Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adam I Studios.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get the show on the road, shall we.
Speaker 2: It's now twenty to six and people are coming in soon,
Speaker 2: so the two of you better get going. What are
Speaker 2: you going to make We are making Kelly. Kelly happy
Speaker 2: with that chef.
Speaker 3: I'm more than happy with that, yah, David.
Speaker 4: Okay, David, it's going to okay.
Speaker 2: Over the last year, forty six guests of Sat at
Speaker 2: the River Cafe Table four, not at the same time,
Speaker 2: Michael Caine, Jake Jillanol, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Davidson, Paul McCartney,
Speaker 2: and many many more, but only one. David Beckham walked
Speaker 2: past the bright pink wood oven and headed straight into
Speaker 2: the kitchen.
Speaker 5: Give it a really good shake, Yeah, take it, shake it.
Speaker 5: I gotta go, and a.
Speaker 6: Bit of parsley.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, what do you like cook at home?
Speaker 2: David?
Speaker 3: To be honest, my kids are upsets.
Speaker 7: We have Italian food.
Speaker 3: They get me to make like a ragged yeah, because
Speaker 3: the kids love.
Speaker 4: I can tell when you're shaking the pane that you
Speaker 4: work just in office.
Speaker 8: I want a job.
Speaker 3: I would love a job. I need a job up there, you.
Speaker 7: Need a job.
Speaker 9: We need.
Speaker 2: Most episodes of River Cafe Table four began not with
Speaker 2: a job offer, but with reading a recipe, and with
Speaker 2: more than twelve River Cafe books, there were plenty to
Speaker 2: choose from. Jeff Goblum's recipe was one of my favorites.
Speaker 10: So I've got this book in front of me and
Speaker 10: I've turned to I've dog hereed the slow cook funnel. Well,
Speaker 10: there's not much to read. It's like a high coup.
Speaker 10: I see ready, here's my You don't like it, you
Speaker 10: can say, take take two. Waited, I haven't taken one yet.
Speaker 5: Just a second.
Speaker 10: Okay, here's there's take one. You don't how many takes
Speaker 10: Stanley Kubrick would do sometimes for a movie. No tell
Speaker 10: me famously eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Okay, come on, read the recipe.
Speaker 10: You are a good interviewer. I like when the interviewer
Speaker 10: claps your hands and says, come.
Speaker 2: On, get that all right, come on there.
Speaker 8: Okay, here it goes, slow cooked fennel serves six, six
Speaker 8: fennel bulbs, five tablespoons olive oil.
Speaker 11: The River Cafe have a dessert which is my favorite,
Speaker 11: and it's called panacotta with grapper.
Speaker 2: This voice, of course is Michael Kayane's.
Speaker 11: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
Speaker 11: give you the recipe in case you want to make
Speaker 11: it for yourself. Okay, pour nine hundred milligrams of cream
Speaker 11: into a pan, add the vanilla pods and the lemon ride,
Speaker 11: bring to the boil, simmer, and reduce by a third
Speaker 11: pass through a sip. Then scrape the seeds from inside
Speaker 11: the vanilla pods back into the cream and discard the
Speaker 11: alta pods. Remove the jelatine from the middle.
Speaker 12: Oh no, now you just played me, Michael Caine. How
Speaker 12: am I supposed to this is?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 12: How the hell am I supposed to do this?
Speaker 13: This is?
Speaker 2: But you got tomato sauce.
Speaker 12: Maybe I should do an intro to Okay, I'll do this.
Speaker 12: Then I'm Jake Jillenhall, and there is truly nothing like
Speaker 12: Ruthie slow cooked tomato sauce.
Speaker 14: Hello, this is Wes Anderson. I'm going to read you
Speaker 14: the recipe for the River Cafe roast pigeon stuffed with cotaquino.
Speaker 14: You'll need six breast pigeons. That's six pigeons from the breast.
Speaker 14: I guess these are French pigeons. Now, preheat the oven
Speaker 14: to two hundred and thirty degrees celsius to make the
Speaker 14: stuffing soft. From the onion and celery in the two
Speaker 14: tablespoons of olive oil for ten minutes. Remove the skin
Speaker 14: from the cotaquino and crumble the meat with your hands.
