Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is now a book. Paul McCartney, Michael Caine,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina fey Elton John and many more.
Speaker 1: It's full of stories, beautifully designed, and a celebration of
Speaker 1: the way food connects us all. It's available now wherever
Speaker 1: you buy your books. Ruthie's Table four brought to you
Speaker 1: by Sky and Montclair. There was a time that I
Speaker 1: think it was you that was had been going every
Speaker 1: single day down to the harbor to try fish and
Speaker 1: catch a fish. And every day we had this little
Speaker 1: fishing rod, I think it was maybe it was true
Speaker 1: with you, and would stand there for hours. And one
Speaker 1: day we just thought we can't go on any longer.
Speaker 1: So we bought a fish, a little fish in the
Speaker 1: fishing market, and then you drove down underneath the fishing
Speaker 1: and attached it to the fishing rod, and he pulled
Speaker 1: it up swimming. So they hatched it to the rod
Speaker 1: and he pulled it up. Of course, what he did
Speaker 1: really cut onto is that it was a dead fish.
Speaker 1: There are many many things I admire about abe Rogers.
Speaker 1: He is the founder of Abe Rogers Architects, an international
Speaker 1: practice where he breaks boundaries, creating beautiful buildings, challenging exhibitions,
Speaker 1: and dynamic interiors. As a parent, he is patient, exuberant,
Speaker 1: and as a stepson, well, he and I have been
Speaker 1: side by side with many, many stories to tell. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Abe as a cook, the inventive, inspiring,
Speaker 1: and brave way he brings ingredients together, creating some of
Speaker 1: the most delicious food I've eaten in my life. I
Speaker 1: think I know Abe very well. Today I'm going to
Speaker 1: know him even better and we'll share with you what
Speaker 1: he does, what he thinks, and what he makes. What
Speaker 1: a privilege we're going to talk an't we we have known?
Speaker 1: I don't think i've known apart from maybe I would rather.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've known any person I've interviewed as
Speaker 1: long as I've known you have.
Speaker 2: I think I'm one of the apart from the only
Speaker 2: people that have eaten your food all their all.
Speaker 3: Their their lives.
Speaker 2: And I think that's quite a privilege. And I even
Speaker 2: make your food kind of before it was this, when
Speaker 2: it was we were.
Speaker 1: Making the other day, I went up to Ruse and
Speaker 1: he said, I want you to cook something that used
Speaker 1: to cook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was thinking about soufles is like bicycled
Speaker 2: over here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, he said, let's make something that you
Speaker 1: know you used to make, and so I said, soufle
Speaker 1: And I used to make cheese, one cheese to and
Speaker 1: one finish, and then.
Speaker 2: I remember the whole theater, then looking through the oven
Speaker 2: and then rising.
Speaker 1: You remember the time we were skiing, Yeah, we were skiing.
Speaker 1: You know how everybody makes you feel like souffles. You
Speaker 1: can't open the oven door, nobody can make a noise,
Speaker 1: you can't play music. And we were in a shallow
Speaker 1: in some apartment house and some humor, and we made
Speaker 1: a cheese to play and a spinach shoe flay, and
Speaker 1: the oven kind of broke or something happened, and we
Speaker 1: took both soufles out of the oven as they were rising,
Speaker 1: went down the hall, turned on the other oven, which
Speaker 1: was like a very low temperature, and put the soufles
Speaker 1: in and slammed the door. And they were the best
Speaker 1: soufles I've ever had. So is not always right, No,
Speaker 1: exactly where the mythology of a tradition. We're going to
Speaker 1: ask you to read a recipe that you've chosen. I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that of all the recipes that
Speaker 1: you've chosen, it's a dish that I absolutely adore with
Speaker 1: a fish that I think worked so well in this recipe.
Speaker 1: Why don't you read it first?
Speaker 2: And why discuss going to say prior to reading this
Speaker 2: is what when in the last years with that we'd
Speaker 2: had these kind of emotional conversations and he was very
Speaker 2: soft and he said, your super power is your fearlessness,
Speaker 2: and that is you know, that's what. But actually the
Speaker 2: one thing makes me fearful is reading out louds So
Speaker 2: I walk endeavor to read, especially dyslexia. Yeah, and this
Speaker 2: is very beautifully printed in LUNs writing for me. Acropats
Speaker 2: is an extraordinary dish because a little bit like my mete,
Speaker 2: the Spanish dish is kind of made by the fisherman
Speaker 2: to be kind of eaten on the boat almost. And
Speaker 2: so this idea of using the local seaweed and this
Speaker 2: kind of strange curdle, a multiplication that comes with a
Speaker 2: fish protein and the olive oil and the garlic the
Speaker 2: coming together so for kind of crazy water acropats. So
Speaker 2: we need three pielt garlics. We need four tablespoons of
Speaker 2: chopped fresh flat parsley, two fresh or tinned plum tomatoes,
Speaker 2: true crushed dried chilis. One whole red mullet. I mean,
Speaker 2: I love the red mullet. I think it's exceptional. Fish
Speaker 2: white wine optional, all necessary. I would say four scallops
Speaker 2: of longesteed, two slices of sheap batter, bread, one lemon
Speaker 2: hard in a pan large enough to hold the fish
Speaker 2: in one layer. Five water with garlic, pastia, tomates, and chili.
