Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 1: An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
Speaker 1: chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
Speaker 1: the restaurant, sharing how we cook their food, where the
Speaker 1: ingredients come from, as well as hints and advice for
Speaker 1: cooking the recipes in the books. And now we're bringing
Speaker 1: that same ethos to our podcast, a question and answer
Speaker 1: episode with me and our two executive chefs, Sean Winnowen
Speaker 1: and Joseph Travelli. All we need is to hear from
Speaker 1: you about what you would like to know. Send a
Speaker 1: voice note with your question to Questions at Rivercafe dot
Speaker 1: co dot uk and you might just be our next
Speaker 1: great guest on Ruthie's Table four. David Chipperfield and I
Speaker 1: have been friends for so long that this morning I
Speaker 1: had to ask him when we met. He reminded me
Speaker 1: it was in Paris, Richard was building the Pompadou and
Speaker 1: David was a student. The light has shone bright since
Speaker 1: then for this Pritzker and Sterling Prize winner, the Noise
Speaker 1: Museum in Berlin, Hepworth Wakefield and many others. A few
Speaker 1: months ago, David asked me to see the work his
Speaker 1: foundation is doing on the food Marcus in Galicia, their
Speaker 1: crucial world sustainability, the economy and culture. And so here
Speaker 1: I am in northwest Spain about to talk to him
Speaker 1: in front of an audience for a special live event.
Speaker 1: David's introduction to Calicia was thirty three years ago on
Speaker 1: a visit to Corbado, a small seaside village where he
Speaker 1: and his wife Evelyn created a home. Now they have
Speaker 1: a small bar in the middle of the village. David
Speaker 1: is as passionate about Alicia's farm to table culture as
Speaker 1: he is about its people. For him, it's all part
Speaker 1: of the same conversation, conversation that I am so excited
Speaker 1: and grateful to be having here with him in Casarea.
Speaker 1: David and Evelyn think that I went to have my
Speaker 1: hair done today, but really what I was doing is
Speaker 1: looking for an apartment to live here, because in the
Speaker 1: last forty eight hours, having never been here before, I've
Speaker 1: been in bars in eleven o'clock at night. I've eaten
Speaker 1: a pig's nose and a pig's tail and a pig's ear.
Speaker 1: I've met ambassadors and artists and fashion designers. And I've seen, really,
Speaker 1: what I've seen here in the last forty eight hours
Speaker 1: is the connection here in casarea. It could be in
Speaker 1: the market, it could be meeting someone who is going
Speaker 1: to tell us their fish. It's just a constant, constant
Speaker 1: flow of connection and engagement and empathy and fun and
Speaker 1: interest in the people who live here. And I'm in
Speaker 1: awe of what they do. I feel so lucky and happy,
Speaker 1: and the only emotion I feel right now is that
Speaker 1: I don't want to go home.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ruthie, and thank you everybody for coming. It's
Speaker 2: a really impressive group of people tonight, So thank you
Speaker 2: for coming. Ruthie has been instrumental in changing the food
Speaker 2: culture of London, your interest in where food comes from
Speaker 2: and sourcing food, because you talk a lot about that.
Speaker 2: When I hear you talking a lot about where you
Speaker 2: get your tomatoes from. Galicia has this food culture, it
Speaker 2: has this food production culture, it has this small scale production.
Speaker 2: We've got many here and we at the same time,
Speaker 2: we've seen the enormous migration of young people from the
Speaker 2: rural because it's a hard life. The parents want them
Speaker 2: to go away and go to university. Doesn't matter what
Speaker 2: they study, and there isn't enough development of those agricultural
Speaker 2: industries into the modern world. So we've got no new model.
Speaker 2: We've only got the old model, the antique model of
Speaker 2: small scale farming. And that is tough. And this is
Speaker 2: a topic that we're interested in the way how do
Speaker 2: you keep young people interested and how does the administration
Speaker 2: in a way put confidence in that.
Speaker 1: I'm encouraged by a lot of really good you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about food, about small farms, about farmers, about young people.
