Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Adam I Studios.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've had quite a series of performers. I'm
Speaker 2: honored even to be on your podcast. The sample tape
Speaker 2: I get is Ray Fines doing the chocolate Nemesis. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I just I'm going to give up now, you.
Speaker 3: Know, never never, never, no, do the best. Michael Caine
Speaker 3: was very, very sweet. It was very did I play
Speaker 3: his actually anywhere in the world? And they have a
Speaker 3: desserved which is my favorite?
Speaker 2: That is so good. That is good recipe you want
Speaker 2: to make. Michael Caine is so rude. Oh no, now
Speaker 2: you just played me, Michael Kine. How am I supposed
Speaker 2: to this is?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How the hell am I supposed to do this? This is.
Speaker 3: But you got to I'm notta sauce.
Speaker 2: Maybe I should do an intro to it. Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: do this. Then I'm Jake Jillenhall, and there is truly
Speaker 2: nothing like Ruthie's slow cooked tomato sauce. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to do my best here to give you a recipe
Speaker 2: that will hopefully change your life and the life of
Speaker 2: many people that you love. So here's slow cooked tomato
Speaker 2: sauce very fast. Heat one to two tablespoons of the
Speaker 2: olive oil in a large saucepan and fry the garlic
Speaker 2: until it is soft but not brown. Add the tomatoes
Speaker 2: with some sea salt and black pepper, and cook fiercely,
Speaker 2: stirring constantly to prevent the tomatoes from sticking as they
Speaker 2: break up. As they cook, the tomatoes will release their
Speaker 2: juices when this liquid has evaporated. Add the remaining olive oil,
Speaker 2: the basil or regino, and more seasoning if necessary. Serve hot.
Speaker 3: So Jake, I think you were the first person that
Speaker 3: I called when I had the idea of doing a recipe,
Speaker 3: reading a recipe from the River Cafe cookbook. Twenty five
Speaker 3: years of cookbooks and eleven books and so many recipes
Speaker 3: that you could have chosen. You chose tomato sauce. I
Speaker 3: know why, but maybe you could tell everyone else why
Speaker 3: you chose.
Speaker 2: Tomato sauce, because I think simple is the most difficult.
Speaker 2: When you take just a few ingredients and you try
Speaker 2: and cook with them, what comes through is the person
Speaker 2: cooking them. Also, if you have the best ingredients, like
Speaker 2: the ones that you showed me, how to make this
Speaker 2: tomato sauce with or tomato sauce with, then you can't
Speaker 2: mess it up.
Speaker 3: I remember there was a time when Ruby, my granddaughter,
Speaker 3: was I think about seven, and you made a little
Speaker 3: She taught you how to make it. And food is
Speaker 3: a connection, and it is a connection, and I think
Speaker 3: that probably this pasta makes us feel close.
Speaker 2: I always think of that moment whenever I'm taking the
Speaker 2: two knives and a calendar and I'm slicing the can tomatoes.
Speaker 2: It almost was her favorite part when she was instructing me.
Speaker 2: And I always think of that moment because it's it's
Speaker 2: essential to the recipe. It's really when you empty those
Speaker 2: tomatoes into the calendar and you have to slice them
Speaker 2: to get the first sort of first juices out of them.
Speaker 2: And then over time, as they sawte they really do
Speaker 2: turn into like a sugary glaze. And then how they
Speaker 2: stick on to that pasta is like nothing else.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think how we first met, and
Speaker 3: I think that I met your sister, Maggie, maybe before
Speaker 3: I met you, I can't remember, but I remember that
Speaker 3: you have a brother and a sister who love food.
Speaker 3: Where your parents obsessed with food, did they make sure
Speaker 3: that you always ate. Did you have meals at the table?
Speaker 3: What was it wasn't growing up with food in your house?
Speaker 2: I would say rather honestly, that food was and meals
Speaker 2: were the only thing that really worked in my family.