Speaker 2: Season weal and boil for five minutes. Add the mullet
Speaker 2: and splash of wine and cover for six minutes. Then
Speaker 2: carefully turn the fish over. Add the shell fish. Cook
Speaker 2: for six more minutes. Carefully turn the fish over, cook
Speaker 2: for further six minutes, seasoned, drizzle olive oil. Toast the bread,
Speaker 2: rub garlic on one side, and place on a plate.
Speaker 2: Add the fish, spooning over tomatoes and broth. Be on
Speaker 2: a rocky boat.
Speaker 1: And why did you choose this recipe?
Speaker 2: Because I think it represents the simplicity of kind of
Speaker 2: Italian food, of food that that you know, that that
Speaker 2: you cook and bringing these ingredients together, and the idea
Speaker 2: that it's cooked by the by the fishermen.
Speaker 1: That's why it's called crazy water. Because the myth or
Speaker 1: the reality that if you drink salt water of the sea,
Speaker 1: you will become insane, you'll be crazy. And so the
Speaker 1: aqua patza means pazza is you know, means crazy in Italian.
Speaker 1: So I think I think it's a beautiful name for
Speaker 1: a recipe and the mythology of it. As you tell
Speaker 1: me more about aqua, parts of what do you when
Speaker 1: you make it? What do you do well?
Speaker 2: I mean for me, it's just coming together of these
Speaker 2: different ingredients, and you have you know that you'll see
Speaker 2: the shellfish and meeting with the red mullet, and they
Speaker 2: can make.
Speaker 1: It without like it without and I just like a mullet.
Speaker 2: Just a mullet. Yeah, I mean clans I think you know,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't nessary, but it's scallops. But I think it's
Speaker 2: it's a celebration of pure ingredients, which all you're cooking
Speaker 2: is a bat.
Speaker 1: The other appeal of this dish for me is that
Speaker 1: it's a whole fish. Yeah, I don't want to make
Speaker 1: it with a filet. You would never make it with
Speaker 1: a filet if.
Speaker 2: I can avoid. I like to cook everything, whole everything
Speaker 2: point I would only cook vegetables whole as well. I mean,
Speaker 2: now I've kind of got more. But I quite like
Speaker 2: going through these conceptual moments of kind of defining the
Speaker 2: food by the.
Speaker 3: Way you doing it.
Speaker 2: Because then it's as it arrives and it cooks inside
Speaker 2: it itself. And I try not to add water to things,
Speaker 2: so I kind of like this idea of concentration and
Speaker 2: trying to get the water from the vegetable, and if
Speaker 2: it's not cut, then it sits inside and kind of
Speaker 2: cooks in its own self.
Speaker 1: And also when you see a fill it of sea
Speaker 1: bass or a turbot, whatever you are very often putting
Speaker 1: on the grill, it kind of shrinks and gets all
Speaker 1: sort of angry and tight.
Speaker 2: The juice kind of escapes, and you need the bones, and.
Speaker 1: You need the bones. That's you know. I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever ate a fill of a fish. When I
Speaker 1: lived in Paris, we'd either get you know, sea bass
Speaker 1: big enough for every everyone to share, and taking it
Speaker 1: off the bone is part of the whole process, and.
Speaker 2: Then the bone becomes the stock. And I had some
Speaker 2: friends for dinner last night, did you cook? I cooked
Speaker 2: a turbots, but I sput it on the wire frame
Speaker 2: of the shelf and the vegetables underneath it. So the
Speaker 2: kind of the enzymes drop and you do a kind
Speaker 2: of salt and olive oil and vinegar massage into it
Speaker 2: and releases the proteins. It's the kind of bass thing
Speaker 2: and everything drops out. And I was cooking for Lynn
Speaker 2: Harris to perfume, and it was very interesting to be
Speaker 2: talking about food with someone who's just obsessed with the smell,
Speaker 2: smell and the kind of whole taste and smell and
Speaker 2: that inter.
Speaker 1: I get that, you know, I always say that very
Speaker 1: often you want to make something up because of what
Speaker 1: it will taste like, but what it will smell like.
Speaker 2: And how your house will smell when people enter the.
Speaker 1: Ways. Yeah, sometimes you don't wantever you do one I
Speaker 1: don't have. I don't have extraction in my house.
Speaker 2: I think I learned that from you. I have.
Speaker 1: Open window. Yeah, what are your early memories of the kitchen?
Speaker 2: When I was bically him thinking about this conversation, I
Speaker 2: realized that most of my early memories are about food,
Speaker 2: and when I talked to that, his memories are very different.
Speaker 2: I think it's very interesting early on what we take
Speaker 2: from our memories and our past. So yeah, definitely. I
Speaker 2: mean we were five that we'd all sit down together.
Speaker 2: Chicken would kind of be devoured in minutes with such
Speaker 2: a with five kids and two adults and two great danes,
Speaker 2: and soon would make packed lunches for all of us
Speaker 2: every morning and be at the kind of five making
Speaker 2: homemade bread. I mean, it was quite in this kind
Speaker 2: of conveyor belt and we go off my little plastic
Speaker 2: bags with the sandwiches and the carrots. Where they eat
Speaker 2: with you most nights every night, or my bedroom is
Speaker 2: next to the kitchen because I was the youngest, and
Speaker 2: so I'm going to go to bed as they were cooking.
