Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: When people talk about food, they talk about memories, the
Speaker 2: meals of their childhood, unforgettable parties they went to, comfort eating,
Speaker 2: and their grandmother's kitchen. Forty four guests have joined me
Speaker 2: at Table four this season, Chefs, actors, tennis champions, football heroes.
Speaker 2: As part of the podcast, many have cooked with our
Speaker 2: chefs in the River Cafe kitchen. As the season comes
Speaker 2: to a close, we're sharing some of these conversations with
Speaker 2: you in this episode Wycliffe, Seawan, Carrie Mulligan, Tom Hollander,
Speaker 2: and Guy Ritchie. Let's begin with Sarah Jessica Parker, who
Speaker 2: brought her family to the River Cafe, learned how to
Speaker 2: make Puntaurel in the kitchen, and join me for a
Speaker 2: lunchtime event with an invited audience.
Speaker 3: Thank you, good cooling here.
Speaker 2: So here we are. Did you ever work in a restaurant?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: But I say this, knowing how hard it is. I
Speaker 4: think I would really love to be a server.
Speaker 3: Like I really think that.
Speaker 4: This summer is and you I was, we were really
Speaker 4: admiring your service the day because I said to the girls,
Speaker 4: I was like I'm not sure that I've seen servers
Speaker 4: move this fast a long time, because Sunday is a
Speaker 4: very busy day for you guys, right, Like especially was
Speaker 4: a really busy day and I was saying to somebody
Speaker 4: and I said, you know, I don't get to come
Speaker 4: to the River Cafe very often. I don't live in London,
Speaker 4: and to myself, to Matthew, it's like a very it's
Speaker 4: a it's like a special thing. It's like something you
Speaker 4: earn or maybe you work toward or you pine about,
Speaker 4: and then you visit it and you're not sure if
Speaker 4: you made it all up, like is it possible that
Speaker 4: you joined a sort of cult, like a kind of
Speaker 4: thinking about it?
Speaker 3: Can it be?
Speaker 4: And then you come here? My hand got it is?
Speaker 4: And the kitchen really is. It's extraordinary to watch. It
Speaker 4: is like a pinball machine, but it's like there's such
Speaker 4: precision about it. And I love watching the chefs talk
Speaker 4: to each other quickly and passing or actually come together
Speaker 4: to speak. I don't know, it's amazing and it's glorious.
Speaker 3: We were thrilled to be here, really.
Speaker 2: Well, we're thrilled to have you and I. When we
Speaker 2: first did the completely open kitchen. You will remember after
Speaker 2: the fire, Richard Ayir, who's a director of theater, came
Speaker 2: in and I said, Richard, isn't it just like theater
Speaker 2: watching everyone around? And he said, actually, Ry, it isn't.
Speaker 2: It's like ballet. And he said, because watching people everybody,
Speaker 2: you can't shout in an open kitchen. I mean, sometimes
Speaker 2: raise your voice, but basically you're moving around to speak
Speaker 2: to people about if you need to. Usually there's a
Speaker 2: kind of communication.
Speaker 4: And this time I had the ravioli with the spinach
Speaker 4: and the ricotta and those tiny gorgeous porcini mushrooms that
Speaker 4: are like a surprise.
Speaker 3: They don't talk about that as much.
Speaker 4: And we ordered two and I was like, my daughter said,
Speaker 4: do you think we can order another one?
Speaker 3: James said, can we order another one? Which just seems so.
Speaker 4: Like gluttonous and decadent and greedy, and and I was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, yes, And if anybody says anything, I'll
Speaker 4: just say we'll take it, like I'm sorry that we're
Speaker 4: being so like like animals about this, but it's a
Speaker 4: kind of it's good to think of it as this
Speaker 4: kind of once in a lifetime.
Speaker 3: It's just incredible.
Speaker 2: One of the things I think that we all, probably
Speaker 2: everyone in this moom would think about. Was that in
Speaker 2: Sex and the City and the way you talk about
Speaker 2: food the joy. So many conversations were over food, and
Speaker 2: it was the pleasure of food. It was enjoying food
Speaker 2: as a way of communicating and being together, which we
Speaker 2: you know, we all feel here that we a restaurant
Speaker 2: is a place where you share Yeah, you know food
Speaker 2: you're sitting down at the table or at home with
Speaker 2: your children. Yeah, And so how is that working in
Speaker 2: Sex and the City and doing was that from you?
Speaker 3: I always loved food scenes.
Speaker 4: I think it initially it was initially in place I
Speaker 4: think probably from either Candace's original source material or Darren
Speaker 4: Starr wrote that first coffee shop scene, which I think
Speaker 4: was just a great meeting place to sort of talk
Speaker 4: about the themes of the of each episode, like get
Speaker 4: the headline out, and then each person, those kind of
Speaker 4: archetypal characters would share points of view, so we knew
Speaker 4: where where everybody stood, and it allowed for controversial conversation
Speaker 4: or titillating conversation. But I will say this that Cynthia Nixon,
Speaker 4: who is a dear friend of mine and we've been
Speaker 4: working together since we were little girls.
Speaker 3: We've known each other, so we were eleven or ten.
Speaker 4: She was a child actor also, and we would all
Speaker 4: auditioned together. She often got the part. And but we
Speaker 4: played siblings when I was very young. We played sisters
Speaker 4: on records. They used to do records of stories, and
Speaker 4: we played Laura and Mary Ingalls, and then we played
Speaker 4: siblings of we played children of Vanessa Redgrave in a movie.
Speaker 4: But Cynthia and I in those coffee shop scenes, we
Speaker 4: always eat. Yeah, we always eat, and we always need
Speaker 4: to like reprop our plate. And then when we finally wrap,
Speaker 4: they'll always they always said to Cynthia, Me and Cynthia,
Speaker 4: do you guys want to take it.
Speaker 3: To go again today? Yes, we do.
