Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Neither John Lithgow nor I remember how we met. I
Speaker 2: think it was about twenty years ago. He thinks more.
Speaker 2: I think it was a roommate from Harvard who introduced us.
Speaker 2: He thinks a friend from New York. In fact, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter. What matters is that John is living
Speaker 2: in London performing in Giant, de rave reviews, playing Roles
Speaker 2: Doll and He and his wife, Mary Yager's house is
Speaker 2: around the corner from mine. On Sunday nights, the one
Speaker 2: day he's not on stage, they've come to supper. Our
Speaker 2: friends love them, my children love them, and I love them.
Speaker 2: John has played an alien, a cardinal, a serial killer,
Speaker 2: a prime minister, presidents, and though I've seen Giant three times,
Speaker 2: the role I know best is John as a friend.
Speaker 2: He is quite simply the nicest man I know. John
Speaker 2: and I share a belief in the joy of song,
Speaker 2: and right now in this world we are looking everywhere
Speaker 2: for joy. His albums for Children, Singing in the Bathtub,
Speaker 2: Farkl and Friends, and The Sunny Side of the Street
Speaker 2: are beautiful. I've been listening to him singing everybody eats
Speaker 2: when they come to my house very relevant and my
Speaker 2: favorite getting to know You both particularly relevant today. Right now,
Speaker 2: we're at the River Cafe on Father's Day to talk
Speaker 2: about acting and food, theater and food, film and food,
Speaker 2: family and food.
Speaker 3: Who cares? How we bet? We're together? Now? Should we sing?
Speaker 3: Getting to know you.
Speaker 4: And getting to know you, getting to know.
Speaker 3: You, getting to like.
Speaker 4: You, and getting to hold you like me.
Speaker 3: To Suddenly I'm right.
Speaker 5: And easy because of the.
Speaker 4: Things I'm learning about you.
Speaker 3: Day by.
Speaker 4: Day. When have you begun an interview like that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I will confess that.
Speaker 2: Richard Y Grant was here about a few months ago,
Speaker 2: and in the middle of it we started talking about
Speaker 2: My Fair Lady and he played Henry Higgins, and so
Speaker 2: he said to me, what's your favorite song for my
Speaker 2: Fair Lady? I said, that is so easy because for me,
Speaker 2: I've grown accustomed to her face, and so he sang it.
Speaker 3: Do you know that I.
Speaker 4: Did play that part?
Speaker 3: Did you play Henry?
Speaker 4: Once?
Speaker 5: At the Hollywood Bowl there was a full production put
Speaker 5: together for one evening, and because I had grown up
Speaker 5: listening to the original cast.
Speaker 4: Album as you clearly did.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 5: Performed it with ten days rehearsal. It was fully costumed,
Speaker 5: with the entire Los Angeles Philharmonic up on stage with us,
Speaker 5: and oh my god, Roger Daltrey played.
Speaker 4: Doolittle and packed Lighthead played.
Speaker 5: Pickering, all these Rosemary Harris played Missus Higgins.
Speaker 4: Remember that was Melissa Era.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think we performed it for about nineteen
Speaker 5: thousand people at the Hollywood Bowl. And you know, the
Speaker 5: the magnified, the amplified voices on stage, they sort of
Speaker 5: hit like two seconds later way up at the back,
Speaker 5: and so you would tell a joke and the laughter
Speaker 5: would roll up the hill. It was the most amazing experience. Oh,
Speaker 5: it was fantastic. I always wished that they would ask
Speaker 5: me to do it again for a run somewhere because
Speaker 5: it is the perfect music.
Speaker 2: You know that for me, Well, you'll have all different ones,
Speaker 2: but for me My Fair Lady and Guys and Dolls.
Speaker 3: I love the music from Guys and Dolls.
Speaker 2: But we're talking about it the other day with Greta
Speaker 2: and No and actually with Richard was saying, could you
Speaker 2: do My Fair Lady now? Because it is pretty misogynist,
Speaker 2: it does have a and they were saying, yes, why
Speaker 2: not have a play about a man who doesn't understand
Speaker 2: and his own.
Speaker 5: It was equally controversially back in those days. But Higgins
Speaker 5: is a George avatar and very kind of challenging, dangerous wit.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's kind of like playing role doll. You're
Speaker 5: startled by his savage. Well, it's just it's a savage wit.
