Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Gwyneth Paltrow worked for a day in the River Cafe kitchen.
Speaker 2: She arrived early, dressed in professional chef whites, ready to cook.
Speaker 2: Gwyneth is the only chef ever to have ast clean
Speaker 2: and cook fresh anchovies, and for three hours she did.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot that day. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: just when you're a home cook, you don't think about
Speaker 3: precision and like repetitively turning out something that's perfect and
Speaker 3: exactly the same over a course of many hours.
Speaker 2: Didn't Jamie Oliver come in when you were there? You know,
Speaker 2: what is Gwyneth? Quite a few people say, what is
Speaker 2: Gwyneth Paltrow doing in your kitchen? We said, she's frying anchovies,
Speaker 2: you know, So that's as it was. This memory speaks
Speaker 2: to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar winning actor. She
Speaker 2: built Coop from a simple newsletter into an influential and
Speaker 2: uplifting business with energy, elegance, and strong values. Another memory
Speaker 2: ten years ago, just after the death of our son BeO,
Speaker 2: I asked Gwyneth if she might surprise the River Cafe
Speaker 2: team and sing one song for them at our Christmas
Speaker 2: party to thank them for their care and concern for me.
Speaker 2: Gwyneth not only said yes, she sang four songs, danced
Speaker 2: with everyone, and stayed to the very end. In the
Speaker 2: River Cafe history, we still talk about the time Gwyneth
Speaker 2: Paltrow came to sing. I admire Gwyneth for being a brave,
Speaker 2: smart entrepreneur. I respect Gwyneth as a writer of recipes.
Speaker 2: Most of all, I love Gwyneth for being there with
Speaker 2: me that night and here with me today.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I wasn't expecting that that was so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Gwyneth. Which wuld you like to read the recipe?
Speaker 3: I would love to one of my favorites from the
Speaker 3: River Cafe. Zucchini free tea five hundred gram zucchini, one
Speaker 3: liter sunflower oil for the batter, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: grams of plain flour, three tablespoons extra virgin olive oil,
Speaker 3: three tablespoons warm water, three egg whites organic. Cut the
Speaker 3: zucchini into five millimeter thick ovals, then cut them into
Speaker 3: thick matchsticks. For the batter. See the flour into a bowl,
Speaker 3: make a well in the center. Pour in the olive oil,
Speaker 3: and stirt to combine lucinetting enough warm water to make
Speaker 3: a batter the consistency of double cream. Heat the oil
Speaker 3: in a high sided pan to one hundred and ninety
Speaker 3: degrees celsius. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold
Speaker 3: into the batter. Dip the zucchini in the batter. Fry
Speaker 3: in batches in the hot oil until golden and crisp.
Speaker 3: Serve immediately.
Speaker 2: So when you make do you make zucchini do fry?
Speaker 2: Do you do zucchini free tea.
Speaker 3: All the time? Yeah, it's Apple's. One of Apple's favorite
Speaker 3: foods is zucchini free tea. And they're so good, especially
Speaker 3: when the one thing also you can do with zucchini.
Speaker 3: They're slightly larger, I think because the way we do
Speaker 3: it of cutting it into rounds and then cutting into
Speaker 3: strips may make it easier.
Speaker 2: Do you grow them here?
Speaker 3: No, you're getting back east on Long Island in the summer,
Speaker 3: we have tomatoes and zucchini for days and days and
Speaker 3: days and flowers. They're so delicious. Except I have to say,
Speaker 3: and I'm probably this is probably really unpopular, but I
Speaker 3: like mozzarella in them more than ricotta in them.
Speaker 2: I don't put any cheese in them. No, I'm never have.
Speaker 2: I just love having them absolutely, just the flower and
Speaker 2: the kids fry them and then you hold them by
Speaker 2: the stem and you just eat them. So, if we
Speaker 2: were going to start at the beginning, what is the beginning?
Speaker 2: Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
Speaker 3: I was born here in Los Angeles and Hollyoo. We
Speaker 3: kind of went back and forth between New York City
Speaker 3: and Santa Monica a lot. I did a lot of
Speaker 3: preschool in New York City, and I did first and
Speaker 3: third grades in New York City while my mother was
Speaker 3: on Broadway, and then the bulk of the rest of
Speaker 3: elementary school here, and then moved permanently to New York
Speaker 3: City when I was eleven.