Speaker 4: So we really like those scenes, and we very much
Speaker 4: go back and forth about what you could they'll send
Speaker 4: the menu in advance now now that we all have
Speaker 4: the phones and things, and because they want you to
Speaker 4: order an advance for props to have everything ready and multiple,
Speaker 4: you know, multiples of it.
Speaker 3: So we'll go back and forth. Would you order You're
Speaker 3: going to order the all or that? So you ordered
Speaker 3: that and we can share. So the food is the lines.
Speaker 5: Are blurred yes, women eating you know, yes was something
Speaker 5: that we are all thinking about how we combine you know, food,
Speaker 5: and I think it it's changed.
Speaker 2: You find that your daughters are different now in terms
Speaker 2: of their attitude.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I I never was very disciplined about it.
Speaker 3: I just wasn't.
Speaker 4: I think I'm not really good at like denying myself something.
Speaker 4: And I think also I was a dancer for so
Speaker 4: long and running around, so it was I was able
Speaker 4: to be that way. It's certainly not the same now.
Speaker 4: But I also just I had girls. It just was
Speaker 4: so I didn't want them to have a relationship with
Speaker 4: food that was antagonistic or they felt like this was
Speaker 4: their enemy and that they were going to have to
Speaker 4: sort of like stake out a position with food. So
Speaker 4: when I was growing up, we weren't allowed sugar in
Speaker 4: the house, and we were allowed to cookies, and we
Speaker 4: weren't allowed the chocolate. And of course all we did
Speaker 4: the minute we moved out was buy Entimate's cakes and cookies,
Speaker 4: and you know, and I didn't want that. So in
Speaker 4: our house we have cookies, we have cake, we have everything.
Speaker 4: And I think as a result, you kind of have
Speaker 4: a healthier relationship and my daughters will have the figures
Speaker 4: they have and hopefully they'll be healthy in their athletes
Speaker 4: and they enjoy food, and they have different palettes, and
Speaker 4: you can't make someone like something they don't like or want.
Speaker 4: And I hope that they I hope that they can
Speaker 4: maintain their affection for the experience and their delight in
Speaker 4: taste and find their own ways to have that be
Speaker 4: healthy for them.
Speaker 2: And your son mad for food. It was fantastic to
Speaker 2: be all three of them are just you know, involved
Speaker 2: in the food and talking about the food and asking
Speaker 2: questions about yea on Sunday, I know.
Speaker 3: Math Matthew cooks.
Speaker 4: We both cook every single day, every day, every single day.
Speaker 3: Every day. We probably eat dinner as a family every night.
Speaker 4: If I'm shooting or he's going to play, obviously that
Speaker 4: shifts around. We always have dinner Sunday night, but one
Speaker 4: of us, if we're home, cooks every single day.
Speaker 2: The film director Guy Ritchie loves food and he loves
Speaker 2: wine and has his own unique way of doing things.
Speaker 2: When he came to the River Cafe, he didn't go
Speaker 2: into the kitchen. He set up his own outdoor kitchen
Speaker 2: in the garden and cooked a steak for our chefs.
Speaker 2: But that's not the only reason I like guy. He's
Speaker 2: a childhood friend of my step Sunabe and I've known
Speaker 2: him for decades. We began this conversation talking about his
Speaker 2: early food memories growing up with his family in London.
Speaker 6: When we moved in, it was an old old fashion.
Speaker 7: In theory.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a sort of Cottney community, but it was
Speaker 6: an old fashioned English community there. So this is in
Speaker 6: sixty They bought that house in Fulham and they were
Speaker 6: like foodies and boozies then, which is quite early doors.
Speaker 2: So you grew up in the house that loved food.
Speaker 6: And then my mum was very a cook.
Speaker 2: Where did she cook?
Speaker 6: My favorite was watercress soup. Really it was quite exotic
Speaker 6: rabert carriers idea, but she was a very goa cook.
Speaker 6: I used to like baked eggs and watercrest soup.
Speaker 2: And would you sit down to dinner like most nights
Speaker 2: as a fa who's in your family?
Speaker 6: Your brothers and one sister, a sister and a mother, and.
Speaker 2: So would you sit down to me with the family supper?
Speaker 6: I heard something earlier on that I'm not can't remember
Speaker 6: which generation we are, but we are still the sort
Speaker 6: of the I suppose maybe the LA generation that lived
Speaker 6: more outdoors than we did indoors, so I knew all
Speaker 6: the other kids in the street, so you were never indoors.
Speaker 6: You were always out with your mates. And we were
Speaker 6: on bicycles. I remember used to cycle to quite far
Speaker 6: Afield and we were on bicycles when we were six.
Speaker 6: So I went to local school, local, I went to
Speaker 6: thirteen school. I went thirteen thirteen. Okay, yeah, local school
Speaker 6: or no school could cope with no educating local school
Speaker 6: could cope. And I sort of picked up the reputation
Speaker 6: that it was because I was naughty, and it wasn't
Speaker 6: because I was naughty. It was it was just I
Speaker 6: was remarkably slow in understanding what they were trying to translate,
Speaker 6: and I had no ability to translate it. So yeah,
Speaker 6: very probiscuous for schools. And I went to about five
Speaker 6: local schools and then gradually, I mean even the one
Speaker 6: I went to school with ab that was which is
Speaker 6: subsequently shut down. Most of the schools I went to
Speaker 6: subsequently because they were all learning disability schools, and they
Speaker 6: did well. They sort of fumbled around as best they could,
Speaker 6: and I'm sort of grateful for their efforts. But there
Speaker 6: was only one person I met that was more dyslexic
Speaker 6: than me, and that was Abe.