Speaker 2: I mean, lot of people would see that I was
Speaker 2: in the cupboard in the basement, but it was. But
Speaker 2: it was actually a real kind of generous things that
Speaker 2: kept me very close. She was always in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: But I grew up, you know, with this incredible privilege
Speaker 2: of these I know, kind of five four amazing cooks.
Speaker 2: You know, you're you know you cooking, and we'd go
Speaker 2: every week to Bell Sized Grow And there was a
Speaker 2: period when Dad was supposed to cook every Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that. I, you know, Richard who really.
Speaker 2: Food was important respective.
Speaker 1: Everything was about. He would literally go to bed at
Speaker 1: night and think what we were going to eat the
Speaker 1: next day, or he would, you know, after a meal,
Speaker 1: talk about what he you know, had eaten that lunch.
Speaker 1: There was a conversation about food. There was this.
Speaker 2: Love of very natural food. He wanted he wanted the
Speaker 2: livers and the kidneys, and he wanted in fact, and
Speaker 2: he wanted you know, the substance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So going, so you had the Tuesdays whenever we
Speaker 1: did one of the.
Speaker 2: Tuesdays when he could and he couldn't cook. He didn't
Speaker 2: know how to cook. He liked the idea, but he
Speaker 2: you know, so I would cook with you.
Speaker 1: So you were saying that your memories of your childhood
Speaker 1: really centered around food. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then of course Dada Dada who was who was
Speaker 2: my grandmother? I think quite inspiration had totally who kind
Speaker 2: of was the first Italian cook. I mean obviously the first,
Speaker 2: but was kind of And you would go to her
Speaker 2: house and she would skate around with cloths attached to
Speaker 2: her feet and you know, she would slowly cook these
Speaker 2: carrots and she's had.
Speaker 1: The clothes on her feet now for cooking but cleaning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we should tell everyone about data who was born
Speaker 1: in Trieste.
Speaker 2: Early century, women who survived the wars, who kind of
Speaker 2: fled Italy in thirty nine, who kind of arrived in
Speaker 2: England the beginning of the war at a moment kind
Speaker 2: of great nationalism in a way.
Speaker 1: And she had a very privileged childhood. So she was
Speaker 1: brought up with I think cooks in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: cleaners in the bedrooms, and a little private train that
Speaker 1: took her to the top of her house.
Speaker 3: And James, James Joyce.
Speaker 1: That's always my question, who do you think Richard's mother
Speaker 1: to speak English? And there was James Joyce who was
Speaker 1: living in Triesta.
Speaker 2: And I think when they had the flu in eighteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen, she didn't need the house free, you know,
Speaker 2: and people would bring the through to the kind of
Speaker 2: doorstep of the house.
Speaker 1: There were two things she wanted to have in London,
Speaker 1: many things, probably, but coming from this privileged life to
Speaker 1: a wartime Britain was one not being able to have
Speaker 1: a view. Because she grew up in Florence where there
Speaker 1: were the hills and she could walk up there and
Speaker 1: see the view of a Florence. And so she said
Speaker 1: to me once and she used to walk around London
Speaker 1: all day trying to find a view. And the other
Speaker 1: one was to have the kind of food that she'd
Speaker 1: grown up with, the trisque. Her father, even though it
Speaker 1: was wartime Britain and rationing, would send her candy chestnuts
Speaker 1: and candied fruit. She often told me about getting these packages.
Speaker 1: I don't know how he got them out of Italy
Speaker 1: and to Britain, but for her having the candied fruit.
Speaker 1: But you can imagine coming from parmesan cheese and olive
Speaker 1: oil and anchovies and garlic to a country where there
Speaker 1: was just a very, very different level of type of cooking.
Speaker 2: But she had this amazing house that Dad had designed
Speaker 2: her as kind of super experimental house, his first kind
Speaker 2: of real vision of the future of his eye.
Speaker 3: That wasn't until sixty eight, sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this kind of yellow box where she would cook
Speaker 2: her childhood food and with this incredible generosity and precision
Speaker 2: in how she would cook. And for me, I always
Speaker 2: wouldly remember the carrots, and the carrots would take four
Speaker 2: hours and she would kind of turn them over each
Speaker 2: one individual. She almost knew them by name slice by
Speaker 2: the end of the kind of carrot cooking, and he
Speaker 2: would have this orange all of oil that had been
Speaker 2: kind of touched by this very very slow cooking.
Speaker 1: Italian vegetables are never undercooked. Everything in Italy is, you know,
Speaker 1: the prety rules. Even though yeah you can have raw
Speaker 1: you do. But I think that the whole the difference
Speaker 1: between you know, a blanched vegetable and French cooking or
Speaker 1: you know, other cooking, and then the Italians which just
Speaker 1: cooked them for a very long time, they do it
Speaker 1: because of the olive oil. I think they get away
Speaker 1: with it. So tell me more about the influences in
Speaker 1: your cooking.
Speaker 2: And then so you know, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 2: with Rose and her kids, we were all very much that.
Speaker 1: Would be Rose Grades, my co founder of the River.