Speaker 2: Can you remember the kitchens? Could described the kitchens, but
Speaker 2: they're very different. The LA house and the kitchens were
Speaker 2: very different. So our kitchen and in Los Angeles here
Speaker 2: had a brick floor, red brick floor and a tile counter,
Speaker 2: sort of like very country kitchen. Lots of windows and
Speaker 2: you could see the backyard in the pool, and we
Speaker 2: were in there a lot. I mean, I think with
Speaker 2: every house you're in the kitchen more than anywhere. Our
Speaker 2: New York kitchen was on the ground floor. We grew
Speaker 2: up in a townhouse, almost no windows, but we had
Speaker 2: a big fireplace in the kitchen, which is really nice,
Speaker 2: and it was more of a modern kitchen. It had
Speaker 2: been done by a Swedish architects. It was kind of
Speaker 2: minimal and who cooked.
Speaker 3: Well. When I was little, I remember, I mean my
Speaker 3: mom cooked. My dad started cooking a lot, but that
Speaker 3: was later. He got very into cooking kind of when
Speaker 3: we were older teenagers. But we had we had a
Speaker 3: no pair that would cook. My mom would cook. It
Speaker 3: was kind of like a group effort in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: But my mom was always like, she loves food, but
Speaker 3: she would get sort of stressed cooking, you know, whereas
Speaker 3: my dad was like thought it was really fun. My mom,
Speaker 3: I don't think she found it so relaxing.
Speaker 2: And also you just mentioned that she was in theater nice,
Speaker 2: so what was that luck?
Speaker 3: So she would come home late after the theater, which
Speaker 3: when I was older was really nice. I remember when
Speaker 3: I was in high school and she would finish a
Speaker 3: plane come home and I would still be awake and
Speaker 3: we would kind of have a chat, which was some
Speaker 3: of my favorite memories of growing up. In New York,
Speaker 3: and or she was doing Shakespeare in the Park and
Speaker 3: I would walk down Central Park to go visit her
Speaker 3: and watch her. So it was really a wonderful thing
Speaker 3: having a mother so steeped in the arts in New
Speaker 3: York and with all of the friends and you know,
Speaker 3: the artists singing around the piano, and you know, it
Speaker 3: was really a great way to check it.
Speaker 2: Would she have eaten? Do you think? I often ask
Speaker 2: actors who are acting in a play. Do they eat
Speaker 2: before the play? Do they eat after the play? Do they?
Speaker 2: And everyone varies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think she would generally eat before unless she
Speaker 3: had friends coming. It's sort of an occupational hazard to
Speaker 3: eat after. I did a play in London, I think
Speaker 3: in maybe two thousand and two, and I ate every
Speaker 3: night after the play, and I gained about fifteen.
Speaker 2: There is also that thing when you go to see
Speaker 2: somebody in a play and then they go, you know,
Speaker 2: Ray fines doesn't. It's always dinner afterwards, and you do
Speaker 2: see the kind of fatigue and then letting go and
Speaker 2: probably eating too much a night, I know, but then
Speaker 2: eating before you might go on. Did you feel stuffed
Speaker 2: when you went on to the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't eat before. I was too
Speaker 3: nervous to eat before, So I would always end up
Speaker 3: eating after and go to Jay Chiky and he, you know,
Speaker 3: have a bottle of wine and French fries and some
Speaker 3: kind of oyster. And back to New York and back
Speaker 3: to growing up with a mother who was acting. And
Speaker 3: what was your father doing? He was making TV shows,
Speaker 3: So he was making shows here and in New York and
Speaker 3: doing a lot of traveling back and forth, and then
Speaker 3: and then kind of settled in New York. And that
Speaker 3: was great when he was with us all the time.
Speaker 3: And but I don't remember him really being in the
Speaker 3: kitchen until he had kind of slowed down how prolifically
Speaker 3: he was making TV shows. And when he kind of
Speaker 3: slowed turned everything down a notch is when he really
Speaker 3: got into cooking.
