Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: I remember turning to you once and you said to me, well, Ruthie,
Speaker 2: how many people do you employ? And I very proudly said,
Speaker 2: I employ one hundred and ten people. Bob, how many
Speaker 2: do you employ?
Speaker 3: It?
Speaker 2: He said, how many?
Speaker 3: It was like two hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: That's a lot. Say the name Bob Iger to me,
Speaker 2: and I think of my good friend who cares passionately
Speaker 2: about what he cooks, the vegetable garden outside his kitchen,
Speaker 2: and what he feeds his children, grandchildren and the people
Speaker 2: who work with him. Say the name Bob Iger, the
Speaker 2: former CEO and chairman of the board of Disney, and
Speaker 2: everyone will think of the man who acquired Pixar, Lucasfilms,
Speaker 2: and Marvel, giving the world some of our most loved movies.
Speaker 2: There is much more Bobby has done for Disney and
Speaker 2: for us, and this is what we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about today.
Speaker 3: That was very involved in the food program at our parks,
Speaker 3: and not only have we hired a lot of great chefs,
Speaker 3: but we also have quite a wine program. We believe
Speaker 3: we're the largest buyer in the largest cellar of wine
Speaker 3: in the world, interestingly enough, which you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 3: hear about Disney. This recipe is for pasta al lemone
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty grams of spaghetti, the juice of
Speaker 3: three to four lemons, one hundred and fifty millilters of
Speaker 3: olive oil, one hundred and fifty grams of parmesan cheese,
Speaker 3: freshly grated, two handfuls of fresh basil leaves picked and chopped,
Speaker 3: and finely grated lemon zest. Cook the spaghetti, then drained
Speaker 3: thoroughly and returned to the saucepan. Meanwhile, whisk the lemon
Speaker 3: juice with the olive oil, then stir in the parmesan.
Speaker 3: It will melt into the mixture, making it thick and creamy.
Speaker 3: Season and add more or less lemon juice to taste.
Speaker 3: Add the sauce to the spaghetti and shake the pan
Speaker 3: so that each strand of the pasta is coated with
Speaker 3: the cheese. Stir in the chopped basil and a generous
Speaker 3: amount of lemon zest. And there you have it, pasta.
Speaker 3: I'll do my head.
Speaker 2: Just hear you read it? Taste of summer, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: You've just woken up. Haven't you this early? There we're
Speaker 2: in different times, as have you had breakfast?
Speaker 3: I did have breakfast, Jack, Okay, tell me about your breakfast.
Speaker 3: I get up at four point fifteen in the morning,
Speaker 3: so by six I'm starved. Yeah, And I'm a creature
Speaker 3: of habit when it comes to breakfast. I always have
Speaker 3: Greek yogurt and a nice portion of really good granola
Speaker 3: and a cup of coffee every day of the week,
Speaker 3: every week of the month, and every month of the year.
Speaker 2: I do think you have a routine. That sort of
Speaker 2: lack of decision, you know, you wake up and let
Speaker 2: you know that's what you're going to have, is quite
Speaker 2: in a way comforting, isn't it that you just know
Speaker 2: your days beginning in the same way. But I think
Speaker 2: of you was such an inventions eater and a curious eater.
Speaker 2: Did you going back to the beginning, begin at the beginning,
Speaker 2: What was it like growing up in your house? Did
Speaker 2: your parents cook?
Speaker 3: Well? Interestingly enough, I live with my maternal grandmother and
Speaker 3: my parents. My maternal grandmother lived with us, and she
Speaker 3: was from the Old Country. Which country she was from Poland?
Speaker 3: But she was a nice Jewish grandmother, so her go
Speaker 3: to meals that are the most memorable were a pot
Speaker 3: roast and stuffed cabbage were the two big ones. And
Speaker 3: she liked to make mats of ball soup as well.
Speaker 3: But she also made a mean apple pie. Interestingly, my mother,
Speaker 3: who picked up some of her cooking abilities, was not
Speaker 3: very adventuresome. And you know, in the nineteen fifties in
Speaker 3: the United States, what was available was actually quite limited.