Speaker 1: I think the exciting thing is also that I was
Speaker 1: talking to We buy our tomato and jars for the
Speaker 1: winter cook tomato sauce in Pulia, and he was telling
Speaker 1: me today that a lot of the people from Pulia
Speaker 1: young people, because how do you keep young people wanting
Speaker 1: to stay in the communities where they grew up And
Speaker 1: of course you want them to go explore the world,
Speaker 1: but you also know how important the culture is. And
Speaker 1: he was saying that people in ployee have gone young
Speaker 1: people have gone to Milan to become bankers or you know,
Speaker 1: work in industry or work in tech, and at starting
Speaker 1: to come back because what draws them back is the quality,
Speaker 1: you know, the quality of food that they can do.
Speaker 1: It's exciting. They can make you know, jar tomatoes and
Speaker 1: beautiful jars with beautiful graphics and make them you know, interesting,
Speaker 1: and then they can experiment. In Mexico, you know, we
Speaker 1: have so many friends who are making you know, their
Speaker 1: parents with traditional made mescal or tequila, and they're doing
Speaker 1: it in a different way. The wine producers that we
Speaker 1: work with in Italy, their parents their you know, Renzo's generation.
Speaker 1: They were farmers who made wine. And now these young
Speaker 1: you know, they're now in their forties or fifties, decided
Speaker 1: when they inherited, they go to La you know, California
Speaker 1: and France and Bordeaux and see how to make wine
Speaker 1: in a different way. Came back and changed the production
Speaker 1: of you know, great into great wines. And so I
Speaker 1: think if we can encourage people to work because food
Speaker 1: and farming, agriculture and production is so exciting.
Speaker 2: One might say, very superficially here that the margins get
Speaker 2: very small now and therefore the condition hospitality is very
Speaker 2: tough because bars and restaurants can't afford to pay their
Speaker 2: stuff that much. Yeah, yeah, and I think they pay
Speaker 2: them very fairly and reasonably, you know, in the general,
Speaker 2: but it's a very long day. It's a very hard business.
Speaker 2: You know, it's tough.
Speaker 1: We glamorize being a chef, you know, we think, oh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, passion to be a chef and work
Speaker 1: in a restaurant. But for a lot of people, it
Speaker 1: was either going in the army or going to be
Speaker 1: a chef. And then and then if you became a chef,
Speaker 1: it was so hard because you had to be there
Speaker 1: at four in the morning, you had to soak the fire,
Speaker 1: you had to be bullied by somebody who told you
Speaker 1: what to do. And then everybody woke up and said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we don't have to be like this.
Speaker 1: You can come into work at nine, you can work
Speaker 1: five days a week. You can be fed, you can
Speaker 1: use good ingredients, you can be taught. You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to be you know, if somebody bullies you, go to
Speaker 1: the police. You know, there was a whole way of
Speaker 1: making actually working in food in a restaurant something that
Speaker 1: people wanted to do. And I think it could be
Speaker 1: the same with farming. It can be with.
Speaker 2: Its easily because do they want to work and I
Speaker 2: hope they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's been you know, we have had
Speaker 1: people do you have about one hundred and twenty. But
Speaker 1: we have a shop, we have a cafe, cafe, and
Speaker 1: we do off site, you know, we do you know,
Speaker 1: we do events and that. But I think whether you
Speaker 1: have twelve or whether you have one hundred, it's the
Speaker 1: way your culture. Getting back to the culture, what makes
Speaker 1: somebody want to be an architect, you know, what makes
Speaker 1: somebody want to be a fashion designer? You know what
Speaker 1: draws you? And I think far is a real struggle.
Speaker 1: You know, it can rain when you need sun, and
Speaker 1: it can have sun when you need rain, and it
Speaker 1: can be nobody buys corn anymore. It's very hard. You're
Speaker 1: working in the wine is wine is like farming. They
Speaker 1: have a bad rain and then a hail and then
Speaker 1: you know, we know that. So how do you make
Speaker 1: it though part of something that you want to do.
Speaker 2: A few people say, we're just not willing to pay
Speaker 2: enough for our food, and that's one of the problems.
Speaker 2: A lot of the restaurants here. They are very fixed
Speaker 2: in prices, you know, and it's a much flatter society here.