Speaker 2: I've been to my kids' schools, you know, whether it
Speaker 2: was Abe or it was you know, my children, and
Speaker 2: I remember saying the only I don't care if they
Speaker 2: learned to read when they're eight or six or ten
Speaker 2: or twelve or fourteen. What you do never want your
Speaker 2: child to do is to feel stupid. You know, because
Speaker 2: I said, those are the people that come into the
Speaker 2: River Cafe, and they was coming and they say, I
Speaker 2: don't want to sit here. I don't want that, I
Speaker 2: don't want this, And I almost want to say, did
Speaker 2: you have a hard time in school? You know, because.
Speaker 6: It's I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to challenge
Speaker 6: you that from the best roses come from the worstman you. Okay,
Speaker 6: So I think a certain amount of adversity is rather essential.
Speaker 6: And I don't think it did me much harm being told.
Speaker 6: You never told you're stupid, It was implicit feel that
Speaker 6: you were where you were clear, it was clear that
Speaker 6: you couldn't follow right, and you were clear that kids
Speaker 6: that weren't that quick were following quicker than you. Could follow,
Speaker 6: so you could you knew there was an issue. I
Speaker 6: would argue though, that that gave me a sort of
Speaker 6: a myriad of skills that otherwise I would never have developed.
Speaker 6: And feeling like you were an outside of some description
Speaker 6: and feeling diminished as a point in the end, I
Speaker 6: just don't think that did me any harm.
Speaker 2: I agree with you about a lot of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I agree with self esteem. I used to think self
Speaker 2: esteem was the most important thing. Now I think maybe not.
Speaker 6: It was a paradox that. Yeah, there's a paradox.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, going back then thirteen schools, do you remember
Speaker 2: any of those searteen schools having good food?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you'll be surprised what kind of food I can enjoy? Yeah,
Speaker 6: tell me everything. My mum wasn't fussy, and I've never
Speaker 6: been fussy. The only thing I couldn't eat was rhubarb,
Speaker 6: and even that I can eat now, and I was.
Speaker 6: I'm quite interested and enjoy industrial quantities of food that's
Speaker 6: not necessarily to consume. But there's a sort of it
Speaker 6: takes on certain qualities they used to do, like school, Lasanya,
Speaker 6: when you're cooking for a few hundred kids, it takes
Speaker 6: on complex characteristics that are impossible to derive if you're
Speaker 6: using quality product. So yeah, I liked school food.
Speaker 2: Out of thirteen schools, which one did you? Did you
Speaker 2: do something like graduating from school? Or did you just
Speaker 2: leave school?
Speaker 6: It just left fifteen, and it was anticlimactic sort of.
Speaker 6: I left and then they said, don't bother coming back?
Speaker 2: And did your parents were they? Were they worried about you?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, because I had no qualifications at all. I
Speaker 6: can barely spell my name, but I was. I mean,
Speaker 6: I was working by the time I was fifteen, not
Speaker 6: far from here, actually some Peter Square in amazonhere.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I worked in the Island Records, which I don't know
Speaker 6: if it's still there, but I worked as a twoboy
Speaker 6: in records.
Speaker 2: Were you living at home? Did your mom still cook
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 8: Who?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 6: I left home early door, So I was from fifteen onwards.
Speaker 6: I was in and out And.
Speaker 2: What were you eating? Do you remember?
Speaker 9: Ummm no is.
Speaker 6: The answer that no be goes. Then it was it
Speaker 6: was all work from fifteen to now. It's really all
Speaker 6: been work, although it's been sort of messy periods along
Speaker 6: that way. I've been working pretty much since I was fifteen.
Speaker 6: My first love of real food was French and I
Speaker 6: was tremendously impressed by the layering.
Speaker 2: M call layering, you mean the way.
Speaker 6: That I felt as though there was every nuance was investigated.
Speaker 6: There was a place on Pimlico Road that was run
Speaker 6: by those brothers.
Speaker 2: Remember, yeah, it was next to the pot Yeah, but
Speaker 2: that's when I.
Speaker 6: There was a little supermarket. There was next door a
Speaker 6: little shop and a little French shop, not much bigger
Speaker 6: than this room. And when I was a van driver,
Speaker 6: I used to go in there and it was absurdly expensive,
Speaker 6: but the quality was mind blowing. You've run a career
Speaker 6: off the quality of your ingredients, Avenue.
Speaker 2: I would say that about French food and Italian food.
Speaker 2: You know that I see nothing I love more than
Speaker 2: a piece of fish, both blanc and spinach on the bottom.
Speaker 2: As you say, almost layering the way. But there's something
Speaker 2: also when you go to Italy and then you have
Speaker 2: a piece of sea bass and nothing. You know, you
Speaker 2: just get this bass and maybe, if you're lucky, a
Speaker 2: bit of salsa verdi or lemon, and so if you're
Speaker 2: going to have only two ingredients of lemon and a
Speaker 2: sea bass or sea bass and a bit of wild diregular.
Speaker 2: The wild diregua has to be wild, and the sea
Speaker 2: bass has to be incredibly fit, you know, fresh, because
Speaker 2: there's no masking of it. You're not looking at the
Speaker 2: hollandaise or the burnets or the other stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think we are with the river Cafe definitely
Speaker 2: is very ingredient based. Yeah, we are.
Speaker 6: I went fishing for sea bass this week, actually Portland anyway,
Speaker 6: So I caught four very healthy bats. We're actually caught fourteen.
Speaker 6: We returned ten of them. Wet fishing with my ten
Speaker 6: year old is obsessed and English bass.
Speaker 2: We get it is. We get all our fish off
Speaker 2: the coast. We don't bring any two now or anything in.
Speaker 2: We once had one of my was we had the
Speaker 2: we you know, we call it the end of service.
Speaker 2: So at eleven o'clock at night, we know how much
Speaker 2: bass we've sold, how much you know turbot we've sold,
Speaker 2: and we know that the next day we're going to
Speaker 2: change the menu. So we never have the menu. It
Speaker 2: just depends what there is in the fridge and what
Speaker 2: there is in the sea. And then we got a
Speaker 2: call from the boat and he said, I we have
Speaker 2: just reeled in a turbot and it's so big that
Speaker 2: either the River Cafe takes it or we put it
Speaker 2: back in the sea.