Speaker 2: And would you have meals around the table together with
Speaker 2: you and Jake? Oh, my parents sit down? What were
Speaker 2: they like?
Speaker 3: They were really nice? I mean it was I think
Speaker 3: we felt special being included at the dinner table, even
Speaker 3: though it was a nightly event. It felt, you know,
Speaker 3: like if they had friends over. We sat with them
Speaker 3: at the table and had long conversations It's something that
Speaker 3: I've carried on with my kids as well. You know,
Speaker 3: we always have dinner all together as a family, no
Speaker 3: phones allowed at the table, and you get into great
Speaker 3: discourse with them and hear what they think about things.
Speaker 3: And I think my father made me feel that I
Speaker 3: was valuable during those dinners because he really elicited our opinion.
Speaker 3: He asked questions, and my brother and I were very
Speaker 3: much a part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: It was his background.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting, you know because touching on what you
Speaker 3: were saying, before he grew up without money. He grew
Speaker 3: up on Long Island, and they were you know, they
Speaker 3: were kind of a working class moving trying moving up
Speaker 3: into middle class Jewish family, but they didn't have a
Speaker 3: lot of disposable income, and they didn't they didn't go
Speaker 3: out to eat. So when my father finally made it,
Speaker 3: you know, like his and he loved food and all
Speaker 3: the beautiful things in life. You know, he loved beautiful
Speaker 3: fabrics and paintings, and you know, he would take me
Speaker 3: to every museum in the world and we would walk
Speaker 3: for hours. And I think food for him was really
Speaker 3: an expression of life's beauty and our blessings and good
Speaker 3: fortune to be able to eat something that was fresh
Speaker 3: and delicious and really well conceived and thought about. And
Speaker 3: he was so proud that, you know, we ate oysters
Speaker 3: and you know, things that he hadn't come across until
Speaker 3: really later in his life. And I always remember, and
Speaker 3: I wrote about this in my first book, that when
Speaker 3: we would get into the car to go out to dinner, like,
Speaker 3: no matter how many times we had gone, like, he
Speaker 3: was so excited. It was like the greatest thing of
Speaker 3: all time that we were going out to dinner.
Speaker 2: I think that it's interesting because people that I've told to,
Speaker 2: many of them measure their success in the ability to
Speaker 2: eat well. It's fascinating that people, you know, when they
Speaker 2: were able to go to restaurants and choose something that
Speaker 2: they weren't worried about how much it cost, or you
Speaker 2: know Paul McCartney saying that he always thought wine was
Speaker 2: terrible because he only had really really cheap wine. And
Speaker 2: then when he was able to go to a restaurants
Speaker 2: somebody bought him a fabulous bottle of wine, he kind
Speaker 2: of understood what it had meant to work hard and
Speaker 2: what he could do and even just going to restaurants
Speaker 2: so that what going back to your dad, what were
Speaker 2: his parents like?
Speaker 3: They were New Yorkers. They had so my grandfather's grandfather
Speaker 3: had come from Poland. They were from a long line
Speaker 3: of rabbis, and they were all Ashkenazi Jews from Poland
Speaker 3: and Russia kind of Belarusian, and they were, you know,
Speaker 3: had grown up. My grandfather had grown up in a
Speaker 3: tenement on the Lower East Side and fought his way
Speaker 3: into military school so he could, you know, have three
Speaker 3: square meals a day and learn. He craved discipline and order,
Speaker 3: and so he was very proud of himself that he
Speaker 3: had put himself, you know, had gotten himself in that position.
Speaker 3: And they were great. And my grandmother, my dad's mom,
Speaker 3: was a great I mean I loved eating at her house.
Speaker 2: Grandmother's are really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Food, I mean she made brisket and that it
Speaker 3: was like the best brisket in the world. And then
Speaker 3: she also let us have junk food, which we were
Speaker 3: not allowed from my mother. So you know, we would
Speaker 3: go to stay with them and there would be fruit
Speaker 3: loops and I would be out of my mind, you know,
Speaker 3: Jake and I would be eating wonderbread with frenches, mustard
Speaker 3: and a slice of tomato and lettuce, and we thought
Speaker 3: it was the most delicious thing of all time.