Speaker 3: We didn't have access to great fresh produce, at least
Speaker 3: not in New York and supermarkets even the big chains
Speaker 3: didn't have great produce sections. I don't think you'd ever
Speaker 3: get fresh basil, for instance, And so a lot of
Speaker 3: what we ate were canned foods, canned peas and carrots
Speaker 3: and canned green beans and what like. But adventurous cooking
Speaker 3: was not my mother's middle name. She made some good desserts,
Speaker 3: but that was about it.
Speaker 2: Do you think that as an immigrant you bring the
Speaker 2: food of your country, because a lot of people I've
Speaker 2: spoken to, whether it's David Adjay talking about growing up
Speaker 2: as a Ghanian in London, bringing that culture to the
Speaker 2: society that you've moved in, which might be alien, might
Speaker 2: be frightening, might be anything that the food that you
Speaker 2: have is part of what you bring with you as
Speaker 2: an immigrant.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I think you know you bring you know, a
Speaker 3: good thick Eastern European accent and in a number of recipes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So did she do the cooking in your house?
Speaker 3: She shared the cooking with my mother, Yes, but but
Speaker 3: cooked often.
Speaker 2: And would you all sit down to a meal together?
Speaker 2: Was that a big deal?
Speaker 3: We did. She died when I was sixteen, but she
Speaker 3: lived with me, you know, up until then, and she
Speaker 3: was always part of our family meals. Yes.
Speaker 2: What about your father? Did he cook? No?
Speaker 3: My father wasn't much of a cook, although I remember
Speaker 3: him making scrambled eggs from me on occasion in the morning.
Speaker 3: And he liked to make a good Jewish deli sandwich,
Speaker 3: you know, he'd buy meat from the local deli and
Speaker 3: Cancot great sandwiches. But beyond that, no, he loved a
Speaker 3: good hot dog Nathan's hot Dogs. Nathan's was the famous
Speaker 3: Coney Island hot dog emporium, and he loved that. But
Speaker 3: he wasn't much of a cook. He was a trumpet player,
Speaker 3: not a cook. Would he perform, yes, he played occasionally
Speaker 3: in the house. He had sort of lost his lip
Speaker 3: by the time I was born. He had played some
Speaker 3: professional trumpet in his day, but he took me to
Speaker 3: jazz concerts. I grew up listening to jazz and some
Speaker 3: great jazz players. I saw Louis Armstrong play, I saw
Speaker 3: Duke Ellington, for instance, and that was a great influence
Speaker 3: on my life. And music is a true love of
Speaker 3: my life thanks to him. And his trumpet still sits
Speaker 3: in my office at home, does it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you grew up with this, which I think
Speaker 2: a lot of American as you say, Americans in the fifties.
Speaker 2: So did you find food yourself when you went to
Speaker 2: college or when you went.
Speaker 3: To Interestingly enough, it started with a cookbook. My father
Speaker 3: collected a lot of books, and for some reason we
Speaker 3: had a Life magazine book Food and included the great
Speaker 3: restaurants of the world in it at the time and
Speaker 3: some recipes. And I decided to impress a college girlfriend
Speaker 3: by cooking some Italian food for her, and I actually
Speaker 3: loved it. And then when I went into New York
Speaker 3: to begin work after college, I started cooking for myself
Speaker 3: quite avidly, and I ended up taking a cooking class,
Speaker 3: a number of lessons with a French woman of I
Speaker 3: think Egyptian descent, and it was a Mediterranean cooking class,
Speaker 3: and I fell in love with cooking. And then I
Speaker 3: ended up in jobs working for ABC Sports that took
Speaker 3: me around the world and that's when I first got
Speaker 3: truly introduced to the world's food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that exposure again, going to different cultures and saying it.
Speaker 2: But back to the girlfriend, I want to go back
Speaker 2: to that girl. Did cooking an Italian meal?
Speaker 3: Firs?
Speaker 2: Did that work?
Speaker 3: Yes? By the way, I think it was rather basic.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what you cooked?
Speaker 3: Yes? It was. It was a pasta with vegetables, very basic.
Speaker 3: But I made my own. I guess it was a
Speaker 3: light tomato sauce. I remember making my own also for
Speaker 3: the first time in impressing myself. But I think I
Speaker 3: kind of used cooking as a means of presenting myself
Speaker 3: as an attractive date to folks. I remember actually when
Speaker 3: I met Willow, and I remember telling her that I cooked.
Speaker 3: She said, you cook, and her eyes lit up. Suddenly.
