Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adam II Studios.
Speaker 2: Over the last year, I've been lucky enough to sit
Speaker 2: down with forty six guests at River Cafe Table four.
Speaker 2: We've talked about food and family, taste and memory. We've
Speaker 2: read recipes and swaps stories of dining out around the world,
Speaker 2: from the grandest Michelin start restaurants to canteens, bars and
Speaker 2: market cafes. The restaurant I know best is, of course,
Speaker 2: the River Cafe, and so to begin this episode, I'm
Speaker 2: stepping behind the pass to talk to executive chefs Sean
Speaker 2: Winowen and Joseph Travelli, friends and colleagues. We've been cooking
Speaker 2: together for over twenty years. This is just about how
Speaker 2: immediate your performance is judged in a restaurant.
Speaker 3: Chef's a judge as soon as they walk into the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Judge a chef by the chef's trousers they wear even
Speaker 3: or if they come in a jacket that's not clean
Speaker 3: or tied neatly, And how you present yourself before you've
Speaker 3: even picked up your knife, which people are judging you
Speaker 3: by your knife quietly even though I don't believe in
Speaker 3: the what your knife says about you, per se. But
Speaker 3: a lot of chefs will just have a little look
Speaker 3: at someone's knife before they've even chopped anything.
Speaker 2: When a new chef comes. When you've interviewed someone, and
Speaker 2: you know, I always used to say, what books do
Speaker 2: you read? Michelle Rue used to say, make me an omelet,
Speaker 2: But what do you look for in terms of somebody
Speaker 2: coming for a job here?
Speaker 3: If we interview people together, that we try and put
Speaker 3: them off because some people come with they have maybe
Speaker 3: a law degree or they've done a degree in dark
Speaker 3: medicine y we have, and we're like, okay, so you know,
Speaker 3: you have to stand up for a living. You know,
Speaker 3: you have to work nights, you have to work weekends.
Speaker 3: It's shift work. If you love cooking, you can always
Speaker 3: cook at home. And then if you're really, really, really
Speaker 3: really really set on it, then you know, because some
Speaker 3: people think, my god, you could earn a fortune being
Speaker 3: a lawyer. I look for people that I think will
Speaker 3: fit into the team because if someone wants to learn,
Speaker 3: we can teach anyone to cook.
Speaker 2: We also talked about Rose Gray. We founded the River
Speaker 2: Cafe together in nineteen eighty seven. She was my closest
Speaker 2: friend and a brilliant cook.
Speaker 3: I remember meeting Rose on my first day and she
Speaker 3: said something I always quote still said, I'll teach you
Speaker 3: to slice a piece of preciuto the perfect thickness. I'll
Speaker 3: teach you to cook pilotti beans perfectly. I'll teach you
Speaker 3: the art are simple cooking. And I remember thinking that
Speaker 3: sounds easy, but actually that is the essence of the
Speaker 3: River Cafe, isn't it. Simplicity and the understanding of simplicity, which,
Speaker 3: as I've worked with Ruthie over the years, I've never
Speaker 3: understood it more than watching you and how you take
Speaker 3: one thing more away.
Speaker 2: I remember one time we'd had a huge lunch in Tuscany,
Speaker 2: and then we drove to Piermonte and we went out
Speaker 2: to dinner and there was I remember there was again
Speaker 2: a grand dinner and I sat next to it, and
Speaker 2: I remember when the fifth course came out, I just
Speaker 2: started to cry. I literally started, I can't take this anymore.
Speaker 2: That's too much, and she was just, you know, there
Speaker 2: she was, come on, Rogers, Rogerina, she used to call me.
Speaker 4: Next.
Speaker 2: She was very much her own person, I think in
Speaker 2: terms of what she chose to do and fiercely loyal
Speaker 2: and fiercely proud.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 2: You know, we used to get into a taxi in
Speaker 2: Paddington in the early early days and she just said
Speaker 2: to the driver River Cafe, and I say, I hope
Speaker 2: this guy knows where the River Cafe those days going
Speaker 2: to be rude, and she was.