Speaker 2: So we have a recipe for brisket I do. And
Speaker 2: what about your mother's mother.
Speaker 3: My mother's mother was a fantastic cook and entertainer. She
Speaker 3: was a really scary person, but she made the best food.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the things that, you know, really sort
Speaker 3: of like fifties food that she made all throughout the eighties,
Speaker 3: you know. So her the best deviled eggs in the
Speaker 3: whole world, the best Christmas dinners with her stuffing in
Speaker 3: her and her spreads would be this whole table full
Speaker 3: of the most delicious food. And it was only her,
Speaker 3: you know, on her own, chopping and cooking, and her
Speaker 3: food was amazing. She was a great, a really great cook.
Speaker 2: You grew up in this house where your father loved
Speaker 2: to take you to restaurants and to eat, and your
Speaker 2: mother cared for you and came home after theater stories,
Speaker 2: and then you left home. And did you cook after
Speaker 2: you left home for yourself or did you go home
Speaker 2: to eat?
Speaker 3: That's when I really started to learn how to cook.
Speaker 3: I went I graduated from school in New York City,
Speaker 3: and I went to UC Santa Barbara all the way
Speaker 3: across the country, and my father was in Santa Monica
Speaker 3: a lot, and I would come home for weekends or
Speaker 3: you know, for some good food, and we would cook
Speaker 3: together a lot. And that's when we both really started cooking.
Speaker 3: And that's when the Food Network was just amazing and
Speaker 3: really instructional and tactical, and we would watch you know,
Speaker 3: the food the Food Network and learn things and try
Speaker 3: them out. Or we would go out to there was
Speaker 3: a restaurant in Venice that was kind of legendary called
Speaker 3: seventy two Market Street and we would go there, and
Speaker 3: or Sheen Wah on Maine, which is a Wolfgang Puck
Speaker 3: French fusion Chinese russaurant that I still love to this day.
Speaker 3: So there's like a couple places that he would that
Speaker 3: he loved that we would go to. But we also
Speaker 3: cooked a lot.
Speaker 2: And so do you do that with your children? Do
Speaker 2: you cook with them?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 2: I love both of them.
Speaker 3: I cook for both. I cook. You know, Apple's really
Speaker 3: interesting because now she's kind of very independent and she
Speaker 3: likes to cook for herself a lot, so and she's
Speaker 3: vegetarian and she has like really specific food ideas which
Speaker 3: is so great and I love I would say what
Speaker 3: she asked me to make still for her the most
Speaker 3: is lemon pasta. She went through a real like fetichini,
Speaker 3: alfredo face and breakfast potatoes. She asked, that's probably what
Speaker 3: she asked me to make the most these days. And
Speaker 3: then Moses, you know, during the week, I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't have time to cook very much. But I cook
Speaker 3: kind of all weekend long, and I really love it,
Speaker 3: especially Friday nights. It's like how I transition from my
Speaker 3: week to being like a woman in a body.
Speaker 2: And did they cook with you or do you think you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do?
Speaker 2: Do they cook for them?
Speaker 3: I mean, Apple will definitely cook with me. Moses will help, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I mostly cook for them. I mean I think
Speaker 3: they liked being especially because when we were living in
Speaker 3: London and I was before I started Goop, I cooked
Speaker 3: all the meals, and so they really they have nostalgia
Speaker 3: around me cooking them all the meals, and so I
Speaker 3: think there's I think especially Moses sometimes he's like, why
Speaker 3: are you making me more food?
Speaker 2: You just love? Do you think that you're interested in
Speaker 2: cooking for them? Does come from your own childhood?
Speaker 3: Or I do? Because It was such an unabashed expression
Speaker 3: of my father's love for us, like there was no
Speaker 3: denying it. And when someone is so excited about like
Speaker 3: the seer on their baby back ribs, you know, and
Speaker 3: like look at this, Look what I did. You know,
Speaker 3: it's so imbued with love that you can't It's undeniable,
Speaker 3: and so you learn it as a love language. I
Speaker 3: just had this beegind I at a house full of
Speaker 3: people at our house in Santa Barbara, and I was
Speaker 3: making all these different breakfasts, and you know, my friends
Speaker 3: are like, oh my god, we feel so terrible, and
Speaker 3: I was like, no, you don't understand, Like this is
Speaker 3: my love language. Like I'm so happy doing this.
