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Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.

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Speaker 2: A week ago, we were at the Tape Modern cooking

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Speaker 2: a sit down dinner for seven hundred people to celebrate

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Speaker 2: their twenty fifth birthday. I'm here today with Sean Owen

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Speaker 2: and Joseph Tavelli, executive chefs of the River Cafe, to

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Speaker 2: tell us how they did it. I can say that

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Speaker 2: I was there twenty five years ago for the opening

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Speaker 2: date when the Queen opened it. It was such an

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Speaker 2: amazing I did to have this new museum in the

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Speaker 2: Turbine Hall, you know, to have a museum that was

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Speaker 2: a fixture of London, and it was a power plant

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Speaker 2: on the south bank of the Thames, far from the Tape,

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Speaker 2: far from the National Gallery, and it has become now

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Speaker 2: an incredibly successful, happy place to go to look at

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Speaker 2: great art. So they wanted to celebrate their birthday. They

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Speaker 2: wanted to have a sit down dinner for seven hundred people.

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Speaker 3: I remember when we had that we were going to

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Speaker 3: be cooking for seven hundred thinking that I should put

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Speaker 3: my poke face on and just think, yeah, of course

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Speaker 3: we can do it, Yes, yes, we could definitely do it.

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Speaker 4: And it was you know, just a really fun different challenge.

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Speaker 4: I think for char and I was quite nice. We've

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Speaker 4: been working here for about twenty five years, just about

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Speaker 4: as long as the thing wouldn't have been open, and

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Speaker 4: obviously it's like framed a lot of our experience in

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Speaker 4: London being able to go there.

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Speaker 5: So it was an honor of course, massive ones there was.

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Speaker 2: I think we wouldn't necessarily done at seven hundred sit

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Speaker 2: down to it for many people, but for the Tape,

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Speaker 2: they just think we have to do this, you know.

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Speaker 2: And they also came saying that they really wanted us

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Speaker 2: to do it.

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Speaker 6: You know.

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Speaker 2: They felt a connection with the Tape between the River Cafe.

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Speaker 2: They all late here. Richard was chairman of the Tape

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Speaker 2: for five years in the eighties, and I think there's

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Speaker 2: a deep connection, you know.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, one of the first meetings when we sat down,

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Speaker 3: they were really keen on having something that was very

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Speaker 3: like pure River Cafe, strong colors. They were they were

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Speaker 3: looking at it through their lens of how they see art,

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Speaker 3: I guess, and had planned the room and how the

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Speaker 3: room was going to look, and they wanted a menu.

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Speaker 3: I was saying to the waiters on the night of

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Speaker 3: the event, that the starter was basically red, the main

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Speaker 3: course was basically green, and the.

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Speaker 6: Dessert was basically yellow. It was like very strong colors.

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Speaker 4: So the red was tomatoesto, the green was a sea

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Speaker 4: bats plate with sousa verde and spinach and peas, which

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Speaker 4: are phenomenal at the moment.

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Speaker 5: And then the dessert was lemon tar.

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Speaker 3: And not to forget our special what we're really known

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Speaker 3: for at the River Cafe cannopes.

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Speaker 6: Italian, very Italian.

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Speaker 2: What is the Italian word for a cannope.

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Speaker 3: One of the first challenges we came up with was

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Speaker 3: how to do bite sized cannopes that people in a

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Speaker 3: smart event would want to eat without spilling food on them.

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Speaker 3: And we're obviously because we're mostly known for robust sort

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Speaker 3: of cooking, it's not doesn't lend itself to canopies per se.

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Speaker 4: What was really nice about the cannapase is we were told,

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Speaker 4: you know, you need, you know, half the amount of

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Speaker 4: cannopes that there are people because people just don't take cannape.

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Speaker 4: They come round, you know how it is, and you

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Speaker 4: just don't take it. But we just kept sending them

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Speaker 4: and they kept going, you know, which was a really

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Speaker 4: nice beginning.

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Speaker 5: To the event.

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Speaker 4: It's like, so we we we're going to make three

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Speaker 4: hundred of everything. The first one we definitely send out

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Speaker 4: at least for five hundred of them, and it kept

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Speaker 4: kept going.