Speaker 5: It's a willingness to be cruel.
Speaker 3: I can't a woman be more like a man?
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. I mean you have to consider the source.
Speaker 5: It's wonderful to play a part that's all in. That's
Speaker 5: that's how I always felt about playing Dick Solomon on
Speaker 5: Third Rock from the Sun. Just nothing but impulse, completely unedited,
Speaker 5: because he knew nothing about the proprieties of being a
Speaker 5: human being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very.
Speaker 2: Yeah, watching you in the theater and being in the
Speaker 2: theater and having seen Giant? How does food enter your
Speaker 2: work day when you're thinking about if you're doing a matinee,
Speaker 2: do you start thinking about in the morning, are you
Speaker 2: going to have a breakfast?
Speaker 5: Or it's a catastrophe doing a play, especially a really
Speaker 5: demanding play like Giant, it's thrown everything off. I never
Speaker 5: know when to have a good meal because if you
Speaker 5: wait too late, you've got too full of stomach. When
Speaker 5: the show is over and you come home, you don't
Speaker 5: want to eat too much then because you've got to sleep.
Speaker 5: It's very confusing. I'm counting on Sundays. That's why I
Speaker 5: keep gravitating to the River Cafe.
Speaker 3: We're going to go and have lunch very soon. But
Speaker 3: if what you eat so like tomorrow, you're in on
Speaker 3: performance tomorrow night, do.
Speaker 4: You think you'll got a horrendous day tomorrow? Don't?
Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I have entered into a sort of ven Diagram period
Speaker 5: of my schedule where I'm running Giant but doing prep
Speaker 5: work for Harry Potter and tomorrow Tomorrow I have wardrobe fittings,
Speaker 5: and Tuesday I have hair and makeup, and this is
Speaker 5: Dumbledore we're talking about, and then I have to race
Speaker 5: back into town to do the show both nights. Then
Speaker 5: I have two on Wednesday, so I don't know when
Speaker 5: I'm going to eat.
Speaker 2: I better go have a good lunch. And when you're filming,
Speaker 2: do you think about when you did you know movies?
Speaker 5: Movies are a luxury because you know they feed you
Speaker 5: well midday every day, and you're usually on. You're frequently
Speaker 5: on location where you're God, I did two months in
Speaker 5: Rome on it.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hear about that because I've heard from Stanley. Stanley,
Speaker 2: you and Sally did a tour of Tuscany, did you
Speaker 2: or not?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I went by myself around Tuscany, but following Rafe's itinerary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he laid out where.
Speaker 3: I should go.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and uh, I mean doing doing a film in
Speaker 5: Rome with Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini and Ray Fines.
Speaker 2: It was just tell me what would you do that
Speaker 2: would you film? And then go out to eat?
Speaker 5: And yeah, we ate at night and trust Everey we
Speaker 5: had were an amazing, funky hotel across the Tiber from
Speaker 5: trust every eating and drinking at the end of a
Speaker 5: long day of working. It was great, much much better
Speaker 5: than doing theater.
Speaker 3: Well maybe you.
Speaker 2: Should think about that, you know, when you when you
Speaker 2: choose what films is going to do.
Speaker 5: One of the first big roles I played in movies
Speaker 5: was obsession for Brian to Holm where we shot in
Speaker 5: Florence and New Orleans. And I asked him, Brian, did
Speaker 5: you did you pick the cities before you made up
Speaker 5: the story, and he said, yes, Where do you want
Speaker 5: to be on it.
Speaker 2: Where do you want to be Yeah, exactly, Well you're
Speaker 2: going to be in London, which is going to be great.
Speaker 2: Sow When do you start doing the Harry Potter We
Speaker 2: haven't right as.
Speaker 5: Soon as this, but I don't expect to be working
Speaker 5: as hard on that as I do on this.
Speaker 3: What does it feel like at the end of it?
Speaker 4: It's really exhausting.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're related by it, but it's completely exhausting.
Speaker 3: Have you ever done a play we had to eat
Speaker 3: on stage?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yes, Uh?