Speaker 3: I was far more attractive once you discovered that exactly.
Speaker 2: And then when you started traveling, what was that like?
Speaker 2: Where would you travel to when you were working? Then
Speaker 2: you were explited.
Speaker 3: I quite an amazing experience because I started working for
Speaker 3: ABC Sports when I was twenty four years old and
Speaker 3: I worked there for thirteen years, and I worked on
Speaker 3: a program called Wide World of Sports, which covered sporting
Speaker 3: events all over the world in rather exotic places as well,
Speaker 3: including you know, visiting Beijing in the late seventies, and
Speaker 3: South Africa, and certainly all over Europe, but also Central
Speaker 3: and Eastern Europe and then the then Soviet Bloc countries
Speaker 3: as well, and Latin America. So it was almost no
Speaker 3: place that I didn't visit. It was quite it was
Speaker 3: quite amazing. And we lived well when we traveled, and
Speaker 3: that's we ate well. And so you know, I remember
Speaker 3: going to Tyvon in Paris, which I think business going
Speaker 3: to by the way, but it was the thing to do.
Speaker 3: And I remember the hotel to Perry in Monte Carlo
Speaker 3: and trying to remember where I would be. Oh, I
Speaker 3: remember there was a grill at the Connaught.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, London.
Speaker 3: I remember having a steak there the grill at the hotel.
Speaker 2: Cannon And did you keep cooking?
Speaker 3: I cooked really until I became CEO of Disney, which
Speaker 3: was in two thousand and five, and I and time
Speaker 3: management became a little bit more challenging, much to my
Speaker 3: wife's chagrin, but it's one of the things that I
Speaker 3: look forward to doing, having the time to cook more.
Speaker 3: And I love shopping for food too. I love going
Speaker 3: to farmers' markets and discovering new things and tasting. I've
Speaker 3: got guts to pick up a book and pick out
Speaker 3: a recipe, you know, I'm trying to remember. I've cooked
Speaker 3: from a few River Cafe books a few times.
Speaker 2: Do you find it relaxing after working to cook?
Speaker 3: Yes, I find it relaxing, incredibly therapeutic. And I must
Speaker 3: have a glass of red wine open to sit from.
Speaker 3: And I like to listen to music, and I don't
Speaker 3: like intrusions. I like to take over the kitchen.
Speaker 2: I get that. So it's a long way from the
Speaker 2: cans of vegetables that you.
Speaker 3: Did.
Speaker 2: Your mother and father. Were they part of that explosion
Speaker 2: of food for you? Did you cook for them when
Speaker 2: they came to visit.
Speaker 3: I did cook for them. I tried to be a
Speaker 3: positive influence on them in terms of healthier eating, but
Speaker 3: I failed at that. It's interesting because my dad and
Speaker 3: mom both had heard conditions and bypass surgery in their
Speaker 3: fifty at early fifties, and I could never quite understand how,
Speaker 3: somehow I know that didn't change their diet afterwards. My father,
Speaker 3: I think, used to taunt me. We'd go to restaurants.
Speaker 3: If I took them to an Italian restaurant and I
Speaker 3: ordered the grilled salmon rocket, he would order spaghetti bolonnets,
Speaker 3: and then when the bread would come, he would wonder
Speaker 3: why there was olive oil and not butter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, generational, But do you think about when you eat.
Speaker 3: I'm a very healthy eater, mostly a Mediterranean diet, high
Speaker 3: in seafood and low in carbs, although I allow myself
Speaker 3: a good bowl of pasta every once in a while.
Speaker 3: And a passion of mine is pizza. I've been trying
Speaker 3: to hone my pizza making skills. We have a nice
Speaker 3: pizza oven at the house, and so I've spent some
Speaker 3: time doing that.
Speaker 2: When you traveled, when you traveled for Disney later on,
Speaker 2: what was that like? Did people really try to give
Speaker 2: you their culture through food? Yes?
Speaker 3: First of all, it was always a priority of mine
Speaker 3: when I visited a city to find a good restaurant,
Speaker 3: and over time, because I visited a number of cities
Speaker 3: often for instance Shanghai, I visited Shanghai over forty times.