Speaker 2: Capitol was you know who moved to Florence in when
Speaker 2: I was like fourteen, twelve thirteen, and we would go
Speaker 2: out there and all that they would do there was
Speaker 2: cook and she kind of demanded everybody in the house
Speaker 2: to be cooking. I don't know how you could make
Speaker 2: it too much. I saur so collaborative, and she always
Speaker 2: wanted to push and like you were saying in my introduction,
Speaker 2: she always really wanted to push the baund and she
Speaker 2: was going to use chili. She wants to make you
Speaker 2: cry from the heat, you know. She kind of she
Speaker 2: was she was experimental, not when she was hit in
Speaker 2: those kind of periods and interesting things, so bohemian in
Speaker 2: a way. Kind of going there as a teenager was
Speaker 2: like anything could happen, and food was the absolute glue
Speaker 2: that operated around that.
Speaker 1: And she was taught to cook by daughter. She always
Speaker 1: said that. You know, there were about five friends of
Speaker 1: Richard who lived in South London, Wimbledon, she that area,
Speaker 1: and they were friends of Richard, and then what they
Speaker 1: really loved was being taught by Richard's mother daughter, your grandmother,
Speaker 1: how to cook. And so there was and actually if
Speaker 1: you went to Rose's house or sus or you know,
Speaker 1: Georgie Walton's house or Wendy Foster's, there was you could
Speaker 1: tell that they'd been taught by Dadda. There was a consistency.
Speaker 2: Because her food was about approach to exactly me dishes.
Speaker 2: But the way that you learned you could apply it
Speaker 2: to anything. As you say, you talk about the vegetables,
Speaker 2: or we talk about it, the salad, the ice creams,
Speaker 2: you know, which extortedly we're all still trying to recreate
Speaker 2: many years later, or the Christmas cake that you make
Speaker 2: every year. But in a way, the really interesting thing
Speaker 2: for me is this is the kind of creation is
Speaker 2: quite humble food that you make so exquisitely. And something
Speaker 2: I find fascinating in your cooking is the more noble
Speaker 2: your guests, the more humble the food that you serve them.
Speaker 2: So you have the American Ambassador for lunch and you
Speaker 2: give them which is, you know, kind of the peasants food,
Speaker 2: but you make it so perfectly, you know, I think,
Speaker 2: and it changes all the time, whether you're using parmesan
Speaker 2: or you're not using parmesan, that if tomates you're using
Speaker 2: the time of years, but it's always, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's yeah. Eva Drittna says in design that three materials
Speaker 2: make a palette, and I think, you know, that's quite
Speaker 2: true in a lot of these dishes. I just ate
Speaker 2: the targa with tomatoes outside, and that's two ingredients. Maybe
Speaker 2: we add salt three, but it's just it's this kind
Speaker 2: of poetry in your in your mouth, the kind of
Speaker 2: fish to the field, which is fabulous.
Speaker 1: And also when you have few ingredients, if you just
Speaker 1: have two ingredients. They'd better be good. There's no masking them,
Speaker 1: you know that. Butka has to be great a certain way.
Speaker 3: A ribbon, Yeah, you like the ribbon.
Speaker 1: I quite like it greater.
Speaker 3: We'll go have a comparison.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So you had Sue, you had you had me, you
Speaker 1: had daughter, you had Cheer and then your cousin she's
Speaker 1: married to the Cheerman.
Speaker 2: Was married to Richard's first cousin. And she was this
Speaker 2: kind of extraordinary, short, completely energetic cook who would spend
Speaker 2: no money, but she would barter with the local farmers
Speaker 2: and she would drive off in the morning for forty
Speaker 2: minutes to get this very fresh paccarino they just had
Speaker 2: just kind of been been set and she would drive
Speaker 2: back across and you would have that, and she'd be
Speaker 2: so excited to bring you this and this and this bread.
Speaker 2: And she would have huge fights with the other chefs
Speaker 2: in Florence because their food was being too comp lo
Speaker 2: caterd and it well, you know, it was always trying
Speaker 2: to be there was a real activist. I remember this
Speaker 2: meal where she had given the farmers free ducks, and
Speaker 2: she'd given them the and she specified their diet.
Speaker 1: These three ducks, she gave them as us to be.
Speaker 2: Fair, and then for six months they fed them and
Speaker 2: grew them, and then she came and picked them up
Speaker 2: and she did this whole meal devoted to the duck.
Speaker 2: So you start with duck soup, then you have duck bravioli,
Speaker 2: then you have rosed duck. So how you can take
Speaker 2: one animal and it influenced the whole meal. And I
Speaker 2: kind of love that linear story that starts to be
Speaker 2: told and how we can use, you know, food to
Speaker 2: really tell stories. And it almost has kind of conceptual
Speaker 2: art in some ways that he's sow in these other narratives.
Speaker 1: So there are five women in the sense that you
Speaker 1: grew up with is you know the importance and no
Speaker 1: wonder your memory is so strong a food. You know
Speaker 1: that you had these very different views in the way
Speaker 1: people cook, but a kind of quality and also a
Speaker 1: sense of that food was a way of bringing a
Speaker 1: we want together. Do you remember going to restaurants? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I remember going to Chinese, going to mister choosing to
Speaker 2: go to Chinese restaurants, Pizza Express, Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 2: that definitely with you and Richard are going to restaurants
Speaker 2: in Paris. Yeah, I also remember those holids days where
Speaker 2: we would live in a boat house and you would
Speaker 2: cook you know, sardine. I mean it was a very
Speaker 2: it was. It was not a lavish exist.