Speaker 2: And by that I mean the only thing really without
Speaker 2: a sort of drama or tumult, though it was full
Speaker 2: of wonderful drama. And you know, us being all sort
Speaker 2: of competitive and partial control freaks, you know, as it
Speaker 2: is in a kitchen, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: nudging and bumping around and you know, don't do it
Speaker 2: like this like that. But the dinner table, and particularly
Speaker 2: the I would say the market, which my parents, since
Speaker 2: I was a very young age, took us to, and
Speaker 2: you know, that was an experience in itself. And I
Speaker 2: remember my mom, you know, holding my hand and taking
Speaker 2: me to the woman at the Hollywood Farmer's Market where
Speaker 2: I grew up in Los Angeles, and she was the
Speaker 2: one who grew Japanese tomatoes and Japanese cucumbers, and we'd
Speaker 2: always get sheis so, and then we'd move over to
Speaker 2: the lettuce that she loved, and then citrus, and we
Speaker 2: were always tasting things and in America in particular, that
Speaker 2: is not so common, you know that experience. But so
Speaker 2: from there, from the market and buying it from local
Speaker 2: farmers and then knowing, you know, the beautiful thing you've bought,
Speaker 2: and then cooking it in the kitchen. You know that
Speaker 2: was the process. And then sitting down to the table,
Speaker 2: you know that those are the things. You know they were.
Speaker 2: My parents were always trying to tell stories of different
Speaker 2: kinds and really beautiful artists in their own ways. And
Speaker 2: then you know, my sister and I were performing at
Speaker 2: a very young age, and I mean that also like
Speaker 2: as actors and then personalities. But the thing that was pure,
Speaker 2: the thing that was clear, at least to me, was
Speaker 2: always the meal.
Speaker 3: Was it your mother in the kitchen or your father?
Speaker 3: Did you have someone cooked?
Speaker 2: Did you both both? My mother was more of a
Speaker 2: salads not much transference of heat. She was more of
Speaker 2: a kind of antipasti cold kind of more person. Lettuces
Speaker 2: and salads were specialty. And then my dad was more
Speaker 2: of a sort of burn it roasted kind of guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he would always get lots of root vegetables and
Speaker 2: carrots and potatoes and rosemary mushrooms. He was very close
Speaker 2: to the mushroom man at the market. Yeah, I'd be
Speaker 2: very close to him. I always remember going to the
Speaker 2: mushroom inn and getting all these sort of funky little
Speaker 2: mushrooms and he would then roast them with olive oil
Speaker 2: and salt and you know, different nerves and things. But
Speaker 2: they both cooked, and they both loved food. And they
Speaker 2: always said to me, you know, if you and when
Speaker 2: you make your own money, you know, if you're going
Speaker 2: to spend money, anything should be a great meal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was good advice, but not great advice. I would
Speaker 2: probably say if you were to ask people closest to me,
Speaker 2: I'm not always the most fun to be with in
Speaker 2: the kitchen because I was. I did have my stent
Speaker 2: in kitchens, you know, and I learned from professionals, and
Speaker 2: it's a very tough place, a kitchen, you know. It
Speaker 2: requires a particular type of focus and a sense of geography,
Speaker 2: you know, like knowing small spaces and moving hot things.
Speaker 2: And I think I might take it all a bit
Speaker 2: too seriously. It's a general note for myself, but I
Speaker 2: think that my sister likes it when I cook for her,
Speaker 2: my nieces like it when I cook for them. I
Speaker 2: love cooking for my nieces. I love asking them what
Speaker 2: it is that everything that they want that to me,
Speaker 2: like what is your favorite? What do you want me
Speaker 2: to coming over? I'm going to bring you anything that
Speaker 2: you want. We're going to cook it, you know, And
Speaker 2: just the satisfaction of that is there's nothing like that too.
Speaker 3: I always tell people work me, just say yes, no
Speaker 3: somebody and we can and then at least you say yes,
Speaker 3: and then I'll say no. But I thought it was
Speaker 3: interesting you said you just had a stint. When did
Speaker 3: you work in the kitchen? I should do that? What
Speaker 3: kitchens did you work in?
Speaker 2: Well? I worked in a few restaurants as a bus
Speaker 2: boy for a while, and then I went and when
Speaker 2: I was around sixteen seventeen, I started working as a
Speaker 2: Sioux chef, like very prep chef really for Marco Knora.
Speaker 2: He runs a hearth and Broto is another. He had
Speaker 2: a restaurant in Martha's Vineyard and Edgar Town there and
Speaker 2: I was for a while really a prep chef for
Speaker 2: him and did a buckets of lemon comfee for months.
Speaker 2: That was quite an experience. And then I did my
Speaker 2: one of my oldest best friends from childhood cooked in
Speaker 2: New York for a number of years, and I actually
Speaker 2: at times would join him in the kitchen when they
Speaker 2: needed sort of extra hands here or there. They don't
Speaker 2: have any You guys don't have any time. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just all taken up. It's you know, from ten
Speaker 2: am until midnight. You know, sometimes two in the morning,
Speaker 2: you're all working, and so it's hard to have a
Speaker 2: certain type of friendship and separate days off. So we
Speaker 2: would spend our time. Sometimes i'd just joined the line,
Speaker 2: and that was more in college.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting because you also, I always think that
Speaker 3: there is something well links between the theater with where
Speaker 3: you were just describing the geography of the kitchen, and
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's like to be on the stage,
Speaker 3: but there is very definitely a geography of the kitchen.