Speaker 5: Actually I made a great discovery when I played King
Speaker 5: Lear in New York at the Public Theater. The scene
Speaker 5: where he he sort of crashes his daughter's castle with
Speaker 5: his entire troop of knights, the director wanted me to
Speaker 5: sit down and eat, eat hard after the hunt, and
Speaker 5: the prop man came up with this ingenious device for
Speaker 5: eating on stage. He made these chunks of watermelon covered
Speaker 5: with food coloring. Looked exactly like a big slab of beef,
Speaker 5: and I would just pop gigantic square inches of watermelon
Speaker 5: into my mouth and they disappear instantly. So not only
Speaker 5: can you can you eat and speak Shakespeare at the
Speaker 5: same time, but you're also hydrating.
Speaker 4: And that's what we do in Giant. Don't tell anybody.
Speaker 4: They serve us salad sUAS well. That's thinly sliced watermelon.
Speaker 5: And I always I can always get everything down my
Speaker 5: gullet on que. There's about ten moments when I'm munching
Speaker 5: and it's all gone straight down, just in time.
Speaker 3: I think it was It wasn't Carrien Mulligan.
Speaker 2: It was someone maybe it was that had to cook
Speaker 2: and eat something made a pasta.
Speaker 3: I think it was maybe for her Pin to play.
Speaker 3: That was it was David Hare, David Hare.
Speaker 2: I think it was Skylight, the Skylight where they cook
Speaker 2: a pasta on stage. Yeah, and she described having to
Speaker 2: actually cook it and then then eat it.
Speaker 4: It's always wonderful when that happens on the stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, smell it you.
Speaker 4: But I'm basically cheating up there on stage.
Speaker 2: Okay, we can cut that from this and we can
Speaker 2: tell them nobody's gonna like it.
Speaker 4: Ahead and share it.
Speaker 2: I just like to think about the early days your
Speaker 2: Your father was born in the Dominican Republican, Is that right?
Speaker 3: So what was that like? Did they?
Speaker 5: Well, it's a it's a kind of curiosity about of
Speaker 5: his history and mind. He was descended from two or
Speaker 5: three generations of Scott's. My nice Lithgo is a Scottish
Speaker 5: name who lived in the Dominican Republic. His father and
Speaker 5: his grandfather were both vice consuls of and he was
Speaker 5: born in Santa Domingo and grew up in Porta Plata,
Speaker 5: but only grew up until he was four and then
Speaker 5: he and then he went straight to Boston. And that's
Speaker 5: my real So.
Speaker 3: Your grandparents, yes, whom I never knew.
Speaker 5: I knew my grandmother, but not my grandfather. He died
Speaker 5: when my dad was four. So it's really just a
Speaker 5: curiosity of my biography.
Speaker 2: Did your mother cook food that maybe came from there
Speaker 2: or did she bring any Caribean food or.
Speaker 5: I would say the food in my household was very
Speaker 5: much Boston seafood. That was my father's absolute favorite food
Speaker 5: New England lobsters and clams and scollops.
Speaker 4: And my mother, she was from Rochester.
Speaker 5: I and my siblings had a crazy upbringing because my
Speaker 5: father was a regional theater artistic director and we lived
Speaker 5: in about eight different places, so he directed, he was
Speaker 5: he created and ran Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. I mean,
Speaker 5: another curiosity of my biography It's what has turned me
Speaker 5: into this peculiar hybrid between an American and an Englishman.
Speaker 5: And my mother just kept the house, kept the family
Speaker 5: together as we moved from place to place, and just
Speaker 5: was a very reliable kind of Fanny farmer cook. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I remember her cooking very well. I remember one of
Speaker 5: our my real hometown up until I was about twelve
Speaker 5: years old was Yellow Springs, Ohio. We lived in a
Speaker 5: house on Dayton Street, and it was full of fruit
Speaker 5: trees and an entire line of rhubarb along the along one.
Speaker 5: I don't know whether they inherited it. Certainly they inherited
Speaker 5: all the fruit trees, but were there was peach trees,
Speaker 5: cherry trees, apple trees. And she used to make the
Speaker 5: most incredible rhubarb pies.
Speaker 3: What was it like?
Speaker 4: It was all rub none of this strawberry rhubarb.
Speaker 5: Stuff, and just one of my favorite things growing up.
Speaker 3: Would you go pick the rubarbi?