Speaker 1: That was of Coudie, wasn't it. We had the keys
Speaker 1: to the house, we had a map to take us
Speaker 1: to the house. We had three children, I was pregnant,
Speaker 1: it was. And we stayed there for three weeks and
Speaker 1: we never found the house where.
Speaker 2: The houses never have found the house.
Speaker 1: We stayed in this room which we thought we could
Speaker 1: go to be one night and ended up being sort
Speaker 1: of three weeks. But I think we did eat. You know,
Speaker 1: we ate from the sea. We ate, and so I
Speaker 1: think that probably part of your childhood and growing up.
Speaker 2: I mean, which you couldn't cook, but he would gather.
Speaker 2: We'd go to the sea urchins, we would get brickly pears,
Speaker 2: we'd be covered in splinters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a time that I think it was
Speaker 1: you that was had been going every single day down
Speaker 1: to the harbor to try and fish and catch a fish.
Speaker 1: And every day we had this little fishing rod. I
Speaker 1: think it was maybe it was Rue you and would
Speaker 1: stand there for hours and one day we just thought
Speaker 1: we can't go on any longer. So we bought a fish,
Speaker 1: a little fish in the fishing market, and then drove
Speaker 1: down underneath the fishing and attached it to the fishing
Speaker 1: rod and.
Speaker 3: He pulled it up.
Speaker 2: What's doing.
Speaker 1: Swimming? So they attached it to the to the rod
Speaker 1: and he pulled it up. Of course, what he did
Speaker 1: really cut onto was that it was a dead fish,
Speaker 1: and so then he was so.
Speaker 3: Ses it was this big. It gut it and we brought.
Speaker 1: It back, the fish back to the house, and then
Speaker 1: by that time was so attached to it he wouldn't
Speaker 1: let us cook it, and so he slept with.
Speaker 2: It nights and we were all sleeping in one room.
Speaker 2: So it started to really really smell and it dried
Speaker 2: leave fish, and we had to persuade him to let
Speaker 2: the fish go. And he's going to get back to
Speaker 2: his mom. He wasn't well. His mom was going to
Speaker 2: make him better. Maybe had to get the hospital we had,
Speaker 2: and we launched it back into the sea, and this
Speaker 2: Viga water is completely stiff.
Speaker 1: I don't think you get away with that now, because
Speaker 1: the whole idea of honesty and treating children as when
Speaker 1: you go to a city and you think, what is
Speaker 1: the culture of food, going to tell me about the
Speaker 1: culture of the country.
Speaker 3: The city, the market.
Speaker 1: So what do you what do you look for?
Speaker 2: And I look, I love the mark. We want to look.
Speaker 2: But the locals are eating what the locals are doing,
Speaker 2: And I think for me, Thailand is fascinating. You have
Speaker 2: some of the best thing I've had in my life.
Speaker 2: You have these fish which are barbecued, but in this
Speaker 2: kind of salt and flower. You have fish that you
Speaker 2: cannot recognize. I might get obsessed with fish particularly, they're
Speaker 2: such strange creatures and we don't see them most of
Speaker 2: the time because they're under the water. But then you
Speaker 2: have you know, you have seventy seven different types of mangos.
Speaker 2: If we don't about a mango as if it's the
Speaker 2: one thing, or in the same way, I guess with apples,
Speaker 2: you have all these different rice is you have. You know,
Speaker 2: that's great kind of uh pioneers. We're trying to bring
Speaker 2: back all the heritage growing that has kind of been
Speaker 2: lost along along the way. And you know, when I
Speaker 2: work in Thailand, we have you know, I eat it
Speaker 2: in the canteen in the morning, and you eat this,
Speaker 2: you know, it's all blood and guts because it's incredibly inexpensive,
Speaker 2: but the taste is fantastic. And if you're getting up
Speaker 2: at six in the morning to spend all day on
Speaker 2: site working, you want this kind of high protein, this
Speaker 2: high iron, this high kind of toxing thing. And it's it's, it's,
Speaker 2: it's it's superb.
Speaker 1: Your work is taken you to Japan, Thailand.
Speaker 2: In Thailand we work with Wonder Fru, which is a
Speaker 2: big festival and that has this they have it has
Speaker 2: an amazing food culture inside it and the food culture
Speaker 2: for the kind of workers which I find really interesting.
Speaker 2: And how we treat our workers is so bolled. At
Speaker 2: the canteen, you know, the Sophie around the canteen here,
Speaker 2: which was which was fantastic. You started this as a
Speaker 2: canteen itself at the beginning, which is really amazing and
Speaker 2: such some kind of privileged the office team here, who's
Speaker 2: the best canteen in London?
Speaker 1: Yeah, judge, judge. You judge a society by the way
Speaker 1: it feeds its Parker poor, the way they feeds hospitals.
Speaker 1: And you've done a lot of work in hospitals, you know,
Speaker 1: this is this brings back the immersion of you know, architecture, design, food, cooking.