Speaker 2: It's much more difficult to leave ridge money out of food.
Speaker 2: The margins are quite tight. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I would say the qualities are very yeah, really hard.
Speaker 1: I've eaten so well here, you know, really from the
Speaker 1: lunch we had, I can name all the meals we've had,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've only been here a short time.
Speaker 2: We've had a piece lunch, and you've had about.
Speaker 1: The fish we had the first you getting off the
Speaker 1: plane and having that fish and then sitting in nearby
Speaker 1: that night. And the pig, yes, the pig. But the
Speaker 1: breakfast and the tortilla, and what David and Evelyn and
Speaker 1: so Leicester you're doing here. I mean, the kitchen here is.
Speaker 2: Amazing Anincdotally it's often said that we're buying more cookbooks
Speaker 2: but doing less cooking. Clearly, the idea that people still
Speaker 2: cook is pretty fundamental part of the whole food ecology.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you have the feeling that people are
Speaker 2: still cooking?
Speaker 1: I think they are. I think, you know, young people
Speaker 1: who can't I mean, you know, maybe afford to go out,
Speaker 1: or they have children at home and don't go out.
Speaker 1: I think that cookbooks are kind of aspirational, you know.
Speaker 1: Nor Efron rote a very famous essay for Gourmet, saying
Speaker 1: I get Gourmet magazine every month and I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it from cover to cover, and I've never made a recipe,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think there is that thing of
Speaker 1: looking at a cook book and thinking I will make this,
Speaker 1: I will do it, I'll be a better person if
Speaker 1: I do, or whatever, and then you put it away
Speaker 1: and you go back to making what you do. But
Speaker 1: I do think people like to read. I think the
Speaker 1: internet has changed a lot of people look at recipes online,
Speaker 1: which is great, you know, or on YouTube, which is great,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that anything that makes people want
Speaker 1: to cook. Do people cook for you? Do your friends
Speaker 1: cook for you?
Speaker 2: Yes, there's certainly a sort of London dinner party cooking,
Speaker 2: but I suppose I'm talking about you know, every day yeah,
Speaker 2: for your kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think it's hard. I mean it is
Speaker 1: really hard because now we're all working with the idea
Speaker 1: of one of the woman who stayed home and shocked
Speaker 1: and prepared and cooked and food was on the table
Speaker 1: when you came home. It has changed. It's just a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure because very often those women are going
Speaker 1: to do the night shift at Amazon or you know,
Speaker 1: they'd rather do homework with their kids and cook a
Speaker 1: meal for them. I'd like to take the value j
Speaker 1: out of it. I would like people to think, instead
Speaker 1: of ordering on delivery, I can put a bag of
Speaker 1: pasta in the boiling water and serve it with broccoli
Speaker 1: and you're done. But I think the reality is it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to do everything.
Speaker 2: As things become more and more expensive even to buy,
Speaker 2: then the reliability of process food that you can buy
Speaker 2: becomes simpler. Again, slightly anecdotal, but I heard a mother
Speaker 2: talking on BBC Radio for saying that she tried, and
Speaker 2: you know, she felt morally undistressed to cook every night
Speaker 2: for her children and sit down. She said, but I
Speaker 2: can cook reasonably well and I can do it, but
Speaker 2: so many of my friends don't know how to cook.
Speaker 2: And also that it's a risk because if you can
Speaker 2: buy things and you don't cook your supper well for
Speaker 2: your kids, you might have blown your budget and secondly
Speaker 2: they might not want to eat it, whereas if you
Speaker 2: give them process, you know, a Hamburg or something guaranteed.
Speaker 2: And your friend Jamie Oliver, so those of you that
Speaker 2: know the chef Jamie Oliver, who had a very has
Speaker 2: had really big influence in England, came from your kitchen.
Speaker 2: He was one of your kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was, he is still and.
Speaker 2: He's been incredibly a good advocate for sort of normal food.
Speaker 2: I think Blair pointed him as a sort of ambassador
Speaker 2: for school food, so they tried to improve school food.
Speaker 2: But how do you see the larger food culture.