Speaker 5: She picked the rubarb for her, and and it was
Speaker 5: I just remember family meals.
Speaker 3: Did you do all sit down at night?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: How many brothers and I had?
Speaker 4: I have two sisters and a brother.
Speaker 3: A lot of work I was cooking for four Yeah.
Speaker 5: And they were they let's see about a fifteen year
Speaker 5: span between the first and the last.
Speaker 3: What about your dad was then? How much was he
Speaker 3: he was?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was always home, but always in the theater.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I just that's how I remember him.
Speaker 5: And he had a crazy career that veered between the
Speaker 5: theater profession and the teaching profession, because it was just
Speaker 5: you know, if you're if you're in the theater, you
Speaker 5: have a crazy life. Sometimes you're employed, sometimes you're not.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you have to choose other work. Sometimes it's going great,
Speaker 5: and sometimes it's a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: He started this idea of doing because that's very different
Speaker 2: from being an actor, to have a business or a
Speaker 2: career going setting up a theater, doing Shakespeare, going from
Speaker 2: town to town, finding the theater.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well it came out most of his theaters were university connected.
Speaker 5: He did a great Shakespeare festival that lasted eight years
Speaker 5: at Antioch College.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he taught there and I see that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And he.
Speaker 3: Actually college because it's quite.
Speaker 5: Very funky in the middle of Ohio. It's certainly the
Speaker 5: most lefty radical place in Ohio and it hasn't changed out.
Speaker 3: In the States. It always had of being very.
Speaker 5: Liberally, tremendously exciting place, and that was our hometown. And
Speaker 5: a lot of my friends were professor's children, and a.
Speaker 4: Lot of them were on the blacklist. You know.
Speaker 5: It was a greatness, was in the early nineteen fifties
Speaker 5: mcarthy era, and it was a badge of honor to
Speaker 5: have your father a blacklisted professor.
Speaker 2: My dad was in that world as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love Do you know Howard Koch was Howard Koch as well?
Speaker 2: The writers we wrote Casablanca, And we lived in a
Speaker 2: small town upstate New York, Woodstock, and we were on
Speaker 2: a street literally our next door neighbor. Actually, that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I came to London is that Howard.
Speaker 2: I wanted to take time off and Howard, because so
Speaker 2: many writers at the time who are blacklisted came to England.
Speaker 4: Carl Foreman, Carl.
Speaker 3: Rice, maybe two. I think they were quite a lot.
Speaker 4: Ring Lardner Jr. Was quite a gang.
Speaker 3: A gang.
Speaker 2: So did you know that being in the world of theater,
Speaker 2: of your father setting up theaters, was this an influence of.
Speaker 5: Well, I was much more interested in being an artist
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, genuinely interested, and that was
Speaker 5: everybody assumed that was what I would do. But you know,
Speaker 5: we were very involved in the theater, Me and my siblings.
Speaker 5: We all performed, performed in the plays, and watched rehearsals
Speaker 5: day in and day out. Knew the whole Shakespearean cannon
Speaker 5: because he produced every single one of Shakespeare's plays, including
Speaker 5: Henry the Eighth and Timon of Athens.
Speaker 3: He must have been a great guy.
Speaker 4: He was a very genial, sweet, wonderful man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but his parents supportive of him.
Speaker 4: He was a black sheep and my mom was a
Speaker 4: black sheep.
Speaker 2: When you went from theater to theater, town to town,
Speaker 2: you said you did, even though there were universities. Was
Speaker 2: it having to adapt to a new vice.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like being a service brat, except I
Speaker 5: didn't go to a service brat school. I was the
Speaker 5: new kid in public schools all over Ohio and Massachusetts
Speaker 5: and graduated from Princeton High School in Princeton, New Jersey,
Speaker 5: where my dad ran the MacArthur Theater. It was a
Speaker 5: crazy pretty much, starting in about fourth grade.
Speaker 4: I kept we just moved.
Speaker 3: And moved, moved, and did you keep painting?
Speaker 4: I kept painting.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was really serious, right, up until I
Speaker 5: went off to college, at which point I was the
Speaker 5: campus star. Like within the first week I was an
Speaker 5: experienced actor.
Speaker 2: Tell me about Harvard and going to university. First of all,
Speaker 2: do you remember the food? Can we talk about food
Speaker 2: in Harvard?