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Speaker 3: That was the first one we did was a smash

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Speaker 3: brawl beans that we normally would serve on a mozzarella

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Speaker 3: plate at the River Cafe on a brisket, but we

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Speaker 3: we made it like micro sized. We made some ponisse,

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Speaker 3: which is like a chickpea pancake similar to farinata that

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Speaker 3: you can deep fry, cut it into a tiny disc

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Speaker 3: about the size of a twenty p piece maybe tiny,

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Speaker 3: maybe a little bigger tempe, and then we piped was

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Speaker 3: very on the River Cafe. We piped broad beans onto

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Speaker 3: the top that was like a post that we did

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Speaker 3: some polenta that we made solid polenta, and then we

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Speaker 3: cut that out into more discs that were bite size

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Speaker 3: and spooned devil crab that was marinated with lemon juice

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Speaker 3: and chili olive oil, fennel seeds on that. We did

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Speaker 3: a pizza setter with Ledgo playing Teledgo and time because

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Speaker 3: it's had to be kind of neat, and then we.

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Speaker 6: Did presciutto with figs. That was.

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Speaker 3: It seemed like an easy cando pey, but maybe with

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Speaker 3: retrospect we might be wasn't the most seasonal item we've

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Speaker 3: ever tried to dive.

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Speaker 2: And also, you know, the things were good. I was

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Speaker 2: worried being June instead of August, but they were good.

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Speaker 2: Their things were ripe and the saltiness and then you're

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Speaker 2: able to have something that wasn't.

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Speaker 3: We just had to order them two weeks before so

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Speaker 3: that to make sure they were put perfect.

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Speaker 5: We had to stand by peaches if the figs weren't

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Speaker 5: going to be good enough. But O be good.

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Speaker 2: Okay. Some people asked me had we ever done seven

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Speaker 2: hundred before? And I think the largest sit down we

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Speaker 2: did probably was about three fifty when we went to

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Speaker 2: Rome to be a wedding, and so the well, when

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Speaker 2: would you say you started feeling the challenge of it?

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Speaker 2: When when would you say that before we.

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Speaker 5: Go after food?

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly, and when it was a process for

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Speaker 2: getting ready, how did you feel that?

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Speaker 3: So we were trying to One of the things we

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Speaker 3: were trying to work out was how to starff it

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Speaker 3: because in trying to think of the numbers we had

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Speaker 3: to I would how we'd do any event from one hundred,

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Speaker 3: two hundred, three hundred would be to break it down

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Speaker 3: into manageable chunks and then multiply it back up again.

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Speaker 3: And so I was thinking that for every hundred people

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Speaker 3: you might cook for, you might need seven chefs. But

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Speaker 3: so we realized then we needed a six chefs, wasn't it.

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Speaker 3: We needed forty forty two chefs. So we needed forty

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Speaker 3: two chefs to do it comfortably with panache and make

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Speaker 3: it look easy, because.

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Speaker 6: That's how we roll. We need forty two chefs.

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Speaker 3: So okay, and bearing in mind the River Cafe was

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Speaker 3: also open and functioning. You come with a cafe as well,

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Speaker 3: we were like, okay, that's our entire brigade. So fortunately

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Speaker 3: we've got our River Cafe luminous pink telephone with all

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Speaker 3: our x chef's numbers on. So we started instantly texting

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Speaker 3: old chefs that we not that they're old, are all

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Speaker 3: young still, but to see if they were available to

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Speaker 3: help us, and really nicely, I would say, all of

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Speaker 3: the twenty people we asked all came back and said

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Speaker 3: they'd help. So then we realized that we had our

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Speaker 3: little logo hashtag getting the Band back together, not that

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Speaker 3: you can search it on any social media.

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Speaker 6: If that would be really organized.

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Speaker 3: But we realized we were going to have forty two

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Speaker 3: chefs from twenty five thirty years at the River Cafe, which.

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Speaker 6: Is really nice.

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Speaker 2: One of them said, Michelle said to me, you know

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Speaker 2: r you when I worked with you. It was in

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Speaker 2: two thousand and three and I was single and I

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Speaker 2: was kind of, you know, running around London, and she said,

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Speaker 2: I now have a child in university. So you know,

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Speaker 2: it's the idea that two thousand and three was twenty

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Speaker 2: two years ago and she was there. But I thought

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Speaker 2: one of the very moving things was to see how

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Speaker 2: happy they were to be together, you know that they

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Speaker 2: was just like a reunion.

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Speaker 5: It was a.

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Speaker 4: Serene but it was like generations of yeah, you know

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Speaker 4: that charl and I was the only people that worked

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Speaker 4: with everyone, and then all of a sudden, and it

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Speaker 4: was actually really nice to do a reunion around an activity.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 5: The activity was cooking for seven hundred people.

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Speaker 2: It's amazing, so happy, really happy. All the photographs. So

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Speaker 2: if I was listening to this and I thought, Okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to do a sit down dinner for seven hundred.