Speaker 2: Serving sociologists I think as designers, and I think you know,
Speaker 2: the Dad was very much a kind of sociologists in
Speaker 2: his way. His architecture, his cities were for humans. They
Speaker 2: were the manifestation was was a building or a street,
Speaker 2: but it was really coming from how can we improve
Speaker 2: people's lives as as as the human and I think
Speaker 2: that's what we're you know, and food is part of
Speaker 2: that and which was really interesting trying to put the
Speaker 2: restaurants in the street and how that would ignite and
Speaker 2: bring people into the street and how you know Sparcelonia
Speaker 2: did it better than London. What we could learn from
Speaker 2: that and transforming into that.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your work with hospitals.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, having designed a lot
Speaker 2: of very high end fashion shops and very high culture
Speaker 2: museums and restaurants, et cetera. You know, we started working
Speaker 2: in Maggie's designed the Maggie Center. Everyone with mag Maggie
Speaker 2: is a cancer center which sits outside the hospitals, and
Speaker 2: it's really designed for the patients to energize them. If
Speaker 2: the hospital makes them impotent, Maggie's empowers them. And it's
Speaker 2: you know, they're extraordinary architectural buildings that are designed around
Speaker 2: the needs of the human. So it's very important about
Speaker 2: the texture. If you have had chemotherapy, then you're very
Speaker 2: affected by cold materials, so we tried everything you touch
Speaker 2: is made of wood, Everything is handmade. It's really about
Speaker 2: the psychadian rhythm, how light gets in the space, smoothing
Speaker 2: off corners, so you really it's like it's a form
Speaker 2: of church in a way. It becomes this anchor. You
Speaker 2: walk out of the hospital in this car parck and
Speaker 2: you come to this oasis. You know, we work for
Speaker 2: an amazing landscape garden and Peter Udorff, who designed the
Speaker 2: high Line, who created this incredible god. So you totally
Speaker 2: forget one that you have cancer or not. You forget
Speaker 2: you have cancer, but you forget the trauma that you're
Speaker 2: in and you give you a moment and you really
Speaker 2: see people in this space laughing, and it's not just
Speaker 2: we're incredible architect We are good, but it's because the
Speaker 2: brief is amazing and the whole network is amazing, and
Speaker 2: the staff is amazing, and the architecture becomes part of
Speaker 2: that support system. So we developed a theory which is
Speaker 2: the third care, which is if the doctor and the
Speaker 2: nurses the primary, the family and the friends the secondary,
Speaker 2: how the building can really care for you. And part
Speaker 2: of that kit goes into food. So Maggie's is designed
Speaker 2: around this centralized kitchen where people come and cook, and
Speaker 2: we'll come and cook at tomatoes, sauce. And when Maggie's finished,
Speaker 2: they invited us to the donor's dinner. Maggie's is completely
Speaker 2: paid for by donors fundraising. There's no government money, and
Speaker 2: we felt very indebted to these people. They'd give us
Speaker 2: this amazing opportunity to do this amazing thing. We created
Speaker 2: this building, which took eight years, in many conversations with
Speaker 2: the patients, the users, with the staff. So we said
Speaker 2: we'd only come to the meal if we could cook it.
Speaker 2: So we set up this meal. Our building is seven
Speaker 2: shades of red, so we propose to do seven courses
Speaker 2: of red foods with seven different red wines. And then
Speaker 2: we had all these very generous donors there who would
Speaker 2: come for kind of half an hour, and then they
Speaker 2: stayed for four hours and actually getting in telling their
Speaker 2: drivers to hold on and getting quite drunk. And this
Speaker 2: whole thing became this really convirial experience, and it is
Speaker 2: that power of food, you know, which goes back to
Speaker 2: you serving humble food to noble to noble guests, that
Speaker 2: brings people together and sets you at edge. And I
Speaker 2: think there's a generosity in your cooking, which for me
Speaker 2: I've really learned a lot about, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: making everybody feel welcome around that table, to you know,
Speaker 2: to joy in this in this generosity.
Speaker 1: So the thing between food and design, food and architecture,
Speaker 1: food the people, because you have a system in your office,
Speaker 1: isn't it too where everybody takes a turn to cook?
Speaker 2: Yeah, or more. Now I find myself cooking because I
Speaker 2: find that they're you know, they're drawing, I'm sketching, and
Speaker 2: I think as a kind of a love back to them,
Speaker 2: it's nice for me to cook. And I will cook
Speaker 2: and dictate letters at the same time, be dyslexic. Dictating
Speaker 2: is a much faster way of getting a letter out.
Speaker 2: You can do that kind of multi dimensional thing.
Speaker 1: We've designed schools. As you were saying, Maggus centers, have
Speaker 1: you a kind of interstinct of a feeling about restaurants, We.
Speaker 2: Should start by saying, I think your restaurant is the
Speaker 2: most beautiful restaurant in the world. And I have spent
Speaker 2: a bit of time with Dad and kind of designing
Speaker 2: and helping you have your life you are, and I
Speaker 2: think Dad's clarity of vision on that, you know, this
Speaker 2: notion of the reflection, the open kitchen, and the way
Speaker 2: that it's scaled up over the years, and yet the
Speaker 2: absolute DNA has never changed, and I find that really fascinating.
Speaker 2: We might adding a few extra objects, but you've gone
Speaker 2: from forty covers to hundred and twenty covers, you know,
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, I had the great privilege to
Speaker 2: work with Heston on a few projects, and we did
Speaker 2: the Little Chef, transforming the kind of most grotty foodery
Speaker 2: into this kind of super cool fast restaurant. We'd go
Speaker 2: to the toilet and the toilet was saying to you
Speaker 2: about eating food, and we were converting people that would
Speaker 2: go to use toilet and not eat in the restaurants.
