Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamis Studios.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's go today. Okay, Today, as we
Speaker 2: sit here in the River Cafe on a busy Monday lunch,
Speaker 2: I'm joined by someone I know rather well, my son
Speaker 2: Rue Rogers.
Speaker 3: You were born in.
Speaker 2: Paris, and so would you say your earliest memories are
Speaker 2: of living in Paris?
Speaker 4: I think my earliest memories are eating food in Paris,
Speaker 4: and my earliest memories are of walking into restaurants, and
Speaker 4: I remember going into Benoir and sort of having stories
Speaker 4: about how the Pompadou Center was designed there. From the
Speaker 4: earliest stages, I think I learned quite quickly only a
Speaker 4: passion and love for food, but that you booked the
Speaker 4: restaurant first, and you found the restaurant first, and then
Speaker 4: you figured out who you were going to invite and
Speaker 4: what you were going to talk about.
Speaker 3: And so I always felt so growing.
Speaker 4: Up that like it really was an exploration, not a
Speaker 4: convenience or a necessity, but an exploration.
Speaker 2: And so do you think more of your memories at
Speaker 2: Paris are beating out rather than home cooking.
Speaker 4: I think I still think to this day that like
Speaker 4: really great French markets, you know. And I actually probably
Speaker 4: remember better walking through the French market, you know, on
Speaker 4: Boulevard a Spy with you and Dad, And I remember
Speaker 4: riching dad buying a chicken, a roast chicken, and they
Speaker 4: put it in those sort of silver foil bags and
Speaker 4: there were no knives and forks, and he would just
Speaker 4: literally kept his hand in there and we were just
Speaker 4: the three of us were we were just eating chunks
Speaker 4: of chicken as you pulled it off, and it was
Speaker 4: the most delicious thing. And then when we needed dessert,
Speaker 4: you bought some raspberries and we just took the raspberries
Speaker 4: out of the cotton.
Speaker 3: That was love back then, and it was beautiful and
Speaker 3: I remember it very well.
Speaker 2: Do you still go to markets and shop and eat
Speaker 2: that way?
Speaker 4: Everyone asked me how I know how to cook? And
Speaker 4: I don't think I know how to cook. I know
Speaker 4: how to shop, and I think it's two totally different things.
Speaker 4: If you love food, you have to love the ingredients
Speaker 4: and you never go out shopping for what you want
Speaker 4: to make. You let the shopping define what you're going
Speaker 4: to make. And that was the biggest lesson I ever
Speaker 4: got growing up about food was It's all about the
Speaker 4: quality of the ingredient. I think having a plate of
Speaker 4: amazingly right tomatoes is as hard to cook as a
Speaker 4: real shit, because you have to know whether those tomatoes
Speaker 4: are going to be good, and you have to know
Speaker 4: how to let those flavors come out. And so it's
Speaker 4: not about the complexity of the recipe. It's about understanding ingredients.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so that is very to do with seasonal food.
Speaker 2: You say hello to a vegetable that has just arrived,
Speaker 2: and at the same time you're saying goodbye. You know too,
Speaker 2: I remember in Paris you might too. Ellen's came in.
Speaker 2: We always knew that they were going to come, and
Speaker 2: then you know, Fennel would go.
Speaker 3: Do you remember.
Speaker 4: I remember living in London and how you would come
Speaker 4: back from Paris if I hadn't been able to join
Speaker 4: you on your visit with tons of food from the market.
Speaker 4: I mean asparagus. I remember white asparagus coming to London.
Speaker 4: I don't think we'd ever seen it in the UK,
Speaker 4: Like you couldn't get white expers. You'd come back with
Speaker 4: white spagus or chev that was just seasonal and just
Speaker 4: being completed.
Speaker 3: But I just have this image of.
Speaker 4: You coming back on a plane back then, right, No,
Speaker 4: no trains, no boats, like you would fly back with
Speaker 4: bags fold but you'd brought back just from the market.
Speaker 2: It's not very popular on the plane with smelly cheese Rose.
Speaker 2: And you know, the story about Rose Gray was that
Speaker 2: she once reserved a seat for you know, pumpkin and
Speaker 2: put it in club and she sat in the economy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Actually, as I'm just mentioning Rose, do you have memories
Speaker 2: of Rose cooking with Rose?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, I worked at the River Cafe when I was
Speaker 4: I think seven teen and eighteen, and so working for
Speaker 4: your mother and her partner and her best friend is
Speaker 4: an interesting experience for your first job, somewhat terrifying and
Speaker 4: fast learning. And what's interesting was, you know, Rose was
Speaker 4: very exacting and very demanding in what we had to
Speaker 4: do and how we made it and how we delivered it,
Speaker 4: but very very charming as well, and someone wanted you
Speaker 4: to live up to being the best best eater you
Speaker 4: could be. She was curious about food.