Speaker 3: I always made it a point to have a nice
Speaker 3: meal out and I typically like to do it with
Speaker 3: a small group of people and enjoy a good bottle
Speaker 3: of wine. And it was my way of relaxing when
Speaker 3: I traveled and not being on just literally being able
Speaker 3: to kick back a bit and enjoy a good meal.
Speaker 3: And I love the food of the world, and so
Speaker 3: it was always on my itinerary, and often I would
Speaker 3: go back to ones that I'd fallen in love with,
Speaker 3: obviously River Cafe being at the top of the list.
Speaker 2: I always say, when we go to a city, you know,
Speaker 2: we try and find the market, because I think a
Speaker 2: market tells you also about the culture. You know, if
Speaker 2: you go to the rialto it's noisy in this fish.
Speaker 2: You go to a small market in Nice, it's about
Speaker 2: you know, the piece of basil and small bunches of salad.
Speaker 2: And I think markets tell you and restaurants tell you.
Speaker 2: Food really tells the story of a culture, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, by the way, the market and Nissa it was
Speaker 3: course a lea, I can't remember the name of it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it goes on for blocks and blocks. I remember, I
Speaker 3: remember seeing more olives than I'd ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: That's a wonderful market. There are a few in Paris
Speaker 3: too that I like and would visit.
Speaker 2: What about the markets in La?
Speaker 3: There are farmers' markets. Willow visits regularly. But we also
Speaker 3: we have property in La that has allowed us to
Speaker 3: plant quite a nice sized.
Speaker 2: Garden, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we grow a lot of citrus. We have
Speaker 3: great lemons, including Meyer lemon and oranges of all sorts.
Speaker 3: But we also have a thriving garden and frequently vegetables
Speaker 3: from our own garden, which is fun.
Speaker 2: And what about when you're on the boat do you
Speaker 2: put on the boat?
Speaker 3: We're on our boat. I do no cooking. We have
Speaker 3: a great chef and she spoiled us, but we are
Speaker 3: always interested in her shopping and provisioning, which she enjoys
Speaker 3: a lot, and at times joined her to go to
Speaker 3: a local market, which is fun, or to find great seafood,
Speaker 3: you know, find. We were in Croatia this summer in
Speaker 3: a town called Corchula, flying the streets looking for a
Speaker 3: great fish, for instance. That's always fun too.
Speaker 2: Tell them about wine. Did you study wine?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeah, it started when I worked at ABC, and
Speaker 3: I lived in a building on the west side of
Speaker 3: New York. At the corner of the street that my
Speaker 3: building was on, there was a wine shop called sixty
Speaker 3: seven Street Wines and Liquors. And I had time on
Speaker 3: my hands as a single man in New York, and
Speaker 3: one of the salesmen took a liking to me and
Speaker 3: taught me a tremendous amount about wine and got me
Speaker 3: interested in an early age, well before I could afford
Speaker 3: a good bottle of wine. Years I've collected wine, and
Speaker 3: I think I probably enjoyed it more than I've collected it,
Speaker 3: but I collected.
Speaker 2: Do you always have wine with food?
Speaker 3: I very rarely have wine at lunch. I mean it's
Speaker 3: got to be a very special occasion, although a good
Speaker 3: glass of rose sitting outdoors at a cafe on the
Speaker 3: Place de Votes in Paris that's licensed to have a
Speaker 3: glass of wine. But at dinner. It's interesting because I
Speaker 3: probably had wine maybe three or four times a week
Speaker 3: pre pandemic. It's probably six times a week, since I
Speaker 3: like a good glass of wine right before dinner and
Speaker 3: one had a meal.
Speaker 2: Do you work over a food? Do you go for
Speaker 2: business lunches?
Speaker 3: Somewhat? I probably pre pandemic. Would have two or three
Speaker 3: business lunches a week, and the other days I eat
Speaker 3: at my desk and get work done. And I shunned
Speaker 3: business dinners, but that was mostly because I wanted to
Speaker 3: be home having dinner with my family, and I never
Speaker 3: believed that a business dinner was a prerequisite for being successful. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but often I found both business lunches and dinners was
Speaker 3: always an excuse to turn what could have been a
Speaker 3: half hour meeting into it two an half hour meal,
Speaker 3: and I didn't think that was a very efficient way
Speaker 3: to manage time.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how people use restaurants. I would say that,
Speaker 2: you know, very often people do very private things in
Speaker 2: a very public space, and sometimes people will use restaurants
Speaker 2: to you know, fire someone, or to hire someone, or
Speaker 2: to have a marital conflict, to see people crying in restaurants.