Speaker 1: Well, your first point about people not cooking at home
Speaker 1: and not knowing how to cook, you know, I go
Speaker 1: back to Blair and would say education, education, education, because
Speaker 1: I think if you judge, how do you judge a culture,
Speaker 1: how did you judge a society? You know, it could
Speaker 1: take Paris where if you walk, you know, I have
Speaker 1: a photograph of a cole mat Turnell which is a
Speaker 1: state school for young children, and they put their menus
Speaker 1: on the outside of the of the school and you see,
Speaker 1: you know, they start with Celaria ramalogue and then they
Speaker 1: have a soup, and then they have a fish or
Speaker 1: a meat. Then they have a cheese course for four
Speaker 1: year olds, and then they had a dessert. And I
Speaker 1: have this photograph and I thought that tells you something.
Speaker 1: I think that tells you something about a culture that
Speaker 1: prioritizes feeding little children, well you know, for free. This
Speaker 1: is not a private school. And I think that the
Speaker 1: way a society feeds their children the way they feed
Speaker 1: sick children. You know, I could go on and on.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too political, but I really
Speaker 1: do think that the way and I can see it here.
Speaker 1: You can see in the market, you can see the
Speaker 1: way somebody offered me. One thing I thought I would
Speaker 1: do is buy a piece of cheese today because I
Speaker 1: hadn't been able to do that, and she wouldn't take
Speaker 1: you know, she gave it to me. And that culture
Speaker 1: of sharing, and.
Speaker 2: It's not always true. Sometimes they take money.
Speaker 1: Well, they didn't take it for me. For their food,
Speaker 1: they didn't take it, but they were just it was
Speaker 1: just I don't know, it's a way somebody cuts a
Speaker 1: piece of bread. I think it really goes deep into
Speaker 1: a culture. How we can fix it, I think it's
Speaker 1: not sure, but I do think if we invest in
Speaker 1: people then now.
Speaker 2: I mean, Japan had had an anxiety because they shifted
Speaker 2: diet a bit. They're eating more Western foods, and they
Speaker 2: panicked about child obesity and that they were getting a
Speaker 2: large percentage of child to see, so they introduced regulations
Speaker 2: into the school. All school food now has to be
Speaker 2: produced on the school. It all has to be fresh food.
Speaker 2: It has to be cooked in it, and they've got
Speaker 2: child to b C down to four percent or something.
Speaker 2: So it's as simple as that, surely, isn't it.
Speaker 1: In our schools they have candy machines, don't they The
Speaker 1: machine that sells suits, you know, so it's a complex issue.
Speaker 1: I think cooking is joyous, you know. I think that
Speaker 1: it is fun. It brings people together. I think that
Speaker 1: there are so many ways to do it. And I
Speaker 1: think that you know, there are ways to communicate that
Speaker 1: and to give that to people, you know, definitely, and
Speaker 1: you know, as you say, you need a food culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and presumably at certain point these things have to
Speaker 2: be stimulated or promoted or encouraged by simple regulations or not.
Speaker 2: I mean, we saw something in England which I was
Speaker 2: quite surprised at. They the last government, conservative government put
Speaker 2: the tax on sugar in drinks.
Speaker 1: Now it's happened in New Mexico. A huge, huge difference.
Speaker 1: You must have noticed it, you know that. You know,
Speaker 1: they text Coca Cola and the gcase. People are buying
Speaker 1: huge bottles and that has really helped. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: Imagine a state bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for
Speaker 1: the river Cafe arriving at your door every month. Our
Speaker 1: subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each
Speaker 1: oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with
Speaker 1: each delivery. It's a perfect way to bring some River
Speaker 1: Cafe flavor into your home or to show someone you
Speaker 1: really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
Speaker 1: shop the Rivercafe dot co UK to place your order.
Speaker 2: Now, your whole food thing began in the office. It
Speaker 2: was the canteen of Richard Rogers Architects. Why did you
Speaker 2: do that? Tell us how it started with Rose Gray
Speaker 2: and how did the Oh.