Speaker 2: And then we designed the fact up for Heston, and
Speaker 2: you know, in designing that that's fascinating because we took
Speaker 2: this very high end restaurant and we lost covers. We
Speaker 2: went from forty two to forty covers, and we you know,
Speaker 2: I had staff that would go there and just stand
Speaker 2: in the room and just watch the different services going on.
Speaker 2: Because it's such a precise thing and each guest is
Speaker 2: going to be there for four hours, we said there
Speaker 2: should be no art to the artist, the food. We
Speaker 2: need you focusing on the table. We made sure we
Speaker 2: had perfect access between the kitchen for their staff to perform,
Speaker 2: and then we made this chair. And this chair needed
Speaker 2: to support you for four hours of dining and four
Speaker 2: hours you need to keep your dive from open, so
Speaker 2: you're going to eat thirteen courses. And this chair also
Speaker 2: had to work for different sized people. So Yosky in
Speaker 2: my office is Japanese and tiny, and the designer we
Speaker 2: were working with is kind of very very large and stuck,
Speaker 2: so we would test the chair on them, and it
Speaker 2: was really about this kind of aductive design, you know,
Speaker 2: it is all about the meal. We had this light
Speaker 2: that would changed through from warm to cold and gover
Speaker 2: a whole spectrum. So as we went through the twenty
Speaker 2: four hour cycle in the fact ups thirteen courses, the
Speaker 2: kind of light would change and focus on it, and
Speaker 2: it was just about pulling the people together and the chairs,
Speaker 2: you know, would sit there and you know differently when
Speaker 2: we designed Pizza Express again, we'd spent three four days
Speaker 2: working as pizzolas there and kind of looking at how
Speaker 2: the system worked, and we really bought the chef into
Speaker 2: the center of the space. And one of my proudest
Speaker 2: things that we got him at ten percent pay rise,
Speaker 2: because now the pizzola is not a guy at the
Speaker 2: back of the rest was. He was much more a
Speaker 2: performer and he needs to be more proud. And we
Speaker 2: already dealt with the acoustics and the complexibility of the space.
Speaker 2: We made it brighter and the whole transformation between you know,
Speaker 2: bright daylight and coming cozy at night, you know, And
Speaker 2: we we created these little boosts so you could have
Speaker 2: your own party inside. And I know you know, I
Speaker 2: love that you never play music, but people would go there.
Speaker 2: They could have their own party on these boosts. Plus
Speaker 2: I remember that I pod in and the next door
Speaker 2: person wouldn't hear. Acoustics for me are really interesting how
Speaker 2: we can play with acoustics with Kylo, with texture. We
Speaker 2: want the murmur, yeah, maybe the murmur is too loud.
Speaker 2: Want we don't want silence.
Speaker 1: Did you ever think of doing one or the other?
Speaker 1: You know that well, obviously would be a designer, an
Speaker 1: architecture and cook. But did you ever think that actually,
Speaker 1: maybe this would be something you'd want to do all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: And I think as a passion it's quite nice a
Speaker 2: lot to commercialize it. And I have to say, when
Speaker 2: I've done kind of restaurant projects, I haven't I find
Speaker 2: the transactional part complicated. I find it because I love
Speaker 2: the kind of whole generosity. I love doing this, designing
Speaker 2: these projects, and at the end of them saying to me, well,
Speaker 2: you you know, we did a gallery in Lisbon. At
Speaker 2: the end of it, and he asked us to to
Speaker 2: do the opening of his of his his gallery, and
Speaker 2: he's had like sixty people in a square. Sixty became seventy,
Speaker 2: seventy became one hundred and fifty. So I say, okay,
Speaker 2: well then you need to give me some labor that
Speaker 2: I had his you know, his wife, SARU's an amazing
Speaker 2: art historian, a brilliant glass artist and a steel artist.
Speaker 2: And then my scientist friend and the five of us cooked,
Speaker 2: and the scientist friend Ash who works with the mind,
Speaker 2: and he's a neuro scientist and a neurologist, and he's
Speaker 2: very precise, so he does the meringue. The artists are
Speaker 2: very labor focused, so they can cut, cut, cut Chul
Speaker 2: made mayonnaise with sixty eggs done by hand, not a
Speaker 2: single one curd, you know, sixty eggs, sixty yolks of stirring.
Speaker 2: And the menu was, you know, we started with a sparagust.
Speaker 2: We wanted people to when they peed after the meal
Speaker 2: to remember the the whole idea, the idea of the sparagust.
Speaker 2: We then made this kind of very black stew of
Speaker 2: cuttle fish with a little bit of rice in a
Speaker 2: kind of Spanish style. And so you had these kind
Speaker 2: of these very smart artists from Adagoo, which is the
Speaker 2: gallery eating and they will get black drops on their
Speaker 2: shirts and they're kind of the black and the white
Speaker 2: and this, you know, and they're black lips that you get.