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Speaker 5: People, ask us.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, what was the process? How did you you were

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Speaker 2: sitting up in an office, what would you say one

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Speaker 2: day a week, for the last two days a week,

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Speaker 2: you know, the time that you spent from the beginning,

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Speaker 2: what was the process that you would say that you

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Speaker 2: could tell us a good story.

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Speaker 3: Well, I went into my kind of classic sort of form,

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Speaker 3: which is to go into list writing, which was really

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Speaker 3: like taking it to another level. There was one point

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Speaker 3: where I had so many pieces of paper that I

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Speaker 3: was panicking trying to understand the amount of paper that

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Speaker 3: we had. And so then we were like maybe someone

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Speaker 3: was like, maybe you should type it up, but I

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Speaker 3: was like, I can only read my own handwriting was

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Speaker 3: so me and Joseph, we we tried to break down

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Speaker 3: each dish to start with and think about how much

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Speaker 3: for usosso we'd need to make. So we had to

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Speaker 3: make you know, one bag of rice makes fifteen portions

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Speaker 3: approximately at the River Cafe, and we one needed to

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Speaker 3: have a standard recipe.

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Speaker 6: So then we knew that if we.

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Speaker 3: Needed to make seven hundred portions, we'd need to make

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Speaker 3: forty five bags of rice, which is forty five.

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Speaker 6: Kilos of rice.

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Speaker 3: So it's a kind of small light person's weight in rice,

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Speaker 3: and then we needed two hundred and forty jars of

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Speaker 3: samazano tomato used to.

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Speaker 6: Do it, which was like a lorry load.

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Speaker 4: And just seeing these things because you can plan it

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Speaker 4: all out and you can be like, okay, so it's.

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Speaker 5: Sixty grams of peas each.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 4: The way we don't actually work like that here is

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Speaker 4: just you know, we eyeball everything really, but we knew

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Speaker 4: that we had to be more precise for this amount

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Speaker 4: of covers. But then you don't know what I mean,

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Speaker 4: two hundred kilos of spinach looks like, you know, would

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Speaker 4: it would fill this room easily? You know, So then

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Speaker 4: we had to then we had to arrive here the

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Speaker 4: day before and work out how to manage that, where

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Speaker 4: to put it well.

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Speaker 2: And twenty six hundred and twenty six kilos of pieas

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Speaker 2: that needed to be part.

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Speaker 6: I remember when I did say to.

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Speaker 2: You peace, you know, and you said you know, you

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Speaker 2: both said yeah, we're doing peas. And so there was

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Speaker 2: no sense of let's do something and a shortcut to

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Speaker 2: get it done in an easier way. I mean, was

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Speaker 2: it there was?

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Speaker 4: We were Yeah, we were helped massively by our suppliers

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Speaker 4: that's the truth. And I think those relationships that are

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Speaker 4: very old really paid off.

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Speaker 7: You know, so especially the Toura particularly tell us about

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Speaker 7: what we first tell people with Natura is our main

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Speaker 7: badge supply vegeable supplier. And we've worked with Natura since

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Speaker 7: they began, haven't we. Yeah, that's right, yeah, And they

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Speaker 7: import directly from the Miland market, and you know, for

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Speaker 7: the last probably twenty years, you can get like the

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Speaker 7: best is.

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Speaker 6: Like advertising free other diabet the best Italian produce.

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Speaker 3: The peak stuff and really, really really kindly, they their

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Speaker 3: office agreed that they'd pod two hundreds how many kilos

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Speaker 3: of two hundred kilos apiece?

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Speaker 5: Not quite, but.

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Speaker 3: It was such a monumental effort and so kind and

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Speaker 3: then they precked all the spinach for us, and then

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Speaker 3: they like manually and then we got the whole lorry

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Speaker 3: load of it delivered and we opened the back doors

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Speaker 3: of the.

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Speaker 6: Lorry and it was just peace and spinach and we

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Speaker 6: were like, oh my god, I've got to cook that now,

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Speaker 6: and we were like, okay, get some pots on.

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Speaker 3: It was really it was because we cook as if

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Speaker 3: we were at the River Cafe. We didn't cook like

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Speaker 3: we were in a mass production kitchen, so we did

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Speaker 3: it exactly as we do here, but just took like

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Speaker 3: five hours to blanch that much spinach as opposed to

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Speaker 3: five minutes.

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Speaker 6: And making the risotto took you know, it took like

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Speaker 6: four or.