Speaker 14: Add the cotaquino and sage to the onion and celery
Speaker 14: and fry together for a few minutes. Then pour off
Speaker 14: the fat from the pan and add two hundred and
Speaker 14: fifty mili liters red wine and boil to reduce by
Speaker 14: at least half, season with black pepper, and allow to cool.
Speaker 14: Before stuffing into the six birds, heat the two hundred
Speaker 14: and fifty milli liters of olive oil in a roasting
Speaker 14: tin over a medium high heat. Then brown each bird
Speaker 14: all over season with sea salt and black pepper, and
Speaker 14: roast for twenty minutes. Pour any excess oil out of
Speaker 14: the tin. Then add the remaining red wine over a
Speaker 14: high heat. Reduce us we got half the wine still
Speaker 14: to go? I think yes, over a high heat, reduce
Speaker 14: the liquid by half, so cook it until half it
Speaker 14: goes away.
Speaker 8: I think old.
Speaker 14: The people who cook know this.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 14: I don't know that, then seasoned with sea salt and
Speaker 14: black pepper, and then this is your sauce, poured over
Speaker 14: the pigeons to serve.
Speaker 12: Thank you.
Speaker 2: The food we smell and taste as a child seems
Speaker 2: imprinted on our memories. And almost every guest took me
Speaker 2: back to their early years. We heard about family recipes,
Speaker 2: noisy school canteens, first restaurant meals, and childhood kitchens. Here's
Speaker 2: Victoria Beckham to start us off.
Speaker 5: Ruthie, here's a story my mother. You know what to
Speaker 5: uses her oven for.
Speaker 2: Let me guess by her stockings.
Speaker 5: No, she used it as a filing cabinet. Oh, I'm
Speaker 5: a filing cabinet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: If he didn't go in the microwave, Missus Adams wasn't
Speaker 5: interested in it. But this was the eighties when I
Speaker 5: was growing up. But it's all about microwaveable food, all
Speaker 5: being super super quick. So you know, as I I
Speaker 5: began my life in the Spice girls, we were eating
Speaker 5: out a lot, going to lovely restaurants, and that was
Speaker 5: something really quite new.
Speaker 15: A middle class family in Mexico growing up in the
Speaker 15: sixties and the seventies.
Speaker 2: Alfonso Couran told me about growing up in Mexico City.
Speaker 15: There was still a mentality of making things last. I
Speaker 15: remember the refrigerator in the kitchen was probably a refrigerator
Speaker 15: of the fifties, you know, the rattle a lot. By
Speaker 15: the way, my first memory was a very old woman
Speaker 15: called Benita, and Benita was the cook because she knew
Speaker 15: how to cook.
Speaker 16: She was great.
Speaker 15: But also my grandmother would come with her big book
Speaker 15: of recipes that it was one of those ancient books
Speaker 15: you know. Well, it was not a book, it was
Speaker 15: a notebook. It was all written, handwritten, probably from her family,
Speaker 15: her mom or whatever. It was a very old kind
Speaker 15: of note book and she would go through the pages
Speaker 15: and find like the recipe that was going to be
Speaker 15: for that day. So that means that those recipes will
Speaker 15: come from from way before.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because yesterday I did a conversation with someone Rushti,
Speaker 2: and so there's someone who grew up in Bombay with
Speaker 2: a book like that in his kitchen.
Speaker 17: Middle class kitchen's kitchens which employ cooks, there's always a
Speaker 17: copy book. It's called hanging on a hook, and in
Speaker 17: that book are the recipes of the family. And I've
Speaker 17: always thought if somebody could just go and gather the
Speaker 17: recipes in those copy books. That would be the greatest
Speaker 17: Indian cookbook of all.
Speaker 2: Do you remember your grandmother was your mother's mother a cook?
Speaker 17: Yeah, my mother's mother was not a cook. My mother's
Speaker 17: mother sort of shouted.
Speaker 2: At cooks, ah, okay, yeah in that way. I do
Speaker 2: you think she knew what she wanted?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 17: Yeah, she was a grubby old lady. I don't know.
Speaker 17: I wouldn't have liked to be cooking at.
Speaker 2: Her kitchen really, And what about your mother and her?
Speaker 17: But my mother was very a gentle person, you know.
Speaker 17: And I also had an Ayah, a nanny from South India,
Speaker 17: came from Mangalore, which has its own very distinctive cooking.