Speaker 1: Sorry because it's a long story, but Richard and I
Speaker 1: were living in Paris designing a building and we came
Speaker 1: back to London having lived in Paris for five years,
Speaker 1: and he really it was Richard really thought that he
Speaker 1: didn't want to move into a building in the city
Speaker 1: or building, you know, in an office. He wanted to
Speaker 1: create a community. And I think living in Paris made
Speaker 1: us very aware of being you know, outsiders and sticking
Speaker 1: together quite closely with people we worked with with our family,
Speaker 1: and so we came back. He really looked for a
Speaker 1: place where there could be a community and we found
Speaker 1: these warehouses on the Thames, which quite in the western
Speaker 1: part of London, Harrismith, and they were originally Duckham's Oil,
Speaker 1: you know, And so there was noisy, it was dirty,
Speaker 1: it was quite industrial. And he and his partners bought
Speaker 1: the site and tore down one of the warehouses so
Speaker 1: you could see the river. They took a large part
Speaker 1: of the space, but they also there was somebody who
Speaker 1: framed payings. There was graphic designers, there was another architect.
Speaker 1: The idea was how to create a community. And the
Speaker 1: most important thing for Richard being Italian, having lived in
Speaker 1: Frads loving food a mother was a great cook, was
Speaker 1: gathering together over food, you know, how could you do that?
Speaker 1: And so there was a very small space and we
Speaker 1: talked about it. I'd worked in publishing and I worked
Speaker 1: in the office doing books, and I was trained as
Speaker 1: a graphic designer. And so the idea was we would
Speaker 1: interview various restaurants or small cafes that would want to
Speaker 1: come into this very small space. And I can actually
Speaker 1: remember the night that we were skiing and I turned
Speaker 1: to Richard and said, the only thing worse than not
Speaker 1: having a place to eat would be to have a
Speaker 1: mediocre one and these are mediocre. I think I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I honestly said, I think I'll do it. And so
Speaker 1: from that idea we went back to London and Rose Gray,
Speaker 1: a magnificent woman who was a friend, a great friend
Speaker 1: of Zad's family as well, had come back from New York.
Speaker 1: She'd worked with Keith McNally on setting up Nells, and
Speaker 1: she was back in London. She was cooking and I said,
Speaker 1: let's go, you know, can we meet for a coffee.
Speaker 1: Neither of us really knew very much about doing a
Speaker 1: restaurant but.
Speaker 2: The reason you wanted to do it was because you
Speaker 2: wanted this to be a sort of social center of.
Speaker 1: The place where people could come and have lunch. And
Speaker 1: we weren't even allowed to open. We wanted to open
Speaker 1: to the public. We wanted to be the best Italian
Speaker 1: restaurant in London. The idea that we wanted to start
Speaker 1: a canteen for the office wasn't really our idea, but
Speaker 1: we had the restriction of not being allowed to open
Speaker 1: to the public, and we could only be open for lunch.
Speaker 2: And why Italian, that's.
Speaker 1: A good yeah. Richard. Richard's family were in Florence. His connection.
Speaker 1: His mother was Italian from Trieste. We spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in Italy and Rose had actually lived in
Speaker 1: Luca for two years with her children.
Speaker 2: I had the sense that you were also It wasn't
Speaker 2: just Italian food, it was the idea that you were
Speaker 2: also interested in where the food came from, and you
Speaker 2: did all your trips, research trips about where the recipes
Speaker 2: came from.
Speaker 1: We really wanted to cook the kind of Italian food
Speaker 1: that we had eaten in Italy. And if you went
Speaker 1: to restaurants, the Italian restaurants in London were mostly run
Speaker 1: and started by managers or waiters, and they brought the
Speaker 1: kind of food that they thought people would want to
Speaker 1: eat in London. Quite heavy, you know, parmeganni was delicious,
Speaker 1: plus spaghetti with meatballs, cheap coianty, and we wanted to
Speaker 1: bring the kind of food that we had cooked and
Speaker 1: eaten in Italy. Bread, soups, pasta, sauces that were simple.
Speaker 2: That all seems fairly obvious now, but thirty five years
Speaker 2: ago that must have been.