Speaker 3: And I remember we have an open kitchen, as you know,
Speaker 3: when we opened the kitchen completely, there were no walls
Speaker 3: at all. Richard Air, director came and said, I said,
Speaker 3: isn't this theatrical origin? And he said, well, I've been
Speaker 3: watching you, and actually I think it's more like ballet
Speaker 3: because everybody's just moving. But I think that maybe the
Speaker 3: reason a lot of actors like to work in restaurants.
Speaker 3: Is there are parallels between theater and a restaurant. You know,
Speaker 3: everybody has to know their lines, and everybody has to
Speaker 3: have made the part of the sauce. And if the
Speaker 3: scenery has to be painted and the floor has to
Speaker 3: be washed, and the curtain goes up, the curtain goes
Speaker 3: up in a theater, and the curtain goes up in
Speaker 3: a restaurant.
Speaker 2: I think you could ask a lot of actors. They
Speaker 2: would say a lot of times they started, you know,
Speaker 2: in a restaurant. But I do think that there is
Speaker 2: a theater to a restaurant. And I think what I
Speaker 2: love so much about the theater is going to the
Speaker 2: same place nightly, sometimes daily when you have a matinee,
Speaker 2: you know, if you have lunch service, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's going to a matinee, you know. And I love
Speaker 2: the preparatory sort of experience before that. I mean, well,
Speaker 2: you know, you arrive. For me. What I love is
Speaker 2: you arrive at the front of the back of the theater.
Speaker 2: On Broadway in particular. You know, I love coming through
Speaker 2: the front of the house as I head into the
Speaker 2: back of that. I do it because there's that that
Speaker 2: feeling of the front of the house with all the
Speaker 2: ushers and everybody's preparing, you know, playbills or you know,
Speaker 2: whatever the program is for the for the evening, and
Speaker 2: then you know, if the theater has a bar, you
Speaker 2: know there's they're they're prepping the drinks and making sure
Speaker 2: everything's in order and the cash registers in order, and
Speaker 2: you know they're you're walking through people who may be
Speaker 2: picking up their tickets or ordering tickets first. You know,
Speaker 2: you get a sense of the majesty of what the
Speaker 2: audience walks through before they sit down, you know. And
Speaker 2: I think it gives me, as a performer, an appreciation
Speaker 2: for every single night, though for us it may feel
Speaker 2: sometimes monotonous and the same if you do two hundred,
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty five hundred performances, that you honor
Speaker 2: the audience that arrives that night. That every audience is different,
Speaker 2: and you do feel that once you're on stage, that
Speaker 2: the energy from them is different. That some are a
Speaker 2: wild ride. It is a wild ride. Some are very steady,
Speaker 2: some are and they have their own personalities. But it's
Speaker 2: something about walking through the front of the house to
Speaker 2: the back of the house, oh man, that excitement. Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, nothing like that feeling, and it is it is.
Speaker 2: I am so so grateful for it, and I feel
Speaker 2: at home. I think that's what you know, home feels like.
Speaker 3: Just describing that, I do very often before when we've
Speaker 3: all cleaned down and everything is ready, and you know
Speaker 3: you're in the past and you have your sauces and
Speaker 3: you've done the menu with the team, I often go
Speaker 3: out the kitchen door down towards the river and I
Speaker 3: walk around and I come in the front door and
Speaker 3: I do that, you know, I just come in the
Speaker 3: front and thinking about just looking at the place and
Speaker 3: feeling where everybody's going to be in about fifteen minutes time.
Speaker 3: And it's the same with the audience. I can because
Speaker 3: we have an open kitchen. I can look out there
Speaker 3: and I could see somebody giving a taste of their
Speaker 3: food to their partner, and then you're looking at them
Speaker 3: to see whether they're liking it. You can tell, you know,
Speaker 3: or you see people having an intense conversation. And then
Speaker 3: just the noise, the way the noise builds up. It's
Speaker 3: quite quiet in the beginning, and.
Speaker 2: You walk through those doors and the River Cafe, and
Speaker 2: you feel that type of magic. And I also think
Speaker 2: there's the process of going to a restaurant. It's not
Speaker 2: even just the restaurant itself. It's the making of a
Speaker 2: reservation in the case of your restaurant, months in advance, minutes.