Speaker 2: And if Rose was an influence, going back to Richard
Speaker 2: taking the chicken out of the bag with his fingers
Speaker 2: in the market, do you think Richard was an influence
Speaker 2: in your food life, your father.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think in a way we all
Speaker 4: love food because Richard was a great eater. And I
Speaker 4: do really think that being a great eater is a
Speaker 4: really fundamental skill. It can be very frustrating great because
Speaker 4: everything is being analyzed all the time, but it is
Speaker 4: a very beautiful thing because you're constantly searching for that
Speaker 4: new taste and that new experience and anything else is
Speaker 4: not exciting for that. I mean, I remember the Michelin
Speaker 4: Guide with yellow post it notes and written notes, and
Speaker 4: I mean like obsession and then like going into bookstores
Speaker 4: and saying, we found this restaurant, but we haven't been
Speaker 4: do you recommend it? Like the amount of diligence we
Speaker 4: did just to have lunch because Dad wanted a great
Speaker 4: meal and you wanted to make that possible.
Speaker 3: But you you know, and we did it.
Speaker 4: And so I think a lot of that of you know,
Speaker 4: curiosity and food cooking and food quality comes to Dad's
Speaker 4: real keenness and passion for eating.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's interested to say that, because I do remember
Speaker 2: that we used to He had this theory. I don't
Speaker 2: know where it came from, that if you wanted to
Speaker 2: find a good restaurant. You always asked a bookstore that
Speaker 2: there was a people who loved books would probably know
Speaker 2: where to eat.
Speaker 4: Do you remember when Richard went skiing with Bo, my brother,
Speaker 4: and they bought asparagus and they had to figure out
Speaker 4: how to cook it right? And Dad looked at it
Speaker 4: from an engineering architectural point of view, and he decided
Speaker 4: at the top of the sparagus were narrower and the
Speaker 4: bottom of the asparagus were wider, So he cut them
Speaker 4: up into pieces because the bottom, the wider pieces would
Speaker 4: need more time in the water than the top pieces.
Speaker 4: And sort of right, you know, what's the sparagus standing up?
Speaker 3: That's right? So that was that.
Speaker 4: Dad took a very sort of like you know, pragmatic
Speaker 4: point of view on cooking.
Speaker 2: This is probably a question like I only can ask
Speaker 2: you on the series, but tell me about cooking with
Speaker 2: your brothers.
Speaker 3: Cooking with them?
Speaker 5: Are you trying to preserve our relationship.
Speaker 3: About Ben?
Speaker 4: Zad and Ape are all amazing cooks and very very different.
Speaker 4: Ben is very precise and very responsible in terms of
Speaker 4: the planet and what he's cooking and how much of
Speaker 4: it he's cooking.
Speaker 3: But it always tastes perfect.
Speaker 4: My only like my standing image probably of like not
Speaker 4: just this person, but my entire lifetime of food was
Speaker 4: going to stay at Zad's house and him hanging over
Speaker 4: a duck with a hair dryer and drying duck for Christmas.
Speaker 4: An Abe is an explorer and you never quite know
Speaker 4: what he's going to eat. I do not like surf
Speaker 4: and turf and meat and fish together seem wrong to me.
Speaker 4: But when I go to Abe's house, not only am
Speaker 4: I going to have scallops with blood sausage, but it's
Speaker 4: going to be delicious. So he is always the king
Speaker 4: of surprise. And so my brothers are all very different
Speaker 4: in the way.
Speaker 3: That they cook. For all a wonderful experience as well.
Speaker 2: What about American influence, because you know, I'm American and
Speaker 2: every summer, I think your first flight to the United
Speaker 2: States was when you were four, So you know what
Speaker 2: were those summers, like, what did you eat? What? What
Speaker 2: was the American influence as a child, and then we
Speaker 2: can talk about later about as an adult.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that in general, there were four things
Speaker 4: that I can remember that we really loved eating in America.