Speaker 6: Do you want and we took it? How big was it?
Speaker 6: I can't remember?
Speaker 2: Maybe I have no eight kills. The River Cafe Cafe,
Speaker 2: our all day space and just steps away from the restaurant,
Speaker 2: is now open. In the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
Speaker 2: ciambella and crostada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
Speaker 2: ice creamed coups and River Cafe classic desserts. We have
Speaker 2: sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto, red and yellow peppers,
Speaker 2: Vitello tonado and more. Come in the evening for cocktails
Speaker 2: with our resident pianist in the bar. No need to book,
Speaker 2: see you here. When Michael Jean came to Table four,
Speaker 2: he had memories to share and songs to sing, But
Speaker 2: the moment that stays with me most was this story
Speaker 2: about his childhood. As a young boy, Wycliffe was left
Speaker 2: with his grandmother in Haiti while his parents tried to
Speaker 2: make a new life for the family in America, and
Speaker 2: then one day an immigration officer came looking for them.
Speaker 1: The immigration unit goes to my mama the apartment that
Speaker 1: they staying in. So while my dad's running, this is
Speaker 1: a big raid like dayDay about them. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Now immigration officer gets to my mama apartment. Immigration,
Speaker 1: open up the door now, man, and my mom is
Speaker 1: so scared. The immigration officer has a translator with him
Speaker 1: that speaks French and crayle. So the immigration officer says,
Speaker 1: I had a knocked on this door for a time.
Speaker 1: They ain't open and I know somebody in there. I
Speaker 1: need you to say it in cray all, in French
Speaker 1: whatever language that is. Tell them to open that door.
Speaker 1: And the translator says to my mother and cray all
Speaker 1: fair softly, man, I was butler translation, do you not
Speaker 1: open that door right now? Now? The reason why I
Speaker 1: say this right is, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: people get caught up in these situations, and we the
Speaker 1: United States of America, like there was a time where
Speaker 1: we would take keyed to this, and we would take
Speaker 1: like cause to this, and we would be so sensitive
Speaker 1: to that, like where we could say, we'll give you
Speaker 1: a pass because we know what you're doing here. You're
Speaker 1: not breaking the law. You just had a bad day.
Speaker 1: And these days do not exist.
Speaker 2: No. Also, you know you're making the country better, you know,
Speaker 2: by coming from another country. And I was just given
Speaker 2: a prize in America. It asked to be in the academy.
Speaker 2: I was made a member of this Academy of Arts
Speaker 2: and Letters. And I wrote the letter and I said,
Speaker 2: my grandparents came from Russia and I came in nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 2: You know, they were part of that Ellis Island. I
Speaker 2: was just thinking, two generations. How you know if your
Speaker 2: grandparents were here watching you they did your grandparents know
Speaker 2: the measure of your success? Did they see?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: My grandparents, my grandma knew my musical abilities at a
Speaker 1: very young age because I would just like make songs up.
Speaker 1: There was these women in the village every Sunday that
Speaker 1: would sing these church hymns and I would just get
Speaker 1: I would just be part of remember one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember a few of them.
Speaker 7: She sat fair, Not do you wan pair?
Speaker 8: When Bennie and corner Shop? She shuck fair? Oh what
Speaker 8: do you want pair? Oh Bennie when Bennie?
Speaker 7: Yeah? And more corner Poco Damn the.
Speaker 8: Lulja bo Ben Dick Show, Wha.
Speaker 10: Wha Poco men, The Louija Bo Ben Dick show Whoa.
Speaker 10: So that was that was you know, you could just
Speaker 10: feel it.
Speaker 1: But the the the the him is saying we're blessed
Speaker 1: and we should acknowledge that like basically every day of
Speaker 1: our life. So again that was some of the I
Speaker 1: would hear these these these uh, these amazing women like
Speaker 1: and and then so the heymns would just channel through me.
Speaker 2: And after church, would you would that be food? Would
Speaker 2: that be a meal? Would you go home?
Speaker 1: And hence we call it lucky Sunday. You get that
Speaker 1: lucky Sunday. Everything come out on that Lucky Sunday. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen often. Lucky Sunday happens on Easter.
Speaker 9: The meal is big.
Speaker 1: The meal is big. The meal is a lot of meat,
Speaker 1: goat goat goat cooked very interesting. It's called tasu. It's
Speaker 1: fried traditionally in Haiti. If you see how they cook,
Speaker 1: they used the chabon charcoal, so it's caught with the
Speaker 1: charcoal because you know, the food gonna taste different, and
Speaker 1: then they put the big aluminum pan and so the
Speaker 1: gold is fried. They would make a uh poisson. The
Speaker 1: poisson gorsel is the white fish a little saltea like codfish.
Speaker 1: At times, it.
Speaker 2: Sounds like you're saying gross sell large salt, doesn't.
Speaker 1: It yeah, yeah, yes, yes so. And in crele the
Speaker 1: word means big yeah so yeah, and then phonetically yes
Speaker 1: so because crayle in French at times the words do
Speaker 1: mean the same thing else.
Speaker 2: And so when you your father around and your mother
Speaker 2: didn't open the door, so were they safe in the
Speaker 2: United States for you to come?
Speaker 1: They were safe. My parents came and got me and
Speaker 1: my brother. Now they get on the plane. The immigration
Speaker 1: laws work. They come and get us from Haiti. So
Speaker 1: me and my brother going to see my parents for
Speaker 1: the first time. Left for me now yeah. So now
Speaker 1: I'm like eight nine and now my parents are come
Speaker 1: in to get me, and I've never seen them. For them,
Speaker 1: so my grandma gets us dressed, she takes our bags,
Speaker 1: she brings us to the airport. I ain't never seen
Speaker 1: an airport before. So when the airplane is landing, you
Speaker 1: can imagine what that looks like to me, the UFOE.