Speaker 2: Did you travel with your parents? Did you go to
Speaker 2: Italy or Spain or.
Speaker 3: We never went to Italy until you know, the first
Speaker 3: time I ever went to Italy with my father, he
Speaker 3: was when he died. He died in Florence, he died
Speaker 3: in he died in Rome, and we were doing our
Speaker 3: first kind of road trip after my thirtieth birthday. And yeah,
Speaker 3: he kind of died on me, which complicated the trip.
Speaker 2: Is a complicate Italy for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did complicate Italy for me for a long time.
Speaker 3: I didn't go back for ten years. And when we
Speaker 3: were on our road trip and I found out that
Speaker 3: he was sick and he had been coughing up blood,
Speaker 3: and I said, we have to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3: You know, he'd been hiding it for me because he
Speaker 3: didn't want He really wanted to finish our trip. And
Speaker 3: I was like, this is so, we're going to the hospital.
Speaker 3: And he was like, no, we got to get to
Speaker 3: the Splendido. He really was trying, and I was like,
Speaker 3: we're not going to the like, we're going to the hospital.
Speaker 3: And he ended up dying. And then I had a
Speaker 3: real aversion to Italy for a long time. And then,
Speaker 3: very sweetly Chris Martin, my first husband, on my fortieth
Speaker 3: birthday ten years later. And I was having a lot
Speaker 3: of anxiety about it anyway, because I think turning forty,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm about to turn fifty and I kind
Speaker 3: of don't give a but forty, I was like, really
Speaker 3: had so much anxiety about it. And he by that point,
Speaker 3: I had the two kids, and we got on a
Speaker 3: plane and I didn't know where we were going, and
Speaker 3: we all of a sudden, I realized we were landing
Speaker 3: in Genoa and that we were going to the Splendido,
Speaker 3: which was so sweet. It was such a nice surprise.
Speaker 3: So it was like a completion, but it was. But
Speaker 3: Jake was with me and my two best friends Mary
Speaker 3: and Julie, who've been my best friend since one since
Speaker 3: I was four and one since I was eleven. They
Speaker 3: were with me, and they my father was like a
Speaker 3: father to them too, so it was it ended up
Speaker 3: being a really beautiful experience that we all got to
Speaker 3: be there and and kind of come full circle. And
Speaker 3: now I'm you know, we we bought a little farmhouse
Speaker 3: in Umbria, so just south of the Tuscan border.
Speaker 2: Great food in Umbria, Yeah, truffles in the fall, you
Speaker 2: have lentils, you know. Bar It's great.
Speaker 3: I know, it's really it's a really special place. So
Speaker 3: I'm excited to spend more time there and to learn
Speaker 3: some Italian.
Speaker 2: But what about Spain of France?
Speaker 3: Spain so France. Well I kind of told this like
Speaker 3: now now it's kind of food. A famous story about
Speaker 3: my dad taking me. My mom was doing a filming
Speaker 3: something in London when I was ten, we still lived
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles and we all made the trip over
Speaker 3: to visit her, and then my dad took me to
Speaker 3: Paris for the weekend and just he and I and
Speaker 3: we stayed at the Ritz and we went to the
Speaker 3: Pompey Dew, we went to the Louver, we went to
Speaker 3: all museums and my main thing was that I wanted
Speaker 3: to eat French fries, like actual French fries free. So
Speaker 3: that was the first thing we did when we checked
Speaker 3: into the hotel, is that I ordered French fries and
Speaker 3: he took me all around, you know, we were eating
Speaker 3: all kinds of things. And on the way back to London,
Speaker 3: he said, do you know why I took you to Paris,
Speaker 3: just you and I? And I said no, and he said,
Speaker 3: because I wanted you to see Paris for the first
Speaker 3: time with a man who will always love you no
Speaker 3: matter what.