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Speaker 3: Five hours to just you know, get that amount of

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Speaker 3: onions and celery and garlic chopped. We needed like fifty

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Speaker 3: in kilos of grated parmesan. So once you start going

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Speaker 3: up the quantities, it it started to like I was

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Speaker 3: getting really stressed on. I was just souping everything up

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Speaker 3: into hours and Saint Ruthie, do you know how long

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Speaker 3: it's going to take to cut the lemon tarte? If

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Speaker 3: it takes ten minutes to portion, and I was like,

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Speaker 3: it's gonna take five.

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Speaker 5: Hours and it did. Really called that.

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Speaker 2: Two of them five hours, and I said, well maybe

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Speaker 2: if you'd had four of you, it could have taken

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Speaker 2: two and a half hours. But they wanted to cut. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: they wanted, you know, they do say cooking his repetition.

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Speaker 3: We really saw in this Bella was amazing because of fairness.

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Speaker 3: She put that she actually put on her Instagram and

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Speaker 3: the recipe for fifty lemon tarts, yeah, which is really

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Speaker 3: cool because that's about how many liters of lemon juiceted lemons.

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Speaker 4: And yeah, I mean I really want to say again

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Speaker 4: that the tour just to can you imagine their office,

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Speaker 4: you know, they're you know, they're a sizeable company in

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Speaker 4: London where everyone decided to you know, I was sent

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Speaker 4: pictures of them on their desks that's their computer people

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Speaker 4: podding peas. They all did it and apparently it was

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Speaker 4: good team building also for them. I feel like it was.

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Speaker 4: It was just really a throughout quite positive experience.

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Speaker 2: So we knew that the challenge of doing this dinner

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Speaker 2: was had all sorts of challenges, but there were no

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Speaker 2: I have to say, there were no kitchens that we

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Speaker 2: could use, you know, so what we looked at was

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Speaker 2: doing the kitchens in the meeting room around the space

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Speaker 2: that were there basically at the bottom of the turbine hall,

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Speaker 2: there were the tables and then if you think of that,

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Speaker 2: around the circumference in a way with these meetings rooms

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Speaker 2: to take the food out. So can you describe the

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Speaker 2: challenge of how you cooked in somewhere there was no

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Speaker 2: extraction and no.

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Speaker 4: Well we were massively helped by this company called the

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Speaker 4: Last Supper who organized huge events. I think for them

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Speaker 4: it's even for them it's a big event. But they'd

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Speaker 4: certainly do more big events than we do, and they

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Speaker 4: just impeccably organized. And so when we arrived in there

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Speaker 4: are three kind of classrooms adjacent to the quite big

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Speaker 4: classrooms adjacent to the turbine hall, and in each one

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Speaker 4: they'd set up for us a kitchen with you know,

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Speaker 4: two long tables each.

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Speaker 5: Just four normal induction.

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Speaker 4: Tops and three ovens each, you know, electric ovens, and

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Speaker 4: but efficiently, cleanly, quite basic. And the fact that they

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Speaker 4: were the mirror of each other meant that we could

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Speaker 4: get the whole team together and explain to them, this

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Speaker 4: is what's happening.

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Speaker 5: You know, you're all going to be doing this at

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Speaker 5: the same time.

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Speaker 3: When we were going through the kit list though, because

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Speaker 3: we were trying to make, you know, have all the

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Speaker 3: kit right, but then when you have for every kitchen

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Speaker 3: with four inductions and four trestle tables and two ovens,

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Speaker 3: but then actually what we actually needed was twenty four inductions,

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Speaker 3: you know, forty eight tables as soon as it and

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Speaker 3: then everything was coming in in these massive quantities. So

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Speaker 3: on the face of it, it was sort of a

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Speaker 3: simple meal for one hundred and twenty in a kitchen.

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Speaker 2: Just to be specific, how do you make a resulta

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Speaker 2: for seven hundred people?

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Speaker 4: Really genuinely, you think about how you make a risutta

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Speaker 4: for seven people, and you just multiplied tims ahundred you

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Speaker 4: multiple times one hundred. Honestly, that's what we did. And

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Speaker 4: I think my suspicion is at some of the early

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Speaker 4: meetings that other people that were involved in this kind

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Speaker 4: of size of kind of slightly or maybe I thought

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Speaker 4: that we were approaching it a little bit like how

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Speaker 4: did we just scale up a dinner party to such as?

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Speaker 5: But that is what we did, and it really worked.

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Speaker 6: But we did.