Speaker 1: So the airplane lands, and I'll never forget. My mother
Speaker 1: had a yellow outfit. She looked like Jackie Yo. She
Speaker 1: had the glasses on, you know, she looked like Miss America.
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, that's my mama right there.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: My dad had the long bed looking like he moses.
Speaker 1: You know, he comes and they come and they hold
Speaker 1: me and my brother in that hog. I could still
Speaker 1: feel that hog.
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen you for how long I haven't seen us?
Speaker 1: Since we were born?
Speaker 2: Did they continue cooking the food of Haiti? In Brooklyn?
Speaker 1: My mama had a thing you only can eat in
Speaker 1: the house. I didn't even know what it was like
Speaker 1: to go to a fast food restaurant. A lot of
Speaker 1: what was cooked in Brooklyn was something called ligan. Ligan, Yes,
Speaker 1: ligan is similar to a gumbo, right, but all in vegetables,
Speaker 1: so eggplants, water cress, this was like part of it.
Speaker 1: Also a lot of yam, sweet potatoes and this is natural.
Speaker 1: A lot of fish in the morning. It was very,
Speaker 1: very important that you had breakfast. My father, who was
Speaker 1: also an amazing cook, he used to cook liver for iron, right,
Speaker 1: so again like it would be all, but he would
Speaker 1: like cook the liver with egg whites.
Speaker 2: They dipped the liver in the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they beat the batter, yeah, And they batter the
Speaker 1: liver so it's very it's not rough, so everything is
Speaker 1: very tender. So we naturally grew up in an environment
Speaker 1: where the food wasn't processed like they literally, Oh you
Speaker 1: know what, she used to do chicken, So from the chicken.
Speaker 1: She would always go to the butcher, like they would
Speaker 1: not if the meat wasn't from the butcher, they would
Speaker 1: there's no such thing about she go to the supermarket
Speaker 1: and get chicken. So everything is from the butcher. And
Speaker 1: it was called pool gee. And I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: just thinking about that chicken right now and how they
Speaker 1: seasoned it and cooked it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Did you ever go in the kitchen and cook with
Speaker 2: your mom?
Speaker 1: My mother? She was like, you gotta be real successful.
Speaker 1: I said, why because she said every time we cook,
Speaker 1: and all you do is you come in the kitchen
Speaker 1: and sing, and you sing, and you stay here and
Speaker 1: you wait. So you the first one with the first
Speaker 1: meal out right. My mom when she would cook rice,
Speaker 1: she would had me work with the seasons with her.
Speaker 1: There's a seasoning called Maggie. You've ever heard of it?
Speaker 2: I think I have.
Speaker 1: It's like amazing because it's like a mixed season and
Speaker 1: it was something like she can't. It literally works in everything,
Speaker 1: like literally is like a little cube, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a yellow okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's like a cube of vegetables.
Speaker 1: And they put Maggie in.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So that was one of the things. She was like,
Speaker 1: give me the two Maggie's so the rice game is crazy,
Speaker 1: and Haiti and and and then the the the kitchen.
Speaker 1: So she'd be like, okay, put this amount of water
Speaker 1: right in the pot. And she put the water. She says, okay,
Speaker 1: put this amount of oil right. And one of the
Speaker 1: things she used to have me you do was wash
Speaker 1: the rice. Cleaning was very very important to her how
Speaker 1: she actually cooked the food. So I'd be like, but
Speaker 1: the rice is already in the park just but no,
Speaker 1: she says, you got to put the rice in the water.
Speaker 9: Got it.
Speaker 1: So literally for five minutes she has me cleaning this
Speaker 1: rice out. And I remember, like now I would sit
Speaker 1: back and watch the water boil. And while the water
Speaker 1: was boiling, I was singing my mother's favorite French song,
Speaker 1: Jacques Bell, which.
Speaker 7: One my l.
Speaker 1: Says, quite and Mary unfaithful and faithful? Did it sting?
Speaker 9: Did it?
Speaker 7: I have a version of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you go, yes, that's right. Yeah, Now you
Speaker 1: got to hear they clap version.
Speaker 2: So you sang it in Creole, No.
Speaker 1: I sang it in English. But I put the hip
Speaker 1: hop to it. I was like, yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I put the hipness to it. I put that sauce,
Speaker 1: you know, I put the maggi in it.
Speaker 2: Did you live in an enclave of Haitian culture?
Speaker 1: So we we grew up in Marlborough projects, one of
Speaker 1: the roughest projects in Coney Island in Brooklyn. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I we got there from Haiti. We grew up
Speaker 1: in Coney Island. As far as me and my brother
Speaker 1: was concerned. We came from a hut and so we're
Speaker 1: in the building. So we were rich. We like the Jeffersons.
Speaker 1: We moved on up on the east side.
Speaker 2: Did you what was schooler?
Speaker 1: We went to school in Brooklyn. But this is what
Speaker 1: was amazing about Coney Island. We lived in this big project,
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous projects. But when we go
Speaker 1: on the roof, we could see the entire amusement park
Speaker 1: in the beach in Coney Island. And then so we
Speaker 1: was like living on up because me and my brother
Speaker 1: was like, this is amazing. So literally we could go
Speaker 1: from the projects and then like walk to the beach,
Speaker 1: which was pretty amazing and the reason why we identified
Speaker 1: with the beach again. In Haiti and a village, we
Speaker 1: played in the cemetery, so our Walt Disney and our
Speaker 1: playground was this big cemetery. So and I had we
Speaker 1: watched the transformation go from the cemetery to this amazing
Speaker 1: amusement park. Again, what that did for us was, you know,
Speaker 1: we are in the land of opportunity, and we was like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing now that's going to set us back. So
Speaker 1: the Eagle gave us that opportunity. America has given us
Speaker 1: this opportunity. And I don't say that just for me.