Speaker 17: Her kind of pickles and chutney's got into Midnight's Children
Speaker 17: because I grew up on those. There was a particular
Speaker 17: green chutney which is famously in the book. It was
Speaker 17: just a lot of green things chopped up with a
Speaker 17: lot of chilies. It was very particular South Indian recipe
Speaker 17: that arrived in our house through her go and South
Speaker 17: Indian Aya Mary mayonnaises. She was called lived to one
Speaker 17: hundred and two. She spoke seven languages and was illiterate.
Speaker 17: There's a line somewhere in Midnight's Children where where the
Speaker 17: character the narrator talks about stirring feelings into food. And
Speaker 17: I always believe that that if you're in a good mood,
Speaker 17: the food tastes one way, and if you're in a
Speaker 17: bad mood, the food tastes another way. You know, that
Speaker 17: sense of emotion, your own emotion getting into the cooking.
Speaker 17: You know, it's something I always thought.
Speaker 2: Did your mother put an emotion into her cooking?
Speaker 17: Yeah? I mean she actually she wasn't like a great chef,
Speaker 17: but she enjoyed it. Yeah, she enjoyed it. So the
Speaker 17: food was enjoyable.
Speaker 2: But cooking for a family is not only enjoyable, it
Speaker 2: can also stir up complex emotions. Here's Nigella Larson talking
Speaker 2: about her mother.
Speaker 18: She married very young, she was nineteen nineteen and had
Speaker 18: to have her child at twenties.
Speaker 19: You know, my older brother.
Speaker 18: She felt things very deeply, but didn't always express it,
Speaker 18: so would erupt quite a bit. And you know, she
Speaker 18: was fantastically impatient. And one of the jobs we had
Speaker 18: to do, my sister Thomasina, we used to have to
Speaker 18: make mayonnaise together and one of us would whisk, and
Speaker 18: one would pour the oil. And whoever was whisking, you know,
Speaker 18: you weren't whisking fast enough, and whoever was poor and
Speaker 18: you weren't to sing slowly, you weren't. And the tension,
Speaker 18: you know. So it's so difficult because I remember what
Speaker 18: I learned, and I remember being in the kitchen with
Speaker 18: fondness and gratitude, and yet it would be so unfaithful
Speaker 18: to the truth if I didn't say it was also
Speaker 18: a source of great tension. I mean, it was frightening,
Speaker 18: but I think that. But I think I did learn
Speaker 18: a lot. And she was a very spontaneous cook.
Speaker 2: But imagine being nineteen and or twenty and having to
Speaker 2: embrace motherhood and domestic life and cook. Do you think
Speaker 2: she liked cooking? Did she like he?
Speaker 18: Didn't I associate my mother with food, And yet she
Speaker 18: had a very troubled relationship and had eating disorders, which
Speaker 18: I didn't really think. I didn't really take on board
Speaker 18: until I was in my teens, I think, and I
Speaker 18: don't know when it started. And it was difficult because
Speaker 18: it it was really a repudiation of something that gave
Speaker 18: her pleasure. And the heartbreaking thing is, you know, She
Speaker 18: died when she was forty eight, and she hit pretty
Speaker 18: quickly because she got diagnosed, well, she didn't get diagnosed.
Speaker 18: I was told by the doctor three weeks before she died.
Speaker 18: I didn't tell until two weeks because I was waiting
Speaker 18: a bit just to get it for you know, more
Speaker 18: tests and things. And she said it was the first
Speaker 18: time being terminally ill was the first time she could
Speaker 18: eat without anxiety or guilt. I mean, that's that's and
Speaker 18: I think that so on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 18: I've learnt everything about what cooking is from her, not
Speaker 18: everything I've learned from you. I've learned from anadel Conte.
Speaker 18: I've learned from Claudia Rodin. But I also learned what
Speaker 18: path I didn't want to go down, and it wasn't
Speaker 18: That was your father.
Speaker 2: Do you ever cook?
Speaker 16: No?
Speaker 3: He didn't.
Speaker 18: Occasionally later on he would make his own breakfast breakfast,
Speaker 18: which I think is quite an old fashional male thing
Speaker 18: to do that somehow they don't feel, you know, cooking
Speaker 18: eggs is too much of a dent to their dignity.
Speaker 4: My dad came here in nineteen forty eight on a
Speaker 4: ten pound ticket from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy,
Speaker 4: so it's really quite exotic.
Speaker 2: Actually, this is the artist Tracy Emmon.