Speaker 5: They were all the cooks in all the dorms, were
Speaker 5: these wonderful Irish women who just slopped out the food.
Speaker 2: Did you walk around Cambridge and discover what it was
Speaker 2: like to have Greek food or other kinds.
Speaker 5: Of When I most vividly remember about food at Harvard
Speaker 5: was Elsie's, the sandwich shop in Harvard Square, and the
Speaker 5: Fresher's Special and the.
Speaker 4: Big fat roast beef sandwiches.
Speaker 3: Do you remember that?
Speaker 2: When I went to Bennington and so we had a
Speaker 2: turn off and I got a job at the Harvard
Speaker 2: Law School doing I don't know what I did. You know,
Speaker 2: I took books down from the shelves and kind of
Speaker 2: read a few reports.
Speaker 3: But I sold pretzels. You remember that pretzels stand in
Speaker 3: Harvard Square? Yes, yeah, I worked there.
Speaker 4: Maybe I sold you I bet you probably did. We're
Speaker 4: almost contemporary.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows that about my life.
Speaker 3: Pretzels, But I saw pretzels in Harvard Square.
Speaker 2: Ye, well I was supposed to do. I like doing
Speaker 2: that more than working in the Harvard Law School.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I did get it.
Speaker 5: But it was very is a great atmosphere, and Harvard
Speaker 5: is very heroic these.
Speaker 3: Days, it is. Yeah, we could have a moment on
Speaker 3: that DEI.
Speaker 2: They'd be protecting our universities and standing up for Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, were you active politically in those days?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: I graduated in nineteen sixty seven and came off to
Speaker 5: London to study at Lambda, which pretty much separated me
Speaker 5: from all the political turmoil. I left the country just
Speaker 5: when everything flew apart.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Here I was in London in nineteen sixty eight, which
Speaker 5: until now was the most catastrophic here in America in
Speaker 5: recent American history. And ironically, at both moments here I
Speaker 5: was in England, reading all the news from back home
Speaker 5: and thinking, what is going on at the minute I leave?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know. Imagine a state bottled olive oil chosen and
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Speaker 2: each oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying
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Speaker 2: River Cafe flavor into your home or to show someone
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Speaker 2: website shop the Rivercafe dot co dot uk to place
Speaker 2: your order now. I came here in early sixty nine,
Speaker 2: at the end of sixty eight sixty nine, and I
Speaker 2: came with a you know, a group of friends, you know,
Speaker 2: boyfriends and friends who just escaping the draft.
Speaker 3: I always say that, you know, I'd.
Speaker 2: Probably agree that Vietnam was a class war because I
Speaker 2: you know, poor farmers, poor people from who couldn't didn't
Speaker 2: know how to get out of it.
Speaker 3: You know, we're drafted. I don't know anybody.
Speaker 2: I know somebody who went to Vietnam, for people from
Speaker 2: Williams or Dartmouth, but I don't know anybody who died there,
Speaker 2: and I hardly know anybody who went.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a real third rail of American society from
Speaker 5: that era. People were so burned by that board. Or
Speaker 5: whether they participated or whether they resisted, it's just this
Speaker 5: subject of deep confusion. And you're right. I was here
Speaker 5: in London at exactly that time. So many expaths and resisters,
Speaker 5: so many who were just confused, what do I do?
Speaker 4: What do I do next? I'm not going to participate
Speaker 4: in this.
Speaker 2: The people going to Sweden, trying to get to Canada,
Speaker 2: trying to go anywhere.
Speaker 5: And I remember, well Al Gore was one of them.
Speaker 5: Another one was Donald Graham, who who led Washington Post
Speaker 5: for so many years. They went to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John Kerry, John Carrey.
Speaker 4: Wonderful man.
Speaker 5: And and we thought, what is what's gone wrong with
Speaker 5: Donnie Graham? Because he he reoped for a second tour
Speaker 5: of duty? What has happened to him? And then he
Speaker 5: came back and joined the Washington, d c. Police Force.
Speaker 5: We thought he would you know, basically he was what
Speaker 5: he considered his duty as an American citizen. And we
Speaker 5: all thought it was an aberration. I mean, that's how
Speaker 5: crazy it was that period of time.