Speaker 1: I say that for many of my friends, my peers
Speaker 1: that ended up being super successful.
Speaker 2: While many people visit hotels or work in hotels, Carrie
Speaker 2: Mulligan's experience is more unique. She grew up in hotels.
Speaker 2: When Carrie joined Maybe we talked about food and films.
Speaker 2: Her performance is Felicia Bernstein in Maestro and her very
Speaker 2: unusual childhood.
Speaker 11: My father was a hotel manager for Continental for my
Speaker 11: whole childhood until I was sort of eighteen, so we
Speaker 11: I was born. I think we were at the Brittannia
Speaker 11: when I was born. My dad was running the Brittannia hotel,
Speaker 11: and then in London, yeah and then they yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 11: so there and then the Mayfair. And then we moved
Speaker 11: to Germany to Hanover and Dustledorf and he ran hotels there,
Speaker 11: and then we moved back to London. He ran I
Speaker 11: can't remember in the hotel. He then was at the
Speaker 11: Churchill in Portman Square, so he moved around those and
Speaker 11: he also ran hotels in Vienna and Frankfurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah did you but you actually lived in the hotel.
Speaker 11: We lived in the hotel till I was eight.
Speaker 2: Were you were a bit like Elowise? Do you remember
Speaker 2: that book? Alowis? Did you ever know that growing up
Speaker 2: in the plaza? Would you run around the hotels? Yeah? Fine?
Speaker 7: What was that like?
Speaker 2: Living in a hotel?
Speaker 11: It was amazing. I mean it was you know, it's
Speaker 11: kind of all we knew. But I look back and
Speaker 11: I think, oh wow, that was kind of an extraordinary
Speaker 11: way to grow up. And my brother and I were
Speaker 11: certainly we know, we would sort of roll around with
Speaker 11: the the maids, you know, going into people's rooms after
Speaker 11: they checked out and sort of you know, I remember
Speaker 11: sort of sitting in the basket with all the sheets,
Speaker 11: you know, with my hands holding on, rolling around the
Speaker 11: corridor and you know, sitting on with my whole body
Speaker 11: wrap around a hoover, you know, going up and down
Speaker 11: the hallways.
Speaker 2: We were ordering room service. Did you have we had?
Speaker 11: It was like that, you know, they'll have a they'll
Speaker 11: have a little I mean in the place at the hotels.
Speaker 11: And we lived in the sort of an apartment in
Speaker 11: the top floor for the manager. So we lived in
Speaker 11: a yeah, Mum talks about I mean, we had our
Speaker 11: own little mini kitchen and stuff, but it was more Yeah,
Speaker 11: we didn't do room service, but we did have our
Speaker 11: linen change. The only thing I remember about the kitchen
Speaker 11: because we were, you know, nowhere near the kitchen that
Speaker 11: was not And I was saying earlier, my dad, you know,
Speaker 11: I think briefly worked in kitchens on his way. He
Speaker 11: worked his way up from kind of collect in glasses
Speaker 11: in a restaurant to being the manager. Yeah, and he
Speaker 11: so whenever he cooks, generally I exit the building because
Speaker 11: it's just not what is it like? He just likes
Speaker 11: things ordered and the way that they and you know,
Speaker 11: for us to sort of come in and sort of
Speaker 11: casually start munching on something. His heart was not part
Speaker 11: of it, so that yeah, it's but my memory of
Speaker 11: one of my birthday parties when I was little was
Speaker 11: at the hotel in Disseldorf, and you know, the pastry
Speaker 11: chef made a bunch of dough. We were all making
Speaker 11: little dollies out of dough, and then they took them
Speaker 11: off and cooked them in the kitchen and brought them back.
Speaker 11: And the birthday cakes, you know, when we lived in
Speaker 11: hotels were always you know, those very elaborate kind of
Speaker 11: I feel like they always had liquor in them.
Speaker 2: They always had like a.
Speaker 11: Bit of booze in it, properly kiddie birthday and they
Speaker 11: had like very beautiful writing in icing and all that
Speaker 11: kind of stuff. There was always such a sense of
Speaker 11: occasion in hotels. It's always like there's a big display
Speaker 11: for Christmas or there's a big you know. It was
Speaker 11: like there was always some sort of sense of there's
Speaker 11: a sort of event happening. But I always felt, really
Speaker 11: I like being nomadic. I don't mind, you know, I
Speaker 11: like being in hotel tells I'm not someone who I
Speaker 11: don't need to bring you know, some people sort of
Speaker 11: need to bring stuff with them to make wherever.
Speaker 2: They feel like home. Carries with her.
Speaker 11: Do you know the only time I ate lunch here
Speaker 11: was with Tracy Ty.
Speaker 2: She described, you know that she I think she's ever
Speaker 2: ordered room service. She would always, you know, I'd go
Speaker 2: out and find something and take her food on the
Speaker 2: plane or take an object. And as you say, I
Speaker 2: love hotels so much that I actually don't like when
Speaker 2: I'm upgraded to a suite because it reminds me too
Speaker 2: much of home. Yeah, yeah, I like the confines of
Speaker 2: a hotel them. You can find everything, you know, where
Speaker 2: your boocket as you know where everything is. I always
Speaker 2: thought that maybe I'd be one of those women who age,
Speaker 2: you know, Richard would be a stay at Clarages for
Speaker 2: the rest of, you know, our days. I had said
Speaker 2: to him, if we saw our house, how many nights
Speaker 2: do you think we'd get in Clarges. He's like, probably six.
Speaker 2: And do you think there was a performance that you
Speaker 2: had to behave in a certain way with strangers?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, we had you know, we met people who
Speaker 11: were staying at the hotel sometimes and there was a
Speaker 11: real kind of day. It felt like being a bit
Speaker 11: of a like a diplomat stater or something. You know,
Speaker 11: someone would come and stay at the hotel and you
Speaker 11: would greet them.
