: I think in those early days you can get eaten
Speaker 3: out and spat out in about four years quite quickly,
Speaker 3: and luckily I always sort of say it was like
Speaker 3: like when I set up fifteen, it was such a
Speaker 3: beautiful thing and a beautiful premise, and and well, why
Speaker 3: did you do it? I said, Well, I wanted to,
Speaker 3: I could, and I did. And it was as simple
Speaker 3: as that I was young enough, stupid enough, and able
Speaker 3: enough to do it. And obviously the scenario of having
Speaker 3: a twenty four year old kid, I'd gone from having
Speaker 3: no money to having like money in the bank, and
Speaker 3: I spent all of it on fifteen, which was a charity.
Speaker 3: So like, my dad was so worried about me. He
Speaker 3: thought I'd lost the plot because he'd never made an
Speaker 3: easy pound, so he was he thought, he was very concerned.
Speaker 3: And there was about three weeks when I was theoretically bankrupt,
Speaker 3: but luckily I got.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about fifteen, because when you say it was
Speaker 4: a beautiful concept, it was. It wasn't just opening a restaurant.
Speaker 4: It was a a restaurant with values and a kind
Speaker 4: of philosophy and an idea of fairness and tell us.
Speaker 3: About well it was really it was kind of like
Speaker 3: I think I felt from being that kid that struggled
Speaker 3: at school, like is there anything that we could do
Speaker 3: to kids that had gone off the rail or got
Speaker 3: lost or had problems with the law, and even homeless kids.
Speaker 3: And so we set up fifteen because the profits from
Speaker 3: the restaurant would take fifteen kids every year and train
Speaker 3: them for like sixteen months. And really it was a
Speaker 3: very beautiful blend of the values that I'd learned at
Speaker 3: the River Cafe with you and Rose, Mum and Dad
Speaker 3: and Gennaro, and you could see it. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was a very different restaurant, but also you could see
Speaker 3: the China genetics in recipes of the River Cafe and
Speaker 3: genera Mum and Dad and really mainly for you guys.
Speaker 3: We took these kids on trips around sourcing from farmers
Speaker 3: and you know it look some of these kids were
Speaker 3: like drug dealers and frauds to and you know, and
Speaker 3: we'd take them to catch wild salmon and then we'd
Speaker 3: get a farm salmon and a wild salmon and we
Speaker 3: do an autopsy and show the difference, and like seeing
Speaker 3: is believing, and you start to get their wonder and
Speaker 3: they're like, okay, so you haven't won them over yet.
Speaker 3: But then you do that with pork, and then you
Speaker 3: do that with foraging, and then you do that with
Speaker 3: olive oil, and slowly but surely, about nine months in
Speaker 3: the consistency And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 3: I learned about lots of the things I love and
Speaker 3: people that we love is consistency of how a person is,
Speaker 3: how they dress, how they look after their yard or
Speaker 3: whatever it might be, and their product. I think for
Speaker 3: these young kids they had, most of them got in
Speaker 3: trouble with the law because they had no consistency. And
Speaker 3: through fifteen and the things that inspired me, we tried
Speaker 3: to and we we graduated over eighty percent every year.
Speaker 3: And for content text, that's the complete opposite of the
Speaker 3: government when they rehabilitate young offenders, so they do about
Speaker 3: twenty five.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we did that for seventeen years until sadly
Speaker 2: it closed.
Speaker 4: But it also shows I think back to food. You
Speaker 4: know that what you can what food can do, how
Speaker 4: food can be, you know, a generator of fairness. As
Speaker 4: you were talking about fifteen and taking these kids around,
Speaker 4: I was thinking, well, is there something that could be
Speaker 4: a catalyst as strong as food to motivate people to taste,
Speaker 4: to experiment, to commit to learn. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: I think well maybe, I mean, would you it was
Speaker 4: a fact, you know, tailor trying to teach people to
Speaker 4: make suits, or a doctor trying to you know, to
Speaker 4: get people healthy, all those professions. But there's something about
Speaker 4: food which is so compelling.
Speaker 3: And I think if you did a broad strokes analysis
Speaker 3: of all those young people that got in trouble in
Speaker 3: their life or with the law, like what's beautiful about
Speaker 3: cooking is you know, even on a bad day, there's
Speaker 3: still I always see it like little jiffy bubbles, you know,
Speaker 3: like it's not just a bad day, Like there's still
Speaker 3: three or four positive bubbles of something you've learned that day.
Speaker 3: So do you know what I mean, And I think
Speaker 3: that's what's so nice about cooking. And then at the
Speaker 3: end of the year, you've got all these bubbles that
Speaker 3: you've learned, and then it's like, okay. So obviously from
Speaker 3: what we'd learned at the River Cafe, we would sit
Speaker 3: down and write menus every day and that was and
Speaker 3: still is rare, but they kind of that the young
Speaker 3: people would learn about food more from the debate about well,
Speaker 3: should we could we?
Speaker 2: Is that right? Is that wrong?
Speaker 3: And so that was a very powerful experience for me,
Speaker 3: and to be honest, until then, I'd never been political.
Speaker 3: I'd never been a campaigner. I'd never had deep seated
Speaker 3: feelings about what was right or wrong about I think.
Speaker 2: I think I don't feel that.
Speaker 4: I mean, politics is politics, but your values and your fairness, and.
Speaker 3: I think they were there, they were there, But I
Speaker 3: think the idea of having a voice or expressing them,
Speaker 3: or using a platform to amplify stories that had to
Speaker 3: be told, I didn't really I didn't feel like i'd
Speaker 3: learned that until fifteen, and as I got to know
Speaker 3: their stories, and like, when you talk to young kids
Speaker 3: about life of crime, it's so frightening and so sad
Speaker 3: and it's so hopeless, and you kind of get down
Speaker 3: to sort of nuts and bolts, like you know, mums
Speaker 3: and dads that couldn't afford to feed them, and how
Speaker 3: like a free school lunch was important, you know, and
Speaker 3: like it was the only hot meal of the day,
Speaker 3: and you hear it sometimes mentioned, but when you meet it,
Speaker 3: when you see it, and you might have like, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of our students could handle themselves because they've
Speaker 3: been through such traumatic lives, but yet there were still
Speaker 3: grateful for the hot school lunch and to be that
Speaker 3: free school lunch kid and the baggage that goes with it.
Speaker 3: And of course that I started to realize then because
Speaker 3: roughly around the same time, there seemed to be a
Speaker 3: lot of press around how bad school lunches were, so
Speaker 3: I kind of then went onto that.
Speaker 4: And in the next episode, we're going to talk more
Speaker 4: about Jamie's school Meals campaign. We'll also head back into
Speaker 4: the kitchen with Jamie to make a classic River Cafe recipe.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
Speaker 1: It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
Speaker 1: from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
Speaker 1: delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
Speaker 1: River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.