Speaker 2: It was a crazy time. So then you came back
Speaker 2: following your life you were with Lambda. Yeah, and was
Speaker 2: that a discovery?
Speaker 4: Oh? It was great?
Speaker 3: It was what did you discover?
Speaker 5: The first it was the first time I've been to England.
Speaker 5: I'd been to France, but I'd never been to England,
Speaker 5: even though I'd grown up in a total anglophile family,
Speaker 5: and I had studied English history and literature at Harvard,
Speaker 5: and I always said, within the first two weeks in London,
Speaker 5: I'd learned more about English history than I ever knew before.
Speaker 5: And you suddenly I knew. Never even occurred to me
Speaker 5: to look at a map and see where all these
Speaker 5: Shakespearean characters came from. Suddenly there was Kent and Northumberland,
Speaker 5: and Salisbury and Rochester.
Speaker 4: All of these.
Speaker 5: Gloucester a part that I'd played in king Lear. I
Speaker 5: never bothered to look at where Gloucester was, you know.
Speaker 5: So No, it was a wonderful time, and it was
Speaker 5: a great time in English theater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Peters was going on.
Speaker 5: Peter Brook was doing his greatest work, Peter Hall, who
Speaker 5: was the head of the RSC. Trevor Nunn took over
Speaker 5: from him at age twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Did you meet Kenneth Tynan?
Speaker 4: I never met.
Speaker 5: Kenneth Tynan, but I met a lot of other remarkable people.
Speaker 5: Met John Gielgood and his dress.
Speaker 3: Later.
Speaker 5: She was working a way out in the east in Stratford.
Speaker 5: Of course, the gravitational center has shifted east, but back
Speaker 5: then that was like working.
Speaker 4: You have money, well, I was on a.
Speaker 3: Full could you eat out? I keep going back to
Speaker 3: we ate a lot.
Speaker 5: I was in my first marriage, a very youthful marriage,
Speaker 5: and we ate a lot.
Speaker 4: Of Indian food.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never tasted better Indian food.
Speaker 3: Good. Do you still eat it?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how the I always think, well, we know,
Speaker 2: because of colonialism, how the British is.
Speaker 3: I hope I don't insult any of you.
Speaker 2: But there is a palette of British food which is
Speaker 2: quite sort of h what would be saying don't and
Speaker 2: then to go for all cuisines. You know, in every
Speaker 2: small town all over Britain there's Indian restaurants, you know,
Speaker 2: and that I agree.
Speaker 5: But I also remember, you know, the cliche was that
Speaker 5: England had absolutely awful food, but it.
Speaker 4: Wasn't true at all.
Speaker 5: There were so many wonderful, innovative restaurants. I think it
Speaker 5: was a little legacy of rationing because England had had
Speaker 5: to make do with only half the ingredients that we
Speaker 5: cook with now. But I remember finding great restaurants The
Speaker 5: Hungry Horse, Remember the Hungry Horse?
Speaker 3: I do was that in full? Something like that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And peoples and also if you ate in people's homes,
Speaker 2: their mothers cooked really good Sunday lunches and great meats
Speaker 2: and great you know, so it was an exploring time
Speaker 2: for you to be.
Speaker 3: Did you travel to Europe?
Speaker 4: Yeah, quite a lot.
Speaker 5: Oh we went to Salzburg and Vienna and Amsterdam and Italy.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, I mean you seize the day. If you've
Speaker 5: grown up in America and you're living in London. Every
Speaker 5: time I had a little five day break, I would
Speaker 5: sprint to Europe, to Paris for the first time.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 3: Do you remember Paris? The feeling of Paris?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like everything you ate was good.
Speaker 3: What did you remember what you ate? I read?
Speaker 4: Oh God.
Speaker 5: One of my great memories actually from before then, that
Speaker 5: summer that I spent in traveling around with a traveling
Speaker 5: around France with a youth group. I remember a crape
Speaker 5: stand in an artichoke field in Brittany and having this
Speaker 5: fellow make crapes on a big circular black grill and
Speaker 5: scrape it off when it was paper thin, and fold
Speaker 5: it up and sprinkle it with sugar, and remembered thinking,
Speaker 5: this is the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in
Speaker 5: my life. That's what happens to you when you go
Speaker 5: to other countries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, an open kitchen in the River Cafe means we
Speaker 2: as chefs are able to talk to our guests dining
Speaker 2: in the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos
Speaker 2: to our podcast, a Question an Answer episode with me
Speaker 2: and our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with
Speaker 2: your question to Questions at River Cafe dot co dot
Speaker 2: uk and you might just be our next great guest
Speaker 2: on Ruthie's Table four. The recipe that we thought you
Speaker 2: could read would be the recipe that you just because
Speaker 2: you were in the pastry's kitchen.