Speaker 2: You know, what was German food like? Do you have
Speaker 2: a memory of it or did you.
Speaker 11: Yeah, lots of quite meat, meat based food. I mean
Speaker 11: we you know, we were amongst kind of lots of
Speaker 11: bricks as well. So but we spent We were amazingly lucky.
Speaker 11: We got to go skiing in Austria in our holidays
Speaker 11: and things, we you know, spent lots of We had
Speaker 11: lots of Asia Kaza, spetzel and you know venus ntzel
Speaker 11: and delicious like warm brothy things to be able to
Speaker 11: warm up. But yeah, I think we you know, because
Speaker 11: it was also an international hotel. It was you know,
Speaker 11: it wasn't we were if I was eating stuff from
Speaker 11: it wasn't necessarily German cuisine or anything.
Speaker 2: I usually asked people about their families and growing up,
Speaker 2: and restaurants were restaurants, But in your case, I often
Speaker 2: asked if restaurants were a special occasion, which was the
Speaker 2: touth In my family, we went out to restaurants for
Speaker 2: somebody's birthday and somebody's anniversary or something great had happened,
Speaker 2: and you'd celebrate a restaurant. Here we see people just
Speaker 2: coming out for dinner with their kids all the time,
Speaker 2: and maybe it was just more for you. That was
Speaker 2: that something that was just.
Speaker 11: I suppose that I don't really remember going to restaurants
Speaker 11: at all. I don't remember going to nice, you know,
Speaker 11: white tabletop restaurants.
Speaker 6: Ever.
Speaker 11: With my we would go to there was a pizza
Speaker 11: place in Dussledorf that we would go to, but like
Speaker 11: really a hole on the wall kind of pizza place,
Speaker 11: and that was sort of a treat that we would
Speaker 11: go there. I don't think we went to I remember
Speaker 11: what for the Millennium my dad was running the Intercontinental
Speaker 11: in Vienna, and there was a big Millennium meal there
Speaker 11: and I was fourteen and fourteen fifteen, I think, yeah, fourteen,
Speaker 11: and my best friend came with me and we bought dresses,
Speaker 11: you know, for millennium and we sat and it was
Speaker 11: a proper white tablecloth, seven course meal thing, and that
Speaker 11: was that was a big, big deal. So I don't
Speaker 11: think we did necessarily, although when I was when we
Speaker 11: moved home and we were living in you know, Buckinghamshire.
Speaker 11: We used to go if there was anything to celebrate,
Speaker 11: we'd go to Mister Poone's the Chinese restaurant and go
Speaker 11: and have big Chinese and we did that kind.
Speaker 3: Of for years.
Speaker 11: Your parents cook for you, yeah, I mean Mum's always
Speaker 11: you know, she couldn't turn her hand to anything. She
Speaker 11: was never a sort of passionate cook, I think because
Speaker 11: Dad was the cook. So if there was meals that
Speaker 11: were cooked, it would be Dad, you know. And Mum,
Speaker 11: my grandmother was a was a wonderful bay loved baking.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So where did she live?
Speaker 11: So she was my mother's Welsh So she was in Carmarthenshire.
Speaker 11: So and every time I went to her for any
Speaker 11: kind of length of time, we were just bake and bacon, baked,
Speaker 11: oh well everything. Welsh cakes, famously delicious Welsh cakes.
Speaker 2: Welshcakes, that's don't tell Sean, I asked you this because
Speaker 2: I've lived in this country.
Speaker 7: For well.
Speaker 3: If you weren't it.
Speaker 11: But they're like their little mini sort of flat cake
Speaker 11: with raisins in and like a scone, yeah, like a
Speaker 11: sort of flatter scone. But she'd make amazing Welsh cakes,
Speaker 11: a cherry almond cake, a delicious cherry almond cake that
Speaker 11: just got better the longer you left it in the tin.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 11: It was that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: When Tom Hollander came to Table for here, just finished
Speaker 2: filming the series Feud, Capoti Versus the Swans. The Swans
Speaker 2: were Babe Paley, Slim Keith, and the other wealthy socialites
Speaker 2: who world nineteen sixties Manhattan. Tom played Truman Capoti, their
Speaker 2: unlikely friend and writer host of The Black and White Ball.
Speaker 2: We could talk about Capoti and women in food because
Speaker 2: those women, there are a lot of so many scenes
Speaker 2: in restaurants. Right, they went to lunch every day.
Speaker 9: You're right, But I wonder if they skinny? Was the
Speaker 9: their job?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 9: They drank. I think they drank and smoked. They drank
Speaker 9: and smoked and sort of died young. Yeah. Perhaps they
Speaker 9: were celebrating being in the inn crowd and being at
Speaker 9: the table, the best table in the best restaurant. And yes,
Speaker 9: they were restraining themselves. He couldn't stop, he couldn't control
Speaker 9: his appetite. And he loved cooking. He loved his own kitchen. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So in the South was yes, yes, and the Black
Speaker 9: and White Ball they served his You know, the black
Speaker 9: and White ball, that sort of apotheos The black and
Speaker 9: White ball was a ball at Truman Capoti threw in.
Speaker 9: I can't remember when, the very early sixties, on the
Speaker 9: back of In Cold Blood, which had made him hugely famous,
Speaker 9: and his obsession with sort of high society and his
Speaker 9: own celebrity came together in one glorious moment, and he
Speaker 9: created the guest list to beat all guest lists that
Speaker 9: have ever existed, so much so that people knew about
Speaker 9: him were fighting to get on it. And aristocrats flew
Speaker 9: from Europe. All the film stars, you know, Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 9: Mia Farrow, the Aniellies, the probably Mick Jagger, we can
Speaker 9: ask him. They all turned up to the plaza and
Speaker 9: he he gave them corn beef hash, which he remember
Speaker 9: fondly from Monroeville, Alabama, where he'd grown up. But they
Speaker 9: they all complained about the budget of the catering, that
Speaker 9: it was very small. For him, it was about getting
Speaker 9: them in. They were the decoration, They were the they
Speaker 9: were the party, their their dresses, their masks. But there
Speaker 9: was nothing there. There were some balloons and some some
Speaker 9: some rather dodgy food that neither wanted, and I think
Speaker 9: the party ended relatively early, and a whole bunch of them.
Speaker 2: Went gambling, what was it like filming that scene?
Speaker 4: Did you do it?
Speaker 9: They recreated it in the place and Zach Posen had
Speaker 9: done the dressers for the ladies. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: Did he eat?
Speaker 9: He did cooking. Yeah. He was addictive and compulsive, so
Speaker 9: he goes up and down. You see, we in our
Speaker 9: version we pretty much do fat Troomen because I couldn't
Speaker 9: in a TV schedule go up and down as much
Speaker 9: as I needed to, So we went with Ryan Murphy
Speaker 9: said you need to you need to put on some weight.
Speaker 9: So I did, which was very enjoyable. And then it's
Speaker 9: marvelous in the moment. And then and I started to
Speaker 9: find it hard to put my socks on, and I
Speaker 9: got breathless doing sensible things I thought of easy, usual,
Speaker 9: I mean, ordinary things. That was that was distressing. So
Speaker 9: and also I'm a bit old to be messing around
Speaker 9: with my weight like that. And furthermore, I've I have
Speaker 9: a little bit of a compulsion to overeat myself and
Speaker 9: have spent all of my most of my professional life
Speaker 9: slightly going slightly slightly up in between jobs and then
Speaker 9: having a diet before a job, and going up and
Speaker 9: going down, and going up and going down, and trying
Speaker 9: to stay disciplined, trying to be like my father who
Speaker 9: weighs himself every day and if he ever goes over
Speaker 9: eleven stone, he he has a look at breakfast. He says,
Speaker 9: I were I know whether I can have a heavy
Speaker 9: or light retters, depending on what the scales are on
Speaker 9: every day? Does that which sounds like, you know, one
Speaker 9: of the Swans with its level of obsession, But he's
Speaker 9: he's eighty eight and still going strong.
Speaker 2: You're saying before that putting it on was one thing,
Speaker 2: but you haven't told us about how you take it off.
Speaker 9: So I went to a clinic. About half of it
Speaker 9: came off in an Austrian clinic, and then I went
Speaker 9: and did the play in which I was playing someone
Speaker 9: who needed to actually be a bit heavier than me,
Speaker 9: so I took patriots playing Berezovsky, who was quite portly.
Speaker 9: So I kept it on for that and that worked,
Speaker 9: and then I only I only got it off about
Speaker 9: three months ago, with the fear of doing the American
Speaker 9: press junk it. But I I do have a tendency
Speaker 9: to I love eating, but I also eat my feelings,
Speaker 9: you know, which which people do, and if you do
Speaker 9: it too much, it's it's not good for you. So
Speaker 9: I tried to do other things with my feelings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a friend of mine I was at a dinner
Speaker 2: recently where they were talking about a zempec yes, yes,
Speaker 2: and they were saying that, and it was kind of
Speaker 2: interesting to her. She said, really, what it's done for me.
Speaker 2: It's taken the noise of food away. It's taken all
Speaker 2: that noise. Should I shouldn't? I? How much? When? And
Speaker 2: actually I understand that a lot, But I also think
Speaker 2: it's a kind of noise we do want in our
Speaker 2: life as well. We like the noise of food, don't we.
Speaker 2: We liked the kind of thought of going to bed
Speaker 2: at night and thinking what am I going to have
Speaker 2: tomorrow for lunch or then?
Speaker 9: And actually it's the noise of being alive, isn't it.
Speaker 9: It's the desire, then, the fulfillment of the desire, the
Speaker 9: creative process, the gathering of ingredients, the construction, the destruction,
Speaker 9: the kind of leering up afterwards, everything from the preparation
Speaker 9: to the end of it. It's all and it's a
Speaker 9: sort of I mean, you could I could become pretentious
Speaker 9: if I'd say, but you know, it's a cycle of life,
Speaker 9: isn't it. But yet, but to be at war with food,
Speaker 9: which you can be, is not good. And I have,
Speaker 9: I do have a sense of that because being you know,
Speaker 9: an actor, where you become inevitably obsessed with your appearance,
Speaker 9: you know, it has an a tendency to make you think,
Speaker 9: I mustn't need, I mustn't deed, I mustn't eat, so
Speaker 9: I'm beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It's never really made any difference.
Speaker 9: I met her. I met her an actor once in
Speaker 9: Italy who'd long retired. He'd been a famous sixties heart throw.
Speaker 9: He said, I had to retire because I was sick
Speaker 9: of being thin and I wanted to eat. And he
Speaker 9: lived in the Italian hills near Cordona, and he loved
Speaker 9: food and he ate it. And he's probably no longer
Speaker 9: with us, but he was living the life of a
Speaker 9: you know, a bonne viver. And I did sometimes think
Speaker 9: I'll get to a certain age and then I'll give
Speaker 9: up trying to not be fat, and then I'll I'll
Speaker 9: just become a fat actor. Because fat actors they never
Speaker 9: stopped working. They're always there's always Rumber, a fat actor
Speaker 9: and everything. Anyway, I can't do that wells right, well exactly,
Speaker 9: or the dear Richard Griffiths or you know you sort
Speaker 9: of think they're they're loved. But I don't want to
Speaker 9: do that because I want to I now need to
Speaker 9: live as long as I can.
Speaker 2: For sure if we're certainly shad because you have a son.
Speaker 1: I do thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for
Speaker 1: in partnership with Montclair
Speaker 6: Es