Speaker 4: It went hot pastriami, sandwich, corn in a cob steak,
Speaker 4: and lobster, and I think there were muscles that we
Speaker 4: used to pick off the beach, but unfortunately, with global warming,
Speaker 4: those muscles have gone smaller and that's not possible. But
Speaker 4: we used to love those things again because there's such
Speaker 4: strong taste, Like the lovester would come out of the
Speaker 4: sea and you would just boil it and you would
Speaker 4: eat it.
Speaker 3: And the steak, I mean, it was just you didn't
Speaker 3: have anything like it.
Speaker 4: And then you know, going to the Carnegie Deli and
Speaker 4: having a hot pastriarami sandwich with strong mustard was delicious.
Speaker 4: I think that, you know, the real American influence was
Speaker 4: not in food though. I think the real influence was
Speaker 4: in you, mum, and bringing over the idea that food
Speaker 4: could be used in a sort of to make you
Speaker 4: feel at home, right that like, if food comes to
Speaker 4: the table, you will instinctly want to serve it to
Speaker 4: other people, even if it's not your house, Ruthy, you
Speaker 4: will want to help and serve others. And this notion
Speaker 4: that food could come with such incredible generosity and warmth
Speaker 4: was something that definitely came from your business and what
Speaker 4: I think makes the River Cafe and what you do
Speaker 4: so extraory is that you only say yes and yes.
Speaker 4: It's such a nice word. It's a beautiful word, even
Speaker 4: when you might not be able to carry through it. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's still a nice place to start.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful answer.
Speaker 2: So, Rue, you went to university in New York, you
Speaker 2: went to Columbia. What was it like being a student
Speaker 2: in terms of food?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the most important thing I learned as
Speaker 4: a student at university was the value of a slice
Speaker 4: of pizza, because we lived on pizza, and it's delicious.
Speaker 4: New York pizza is delicious. It's a very different thing.
Speaker 4: It can be a snack, can me. Meal has to
Speaker 4: be eaten the right way. The first time I ate
Speaker 4: slice of pizza, I didn't fold it and I kept
Speaker 4: it angled down and it dripped grease all over my clothes.
Speaker 4: So I remember very much culturally having to get used
Speaker 4: to the notion of fast food but also good food.
Speaker 4: And I would cook for people all the time, and
Speaker 4: I love that. And again I learned about New York
Speaker 4: ingredients and I learned about where to buy what, and
Speaker 4: it was, you know, it was really exciting.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what you would cook for those genners
Speaker 2: with your friends?
Speaker 3: So the thing that I.
Speaker 4: The way I made friends as a child was that
Speaker 4: we would have parties and then when everybody got a
Speaker 4: little bit too drunk, I would make pussa with tomato sauce, right,
Speaker 4: And so that was a very useful thing that I
Speaker 4: learned very early on was that it was very good
Speaker 4: to have something that you could make quickly and easily
Speaker 4: and would probably help soak up some of the alcohol
Speaker 4: and everybody's system. That has continued to with me ever since.
Speaker 4: Now I seve it to my kids. It is always
Speaker 4: something that you can get going very very quickly. But
Speaker 4: I would cook when I was in in college, whatever
Speaker 4: was fresh. My favorite meal was muscles and spicy tomato sauce.
Speaker 4: So I'd buy muscles and I'd combine that with a
Speaker 4: tomato sauce. And the other thing I really love about
Speaker 4: New York, which I experienced a lot of when I
Speaker 4: went to college, is you never self conscious of eating
Speaker 4: on your own right. People are always stopping and eating
Speaker 4: and eating by themselves. And that's something very very nice.
Speaker 4: You know, you see people with a book in a
Speaker 4: diner reading. That's that's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: Today. Do you take your children to restaurants do you
Speaker 2: work in restaurants? How do you feel about going into
Speaker 2: a restaurant? What do you look for? That's a multiple
Speaker 2: question to ask a multiple question. Ever since Jeff Goldblum
Speaker 2: told you I could ask a multiple.
Speaker 4: Questions, I have always used restaurants as public space, and
Speaker 4: I like to move. I need to be around other
Speaker 4: people when I think, and there's nowhere better to be
Speaker 4: around other people and surprise by people then restaurants. It's
Speaker 4: about a certain level of discomfort because what you're really
Speaker 4: doing is you're putting yourself in somebody else's hands in
Speaker 4: a restaurant that you don't know whether they're going to
Speaker 4: cook something the way you want it cooked, or whether
Speaker 4: it should be good, with people that you've never met before,
Speaker 4: seen before, and not knowing what conversations you might have,
Speaker 4: and you're taking a risk, right, and in that risk
Speaker 4: comes really beautiful things when it really pays off, when
Speaker 4: you've really had a meal that surprises you. Right, that's
Speaker 4: sort of like unexpected serendipity, right, which you could never
Speaker 4: get from delivery.