Speaker 3: Tell me what you thought about that.
Speaker 4: Oh, that was wonderful, very welcoming listening. Every every square foot.
Speaker 5: Of this place is welcoming, and that goes for the
Speaker 5: pastry cook kitchen too.
Speaker 4: They were they were wonderful. Tell me their names again.
Speaker 3: And Alice, Yeah, just delightful. They were thrilled to have you.
Speaker 2: Because it's also that contact you have with somebody who yeah,
Speaker 2: both you and Mary.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Mary came in there with me and she is my
Speaker 5: my tutor. Yeah she is a professor, but in the
Speaker 5: case of pastry cooking, she was my professor.
Speaker 3: But how did that start?
Speaker 5: From the very just always she was always a great
Speaker 5: great baker and by bit like Tom Sawyer and his
Speaker 5: white picket fence. She taught me how to do some
Speaker 5: of this stuff and then abandon it herself, so I
Speaker 5: became the baker.
Speaker 4: In the house.
Speaker 3: You find it relaxing to bake.
Speaker 4: Not entirely, but it's there.
Speaker 5: You're feeling elated when something comes out of the oven, right,
Speaker 5: and you look forward to that moment. Yeah, it's and
Speaker 5: now it is sort of shorthand. Mary's from Montana. We
Speaker 5: have a little cabin on a lake in Montana, and
Speaker 5: there's a one single cherry tree in the woods, left
Speaker 5: over from when there used to be a cherry orchard.
Speaker 5: And one of our favorite things is to ride a
Speaker 5: horse to the cherry tree, gather cherries at exactly the
Speaker 5: right time in the summer, bring them back to the house,
Speaker 5: wash them, pit them, and make a cherry pie and
Speaker 5: eat the cherry pie with tea.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like a three hour long to cherry better.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the idea that you get around a
Speaker 3: horse and.
Speaker 4: I become very good at the lattice crust.
Speaker 3: I'd like to have that. Can I make one for
Speaker 3: me one time?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: I might not be We have a church outside. I'll
Speaker 2: show you after this, and we have a lot of
Speaker 2: cherries on it. Yeah, I mean they're not quite there yet,
Speaker 2: but there's nothing better than a good Yeah.
Speaker 3: So would you like to read the recipe?
Speaker 2: You can read it any way you want, Okay, River,
Speaker 2: you that Whyeliff Sean did it and wrap some ta
Speaker 2: face sang it.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. But you can just read it out
Speaker 3: if you like anyway you like.
Speaker 5: Well, I will, I guess I'll read it in my
Speaker 5: best uh an adequate English accent.
Speaker 4: My roll doll, pretend I'm rolled. All. Yeah, there we
Speaker 4: go with the same attitude.
Speaker 3: Roll doll. Like food. We know about his Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was quite a he did cook cookbooks, yeah, with.
Speaker 4: His wife Lizzie. Yeah, and of course a big wine.
Speaker 3: You're sort of in a kitchen in the play.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a house under renovation, but we sell
Speaker 5: set up for a luncheon River Cafe. Pastry three hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty grams that is twelve ounces plain flower, a
Speaker 5: pinch of salt, one hundred and seventy five grams, which
Speaker 5: is eight ounces unsalted cold butter cut into cubes one
Speaker 5: hundred grams that is four ounces icing sugar. Three egg
Speaker 5: yolks for the sweet pastry. Pulse the flower, salt and
Speaker 5: butter and a food processor until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Speaker 5: Add the sugar and then the egg yolks and pulse.
Speaker 5: The mixture will immediately combine and leave the sides of
Speaker 5: the bowl. Remove, wrap in cling film and chill for
Speaker 5: at least an hour. Preheat the oven to one hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty degrees centigrade that is three hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: degrees fahrenheight gas four. Cause the great bass tree into
Speaker 5: a thirty centimeter that is a twelve inch loose bottomed,
Speaker 5: fluted flantin. Then press it evenly on the sides and base.
Speaker 5: Bake blind for twenty minutes until very light, brown and cool.
Speaker 5: How is that coach was not listening?
Speaker 2: We like, there's something about a recipe which is very nice.
Speaker 2: Isn't it nice to listen to?
Speaker 4: I think, what a great idea to have dramatic reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had period and we gave a performance in
Speaker 2: our house and we would invite a hundred people and
Speaker 2: then that money would go to eddy charity or foundation
Speaker 2: that the actor wanted to give. And so we had
Speaker 2: ray fines did a Beckett soliloquy, and Judy Dench did
Speaker 2: a whole night and we had John Williams played the guitar,
Speaker 2: and then Ian McKellen did his night and he ended
Speaker 2: it and he sang songs and he told stories and
Speaker 2: he read poetry and he ended up reading a recipe
Speaker 2: from one I didn't know, and it was very compelling.
Speaker 3: He read a recipe for a soup and.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: In honor of his host, my co star, Elliott Levy, giant.
Speaker 4: Of those.
Speaker 3: He did, Well, we should do another one because you
Speaker 3: know that space.
Speaker 2: The acoustics are good, and yeah, we'll do We'll do
Speaker 2: something when when you're done with the play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: That's so excited. Though I don't like the idea you're
Speaker 2: going to Hampstead. It's quite far. But I also thought
Speaker 2: being you and knowing your political spectrum and how you
Speaker 2: and I both give you a lot through the lens
Speaker 2: of society, through the lens of poverty, through the lens
Speaker 2: of struggle. And I think you know we are aware,
Speaker 2: aren't we that right now in this world there are
Speaker 2: so many people struggling and feeling that.
Speaker 3: Do you feel, Oh.
Speaker 5: Gosh, it's very hard not to be not to be
Speaker 5: extremely gloomy these days.
Speaker 4: But there is there's heroism.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's that magnificent chef who created that, Yes.
Speaker 3: Exactly what these people died in Gaza.
Speaker 5: Yes, for every for every little hopeful sign, there's there's
Speaker 5: another source of despair. These days, it's very, very hard,
Speaker 5: and all you can do is cling to the belief
Speaker 5: that this too will pass, it will and and fight
Speaker 5: for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's a combination of the fighting and the
Speaker 2: optimism that we will fight and win. And then we
Speaker 2: also think about food. As we think about food, as
Speaker 2: I just said political, we think of it as an
Speaker 2: indicator of someone's success that they can afford.
Speaker 3: To buy food.
Speaker 2: We think of it how we feed our children, how
Speaker 2: the government feeds our people in hospital or in prison,
Speaker 2: and the responsibilities.
Speaker 3: And we also think of food is comfort.
Speaker 2: So my very last question to you, John Lithke, who
Speaker 2: I love Anadorea, is when.
Speaker 3: You need comfort, is there food that you might reach for?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I think the very best pasta is probably it. I
Speaker 5: don't know, it's you know, Ruth, you're interviewing me, and
Speaker 5: you are, in my opinion, the paragon of making people
Speaker 5: feel taken care of you're the most welcome I mean person.
Speaker 5: It's no coincidence that you've created this incredible institution because it's.
Speaker 4: The same in your household.
Speaker 5: You just feel every you put everyone at ease, make
Speaker 5: them feel so welcome.
Speaker 4: And food is a part of that process, isn't it.
Speaker 5: I believe there's a wonderful quote from MFK. Fisher, who's
Speaker 5: a fiction writer but also a food writer, from about
Speaker 5: thirty years ago, and she was asked, since you write fiction,
Speaker 5: and that's your great passion, why do you also write
Speaker 5: about food? And she said, well, it's very simple, as
Speaker 5: far as she's concerned, there are two things that human
Speaker 5: beings can't do without. One is food and one is love.
Speaker 5: And to her, they're very, very closely connected with each other.
Speaker 5: I always thought that was a beautiful definition, and you, sir, represent.
Speaker 4: That to me.
Speaker 3: So do you still okay?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four
Speaker 1: in partnership with Montclair