Speaker 2: And then we did the kind of meringue and fruit
Speaker 2: scenario which you're kind of performed and came with a
Speaker 2: big knife and crashed. So, yeah, is that for me
Speaker 2: more than comparing it to actors. It's kind of art
Speaker 2: is that, you know, and it's it's like the design,
Speaker 2: it's it's that same. But I think with food we
Speaker 2: can we can handle everything. We can go to the supplier,
Speaker 2: we can go to the to the you know, to
Speaker 2: the kitchen. We can control everything. We're designed. We're sending
Speaker 2: out drawings and we have to control everything, but we're
Speaker 2: controlling it in a more remote way. It's less instinctive
Speaker 2: in your.
Speaker 1: Work of art. When you're designing Last Richard's buildings, Last,
Speaker 1: do you feel that the impermanence of all that time
Speaker 1: and all that you do to cook would make you
Speaker 1: want to keep doing things that do last?
Speaker 2: I love the emphemeral elements of design, and when we
Speaker 2: do the festival we design, you know, we spend all
Speaker 2: year kind of designing. It lasts for four days, and
Speaker 2: the key to it is it kind of evaporates because
Speaker 2: we don't want to lead chunks of steel knocking around.
Speaker 2: We want to create structures which kind of the term
Speaker 2: might's come along and they eat them and it disappears
Speaker 2: and they we're talking about sustainability, which is such an
Speaker 2: important part of cooking and our designing and our world
Speaker 2: and our future, you know, Sodiope, Dad, In certain ways
Speaker 2: we need to look about kind of reversible structures. So
Speaker 2: I really enjoy the ephemeral nature of architecture. You know,
Speaker 2: I really don't believe necessarily in permanence at the moment.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, permits is such a big word.
Speaker 2: I think we need to design with cathedral thinking. We
Speaker 2: need to be designing long into the future. But we
Speaker 2: need to be aware of our you know, of things
Speaker 2: needing to disappear at certain points, and want you know,
Speaker 2: how what is the future of this material? You know, concrete,
Speaker 2: plaster bore, they never go anywhere they did. The world
Speaker 2: ends up just full of old sheets of NDF and
Speaker 2: plaster board and concrete. So we need to work with
Speaker 2: the more sensitive materials that when it's life, you know,
Speaker 2: like Stuco in Mexico or in America, we have to
Speaker 2: keep it up, keep it continually. As soon as we
Speaker 2: stop up keeping it, it returns to the earth. And
Speaker 2: I really love that kind of that metaphor.
Speaker 1: And what about when you had children? Did that change
Speaker 1: some of your ideas of how you wanted to communicate
Speaker 1: with your children through food?
Speaker 2: And when I had Jay, it was covid and she
Speaker 2: was like three, and I would sit on the floor
Speaker 2: and cook with her, and she liked to eat everything,
Speaker 2: you know, And now she eat lots of things she
Speaker 2: won't eat, but she still really cooks with me, and
Speaker 2: we would we'd make pasta with her. I would get
Speaker 2: her to separate an egg and make a mayonnaise. She
Speaker 2: can do that and stir around and kind of emulsify.
Speaker 2: And I think there's something really enabling and empowering and
Speaker 2: going back to the kind of this thing of getting
Speaker 2: or found me to cook together, because as a kids,
Speaker 2: you want a purpose, you want a job, and to
Speaker 2: suddenly be responsible for cutting the eels or cutting the
Speaker 2: counts or whatever it is, it makes you feel part
Speaker 2: of this performance if you're going to go back to
Speaker 2: the part of this creation of art. And I think
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not the easiest of cooks, but I
Speaker 2: love cooking with my kids. Now, Ella Lula, we'll go
Speaker 2: to call More for two weeks and we'll do tell
Speaker 2: us about that book. I mean, we'll wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning and talk about what we're going to eat,
Speaker 2: and we'll spend the day getting the food and driving around,
Speaker 2: going off in the boat, barbecuing. It's something it will
Speaker 2: make things as difficult as possible. And I think I
Speaker 2: also learned that from ros Why make it easy when
Speaker 2: you can make it more difficult because you know, it's
Speaker 2: not about shortcutting corners, it's about you know, really devoting
Speaker 2: the time. And I think that's also true of design.
Speaker 2: And if a design I really believe that we need
Speaker 2: to design more and build less. We need to think more,
Speaker 2: we need to kind of go through the process of
Speaker 2: the intellectual process of what it is that we're doing
Speaker 2: and how we're going to do it. And it's that
Speaker 2: kind of labor that I think is great results, be
Speaker 2: it in food or in design.
Speaker 1: We go to food for different different reasons. But if
Speaker 1: you did need and as your stepmother, I hope you
Speaker 1: don't need it very often. If you think about the
Speaker 1: kind of food that if you need comfort, what in
Speaker 1: all your life of food, of your memories or what
Speaker 1: you're doing now, is there a food that you would
Speaker 1: go to for comfort?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a piece of toast cold with
Speaker 2: butter so it's concealed and cantabrin anchovies on top. You know,
Speaker 2: you had this crunch and you have this salt and
Speaker 2: you have the softness of the butter, and there's a
Speaker 2: chemistry between that which I find phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Should go have some? Yeah, thank you? Verus Ruthie's Table
Speaker 3: four was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton, and Zad Rogers,
Speaker 3: with Andrew Sang and Bella Selina. This has been an
Speaker 3: atomized production for iHeartMedia.