Speaker 4: Up until we were about six, we would go to
Speaker 4: Turkey regularly once a year, and we spent when we
Speaker 4: were really tiny, we spent two periods of six months there.
Speaker 4: Once when I was about three or four, and then
Speaker 4: another time when I was six, we spent six months there,
Speaker 4: and all that time it would have been Mediterranean food
Speaker 4: and Mediterranean cooking. And we used to drive to Turkey,
Speaker 4: and this is really cool. We used to have in
Speaker 4: the back of the our car. We had a Zodiac
Speaker 4: with these little tiny wooden chairs, you know, with the
Speaker 4: wrap seats, and my dad just with a brand new Zodiac,
Speaker 4: and my dad just stuck a hole through the roof
Speaker 4: through the you know the bits, and then got bongee
Speaker 4: elastic things around the chairs and then just sat us
Speaker 4: in the back of the car bouncing up. And we
Speaker 4: were twins bouncing up and down on these chairs with
Speaker 4: those little knotty dogs. And we'd drive to Turkey and
Speaker 4: we'd stop on the way all the time, and my
Speaker 4: dad would get the calor gas stove out and fry
Speaker 4: eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go go to
Speaker 4: fields and take watermelons and things. So it was really
Speaker 4: exciting and like adventurous these drives and romanticizing about it
Speaker 4: now because it is romantic and it was different and
Speaker 4: it was different from everybody else's upbringing that I knew.
Speaker 4: And so we went from that to this light to
Speaker 4: squatting in a cottage and my mom working in a
Speaker 4: hotel as a waitress and a chamber mate, and so
Speaker 4: it was like from high to low really fast, a
Speaker 4: reversal of fortune when you were having to cook for yourselves.
Speaker 2: Did you eat? What did you do?
Speaker 4: There was so my mom was out a lot most
Speaker 4: of the time working lady, and weekends as well, she'd
Speaker 4: be out to free in the morning. So we were
Speaker 4: on our own and often my mom would leave us
Speaker 4: sandwiches and whatever. But my big thing was just like orange,
Speaker 4: just orange squash and just tons of orange squash, and
Speaker 4: sitting up at night crocher and in bed. We and
Speaker 4: also for example, like Christmas, like you said about this,
Speaker 4: a lot of this podcast is about people sitting around
Speaker 4: the table and remembering it. Oh, there was no sitting
Speaker 4: around the table for me. It was sitting and watching
Speaker 4: the telly with a tray with egg and chips, you know,
Speaker 4: when my mom come home and Christmas was not Christmas.
Speaker 4: We didn't have Christmas because my mom was always working.
Speaker 4: Our Christmas was like a week after and kind of
Speaker 4: cobbled together, but it was never going to feel the
Speaker 4: same as the real Christmas. And I remember we had
Speaker 4: Salvation Army one year, you know, coming around with food
Speaker 4: and presents because we didn't have anything. My mom, if
Speaker 4: she didn't work, we had nothing. And that is a
Speaker 4: very different upbringing to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: The singer Rag and Boneman shared a fantastic story of
Speaker 2: childhood ingenuity.
Speaker 20: Yeah, there's the truth to the story. In the summer,
Speaker 20: the kids from our street we used to sometimes get
Speaker 20: together and so we had a house full of instruments.
Speaker 20: We had guitars that were hanging on the walls and
Speaker 20: sometimes there are old crappy ones that no one played anymore,
Speaker 20: or old keyboard that doesn't really work. We would get
Speaker 20: those instruments and put them out on the front lawn,
Speaker 20: open the windows and play like whatever music it was
Speaker 20: through the stereo as loud as possible, and act like
Speaker 20: we were playing it and put a basket there in
Speaker 20: front of us to ask for money. So we could
Speaker 20: go and buy ice cream from the ice cream Vand
Speaker 20: did it we it did. I mean people came out
Speaker 20: and gave us money. I think we made enough to
Speaker 20: get some ice cream.
Speaker 2: That's the version of I grew up, you know, selling
Speaker 2: lemonade when I was a kid. You know, we take
Speaker 2: lemonade and then put a table on the front lawn
Speaker 2: and at five cents please. Yeah, we were like buskingto
Speaker 2: like guns and roses for aff for hersh The scent
Speaker 2: of food was almost more important than the taste of food.