Speaker 2: Not very many people crying the River Cafe. But what
Speaker 2: do you look for in a restaurant?
Speaker 3: Food is obviously critical quality of food. I like mood
Speaker 3: or ambiyonce a lot. And you know, thinking about your restaurant,
Speaker 3: what strikes me is that it takes it's food seriously,
Speaker 3: very seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously, so the
Speaker 3: meaning it's not arrogant in any way. It's inviting, which
Speaker 3: is great. I love that it's also but it has
Speaker 3: a real professional feel to it too, and it is
Speaker 3: the kind of place you do want to hang out
Speaker 3: in and not just to enjoy the food, to take
Speaker 3: it all in. And it's also a great crowd, great
Speaker 3: people watching, and I've also fought it's a nice place
Speaker 3: to have quiet celebrations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, celebrations. The way people are at a restaurant does
Speaker 2: tell you about the person, do you agree.
Speaker 3: How they treat the people who are serving them is
Speaker 3: very telling, and also the degree to which they appreciate
Speaker 3: what they're being served. Yeah, that's very true. By the way,
Speaker 3: I fell in love, I fell in love with my
Speaker 3: wife over dinner.
Speaker 2: Did you tell me about it? But that's the story.
Speaker 3: We had run into one another at an event in
Speaker 3: New York and a variety of complicated circumstances. It took
Speaker 3: us eighteen months to have the first dinner. Eighteen months,
Speaker 3: which is extraordinary.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of patience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but for both of us. And there I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this woman that I had met eighteen months ago,
Speaker 3: trying to figure out where to take her to dinner,
Speaker 3: and we went to a restaurant called Allison on Dominic.
Speaker 3: Dominic is the street in downtown New York, which was
Speaker 3: not only a really good food but quite romantic. And
Speaker 3: that was our first official date, June thirteenth, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: We still we celebrate the anniversary of that date more
Speaker 3: than we celebrate our wedding anniversary. And I mean, she
Speaker 3: claims that she knew that night over a good meal
Speaker 3: at Allison on Dominic. I think I probably did too,
Speaker 3: But it was the beginning of a great romance. And
Speaker 3: now twenty five years.
Speaker 2: Of marriage, is the restaurant still there.
Speaker 3: No, the restaurant is not there, but we've carried on
Speaker 3: a tradition of having dates since then. I think one
Speaker 3: of the nicest parts of my life, and there are many,
Speaker 3: is just being able to go out to dinner alone
Speaker 3: with my wife. If I know that I'm doing that,
Speaker 3: I look forward to it all week. It's one of
Speaker 3: the things I missed the most out of from the
Speaker 3: pandemic is my dates with my wife's. Occasionally we bring
Speaker 3: food into the house and tell our son or our
Speaker 3: sons were going down to We have another building on
Speaker 3: our property to have dinner just to escape. In the
Speaker 3: graduation speech that I just delivered at the University of Texas,
Speaker 3: which is where our older son graduated, I talked about
Speaker 3: being bold and getting out there and changing the world,
Speaker 3: because there's certainly so much that needs changing and fixing.
Speaker 3: But I also talked about embracing life and my equivalent
Speaker 3: of smelling the roses, which is truly appreciating every moment
Speaker 3: of your life. Life is savoring great pizza. So I
Speaker 3: put that into my speech because I do love pizza.
Speaker 3: That is my go to comfort food.
Speaker 2: I was just going to ask you tell me about pizza.
Speaker 3: A good marguerita pizza I don't need. It doesn't need
Speaker 3: to be fancy. It can be very very basic. But
Speaker 3: I'd say, if I can only have one meal, that's
Speaker 3: what it would be. But I talked in the speech
Speaker 3: about savoring the finer things in life, including friendships and
Speaker 3: relationships of course, but a great piece of pizza.
Speaker 2: Well on that we can end a really lovely conversation
Speaker 2: about fact of connection and memories our friendship, and let's
Speaker 2: have more meals together and I'll make you a pizza
Speaker 2: the next time you come to the River Cafe. To
Speaker 2: visit the online shop of the River Cafe. Go to
Speaker 2: shop Therivercafe dot co.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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