Speaker 3: Come on, did you ever book a table?
Speaker 2: But you know you got to you gotta make you
Speaker 2: gotta make friends, real friends. But that idea of when
Speaker 2: you decide to make a commitment to an experience, you know,
Speaker 2: and the anticipation of that experience is part of the experience,
Speaker 2: and then you know, I think that this very special
Speaker 2: thing about the River Cafe is that when you're there,
Speaker 2: your experience is never what you expect because you know
Speaker 2: in one thing, one way. The menu always changes. So
Speaker 2: you have your consistencies, you have your certain desserts that
Speaker 2: you know will always be there, you have certain pieces
Speaker 2: you know you can always ask or or look towards.
Speaker 2: But then there's the unexpected. And I love that about
Speaker 2: the experience and I do feel that way. If you're
Speaker 2: going to compare theater to restaurants. In theater, that's what
Speaker 2: I love about theaters.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the what's that? What do you mean
Speaker 3: that unexpectedness?
Speaker 2: Well, you bring your life with you to the to
Speaker 2: the theater every night, and your life obviously changes on
Speaker 2: a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis, and so all
Speaker 2: of the things that happen within your day, within your week,
Speaker 2: be they joyous, be they tragic, they come to you,
Speaker 2: with you to your work, and and there's a way
Speaker 2: what I'm grateful for is the ability to express those
Speaker 2: things through in a safe, sacred space, you know. And
Speaker 2: then also things that happened with the audience. You know,
Speaker 2: the last show that I did, you know, I was
Speaker 2: an open monologue with the audience, and so they really
Speaker 2: had the ability to we at least sort of implied
Speaker 2: that they could speak to us, you know, in a way.
Speaker 3: What was that like?
Speaker 2: Magical and sometimes disturbing. You know, the piece that I
Speaker 2: did was very emotional piece and about birth and death,
Speaker 2: and and there was this really amazing moment that would
Speaker 2: happen if it happened every night, where I would feel,
Speaker 2: as you're speaking to an audience, they would click in
Speaker 2: and then they would ride their own imagination and all
Speaker 2: of the experiences they had in their own life with
Speaker 2: losing someone, or with having a child or or you know,
Speaker 2: all the things I was speaking about would begin to
Speaker 2: emerge and then they would tell you where they wanted
Speaker 2: you to go. It was it was that which Monolague
Speaker 2: was that monologue I did called there are two of them.
Speaker 2: One was called Seawall and the other one was called
Speaker 2: A Life that I did A Life, and Tom Sturge
Speaker 2: one factor. Tom Sturge did Seawall, and we did them
Speaker 2: as an evening pretty much all of the year before
Speaker 2: this worldwide pandemic began, and we spent the year first
Speaker 2: of the Public Theater and then we moved it to Broadway.
Speaker 2: But in that in that space, that's what was is
Speaker 2: really really incredible. You know, people weeping sometimes, people getting
Speaker 2: up and walking out, got walking out, you know, and
Speaker 2: because you can see those things, because you were facing
Speaker 2: the audience, it was unlike any other experience I've ever
Speaker 2: had in my work.
Speaker 3: It's interesting how when we opened the River Cafe after
Speaker 3: the first lockdown, people came and cried, you know, people
Speaker 3: were very emotional just being in a restaurant, being with
Speaker 3: people again. And if you ask waiters, it's interesting that
Speaker 3: they will tell you that people do cry and in
Speaker 3: the restaurant, you know that there as you're saying, what
Speaker 3: do you do in a restaurant? What do you do
Speaker 3: opening up? And it is quite emotional, and I think
Speaker 3: we really have missed that contact of people being together
Speaker 3: someone who loves food so much. Have you had to diet?
Speaker 3: I mean, have you had to lose weight for a part? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. I have done that, and you know,
Speaker 2: it depends. Sometimes I find that you're satisfied in different ways.
Speaker 2: You know, for instance, you know, if you have a
Speaker 2: goal for a movie and you know that that goal
Speaker 2: is going to be a part of telling the story,
Speaker 2: you know, you constantly have that to go back to.
Speaker 2: I did this film Nightcrawler. I lost to you know,
Speaker 2: close to thirty pounds or so, and then doing it,
Speaker 2: I supplemented certain things sometimes with running, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: run a lot, and then I learned different safer processes
Speaker 2: of eating and being able to to lose weight, like
Speaker 2: you know, giving yourself proteins and it's possible too. You know,
Speaker 2: I was kind of like I was doing it safely,
Speaker 2: but you know, I didn't really have all the knowledge.