Speaker 21: I remember so clearly. I didn't go to Garner until
Speaker 21: I was fourteen, and my first memory was stepping off
Speaker 21: the plane and two things hit me. The first was
Speaker 21: the heat, and the second thing was the smell. And
Speaker 21: the smell has never left me, and I still every
Speaker 21: time I go to Ghana instantly hit with this intoxicating smell.
Speaker 21: And I've tried to work out what it is. I
Speaker 21: think it's a combination of just heat and sea air
Speaker 21: because it's very the capital is on the coast and
Speaker 21: it's a quite rough Atlantic coast. There's a lot of
Speaker 21: sea breeze and mist and salt in the air. And
Speaker 21: then one of my favorite Ganeian dishes, which because the
Speaker 21: BA flight from Ghana lands basically at dusk, and at
Speaker 21: dusk is when food vendors in the city start selling
Speaker 21: this afterwork snack which they fry outside. It's called kellolee
Speaker 21: and it's ripe plantain diced that seasoned with ginger, black pepper,
Speaker 21: tiny bit of nutmeg, chili and salt, and then it's
Speaker 21: deep fried, absolutely delicious. I made some last I.
Speaker 2: Actually, you season it first, and then you do you
Speaker 2: season it and then you take.
Speaker 16: You eat it hot.
Speaker 21: Yeah, you eat it hot.
Speaker 2: And it's street food.
Speaker 21: It's street food, and that makes the entire city have
Speaker 21: a fragrance of kind of slightly sweet spicy nut maggy
Speaker 21: air and I honestly think it's it's a little hint
Speaker 21: on the air and a cross.
Speaker 2: Glenn Close spent part of her childhood in Africa and
Speaker 2: can still remember the plaintive cries of the family chicken.
Speaker 6: We had a rooster called Pretzel and he would crow
Speaker 6: during the night, and my brother cut a oil drum
Speaker 6: in half and cleaned it out, and at night, Pretzel
Speaker 6: would be put under the oil drum, but you still
Speaker 6: could hear it.
Speaker 19: Worm.
Speaker 22: Finally, finally, everybody thought it was time for pretzel to
Speaker 22: be butchered, and he was, and he was put in
Speaker 22: the freezer. And then I happened to be there when
Speaker 22: they brought pretzel out and said let's let's roast pretzel.
Speaker 6: He was inedible.
Speaker 22: You could even get a knife into where my mother
Speaker 22: was pretzels revenge.
Speaker 2: Do you remember going to the markets in Tehran?
Speaker 19: Not markets? Oh well, actually no I did. They're called bazaars.
Speaker 2: Christian Amanpour grew up in Tehran.
Speaker 19: I mean, if anybody's been to the Great Bazaar in Istanbul,
Speaker 19: imagine that in all the other Middle Eastern countries. And
Speaker 19: we used to go. I do remember. My mother would
Speaker 19: do the shopping. Obviously, I would just be amazed by
Speaker 19: the color and the vibrancy, and that I want this
Speaker 19: and I want that, even if I didn't know what
Speaker 19: it was. I'm afraid that the men at that time
Speaker 19: were very cheeky and quite intrusive. So I used to go,
Speaker 19: not knowing any better, in my shorts or my short
Speaker 19: skirt or whatever and get my bum pinched. That was
Speaker 19: quite derry ger in those days. My mom told me
Speaker 19: from now on I had to bring a flip flop
Speaker 19: you know, sandal hold it behind my bum and if
Speaker 19: anybody he dead, you know, bang them. It really worked.
Speaker 23: I can't remember when I discovered pasta, but I can
Speaker 23: remember when I discovered pasta and risotto.
Speaker 2: Norman Foster one of my oldest friends.
Speaker 23: I was a student and i'd cycled and ended up
Speaker 23: in Milan, and I associated rice with rice pudding, which
Speaker 23: was sweet and sickly and really for me, not very nice.
Speaker 23: And I discovered rice and pasta and it was just
Speaker 23: a great discovery. That was a very very long time ago.
Speaker 2: How old were you then, ah.
Speaker 23: I must have been in my teens.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney and John Lennon were also intrepid teenagers. Here's
Speaker 2: Paul recalling their first trip abroad.
Speaker 9: John and I hitch hiked to Paris. He got given
Speaker 9: a fabulous birthday present by his rich relatives in Scotland,
Speaker 9: and one of them gave him one hundred pounds for
Speaker 9: his birthday. You know, I mean, I still think that's
Speaker 9: a reasonable gift.