Speaker 2: So sweet, I mean, what you've been talking about is
Speaker 2: memories of a man who loved food, loved you, wanted
Speaker 2: to take you and indulge in new experiences to do
Speaker 2: with eating and cooking and spending time with you. And
Speaker 2: I think that you know, that is about what we do.
Speaker 2: Food is memory and food is love, you know, it's
Speaker 2: really and that's what you're doing with your children and
Speaker 2: what we keep doing and your grandmother. So many people
Speaker 2: I've talked to really talk about their grandmothers. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: because I think again, I do it with my grandchildren.
Speaker 2: I know that. You know, if you're a working mother,
Speaker 2: you're trying to get through the day or it's like
Speaker 2: a struggle, and the cand mother is a place you
Speaker 2: want them to remember your food. You want them to
Speaker 2: want to spoil them and give them loops, fruit loops
Speaker 2: and also a recipe that they'll cook they're gone.
Speaker 3: It's true. I often think about that and think about
Speaker 3: the food legacy of a family and what dishes go
Speaker 3: from generation to generation. And there's also seems to be
Speaker 3: such a specific flavor profile. You know. It's like if
Speaker 3: if I cook something, you know, my kids like the
Speaker 3: way I cook something as opposed to anybody else, even
Speaker 3: if it's you know, like there we're all following the
Speaker 3: same recipe.
Speaker 2: Of course, should we just talk about the food that
Speaker 2: you're cooking with? Goog that you want a sole because
Speaker 2: you have had such an influence on the way we eat,
Speaker 2: the way we live, the way we buy, the way
Speaker 2: we collect, the way we treat ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's been probably the steepest learning curve
Speaker 3: of my life. And it's also a marathon. You know,
Speaker 3: it's been years of building a business and not having
Speaker 3: any idea what I was doing, not knowing how to
Speaker 3: monetize the business, and you know, been through so many
Speaker 3: highs and lows and learnings and incredibly painful mistakes and
Speaker 3: real triumphs that you know are little but meaningful to us.
Speaker 3: And so but I do think that the cultural impact
Speaker 3: is it's an important thing to contribute, right if you
Speaker 3: feel whatever you're trying to do in the world that
Speaker 3: you authentically are trying to, you know, connect somebody to
Speaker 3: something good or that will be beautiful or uplifting, it's
Speaker 3: a very fulfilling job in a lot of ways to have.
Speaker 3: And so it's really fun right now because we kind
Speaker 3: of in this last year launched something called Goop Kitchen,
Speaker 3: which is only still here in Los Angeles, but I
Speaker 3: think we're going to expand quickly, which is not a restaurant.
Speaker 3: It's just being able to deliver on those brand values
Speaker 3: of getting really high quality, organic, local, seasonal food to
Speaker 3: people's plates, because the quickest road to feeling better is
Speaker 3: just watching the quality of the food that you're eating, like,
Speaker 3: is it nutrient dense? Is it minimally processed? I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, that's why you're such a big inspiration to me.
Speaker 3: Is everything you make is so ingredient driven and so delicious.
Speaker 3: I remember when I first started coming to the restaurant
Speaker 3: so many years ago, gosh, twenty five years ago, I
Speaker 3: mean so long ago, and just thinking, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: there's you can see everything like the beauty of you
Speaker 3: know that dish, I forget the name of it, but
Speaker 3: you have the sort of fava beans and art of
Speaker 3: chokes and it's like female bring yeah, Roman yeah, and
Speaker 3: it's like, oh my gosh, it's all so visible, and
Speaker 3: you just you see it in your mind coming straight
Speaker 3: from the garden right onto the plate and just enhancing
Speaker 3: all of the beautiful aspects of nature and great olive
Speaker 3: oil and there you go. You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always think that if you cook with few ingredients
Speaker 2: that we do, and I think in Italy you do.
Speaker 2: I love I love going to Paris and having a
Speaker 2: burb block over a piece of turbot with spinach and
Speaker 2: morale mushrooms. But there's something about going to Italy and
Speaker 2: having a grilled piece of fish with three herbs and
Speaker 2: a bit of olive oil, or as you say, the
Speaker 2: vegetables which just depend on themselves. You can't mask it,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, what was it like for you to open
Speaker 3: the River Cafe in London at that time where you
Speaker 3: know it wasn't like that. I mean, there wasn't an
Speaker 3: ingredient forward food culture.