Speaker 6: Really, she's such a character.
Speaker 7: I met Rose Gray in New York Tracy in the eighties,
Speaker 7: and I remember going to Nell's Campbell, who's friend of mine,
Speaker 7: Australian knock at her nightclub, and about three in the morning,
Speaker 7: she said, Darling Litsky Row, are you hungry? And you
Speaker 7: think three in the morning, but yes, of course I
Speaker 7: am nell Lytsky. This is wonderful. Lady's gonna make us
Speaker 7: something to eat. And Rose was so quiet, and she
Speaker 7: started bringing out these little samples of things that were
Speaker 7: so divine.
Speaker 8: I'm like, wow, Rose, amazing.
Speaker 7: And we just all sat and talked and you know,
Speaker 7: were saying those things like you should have your own
Speaker 7: restaurant here, You're brilliant.
Speaker 2: That's how it all started. She was with Nell and
Speaker 2: it Nell's in New York, and then when Rose decided
Speaker 2: to come back, that's when we started the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: I called her up and said, I think there's this
Speaker 2: little site in the middle of nowhere. She would go
Speaker 2: have a look, and we did and the rest is
Speaker 2: ton of history. Over the forty eight episodes of River
Speaker 2: Cafe Table Before, many guests have also shared memories of
Speaker 2: eating at the River Cafe. Here are too. Edwin nfil
Speaker 2: editor of British Folk, but first film director and actor
Speaker 2: Maggie Gillanol.
Speaker 9: I kept texting you and saying, oh, could one more
Speaker 9: person come? Oh, could just one more person come? Could
Speaker 9: I you know, and don't you always kind of want
Speaker 9: to say yes, right, like yes, like of course you
Speaker 9: can bring your boyfriend. This is interesting.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 9: It really was a special night. And then I remember
Speaker 9: like we weren't sure. We're like, oh, is this enough past?
Speaker 9: And I was like, no, no, no, it's not. Let's
Speaker 9: get another two podta.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: I remember that night that you were there, and I
Speaker 2: remember the feeling of it that you were. You know,
Speaker 2: you were so happy and you were so wanting to give.
Speaker 9: We were there to do press for the lost daughter.
Speaker 9: We all had to wake up at like six o'clock
Speaker 9: in the morning the next day and go do press
Speaker 9: all day and then go to the opening night and
Speaker 9: we had all eaten all this food, drank tons of
Speaker 9: wine and champagne and chocolate cake. And I was thinking
Speaker 9: the next day about like consequences, what's worth it and
Speaker 9: what isn't you know? And I was like, this feeling
Speaker 9: I have today is totally worth it. I'm not blindly
Speaker 9: having this dinner and drinking wine and you know, eating
Speaker 9: all this delicious food. I understand that I will sacrifice
Speaker 9: something the next day. If I'd gone to sleep at
Speaker 9: nine and had green juice or something, I would feel different.
Speaker 9: But what it gives me in exchange, I felt it
Speaker 9: was worth it.
Speaker 10: It was a really muchical, even one of my one
Speaker 10: of the truly much cold evenings of my life, because
Speaker 10: remember the issue came out. It was a love story
Speaker 10: really to Great Britain, the country that sort of took
Speaker 10: my family and took me in, and we celebrated everybody
Speaker 10: from Naomi Campbell to Steve McQueen to Cake Moss and
Speaker 10: we had a duel on the cover.
Speaker 2: It was a beautiful night and I think people, you know, again,
Speaker 2: over food overhind the food you wanted to be sharing plates,
Speaker 2: you wanted people to have antipasti. I remember something about
Speaker 2: that night, which was we were talking about whether we
Speaker 2: could do ravioli as a premi, and there was a
Speaker 2: conversation saying, well, you know, fashion people don't eat carps,
Speaker 2: they won't eat pasta. Nobody's going to eat the ravioli.
Speaker 2: Not only did they eat it, they had seconds, gongs,
Speaker 2: and thirds and put on more ravioli on the plate.
Speaker 2: Every conversation of River Cafe Table for ended with the
Speaker 2: same question, what is your comfort food? Food is susten
Speaker 2: it's politics, culture, a journey of discovery. It is also
Speaker 2: comfort in love. Here is Jude Law on food family life,
Speaker 2: and they art feeding your children.
Speaker 5: I enjoyed giving the love of it. I enjoyed looking
Speaker 5: after them. I always say this to friends who are
Speaker 5: expecting children, that you know, the satisfaction you get when
Speaker 5: you're about to go to bed and your kids all eaten,
Speaker 5: they're washed, they're in bed, they're safe. It's just such
Speaker 5: a fantastic feeling. It's a greatest sense of satisfaction and
Speaker 5: contentment that you've got there another day and they're all right.
Speaker 5: You've eaten all of that. And that was an important
Speaker 5: part of bringing them up to me and the adventurousness.
Speaker 5: I suppose, because again it reflects I don't know.
Speaker 4: You know, people go oh, no, I don't.
Speaker 5: Like that, and you think, well, have you tried it?
Speaker 5: You know, that was always that's always the first question
Speaker 5: to the kids. And you think, no, just try it,
Speaker 5: you know, and you see them suddenly thinking, oh, actually, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's an octopus. You think, yeah, go and try a
Speaker 5: little bit.
Speaker 7: It's really good.
Speaker 2: Food also means joy and celebration. Austin Butler is the
Speaker 2: star of Baz Luhrmann's film Elvis.
Speaker 6: There's a small group of us and it was the
Speaker 6: night that we wrapped and we we just we danced
Speaker 6: until the sun came up. We just put on vinyl
Speaker 6: records and we just danced and we ate oysters and
Speaker 6: we just we just lived life. It was like this
Speaker 6: feeling of letting our hair down. And then the sun
Speaker 6: started to come up and Baz looked out and he
Speaker 6: lived across the street from the sea, and he said,
Speaker 6: should we go swim in the ocean right now? And
Speaker 6: it's like five in the morning now, and we swam
Speaker 6: in the ocean and so the sun's rising. And I
Speaker 6: was gonna not go that night as well, and I said,
Speaker 6: I said, Baz, I can't believe I was gonna go
Speaker 6: to sleep tonight. And he started singing nessa dorm and
Speaker 6: he goes no sleep tonight and he went back to
Speaker 6: the shore, and I kind of took a second from
Speaker 6: myself in the ocean where it's just me, and as
Speaker 6: I sort of slowly walked back the shore, I look
Speaker 6: at Baz and he's holding a speaker above his head
Speaker 6: like John Cusack can say anything, and he's playing nessa doortermont,
Speaker 6: the Pavaratti version, and it's blaring at like five point
Speaker 6: thirty in the morning now on the beaches of the
Speaker 6: Gold Coast. And then we made breakfast.
Speaker 4: What was that we made?
Speaker 6: We looked in the refrigerator and we thought, okay, we
Speaker 6: got eggs, we got asparagus, we got some spinach there,
Speaker 6: we got some tomatoes, we got some parmesan cheese. What
Speaker 6: can we do? And so we kind of just made
Speaker 6: this breakfast. And that's one of the most glorious memories
Speaker 6: of my life, was like after we finished this thing
Speaker 6: that was so terrifying and daunting, and that we gave
Speaker 6: it everything we could. And then then we just sat
Speaker 6: there and as the morning sun sort of laid down
Speaker 6: on us and ate that breakfast, and it was so glorious.
Speaker 11: Don't tell anybody I told you this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, with
Speaker 2: memories of a college ice cream heist and food as
Speaker 2: an act of rebellion. We used to go at night.