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Speaker 3: We had the guys making the result of working in pairs,

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Speaker 3: weren't they So they had to make fifteen bags fifteen

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Speaker 3: bags of rice that much? So did fifteen bags of

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Speaker 3: rice between the two of them? Yes, But because there

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Speaker 3: were such good cooks each team making the rice, and

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Speaker 3: they've all River Cafe trained, so we trust them implicitly

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Speaker 3: to know. And we had a standard recipe for the

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Speaker 3: for the one bag rice and then the fifteen bag

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Speaker 3: rice for each person to work on. And then everyone

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Speaker 3: knows exactly what they're aiming for.

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Speaker 4: But I think chart touch on something really crucial there.

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Speaker 4: I think what was great was having really good staff

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Speaker 4: that we could we trusted. Often they'd come to me

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Speaker 4: and they'd say, what do you think? And I said, well, actually,

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Speaker 4: you know what, let's work out together. What time you're

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Speaker 4: going to put the sea bass in the avenor you

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Speaker 4: told me you know how we went around every little

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Speaker 4: past of all like, so, what's your view of how

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Speaker 4: you're going to send this out? And we all let

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Speaker 4: them put a little bit of their knowledge and into.

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Speaker 5: It, and I think that really helped.

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Speaker 2: So we're talking about scaling up, this is about you know,

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Speaker 2: I'm taking, as you say, Rosarta for seven or a

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Speaker 2: Risuta for seven hundred. But what you also just touched

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Speaker 2: upon in terms of the people that you trust to

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Speaker 2: do it and the people who worked with So there

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Speaker 2: wasn't that frustration or there wasn't that kind of concern

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Speaker 2: which gives you confidence. Do you think it all comes

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Speaker 2: down to the people that you chose to or not

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Speaker 2: all of it, but a lot of it comes to

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Speaker 2: the people that.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, because they were all know the house styles. There

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Speaker 6: was no explaining to do there.

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Speaker 3: Everyone knew those dishes, so they could just all of

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Speaker 3: them could cook that for ten, all of them could

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Speaker 3: know how to cook that for a hundred and they

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Speaker 3: all they had to do was work in. Each team

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Speaker 3: was only cooking for one hundred and twenty, so actually

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Speaker 3: that's quite manageable for them as chefs. And then me

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Speaker 3: and Joseph were working across all of it, which was

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Speaker 3: quite funny because we were working down the corridor. We

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Speaker 3: were just passing each other the whole time. But then

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Speaker 3: also really nicely, we neither one of us had to

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Speaker 3: take the sole responsibility.

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Speaker 6: For it, which I actually wouldn't have liked to.

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Speaker 3: Take the responsibility on my own for that because there

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Speaker 3: was so many questions and we ran into problems when

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Speaker 3: we had the van. Our vans came in, but they

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Speaker 3: wouldn't let us stand on the floor of the Tate

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Speaker 3: Modern car park unless we had high vis on. But

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Speaker 3: none of us taken high vis because we had anticipated

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Speaker 3: needing it, and so there was there was a bit

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Speaker 3: of like confusion, and then Joseph was dealing with him

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Speaker 3: and then he was, you know, like one of us

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Speaker 3: could deal with one issue trying to get some high vis,

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Speaker 3: another one who could deal with another issue, but on

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Speaker 3: your own it would have been would have been too much.

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Speaker 4: I think I thought it was going really well, you know,

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Speaker 4: and we were sending out the main courses and as

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Speaker 4: I say, Sean and I were running between all these kitchens,

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Speaker 4: and I've realized that we'd sent out seven hundred main

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Speaker 4: courses in eighteen minutes minutes.

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Speaker 5: And I just and at that point, I was just like, Hey,

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Speaker 5: that's it. This has just gone really well.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I wasn't, to be honest, I wasn't anticipating

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Speaker 4: would be quite that fast, and I was really you know,

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Speaker 4: we were incredibly pleased.

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Speaker 2: Maria told me last night that she had three hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty letters and ninety nine percent of them mentioned

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Speaker 2: they've never had food like yet. So I will give

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Speaker 2: credit right now to the two of you, because I

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Speaker 2: think it all, it all filtered down, you know, it

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Speaker 2: all all came across, and so I think you really

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Speaker 2: have to pat yourselves on the bag. Thanks how long?

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Speaker 6: The best? No, you are, No, you really you really are.

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Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, the best ingredient that

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Speaker 2: we've had for this whole thing has been the two

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Speaker 2: of you. Multiply that time seven hundred and we'd be

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Speaker 2: really roky.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four

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Speaker 1: in partnership with Montclair