Speaker 2: I've learned that over the years, though, I think more
Speaker 2: and more for someone who loves food, your take making
Speaker 2: not only the food out of your life. You're taking
Speaker 2: the experience of being with people because you know you
Speaker 2: can go and I would at times I would when
Speaker 2: I was preparing for that film in particular, I would
Speaker 2: go to dinner with friends and I would, you know,
Speaker 2: drink a glass of water something like that. But you
Speaker 2: realize that oftentimes you'd say you can't go to dinner,
Speaker 2: and you're missing out on that more than anything. What
Speaker 2: I realize is not just really the food, it's really
Speaker 2: the connection with the people that I'm missing out on.
Speaker 2: And and it helped from the character at the time
Speaker 2: because he was he was a very lonely man, and
Speaker 2: all those things I could use knowing that I had
Speaker 2: a space to use them in. And if it's for
Speaker 2: something that you know, you you really do believe in that,
Speaker 2: it's for sort of the the expression of something that
Speaker 2: I'm now very proud of. You know that that was worthwhile.
Speaker 2: I think it becomes confusing when it's other things.
Speaker 3: And then thing I just wanted to ask you is
Speaker 3: when because for me, when I go to a city,
Speaker 3: I always head for the market. You know, if I
Speaker 3: saw you and as you said, you've been to Spain,
Speaker 3: I probably would have said, oh, you know, did you
Speaker 3: did you go to the product? Did you go?
Speaker 2: What did you eat?
Speaker 3: You know, we might say what we pretend to first,
Speaker 3: to ask what museums or what you don't do, but
Speaker 3: really what we want to know is the story, because
Speaker 3: we love stories, don't we. We love a story. And
Speaker 3: you might tell me how you found a restaurant in
Speaker 3: some dark alley, or you met somebody and they took
Speaker 3: you to a you know, a place by the beach.
Speaker 3: Is your curiosity for restaurants wherever you are or food
Speaker 3: wherever you are? Do you want to know the food?
Speaker 2: The only thing that matters to me. It is the
Speaker 2: only thing that that day I didn't have no other interests.
Speaker 2: It's like when I when I think of going to
Speaker 2: a city, that's the first thing I always and you know,
Speaker 2: you know, as insufferable as my friends can say that
Speaker 2: I am, the one thing they cannot deny is that
Speaker 2: they will always go to a great meal with me
Speaker 2: in whatever city we're in.
Speaker 3: That that's that's that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, And it's also not like I'm not
Speaker 2: that Like I actually had a dream the other night
Speaker 2: about that, about just being in an unknown small town
Speaker 2: sort of in the middle of nowhere and going to
Speaker 2: the market, and you went to the market to the
Speaker 2: marketing my dream. And when you said that, I was like,
Speaker 2: it made me think, that's really where you you learn
Speaker 2: the most about where you are now.
Speaker 3: It is if you're in Venice, you go to the fish.
Speaker 3: If you're in a small town, you go to a
Speaker 3: little place and there might be only four little stalls
Speaker 3: in Venice.
Speaker 2: There's this incredible I'm sure maybe you know that that
Speaker 2: black Redicio Tagletaliti that at this small restaurant. Yeah. Never,
Speaker 2: I'm in Venice. I like that's where I go. I've
Speaker 2: had a few films that I've gotten into the Venice
Speaker 2: Film Festival. And as exciting as that is, it's not
Speaker 2: as exciting as knowing I'll be able to go get
Speaker 2: that that.
Speaker 3: I'm really here for many reasons. You might think I'm here,
Speaker 3: but I'm.
Speaker 2: Really Sadly, I've just admitted that my deepest truth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is it. Well, it's good, it's not sad at all.
Speaker 2: You know to me with you are connection, the fact
Speaker 2: that you are so endlessly supportive of your friends, and
Speaker 2: you are an open heart and have given me confidence
Speaker 2: to do things in my life and my work. That
Speaker 2: I wouldn't normally have had and you're cooking well, yes,
Speaker 2: but just the thing that you gave me some cooked
Speaker 2: tomato sauce as a recipe, makes me want to strive
Speaker 2: for more. You know, you say, Okay, you can have it,
Speaker 2: but you got to earn it now.
Speaker 3: I love you, Thank you, Jake. To visit the online
Speaker 3: shop of the River Cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot
Speaker 3: co dot uk.
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