Speaker 5: You're never going to get.
Speaker 3: Serendipity when something is delivered to your hop. Right.
Speaker 4: You get serendipity when you take a walk down an
Speaker 4: alley and you find a restaurant and you just walk in,
Speaker 4: and one time out of ten it will just turn
Speaker 4: out to be amazing.
Speaker 3: And when you discover.
Speaker 4: That, in that risk, you found something that's truly creative
Speaker 4: and truly rewarding.
Speaker 3: And that's what I'm always looking for.
Speaker 2: Do you have a memory of food in terms of
Speaker 2: relationship or impressing someone?
Speaker 4: I fell in love with my wife ever a dover Soul.
Speaker 4: We were at Sha George restaurant and we had only
Speaker 4: just met properly, and I ordered a dover Sole and
Speaker 4: as it came fully on the bone, she and I
Speaker 4: were talking and without taking a.
Speaker 5: Break, I fillaid the fish and.
Speaker 4: Ate it, and little to my knowledge that somehow really
Speaker 4: impressed her. And she found that sort of creative skill
Speaker 4: with my knife and fork and devowing that she George
Speaker 4: dover Sol extremely sexy and allurin and a year later
Speaker 4: we were married.
Speaker 2: You've actually lived in many places and right now you're
Speaker 2: living in Africa. How does that influence your food?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Travels, I mean every where I travel, I obsessively
Speaker 4: look out for the most local restaurant.
Speaker 5: So we don't have mechlin guides anymore.
Speaker 4: But we have the web, and we also have friends
Speaker 4: and ways to make friends, and I look for the
Speaker 4: most authentic food there is. When I went to Ethiopia
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, you know, my add taxi
Speaker 4: driver who picked me up in the airport, stayed with
Speaker 4: me for three days, and the best meals I had
Speaker 4: were in his family home, and they were extraordinary.
Speaker 3: I'll them forget what were they like.
Speaker 4: My favorite actually was when he took me to the
Speaker 4: market and it's the meat market in Addie Adaba, and
Speaker 4: there are just enormous carcasses of meat hanging from the
Speaker 4: top and people shooting flies away from them, and you
Speaker 4: walk in and he says, we're going to eat here.
Speaker 4: So I said, okay, just choose your meat. And so
Speaker 4: I choose a couple of cuts of meat. I even
Speaker 4: choose some sweetbreads to be adventurous, and I go terrific
Speaker 4: and they cut it off and they take it away.
Speaker 4: We go sit down on the back and it comes
Speaker 4: back in literally ninety seconds later, and they go, God,
Speaker 4: they cook it quick here and it was raw. And
Speaker 4: they serve all those meats raw with a spicy chili
Speaker 4: sauce or nut sauce and a really amazing Ethiopian coffee
Speaker 4: and I was there with everyone.
Speaker 3: And we ate it and it was amazing.
Speaker 2: You're working in South Africa, what is the food like
Speaker 2: in Johannesburg.
Speaker 4: The food that I've had in South Africa is the
Speaker 4: truly South African food is delicious. They have extraordinary meat
Speaker 4: in South Africa. The steak is exceptional. A lot of
Speaker 4: stews and so a lot of meats cooked in tomato
Speaker 4: sauce which is amazing, and some basic grains like the
Speaker 4: equivalent of polento as well.
Speaker 2: So you talk about being very dventurous with your food,
Speaker 2: eating raw sweetbreads and Ethiopia and traveling to you know,
Speaker 2: all over the world in Nepal and eating this food,
Speaker 2: But do cook that at home?
Speaker 4: I don't know the ingredients well enough and I don't
Speaker 4: know where to go shopping for them, and therefore I
Speaker 4: would rather eat out and have somebody who does know
Speaker 4: them and knows how to cook them. So at home
Speaker 4: we eat pretty western soule food. My wife, Bernie, though,
Speaker 4: who is Chinese American, makes the most amazing Chinese and
Speaker 4: Asian food as well as Indian food as well.
Speaker 2: What does she make She.
Speaker 4: Makes incredible dumplings and wantons, which we all love and cherish.