Speaker 1: It was very challenging. We used to bring back We
Speaker 1: used to go to Italy and bring back parmesan cheese
Speaker 1: we used to go and bring back a proshuto. I
Speaker 1: remember carrying a proshuoto. And famously Rose once brought back
Speaker 1: a huge pumpkin and she gave the pumpkin a seating
Speaker 1: business class and she's at an economy. You know. But
Speaker 1: it changed, It did change.
Speaker 2: And have you seen that change over these years?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, radically, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that as I sometimes say, when cheap lights started happening,
Speaker 1: that you could fly to Florence or fly to Naples
Speaker 1: for fifteen pounds. More and more people went there, went
Speaker 1: to Italy and thought, wow, I can eat this in Italy.
Speaker 1: I'd like to eat in England. In the beginning, people
Speaker 1: would we'd serve a Papa pomodoro, which was made of
Speaker 1: bread and tomatoes and basil, and people would say, well,
Speaker 1: at the time, why should I pay five pounds for this?
Speaker 1: People became much more involved, I think in the kind
Speaker 1: of food you could.
Speaker 2: Eat and what are the changes have you seen over
Speaker 2: this period?
Speaker 1: I mean, what else is Well, it's been thirty seven years,
Speaker 1: so there has been I think people, you know, eating
Speaker 1: out more. I think that people go to restaurants, do
Speaker 1: want to know about sourcing and then I think for us,
Speaker 1: a big radical step was when we became involved with
Speaker 1: the people who produced our wine. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: we were very tusk and based in the beginning, but
Speaker 1: then we went to Piedmonte to meet the wine producers,
Speaker 1: or Sicily to meet the wine producers, or Pulia. It
Speaker 1: took us into the world of people who were creating
Speaker 1: something and then also people who were then starting to
Speaker 1: really think about bringing food from Italy to England. We
Speaker 1: brought back seeds, We brought back the seeds for cavalon narrow.
Speaker 1: I have to give rosa credit for that, and found
Speaker 1: a farmer near Southampton who grew it for us, you know,
Speaker 1: And so we were able to have cavalonero in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, you know, when nobody even could get it
Speaker 1: at all, so we could make rebelita. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't make rebelita really without cavalonaro. And then became very
Speaker 1: involved in olive oil well as well, because the people
Speaker 1: who make the wine also make the olive oil. So
Speaker 1: we bottled our own olive oil. You know, we'd go
Speaker 1: and do that.
Speaker 2: I use your cookbooks, you know, thirty years or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I think the cookbooks were also a way of
Speaker 2: explaining the idea of River Cafe. No, I mean, do
Speaker 2: you have that feeling that they were sort of fundamental
Speaker 2: to the idea of the River Cafe, not just as
Speaker 2: a place, but as another way of looking at food.
Speaker 1: Now, when we were asked to write our first cookbook,
Speaker 1: the River Cafe Cookbook, and we said, we're not cookbook writers,
Speaker 1: were you know, chefs? So no, and then we started thinking, well,
Speaker 1: how can we In a way, it almost became a
Speaker 1: handbook for the people who work. So they'd come up,
Speaker 1: a chef would be working, say how do I make rotolo?
Speaker 1: Or how do I make a tomato sauce? And you know,
Speaker 1: we have to explain. And then we thought, well if
Speaker 1: we write them down, and I think it's a long
Speaker 1: story again. So well, but the cookbooks, the first cookbook
Speaker 1: that we did, we've wrote the recipe down. We took
Speaker 1: a photograph of the food right away, no styling, we
Speaker 1: just took and so if you follow these directions, you
Speaker 1: will be able to make something that we make. You know,
Speaker 1: it's simple, it's easy, it's accessible. This is the way
Speaker 1: we cook in the River Cafe. This is the way
Speaker 1: you can cook at home. It was kind of bringing
Speaker 1: restaurant food to the domestic kitchen. The River Cafe wind
Speaker 1: you said lunch is now running from Monday to Thursday.
Speaker 1: Reserve a booking at www. River cafet co uk or
Speaker 1: give us a call.
Speaker 2: I wonder if we should open it up to some
Speaker 2: questions to give you the opportunity.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being here and question for me.