Speaker 2: It's very reasonable.
Speaker 9: No one hundred quid I have it anyway. So we
Speaker 9: hitchied to Paris and then we used the money to
Speaker 9: get food and stuff, and we thought, oh, we've got
Speaker 9: to have a wine experience. We're in France, you know.
Speaker 9: So we went into a cafe corner cafe and we
Speaker 9: sort of sidled up to the bar and said, do
Speaker 9: van ordinaire ceavow play? And she gave us two glasses
Speaker 9: of red wine and we took a sip and thought, oh,
Speaker 9: that is terrible. It's like vinegar. God, I don't know
Speaker 9: what the fuss is about all these people going on
Speaker 9: about wine. They're crazy, We're saying.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 9: We never liked wine till we got down to London.
Speaker 9: And the first time I ever remember really liking wine,
Speaker 9: it was with George Martin. My girlfriend at the time
Speaker 9: was Jane Asher, and Jane and I went out with
Speaker 9: George and his wife Judy, and we went to a
Speaker 9: little restaurant in Charlotte Street called Latroale.
Speaker 3: I probably know that, I remember that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was treating so the way to the wine waiter,
Speaker 9: Somelia came up to me and said, would you like
Speaker 9: a wine?
Speaker 19: Sir?
Speaker 9: He leaned in all very intimate, and I sort of
Speaker 9: equally whispering. I said, I'd like you to recommend to me.
Speaker 9: I don't know much about wine. Said, oh, yes, sir,
Speaker 9: thank you very much, leave it to me. And then
Speaker 9: he brought back a bottle of Louis Latour's Caught on
Speaker 9: Graci nineteen fifty nine, and I took a taste of it.
Speaker 9: Oh it was like velvet, was it? And I thought,
Speaker 9: now I get it, And I see why people go
Speaker 9: crazy about one.
Speaker 16: I think, in a way, we all love food because
Speaker 16: Richard was a great eater.
Speaker 2: My husband, Richard was also a great lover of restaurants.
Speaker 2: As our son Rue remembers.
Speaker 16: I do really think that being a great eater is
Speaker 16: a really fundamental skill. It can be very frustrating great
Speaker 16: because everything is being analyzed all the time, but it
Speaker 16: is a very beautiful thing because you're constantly searching for
Speaker 16: that new taste and that new experience and anything else
Speaker 16: is not exciting for that. I mean, I remember the
Speaker 16: Michelin Guide with yellow post it notes and written notes,
Speaker 16: and I mean like obsession, and then like going into
Speaker 16: bookstores and saying, we found this restaurant, but we haven't
Speaker 16: been do you recommend it? Like the amount of diligence
Speaker 16: we did just to have lunch because Dad wanted a
Speaker 16: great meal and you wanted to make that possible. But
Speaker 16: you you know, and we did it. So I think
Speaker 16: a lot of thats of you know, curiosity and food
Speaker 16: cooking and food quality comes to Dad's real keenness and
Speaker 16: 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 it a bookstore.
Speaker 2: That there was a people who loved books would probably
Speaker 2: know where to eat. The River Cafe is thirty five
Speaker 2: years old, and the subject of restaurants is close to
Speaker 2: my heart. Planning menus, juggling staff, road is, sourcing ingredients,
Speaker 2: most of all, cooking a restaurant is all consuming. On
Speaker 2: River Cafe Table four, we shared our restaurant memories. Let's
Speaker 2: start with comedian Pete Davidson. There is quite a lot
Speaker 2: of drama going on in a restaurant, do you think absolutely.
Speaker 24: I mean, when I worked at a restaurant, it was
Speaker 24: for like three or four years, but the bus boys
Speaker 24: hated the waiters, and the waiters hated the bus boys,
Speaker 24: and I mean like afterwards hated the chefs. Yeah, they
Speaker 24: but after work everything was fine. Everybody was like cool,
Speaker 24: but during work it was like, we're gonna be in
Speaker 24: each other's faces all day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 24: But my favorite thing was always sneaking off in the
Speaker 24: back and eating whatever somebody didn't need.
Speaker 3: Oh really, off somebody's plate.
Speaker 24: Yeah I didn't. I didn't give other people like you're gross,
Speaker 24: and I'd be like, it's chicken palm.