Speaker 2: And when Rose and I started, she had lived in
Speaker 2: Luca for five years. And Richard's mother was a cook
Speaker 2: from Trieste who then went to Florence and then came
Speaker 2: to London, probably thirty nine. And we always say that
Speaker 2: she used to wander around London coming from Florence looking
Speaker 2: for a view. She was always trying to find the piazza.
Speaker 2: Mikaelangel was somewhere in London. She's a woman who said
Speaker 2: to me once on her deathbed, she said, Ruthie, I
Speaker 2: want you to put She had amazing skin, and she said,
Speaker 2: I want you to put more cream on your face
Speaker 2: and less herbs on your fish.
Speaker 3: You know, that was her her last year.
Speaker 2: And every time I put herbs on my fish, I
Speaker 2: was like, not too many. Every night I put more cream.
Speaker 2: But the I think that that Rose and I thought,
Speaker 2: why can't we have the kind of food that we
Speaker 2: cooked and ate in Italy, but in London and it
Speaker 2: was challenging. You know if we served a pop up
Speaker 2: homadoro and it had tomatoes and bread and basil and
Speaker 2: that was it. And somebody would say in those days
Speaker 2: and by paying four pounds fifty for a bit of
Speaker 2: bread and tomato. But now I always put you know,
Speaker 2: the travel people traveled more and more to Europe, and
Speaker 2: you know, Freddy Laker with his planes where you could
Speaker 2: go cheaply or whatever, they were opened up Europe. Unfortunately
Speaker 2: right now because if you want me to be political,
Speaker 2: Brexit is closing the doors. But in those days we're
Speaker 2: all going and opening the doors and seeing what food
Speaker 2: was like. And so I think that really changed things.
Speaker 3: So was it quite iconoclastic, that kind of simplicity.
Speaker 2: Of yeah, I think, well I think other people were
Speaker 2: doing it. You know, Rollie Lee at Kensington Place did
Speaker 2: a more French version of it, and as to Little
Speaker 2: and people also changed restaurants. I think everywhere. I think
Speaker 2: give credit to Wolfgang Puck. You know, going from Mammy's
Speaker 2: on to making pieces at Spargo. It's like you could
Speaker 2: either dress up and go to a restaurant and be terrified,
Speaker 2: or you could but eat very well, or you could
Speaker 2: go to the local Greek or treachery and not eat
Speaker 2: very well but have a great time. We thought, why
Speaker 2: can't you come and have a great time and eat well?
Speaker 2: You know, I think a lot of people were doing that.
Speaker 2: So we learned what we started knowing nothing. So you know,
Speaker 2: we learned as we grew. There's a lot to do
Speaker 2: with food. It's love, it's history, it's memories, it's politics,
Speaker 2: but it's also comfort. Yeah, and so if I were
Speaker 2: to ask you for our last question in this beautiful room,
Speaker 2: on this beautiful day, with what Gwyneth would be your
Speaker 2: comfort food?
Speaker 3: Pasta? Ah, I love pasta and I love that it
Speaker 3: can be the most laborious, you know, hand rolling out
Speaker 3: and stuffing something that you are pureing like most intense
Speaker 3: all day episode. Or it can literally be a sauce
Speaker 3: that you make in the time it takes for the
Speaker 3: water to boil and cook the pasta, which are my
Speaker 3: favorite with some garlic, anchovy, you know, chili, oils oil.
Speaker 3: But it always has the same result, which is just
Speaker 3: taste delicious and it makes you feel so good. It
Speaker 3: makes you feel full, but also I don't know. There's
Speaker 3: also an elegance to pasta, and I find it really
Speaker 3: just the perfect meal, pasta and a glass of red wine.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm waiting for you in London. Okay, you don't
Speaker 2: have to fry on chewes, it's postage.
Speaker 3: I want to get back behind that friar.
Speaker 2: Aren't you back in the kitchen? Come back in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: We miss you there. Thank you. To visit the online
Speaker 2: shop of the River Cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot
Speaker 2: co dot uk.
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