Speaker 11: They know now years later they know, but we used
Speaker 11: to go, like in the middle of the night, down
Speaker 11: to the dining room and break into the freezer to
Speaker 11: get ice cream. Now they was locked, so you can
Speaker 11: only lift it a little bit and put the scooper
Speaker 11: in there and pull it out.
Speaker 2: We better not tell certain members of the house about
Speaker 2: this exactly.
Speaker 11: It's hard to tell a flavor and the dark and
Speaker 11: the dark, and you could tell if it's chocolate or not,
Speaker 11: but peach, strawberry and the rest of that kind of
Speaker 11: comes together. And sometimes we would order pizza so that
Speaker 11: the guard, we'd say the guard, somebody would go talk
Speaker 11: to the garden, said I ordered pizza. I'm waiting here
Speaker 11: for the pizza wall. We would go down and steal
Speaker 11: the ice screams, steal the ice cream.
Speaker 2: And so your college days were spent stealing ice stealing
Speaker 2: ice cream, icically, but food isn't only a subject for
Speaker 2: funny stories. On many episodes of River Cafe Tape before,
Speaker 2: we also heard about the politics of food inequality and
Speaker 2: the desperation of hunger. Christian Amanpor told me about her
Speaker 2: experience of reporting from Sarajevo in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 12: The very very first winter under siege, and it sounds
Speaker 12: like a cliche, and I didn't even believe it till
Speaker 12: I saw it, But literally, people were foraging, honestly, trying
Speaker 12: to get dandelion leaves and brasses and things like that
Speaker 12: that they might be able to boil up into something.
Speaker 12: Some of them may have had little vegetable gardens with
Speaker 12: lettuce or spinach or whatever it was, but there was
Speaker 12: no real protein. They could make bread because flower was
Speaker 12: coming in eventually by the UN, but it was basic.
Speaker 12: And you know, I just remember living in the holiday
Speaker 12: in with all the press there. I didn't realize until
Speaker 12: afterwards the managers had to pretty much bribe the besiegers
Speaker 12: and some of the UN peacekeeping forces who came in
Speaker 12: to get things like eggs. There wasn't potatoes or tomatoes
Speaker 12: or anything because all the farming, all the all the
Speaker 12: just like now in Ukraine when it's bombed all the
Speaker 12: time and there's a scorched earth policy.
Speaker 2: And the people of the city, yes.
Speaker 12: Yes, they were mostly grateful for us to tell their story,
Speaker 12: but and I have to say it is important, they
Speaker 12: did begin to get angry. I remember them saying, you know,
Speaker 12: turn your cameras away from us. This isn't the Sarajevo Safari.
Speaker 12: You keep telling our stories and the world doesn't intervene,
Speaker 12: doesn't help us. And those were very painful moments because
Speaker 12: you did realize that they were telling the truth, that yeah,
Speaker 12: we could go to them, talk to them, get their experiences,
Speaker 12: see what they were trying to cook for their families,
Speaker 12: which was pretty much nothing in their little kitchens, and
Speaker 12: trying to survive this war, and nothing was happening to
Speaker 12: help them. So then they would take it out on
Speaker 12: us because we were the closest for them. Yeah, and
Speaker 12: it was painful. That was painful. So I have no
Speaker 12: ellue usion that we are welcomed with open arms and
Speaker 12: we're the great saviors at all. At all.
Speaker 1: We do a job.
Speaker 12: If we're lucky, we tell the truth and the truth
Speaker 12: gets out. And if we're very very lucky, it causes intervention.
Speaker 13: It my love of food, my desire to know more
Speaker 13: about it, has just grown.
Speaker 2: This is Stanley Tucci.
Speaker 13: So it's sort of all I think about, and it's
Speaker 13: very much how I spend my time now.
Speaker 2: We think about food and hunger, and it's also mental health,
Speaker 2: and it's also physical health. And we refer just now
Speaker 2: to the fact that you had cancer and that your
Speaker 2: wife died of cancer. How did you see illness and
Speaker 2: how did illness affect food for you?
Speaker 13: Well, Kate went through so many different treatments, and you know,
Speaker 13: going through chemo and radiation and all that stuff made
Speaker 13: her very nauseous and she couldn't eat a lot at times,
Speaker 13: and then she would recover, and then cancer would present
Speaker 13: itself again, and then she'd go through the process again.
Speaker 13: It was horrible when I went through mine because it
Speaker 13: was an oral cancer. All the treatment was focused on
Speaker 13: my mouth, so I lost everything. You don't only lose
Speaker 13: your sense of taste. Your sense of taste is destroyed
Speaker 13: and perverted so that everything tastes like you know what
Speaker 13: for months and plus your mouth is so compromised and
Speaker 13: so much pain. You're on pain medications and all that stuff,
Speaker 13: and you have a feeding tube. You're trying to put
Speaker 13: protein drinks through your feeding tube, which are disgusting, and
Speaker 13: not that you're tasting them, but they're upsetting your stomach.
Speaker 13: And then there's morphine you're putting through. It's just as
Speaker 13: a nightmare. And for me, it was a real nightmare
Speaker 13: because food is everything to me. It's now how most
Speaker 13: of my life. And not to be able to eat properly,
Speaker 13: not to be able to everything smelled horrible, tasted horrible,
Speaker 13: and not to be able to sit and eat with
Speaker 13: my friends and drink with my friends and cook for
Speaker 13: my family, it was really really hard.
Speaker 2: And did that come back? Obviously came back, But how
Speaker 2: did it just come back and you embraced it? Or
Speaker 2: was it slow?
Speaker 13: It's very slow. It's still not I'm almost four years
Speaker 13: out from finishing my treatments and I still last night
Speaker 13: I made lamb chops. I didn't really eat them. I
Speaker 13: can't really because you lose your saliva, so I don't
Speaker 13: have all of my saliva. So if you don't have
Speaker 13: your saliva, it's very hard to break things down. So
Speaker 13: I eat a lot of pasta. But that's fine, That's
Speaker 13: just the way it is. I'm probably at the point
Speaker 13: now where this is about where I'm going to be.
Speaker 13: I don't know how much more I will recover, But
Speaker 13: it's fine. I can eat most things. I can drink wine,
Speaker 13: I can have a martini slowly. It's fine. Nicroni negroni
Speaker 13: is yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know about the nigronie. As the climate emergency deepens,
Speaker 2: what we eat and how and where food is grown
Speaker 2: has become crucial to our survival. Former Vice President of
Speaker 2: the United States Al Gore is, as we all know,
Speaker 2: passionate about food, farming and the environment.
Speaker 14: Well, agriculture can be one of the biggest solutions to
Speaker 14: the climate crisis. People talk about planting trees to pull
Speaker 14: CO two back out of the atmosphere, and it's something
Speaker 14: we certainly need to do, but we also need to
Speaker 14: remember that if you look at all of the carbon
Speaker 14: and every tree in the world, plus every plant in
Speaker 14: the world, there's three times that much carbon in the
Speaker 14: first ten centimeters of top soils around the world. And
Speaker 14: by sharply reducing the amount of plowing and using natural
Speaker 14: fertilizing techniques and natural pest control techniques and using cover
Speaker 14: crops always keep roots in the soil don't let it
Speaker 14: lie loose. Use perennials where you can use rotational grazing
Speaker 14: agro forestry. These techniques can reverse the flow of global
Speaker 14: warming pollution out of the soil and actually put a
Speaker 14: large amount of CO two back in the soil. So
Speaker 14: regenerative agriculture not only produces healthier foods and healthier communities,
Speaker 14: but it also contributes to a healthier planet by becoming
Speaker 14: a key part of our arsenal in combating the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: For Paul McCartney, the politics of food, particularly animal welfare,
Speaker 2: is also key. He told me about a moment he
Speaker 2: shared with his first wife Linda.
Speaker 15: We were on the farm in Scotland. We had a
Speaker 15: farm in a place called Campbelltown, which is south down
Speaker 15: the Argyle Peninsula, south of Glasgow, so we spent quite
Speaker 15: a bit of time there. The Beatles break up got
Speaker 15: a bit heavy in the business scene and you just
Speaker 15: couldn't deal with it, so we decided to just elope,
Speaker 15: even though we were married. We just escaped there and
Speaker 15: it was just a sheep farm. We were looking out
Speaker 15: of the kitchen window one day and there were lambs.
Speaker 15: It was lambing season early in spring, and the lambs
Speaker 15: were gambling around so full of life, and it was like, wow,
Speaker 15: this is really cool. And I always say that what
Speaker 15: they seemed like they were doing, it would be about
Speaker 15: twenty of them. They'd start at one end of the
Speaker 15: field and then it'd be as if someone said let's
Speaker 15: go and they all go and run to the other
Speaker 15: side of the field. Let's go back. So they were
Speaker 15: just running up and down, gambling and jumping and everything
Speaker 15: were going. It's cute and great. Then we suddenly realized
Speaker 15: we were eating leg of lamb. So that was when
Speaker 15: the penny dropped and it was like yeah, yeah, leg
Speaker 15: of lamb. Then it was just we said, you know what,
Speaker 15: do we try and not eat meat? We try and
Speaker 15: go veggie and in those days, of course, it was
Speaker 15: actually difficult, but we decided that we'd make it a challenge.
Speaker 15: It just became a fun challenge. Okay, what do you do?
Speaker 15: So we gradually begun filling the hole in the middle
Speaker 15: of the plate. We'd keep everything else and then we'd
Speaker 15: just work on things to take the place of where
Speaker 15: the meat had been.
Speaker 16: It's funny because the very early years were actually in
Speaker 16: Scotland and so we had a tiny little vegetable patch.
Speaker 2: There Paul and Linda's daughter. The fashion design is Stella McCartney,
Speaker 2: who was also a vegetarian.
Speaker 16: And I remember we'd always get into trouble because me
Speaker 16: and Mary would go down and pick There were always
Speaker 16: like sugar snaps and carrots and we would always kind
Speaker 16: of nick them and eat them before you could yield
Speaker 16: any kind of crop off it. And then when we
Speaker 16: got a bit older, we got the farm in East
Speaker 16: Sussex and then we had like a proper vegetable patch.
Speaker 2: Well, it's very touching that you say that you and
Speaker 2: your sister would go and get a sugar snappy and
Speaker 2: a carrot as rather the way somebody might take sweets
Speaker 2: from the sweet cub. Know that you actually went to
Speaker 2: the vest.
Speaker 16: And also we had horses, so we had you know,
Speaker 16: we were always with horses, so it would always be
Speaker 16: right Willie the carrot and the carrot heads. So the
Speaker 16: for the horses, you'd always have this journey between picking it,
Speaker 16: the soil, the smell that you know, your dirty fingernails,
Speaker 16: that kind of adventure to go out and have that process,
Speaker 16: and then you'd take it up and give the you know,
Speaker 16: the carrot heads to the horse and that would be
Speaker 16: like horse slow bree all over your hands, and like
Speaker 16: so many different smells as well. I mean, I've worked
Speaker 16: on creating perfumes, and it's so interesting how smell has
Speaker 16: really been inspired by food for a lot of the
Speaker 16: things that I've created. I mean, I, for example, one thing,
Speaker 16: when you're a vegetarian, there's so few moments of kind
Speaker 16: of extravagance, whereas with meat is so associated with kind
Speaker 16: of well cost or you know, there's such a kind
Speaker 16: of different kind of relationship, and when you're a vegetarian,
Speaker 16: it's literally only truffle season that you're like, right, okay,
Speaker 16: this is like, oh, this is this moment. And so
Speaker 16: I did a perfume with truffle in it because I
Speaker 16: just always found that smell. It was so it kind
Speaker 16: of reminded me always of a time of year, and
Speaker 16: just everything associated with it seems so kind of sexy
Speaker 16: and mysterious and incredible. So I think the between this
Speaker 16: food and smell is interesting.
Speaker 2: Edward Enifel, editor of British Folk, What do you feel
Speaker 2: about food and fashion? Is the idea that in order
Speaker 2: to look good and clothes you have to be thin,
Speaker 2: or you have to look elegant. You have to be
Speaker 2: a certain look or models have to look a certain way,
Speaker 2: and that would mean denial of food. It would say,
Speaker 2: in order to look that way, don't eat. Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: that strong.
Speaker 10: Historically, those that you know to be fashionable, when you
Speaker 10: look at at least my Vogue anyway, it's everybody's welcome,
Speaker 10: you know, all shapes, all sizes or colors. And what
Speaker 10: I love now is three years later when you look
Speaker 10: in all the other magazines, everybody's also welcoming in all
Speaker 10: the other magazines. That that strict thing of or not
Speaker 10: being able to be a certain size, being sized zero
Speaker 10: is the perfect that doesn't exist anymore. Even the idea
Speaker 10: of being a model has changed. How you can be short,
Speaker 10: you can be curvey, you can be you know, you
Speaker 10: can be disabled. Literally, to watch that industry change, for me,
Speaker 10: it's one of the great things about you know, doing
Speaker 10: my You make.
Speaker 2: It sound rather seamless that this is what's happened another
Speaker 2: But it hasn't been a struggle for stores or for designers.
Speaker 10: I mean designers now know that they've missed out on
Speaker 10: a whole market from size forteen to sixty. They've missed out.
Speaker 10: Why would you want to miss out on a section
Speaker 10: of a population that can make your business even better.
Speaker 10: So now designers have really sort of like, oh my god,
Speaker 10: they've wisened up. Okay, I just knew that the world
Speaker 10: we lived in just wasn't that Just wasn't that world anymore?
Speaker 10: You know, you have to be a certain size, yeah,
Speaker 10: or a certain color or yeah. The conversations that I
Speaker 10: have been had now never would have been had. About
Speaker 10: ten years ago.
Speaker 2: The artist and film director Steve McQueen talked movingly about
Speaker 2: the London street markets where he shopped with his mother,
Speaker 2: the comfort of home cooking, and the harsh reality is
Speaker 2: a food inequality.
Speaker 4: One thing I was very shocked by when I was
Speaker 4: shooting in Chicago, shooting Widows was how I didn't see
Speaker 4: a grocery store in a black neighborhood. I didn't see
Speaker 4: any greens in a black neighbor You know, there wasn't
Speaker 4: a green grocer's, but there was always some sort of
Speaker 4: fast food place where people eat. So people are losing
Speaker 4: this sort of heritage of food. People are not aware
Speaker 4: of food and nourishment and possibilities within food and food
Speaker 4: is politics in a way. It reverts back to what
Speaker 4: we were talking about right at the beginning of a conversation.
Speaker 4: It starts with like, in a way markets because markets,
Speaker 4: a lot of markets are on the threat, a lot
Speaker 4: of markets have closed. So this sense of community, sense
Speaker 4: of comaraderie, a sense of sort of love of food
Speaker 4: and love of each other is being sort of erased
Speaker 4: in the sort of you know, working class areas. I mean,
Speaker 4: you get these markets, but they're so become like posh markets,
Speaker 4: aren't they They're sort of farmers' markets, they call them.
Speaker 4: And you know, the food is so expensive, so and
Speaker 4: I can I feel that they're they're becoming kind of
Speaker 4: food deserts in a way where kids are growing up
Speaker 4: on fast food and not being introduced to sort of
Speaker 4: love food in a way. So that's that's something which
Speaker 4: I'm a bit sort of concerned about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, food is a connection, and food is a memory,
Speaker 2: and food is giving and sharing, and food is political
Speaker 2: and social, and it's also comfort. It's something that we
Speaker 2: go to and we need comfort. And so I suppose
Speaker 2: Steve McQueen, what would you say is the food you
Speaker 2: would go to if you needed comfort?