Speaker 4: I mean, what's interesting is that there is very few
Speaker 4: things in Western food that is completely original, right, and
Speaker 4: so we all get influenced by everyone else. So an
Speaker 4: amazing wanton is actually like an amazing ravioli, or she
Speaker 4: would correct me and say, an amazing ravioli is like
Speaker 4: an amazing wanton. Since China has existed and been cooking
Speaker 4: this food for quite a long a lot longer, which
Speaker 4: is to say, it's really based about the quality of
Speaker 4: the pasta or the wrapper, as they say, and how
Speaker 4: light that is and how thin that is, and how
Speaker 4: light can you get it, and keeping the fitting as
Speaker 4: simple as possible, and if the chibes are good, it
Speaker 4: makes the one time. And so again you're very dependent
Speaker 4: on fresh quality ingredients.
Speaker 2: You've worked in NGOs, You've written a book, What's Mine
Speaker 2: Is Yours, about sustainability and sharing and consumers society. You've
Speaker 2: traveled to Afghanistan and Nepal, working with people of different cultures.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that the politics of food is something
Speaker 2: that interests you.
Speaker 4: I'm less interested in the politics of food at the
Speaker 4: micro level, which is not to say I don't think
Speaker 4: it's important, but like the idea of the organic movement
Speaker 4: and such, is less important to me. At the macro level,
Speaker 4: which is around food security.
Speaker 3: I'm very interested in it.
Speaker 4: We talk a lot about overpopulation, but what we, in
Speaker 4: my opinion, should really be talking about is food security.
Speaker 4: There is more than enough resources in the world to
Speaker 4: feed more people on this planet, but we choose politically
Speaker 4: not to feed those people. We choose to not send
Speaker 4: grain to places that it's needed. We choose to have
Speaker 4: cows and dairy where we don't need more milk.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: We choose not to provide loans to small holder farmers
Speaker 4: in Africa and India, And so we make choices every
Speaker 4: day around food security and providing food security to billions
Speaker 4: of people, right that have nothing to do with whether
Speaker 4: we actually have the ability as a planet to sustain
Speaker 4: those resources we could And I passionately believe this feed
Speaker 4: everybody in a healthy, equitable way that is good for
Speaker 4: the planet.
Speaker 3: Should we choose to it's a choice.
Speaker 2: Is we the worst as we developed nations? Who is
Speaker 2: when you say we could feed the planet? Who is
Speaker 2: the we?
Speaker 4: I mean? Food security is really an issue that's defined
Speaker 4: by Western powers and Western governments, and if we wanted
Speaker 4: to again and remove subsidies and read this stribute food,
Speaker 4: we could solve food security forever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: I think looking at innovation to solve this problem is
Speaker 4: a really interesting question. And I think if you look
Speaker 4: at things like impossible meats, it's very exciting. I mean,
Speaker 4: the transformation to our ecosystem by removing hamburger meat or
Speaker 4: beef from McDonald's would be huge, right, I mean, that
Speaker 4: would just just change the world. But again, while as
Speaker 4: much as I like the idea of innovation and I
Speaker 4: believe in it, it is people, not technology that need
Speaker 4: to make changes, and those people are leaders and governments,
Speaker 4: and it starts at you know, as much as I
Speaker 4: believe in, you know, becoming a vegetarian, you know, talk
Speaker 4: to talk, walk to walk, I really believe that if
Speaker 4: political leaders came together and made hard choices and decisions
Speaker 4: in a collective way, we could solve most of problems
Speaker 4: as well as innovation.
Speaker 2: So rue, you've talked about comfort and food, the comfort
Speaker 2: of food at home, the discomfort of experienced food often
Speaker 2: in the restaurant, the comfort of food of cooking for
Speaker 2: your children. You use that word very often in describing
Speaker 2: what you love about food and what you look for
Speaker 2: in food. And I was wondering, as I've asked everyone,
Speaker 2: if you needed comfort from food, not the taste or
Speaker 2: the excitement or the adventure, what would be your comfort food.
Speaker 4: Well, I am very, very privileged because it's not a
Speaker 4: question of what do I eat, it's a question of
Speaker 4: where do I go. And I go home to see
Speaker 4: my mom and anything she cooks.
Speaker 3: You're so happy.
Speaker 2: It's really nice.
Speaker 4: You remember remember the mission of book.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the River Cafe. Go
Speaker 2: to Shoptharrivercafe dot co dot uk.
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