Speaker 2: So tell me about the restaurant you've worked in called Nucci's.
Speaker 24: South since that island. It's right under the bridge. My
Speaker 24: dad's good friend runs it. It's it's like pretty well
Speaker 24: known on the island and well respected, and they serve
Speaker 24: classic Italian food, and you know, they have a playlist
Speaker 24: of sixty songs on a loop and it's all Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 20: Yeah all day?
Speaker 2: Can you sing that some more?
Speaker 24: I burned it out of my brain. I used to
Speaker 24: be able to tell what time it was in the
Speaker 24: restaurant by what song was playing.
Speaker 16: What songs would they say playlist?
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 25: Just like fly Me to the Moon, Yeah, fly Me
Speaker 25: to the Moon, just like every yeah, And I would
Speaker 25: hear that every six hours, So like if I fly
Speaker 25: Me to the Moon came back, I would know we
Speaker 25: were halfway through with the day.
Speaker 2: Stanley Tucci and Darren Walker, CEO of the Ford Foundation,
Speaker 2: look back at long shifts in restaurant kitchens or waiting
Speaker 2: on tables, and many guests stories of eating out, whether
Speaker 2: in Michelin start restaurants, backstreet bars, or beach checks. Here's
Speaker 2: David Beckham talking about a Paris restaurant we both love.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite restaurants in the world is Lammy Louis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, w I agree.
Speaker 3: You know all the ways addressed in those white jackets,
Speaker 3: and whether you're wearing a bomber jacket or whether the
Speaker 3: most elegant lady walks in and the Chanel coat. They
Speaker 3: take your coat off, they fold it up and they
Speaker 3: throw it above the head on the car. It's like
Speaker 3: a train carriage. And my record for eating escargo is
Speaker 3: I've eaten thirty two escargoes at one dinner.
Speaker 2: To the listener, Can I tell you those are big?
Speaker 2: I've had that many.
Speaker 3: Times big and they come on trays of six or
Speaker 3: nine I think, and they come and I was in
Speaker 3: there for about four hours with Victoria once and we
Speaker 3: had the most amazing wine and everything about that restaurant
Speaker 3: and the palm free.
Speaker 2: The little potatoes.
Speaker 3: The bread, and everything about. It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: When you go to a restaurant, what do you look
Speaker 2: for it? Do you look for the food, the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: the people, the energy.
Speaker 26: I look for the vibe Darren Walker and the vibe
Speaker 26: to meet lutes. What does it smell like? What does
Speaker 26: the menu look like? What is the decor? I mean
Speaker 26: for me, I really like energy. Some people, for example, say, oh,
Speaker 26: this restaurant's too loud.
Speaker 12: I don't know.
Speaker 26: I like a loud restaurant. If I want an intimate dinner, yes,
Speaker 26: I'll choose something that is quiet with very little background noise.
Speaker 26: But if I want to have a great evening, I'll
Speaker 26: book a table at Balthasar Or.
Speaker 27: It's loud, it's boisterous. It feels like New York on steroids.
Speaker 27: That's why I live in New York to drink New
Speaker 27: York from the fire hose.
Speaker 2: Jude Law filmed The Talented Mister Ripley in Italy. What
Speaker 2: was it like being in Positana? Did you stay there
Speaker 2: when you were doing Ripley?
Speaker 14: Was that was that?
Speaker 7: We want that so long? And my memory of Ripley
Speaker 7: is more on the island of Iskia.
Speaker 28: Oh, I've never been there, Yeah, just off Naples and
Speaker 28: next to Caprian Prody that and we found this extraordinary
Speaker 28: restaurant right on the sea and it was almost as
Speaker 28: if they could sort of fish out of.
Speaker 7: The back window and cook what they caught.
Speaker 28: You know.
Speaker 7: We just sort of as a crew took that over
Speaker 7: and it became the sort of heart of the film
Speaker 7: really where everyone would congregate there after a day shooting
Speaker 7: and eat wonderful fresh fish food.
Speaker 13: Something that's really nice and Ghana now is it's all
Speaker 13: about chefs making food in their homes, especially during this
Speaker 13: COVID times for just like for just two or three.
Speaker 2: People, the architect David Aja, and.
Speaker 13: That's been kind of amazing to experience. You just get
Speaker 13: like half a dozen people invited and it's in the
Speaker 13: garden because the weather is so great. It's socially distanced
Speaker 13: in the garden.
Speaker 28: You know.
Speaker 13: As a chef called Selassian, she has a kind of
Speaker 13: pop up Comandoonia. She's doing incredible things with Gannian food.
Speaker 13: So she's been a kind of whenever she does a
Speaker 13: real run to go eat. So this idea of like
Speaker 13: eating in a place where you know where somebody really
Speaker 13: you know, I think the best way to describe, is
Speaker 13: that where the food is hard, you know, it's not
Speaker 13: just product, not just stuff like exactly what you do.
Speaker 13: You sort of taught the world that Ruthie and I
Speaker 13: think it's it's going around. I see versions of you
Speaker 13: in the younger generations all around as they try to
Speaker 13: really connect with food in a much more powerful way.
Speaker 2: I think that is, you know, what does it mean
Speaker 2: to go to a restaurant? What does it mean to
Speaker 2: go with your friends? And something we've all missed enormously,
Speaker 2: certainly when people have come back to the River Cafe
Speaker 2: having been away for so long, it's quite emotion being
Speaker 2: in a room with people.
Speaker 3: Do that.
Speaker 2: Is there a certain restaurant you'd like or don't like
Speaker 2: it that you feel comfortable in.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I'm very specific about the kinds of places that
Speaker 13: I like and don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go for the positive. What do you like
Speaker 2: in a restaurant?
Speaker 13: I like it to have a certain kind of authenticity,
Speaker 13: to feel like it's not trying to bamboozle me with effects,
Speaker 13: but it's confident in itself and it's trying to reflect
Speaker 13: a little bit of what its culture is.
Speaker 2: And what about designing, Because you're in art you've designed, Yeah,
Speaker 2: public buildings, restaurants, have you designed.
Speaker 13: That you I haven't designed a restaurant yet, but I'm
Speaker 13: right now designing the restaurant for Princeton Art Museum. That's
Speaker 13: that's probably the closest I'm getting to my first ever
Speaker 13: a restaurant. Actually, ironically, do you.
Speaker 2: Know what it will be like?
Speaker 19: The restaurant in the museum.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's trying to really the things I said have
Speaker 13: a certain kind of quality that has a certain sort
Speaker 13: of openness. It kind of has its own terrace, so
Speaker 13: it's open onto a really beautiful terrast that overlooks the grounds.
Speaker 13: Trying to make it feel not in any way that
Speaker 13: it's exclusive, but it has a kind of egalitarian quality.
Speaker 13: But it's really good quality. There's a kind of quality
Speaker 13: in the kind of pieces that are around you, the
Speaker 13: things that you touch, the things that you kind of
Speaker 13: got next to. But it also kind of honors the
Speaker 13: idea of food that it has a certain ritual quality
Speaker 13: to it as well. I think that that's really lovely.
Speaker 13: You know a restaurant that it feels like a ritual.
Speaker 2: You come usually on a Wednesday or Thursday. You always
Speaker 2: sit on table for and you always sit at the
Speaker 2: same seat, and I was just wondering how you feel
Speaker 2: about restaurants and food.
Speaker 11: Well, I love restaurants. I've owned a couple, Michael Kaine Again,
Speaker 11: I don't use restaurants for occasions, restaurants for a part
Speaker 11: of my life.
Speaker 2: Tell us about Jason's.
Speaker 11: Jason's was almost like a club. I should go there
Speaker 11: every Friday and you look around the room and Alfred
Speaker 11: Hitchcock was always sitting there. Kerry Grant was over there,
Speaker 11: you know, and it was one of those incredible places.
Speaker 11: You know, the stars everywhere, just all the movie stars
Speaker 11: I've been seeing in movies all my life.
Speaker 2: The restaurant I know best is, of course, the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: And in the next episode, I'll be talking to executive
Speaker 2: chefs Sean Renoan and Joseph Travelli. We'll also hear more
Speaker 2: food memories and stories from my guests at Table four
Speaker 2: as we talk about the joy, the comfort, and the
Speaker 2: politics of food. To play us out, here's Rag and
Speaker 2: Bone mass. You make me have me when skies are great?
Speaker 20: You love knowd how much I love you?
Speaker 2: Please don't my son shine?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 20: You want to come on.
Speaker 2: Tour to visit the online shop of the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: Go to shop the Rivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.