Speaker 4: To me, the comfort food that I very much love
Speaker 4: and I appreciate. Is often the cold day, you know,
Speaker 4: and you come in and it's my mum's chicken soups
Speaker 4: West Indian chicken soup, which has the bones in it
Speaker 4: and stuff, you know, you suck on the bones, and
Speaker 4: it's the sort of you know, it's the time. It's
Speaker 4: the garlic. It's all kinds of stuff for you know,
Speaker 4: the sugred ingredient which she wants, you still want atomic,
Speaker 4: the dumplings, a bit of potatoes, a bit of peas.
Speaker 4: It's wonderful. So those are the kind of things I
Speaker 4: really love. Yeah, and I could hear my dad sucking
Speaker 4: the bones right now in my head. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was a wonderful, you know, having those dinners together
Speaker 4: on those cold days. I remember it was. It was beautiful.
Speaker 4: It was beautiful and lots of great memories.
Speaker 12: What's my comfort food?
Speaker 7: I love chocolate. I love really good eighty percent chocolate.
Speaker 2: My close friend Tracy Allman, who is a chocolate lover,
Speaker 2: say at the party we have to celebrate thirty years
Speaker 2: of the River Cafe.
Speaker 7: I put my chocolate in the freezer and I break
Speaker 7: off one square every day, and I think it's very
Speaker 7: good for female brains and I can eat a piece
Speaker 7: of chocolate and then I can write and write.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's it.
Speaker 7: That's beautiful answer why I love chocolate Nemesis.
Speaker 2: The chocolate Nemesis so I can get the word is
Speaker 2: so funny.
Speaker 7: Maybe always goes Nemesis Nemesis, and everything goes like Marston
Speaker 7: Scorsese film, you know, when they're taking drugs and goodfellas Nemesis.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous, Thank you, Jasey. The other thing we could
Speaker 2: do before we say goodbye and go have a piece
Speaker 2: of chocolate Nemesis is to sing a song. And would
Speaker 2: you like to sing your song?
Speaker 7: I think our listeners should know. I had a very
Speaker 7: very brief career as a pop singer in the early eighties.
Speaker 7: I had a wonderful song called they Don't Know About Us,
Speaker 7: written by the late great Kirsty McColl.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 7: I sing sort of like Mini Mouse, You've taken Helius.
Speaker 7: I know you were so sweet and you rang me
Speaker 7: up and you said for your thirtieth And I.
Speaker 2: Said, would I sing?
Speaker 7: And I thought, why would Ruth ask me to sing?
Speaker 7: And I was so flattered, and I said, Watchles sing,
Speaker 7: and you went, do you know the song?
Speaker 12: I like?
Speaker 7: You were on the phone.
Speaker 8: You went, It's very clear our.
Speaker 7: Love is here to stay, not.
Speaker 8: For forever and a day. The radio and the telephone
Speaker 8: and the movies that we know may just be passing
Speaker 8: fancies and in time may go, But oh my dear,
Speaker 8: our love is here to stay together. Weird going a
Speaker 8: long long way in time. Hi, rockies may crumble, just
Speaker 8: brought to me tumble, They're only made of clay. But
Speaker 8: I sang, oh is here to stay.
Speaker 10: I love the.
Speaker 2: Cathe and we love you Teresa almy, thank you.
Speaker 7: Very enough so love me to do this in path.
Speaker 2: And that's a wrap for season one. But we will
Speaker 2: be back in September with a new name, Ruthy's Table four.
Speaker 2: Gwadneth Paltrow, Wolfgang Puck, mel Brooks and more great guests
Speaker 2: will be joining us. Have a good summer. To visit
Speaker 2: the online shop of the River Cafe go to shop
Speaker 2: Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
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,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.