Speaker 3: I know that you have a very particular culture at
Speaker 3: the River Cafe, the way that you train the staff
Speaker 3: to care about the food, the trips that you do
Speaker 3: to Italy source, even hiring people that have trained up
Speaker 3: bally Malo in Ireland. Could you talk a little bit
Speaker 3: more about how you install that into like every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the Italy trips are really you know, something
Speaker 1: that Rose and I did when we were just starting
Speaker 1: out and we thought, you know, I really like David
Speaker 1: and even and to have a personal relationship. So we
Speaker 1: started out with the people that we bought our wine from,
Speaker 1: and then we realized that for a lot of the
Speaker 1: young people working in the River Cafe cooking making the
Speaker 1: thinnest violi you can see your hand through, or doing
Speaker 1: a slow cook field sauce, or making a polentic cake.
Speaker 1: They were cooking greatful, but a lot of them. I
Speaker 1: think life is about exposure, and I just say the
Speaker 1: way my children have been exposed, or my friend's children,
Speaker 1: and so they hadn't been exposed to actually Italian life
Speaker 1: for Italy, and so we started taking chefs and managers
Speaker 1: and waiters and it became really important. We still we'll
Speaker 1: do it, you know. Now we take because we're bigger.
Speaker 1: We take about fifteen sixteen people to Tuscany. We do
Speaker 1: it around the olive oil and we take them to
Speaker 1: see how olive oil is made, the pressing the olives,
Speaker 1: and then the producers give us. It's quite hard work.
Speaker 1: You get up in the morning, I know, and then
Speaker 1: you go to a winery, you taste the wine, you
Speaker 1: see the olive oil. Then you have lunch. They always
Speaker 1: in the house of the producer. Again it's a home
Speaker 1: cooked Italian meal, Tuscan meal. And then you do it
Speaker 1: again and you go to it. So it's but they
Speaker 1: come back so excited and so knowledgeable, so that when
Speaker 1: they pour that bit of olive oil over somebody's brisquetta,
Speaker 1: they really respect it and they understand it. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's the Italy trip. Then I suppose we have
Speaker 1: we change the menu every meal, so the chef comes
Speaker 1: in and writes a menu depending like you do at home.
Speaker 1: But we have in the fridge. What if we ordered
Speaker 1: what's left over? How do I feel? What would I
Speaker 1: like to eat if I was eating in the River
Speaker 1: Cafe tonight? So I think that gives a lot of interest.
Speaker 1: And they and also the chefs come in and they
Speaker 1: don't know what they're gonna cook, so that gives a
Speaker 1: kind of interest. And then I suppose we have again
Speaker 1: the open kitchen. We work in a kitchen where it's
Speaker 1: so open that nobody can shout, you know, which is
Speaker 1: you know, you have a kind of order, which is
Speaker 1: I once said to a friend of mine, as a director,
Speaker 1: look at the kitchen, isn't it like a play? And
Speaker 1: he said, no, actually, Ruthy, it's like a ballet, you know,
Speaker 1: because everybody's moving the whole time, you know, and you
Speaker 1: go over to the grill and say is it ready yet?
Speaker 1: Or you go, you know, to the pasta and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're done? Can I put the lamb on now? You know?
Speaker 1: So I think making and we don't. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: and a team and also we don't really encourage people
Speaker 1: to do more than five shifts and sometimes a six.
Speaker 1: They can't do more than one double, and they have
Speaker 1: to have two days off, usually in a row, and
Speaker 1: that again gives you a sense of a genuine place.
Speaker 1: Everybody has a view out to the river. If you're
Speaker 1: on the bar, you can look out. If you're you know,
Speaker 1: washing up, you can move outside. It's so we try
Speaker 1: and create an environment like that. But we're not alone.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not to say I just want to say that
Speaker 1: it sounds like we're a family, happy cozy, you know,
Speaker 1: hugging restaurant. We're actually if that, you know, curtain goes
Speaker 1: up at twelve thirty and you haven't done your sauce,
Speaker 1: so you haven't raided the cheese, or you haven't squeezed
Speaker 1: your lemons, you're in trouble, you know, because our role
Speaker 1: is to make a happy kitchen. But it's really rigorous.
Speaker 1: You have to We have people coming in to eat,
Speaker 1: and the whole attention is on is a carpet cleaned,
Speaker 1: is the are the menus out? You know? It's it's
Speaker 1: it's very professional too.
Speaker 4: Yes, any other questions, so I may lower the level
Speaker 4: of a discussion here with this silly question. But I
Speaker 4: dared to ask you that because perhaps of my I'm
Speaker 4: an anglophile, because I love York Side pudding, Yorkshire, and
Speaker 4: I was wondering what it would be like, Like I said,
Speaker 4: what would be like? How would you imagine what would
Speaker 4: be the difficulties, the challenges, or even have the success
Speaker 4: of opening a British restaurant in Rome?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that I can't take Rome, but I
Speaker 1: know that hawksmore. And there's another restaurant opening in New York,
Speaker 1: you know, and bringing very much kind of Yorkshire putting
Speaker 1: in roast beef to New York. Rome. Not sure.
Speaker 2: But after Yorkshire putting, what what do you do? What's
Speaker 2: the next Thingish thing?
Speaker 1: Fergus it's done for you know, Fergus has done lots
Speaker 1: of you know, we were talking about that today that
Speaker 1: it would just be great if when you went to
Speaker 1: dinner at Buckingham Palace, you know, you have had steak
Speaker 1: and kidney pudding or roast beef instead of a kind
Speaker 1: of faux French meal. You know that you would actually
Speaker 1: celebrate British cooking. And I think sometimes when you talk
Speaker 1: to people about you know, growing up in Lancashire or
Speaker 1: Yorkshire or Cornwall. They will talk, oh, my mother used
Speaker 1: to make this dish, you know, and they will wax
Speaker 1: lyrical about their grandmother's cooking. So I'm sure it's there.
Speaker 1: I don't think it does translate very easily to restaurants.
Speaker 1: The best British cooking I've had has been in people's houses,
Speaker 1: you know, really great food Sad's mom. You know, It's
Speaker 1: just it's eating in people's houses. I think I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how it translates to restaurants. Rome, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: We'll leave it to you for me to open the
Speaker 2: British restaurant in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Yeah. People ask me if I wanted to open a
Speaker 1: river cafe Milad and I thought, no way. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think they'd really want, you know, an American
Speaker 1: and a British woman doing Italian food that I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: If I can say. As a complete foreigner to Galicia,
Speaker 2: one of the things that I find quite interesting is
Speaker 2: there's a tendency for Galicians to like their own food
Speaker 2: above others, which is quite unique because if you, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're in London, you say, what out of food
Speaker 2: do you like? That no one will say English food,
Speaker 2: oh I like Thai. Oh yeah, I mean but here,
Speaker 2: given a choice between a Galician product and another product,
Speaker 2: is it from here or not? It's okay they And
Speaker 2: I think that's an incredible place to begin too, because if,
Speaker 2: as we are now concerned that local and seasonal is
Speaker 2: an issue, then you do need to want to be
Speaker 2: restricted by those things, as opposed to thinking that their penalties.
Speaker 2: You know, why can't I have something? There's very few
Speaker 2: things now in a London context, you know that people
Speaker 2: would understand that you you can't give them this time
Speaker 2: of the year. I mean, your restaurant is one of
Speaker 2: the few. I would say that you sort of positively
Speaker 2: gravitate towards things which are seasonal, and then your cookbooks
Speaker 2: have done that. But I would say one of the
Speaker 2: struggles in terms of sustainability is to persuade people that
Speaker 2: you can't have any product at any time, from anywhere,
Speaker 2: at any season. And I think if you're trying to
Speaker 2: talk about sustainability, I would have to say, and this
Speaker 2: is my you know, it's right. The Foundation talks about
Speaker 2: a lot is I think actually the food culture here
Speaker 2: is in a very healthy state because in a sense
Speaker 2: the culture is already sort of on board. They're very
Speaker 2: unadventurous in a way. When I first came here, I
Speaker 2: was surprised that you look at a menu and it
Speaker 2: just has the same things that every restaurant you go to,
Speaker 2: twelve twelve things. Now I think it's fantastic. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair