Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2: My good friend Ivanworth, the Swiss gallerist co founder of Hauserenworth,
Speaker 2: and I met through a mutual admiration and love for
Speaker 2: the artist Philip Guston. I grew up in Woodstock, New York,
Speaker 2: where Philip and his wife Musea Meyer were close friends
Speaker 2: of my parents. When some years ago the Gustin estate
Speaker 2: chose Hauserenworth to represent them, Ivan and his wife Manuela
Speaker 2: came to tea. We began talking that day about art
Speaker 2: and food and family and we really haven't stopped since.
Speaker 2: Having one restaurant, I personally cannot imagine having a gallery.
Speaker 2: But not only does Ivan have fifteen galleries all over
Speaker 2: the world, he has four restaurants, a farm, a farm shop,
Speaker 2: two hotels and soon a bar and a restaurant in
Speaker 2: the center of London. How does he do it all? Honestly,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but maybe after this conversation about family
Speaker 2: and food, I will. Let's begin with grouse.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ruthie. Well, I'm going to read to you
Speaker 3: one of my favorite recipes, Roast grouse with County Classical.
Speaker 3: It serves four. So you need four grouse, eight plum
Speaker 3: tomatoes peeled, four thick slices of sour though two tablespoon
Speaker 3: sage leaves, eight sprigs of thyme, two hundergram unsalted butter
Speaker 3: half a liter County classical. You have to preheat the
Speaker 3: oven to two hundred and twenty degrees. Stuff each of
Speaker 3: these birds with sage, thyme, and butter season well. Put
Speaker 3: the grouse in a buttered pan, breastside down, roast for
Speaker 3: five minus its. Turn them over, Add the wine, tomatoes
Speaker 3: and cook for fifteen minutes, based adding the bread to
Speaker 3: soak up some of the juices. Roast for another ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Then remove the grouse, tomatoes and bread from the pan,
Speaker 3: add the butter and wine, and over high heat reduce.
Speaker 3: Serve each bird on the tomato porschetta with the sauce
Speaker 3: poured over.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ivan, and I was so thrilled that you
Speaker 2: wanted to have grass as your recipe. Why is that?
Speaker 3: It's something that I actually discovered in Britain and it
Speaker 3: comes from larger from Scotland now or Yorkshire. It's seasonal,
Speaker 3: so it's not like fish or you know, it's very
Speaker 3: it's seasonal. It's the winter at the fall the winter
Speaker 3: a bit like marshroom. I fell in love with the taste.
Speaker 2: I love the food of autumn, don't you, Because it's
Speaker 2: kind of people always say summer food, it's so perfect
Speaker 2: and so but I think for cooks, the actual experience
Speaker 2: of autumn when it comes to white truffles, for chini,
Speaker 2: the grouse, you know.
Speaker 3: It all comes together.
Speaker 2: Do you remember where you had it the first time?
Speaker 2: Was it in a restaurant or someone's home?
Speaker 3: No? Actually I headed at somebody's house and it was
Speaker 3: interesting because half the guests didn't want to touch it,
Speaker 3: and they were not rigid there and they said no,
Speaker 3: thank you, and they got chicken.
Speaker 2: There's something fantastic about eating a whole bird, isn't it
Speaker 2: something that when you get the bird on your plate,
Speaker 2: with the bones and the and the experience of having,
Speaker 2: you know, serving somebody on their plate.
Speaker 3: And you work for your food, and you really have
Speaker 3: to be biting the.
Speaker 2: We started very young with your first gallery, didn't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, eighty six. I started to sell art, and what
Speaker 3: really I realized very quickly was that to share the
Speaker 3: bread with an artist or with a client both. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's the way to people's hearts, you know, really the
Speaker 3: most important critical moments in my life in that that
Speaker 3: were good. The positives one were usually about having a meal,
Speaker 3: sharing a meal, and would that.
Speaker 2: Would that be in a restaurant or.
Speaker 3: That would that is you? Well, it was early on
Speaker 3: it was, and now of course it's been. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: in studios and we share, but it's bad food. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and break the bread with someone, eat, have lunch, dinner,
Speaker 3: pick whatever, and you have a glass of wine. You
Speaker 3: people speak from their.
Speaker 2: Heart, I agree, and it tells you so much. We're
Speaker 2: talking about how very often people will want to take
Speaker 2: a date or if they meet somebody, they'd like to go
Speaker 2: to a restaurant, because sitting at a table or at
Speaker 2: home the way somebody tells you a lot about the person.
Speaker 3: My passion for eating and food and drink was something
Speaker 3: that I discovered in the artists I liked. And it
Speaker 3: can be very different. You know. It rarely ever, is
Speaker 3: about micheline type of food. It's not. Some are more
Speaker 3: passionate about what they all share. Is this intimacy, which
Speaker 3: is a controlled intimacy because you sit on a table
Speaker 3: with someone they love that. But I coming from Switzerland
Speaker 3: working with some of the Swiss artists. The food was
Speaker 3: integral part of there, but even the work. You know,
Speaker 3: one of my heroes was is did the Wrath and
Speaker 3: he made from the sixties on art that of food.
Speaker 2: Also, do you think that there's something about working in
Speaker 2: your studio all day, that solitariness of working as you know,
Speaker 2: I know that in New York a lot of the
Speaker 2: abstract Expressionists and a lot of the young painters of
Speaker 2: the seventies where they went to Max's or to the bars,
Speaker 2: you know, and they congregated there and there was a
Speaker 2: lot of drink and a lot of food. Do you
Speaker 2: think that that's part of that? Also getting together and
Speaker 2: sharing and being around the table and talking as well.
Speaker 3: Being an artist is largely a lonely, a lonely pro
Speaker 3: solitary profession, and particularly I find that painters are more
Speaker 3: lonely or solitary than than sculptors or other because you
Speaker 3: work in you have a team, and so I think
Speaker 3: the reason some of the great painters today have people
Speaker 3: that are around them, yeah, is of course to help them,
Speaker 3: because it's complicated. You've got to you've got to be
Speaker 3: you know, it's not just making the work. Now, there's
Speaker 3: they said the world's gotten more complicated. The shows all
Speaker 3: over the world. There's logistical reasons, but there's also about solitude,
Speaker 3: being lonely being and and some artists have have and
Speaker 3: I've seen some beautiful kitchens in studios. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 3: really is phenomenal. When I go to Mark Bradford studio,
Speaker 3: he has say, well, he has an he has an
Speaker 3: interesting relationship to food. I wouldn't say he's he's not.
Speaker 3: He doesn't cook. He's really la he orders, or he
Speaker 3: goes to mexic or he has some of my favorite meals.
Speaker 3: There is when his when the Lopez family that worked
Speaker 3: with him assistances, and it's an entire clan, the family
Speaker 3: when the father comes and he cooks a Mexican lunch
Speaker 3: and it's the grill and it's the sauces, and it's like,
Speaker 3: oh god, so but he also has a kitchen. And
Speaker 3: then or was Fisher, who has as is a passionate
Speaker 3: about food, has published cookbooks of other people. It's quite
Speaker 3: the common nomination.
Speaker 2: And our mutual friend Philip Gustin is to come. They
Speaker 2: had a teeny tiny little kitchen, I remember that, but
Speaker 2: they beautifully. When he went there, there was always a
Speaker 2: very simple way of eating. But he loved food and
Speaker 2: he can They came to my parents' house a lot
Speaker 2: to eat. If they would call up in the afternoon
Speaker 2: and Philip would say, Sylvia, I'm coming for supper. And
Speaker 2: you know, but he was our link. And that's how
Speaker 2: we first met, was when you came coming to see
Speaker 2: the Gustines. As I was saying the relationship between art
Speaker 2: and food, and I have to say, your galleries and food,
Speaker 2: and so is there anyone else has a gallery in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and opened up Manuela's, which is a fantastic
Speaker 2: restaurant downtown LA Great great compliment the art, great compliment
Speaker 2: to you talk about art and food. Who else would
Speaker 2: for their fiftieth birthday have a cookbook? A cookbook as
Speaker 2: a present, which I think all your friends in every city.
Speaker 2: Manuela really orchestrated this. I was lucky enough to be
Speaker 2: asked to participate. And it's one of my favorite cookbooks
Speaker 2: because it does actually combine, you know, food and love,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. Every page is a recipe, but every page
Speaker 2: is about a relationship that you have with food and
Speaker 2: with your friends. And so how do you feel when
Speaker 2: you look at this book and see.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was crying when I got it. So I
Speaker 3: got Manila secretly started two years before my fiftieth birthday,
Speaker 3: which was last year. The concept of this was she
Speaker 3: invited and you were one of them, very kindly beautiful
Speaker 3: to contribute to this cookbook a recipe that was meaningful
Speaker 3: to them. She then organized in us in the places
Speaker 3: we were, they cooked one of the recipes. So this
Speaker 3: community that we built up with love thirty years together
Speaker 3: came together and the book shows pictures from it. It
Speaker 3: chose the recipes. It's very touching. I have goosebumps every time,
Speaker 3: and then everybody. For some people it was the last
Speaker 3: meal they had together. That was so when people got
Speaker 3: the book during COVID, I sent it out to you
Speaker 3: and everybody that came they said they were, they were,
Speaker 3: they felt the same, and so you see how important
Speaker 3: for everyone it really is.
Speaker 2: Tell me about early childhood in Switzerland.
Speaker 3: Well, I I grew up in the mountains near the mountains,
Speaker 3: the sort of pre Alps and the Tockenburg particular area.
Speaker 3: My father is from uppen Zel, which is a mountainous
Speaker 3: area in Switzerland. That's where cheese comes from. And you
Speaker 3: know the Bishop Burger ads always the up and cel
Speaker 3: and the folk art. And my mother is Italian. Half
Speaker 3: Italian family. Italian family is from the Alps, from the Dolomites,
Speaker 3: from so the mountains and wilderness, if you like, played
Speaker 3: a big part in my life.
Speaker 2: There was stoking, a big thing in your house.
Speaker 3: What did they cook in Switzerland? You you go home
Speaker 3: over for lunch. It has its it has both sides.
Speaker 3: I mean, it keeps the mothers at home. But it
Speaker 3: was of course also everybody got together three times a day,
Speaker 3: so we came home for lunch with breakfast. We came
Speaker 3: home for lunch and come home from dinner. So it's
Speaker 3: not the day school. And that meant that there was
Speaker 3: always cooking. My mother would be she would work and
Speaker 3: cook and it all happened at the same time. So
Speaker 3: she was working with She was a teacher.
Speaker 2: So she would come home from teaching.
Speaker 3: Or she would work half time, or she's been going
Speaker 3: through She was a passionate teacher all the life. She
Speaker 3: in the end taught refugees kids German, but no cooking
Speaker 3: and food. And my grandfather, I mean, I mean, my
Speaker 3: grandfather is one of the earliest memories really that generation
Speaker 3: of Italian immigrants in Switzerland didn't want to be Italian.
Speaker 3: The only thing he would still do is the cooking.
Speaker 3: Is was a lot of Italian and the swearing. But
Speaker 3: he couldn't speak Italian. He couldn't speak Italian to anyone.
Speaker 3: So I only remember him swearing Italian. But they came before,
Speaker 3: you know, they came just before the First War, so
Speaker 3: turn of century came.
Speaker 2: So they cooked the food of the Dolomites.
Speaker 3: And well I remember him doing risotto in the in
Speaker 3: the kitchen. Yeah, And so I have more memories, interestingly
Speaker 3: of cooking and food in a way about my grandparents
Speaker 3: than about home. His home was just part of like
Speaker 3: but my grandfather from there was the you know, there
Speaker 3: was also a great tradition. Friday was apple tart with
Speaker 3: the soup or fish, and then you had was a
Speaker 3: ceremonial cooking.
Speaker 2: Your grandfather was in the kitchen cooking. That's unusual, it
Speaker 2: isn't it for an Italian man.
Speaker 3: Well, only on the weekend.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He was from a family of stovemasons, and so he
Speaker 3: had a constructive smoke construction company. But the weekend it
Speaker 3: was a ritual and we lived from the moment we
Speaker 3: lived in his town. Again we were living elsewhere when
Speaker 3: we came back, we went there regularly, you know, on
Speaker 3: the weekends. And that was that was just an and
Speaker 3: one of the smell, the take the smell and him
Speaker 3: doing the risotto.
Speaker 2: Was that's a memories that we're saying. And what about
Speaker 2: the Swiss side? What would you if you would have
Speaker 2: resortas and Italian food? What did you have from the Swiss?
Speaker 3: My father was a mountaineer. He was an architect and
Speaker 3: still is my mother and father still alive. But he
Speaker 3: was a very you know, a mountaineer. He is. He
Speaker 3: was a member, early member of the Alpine Club. He
Speaker 3: was then a president for many years of the Eastern
Speaker 3: section of the Alpine Club. Retired this year last year.
Speaker 3: So we it's the food of the mountain huts and
Speaker 3: what is that? So it's the food of the mountains.
Speaker 3: We were the The Alpine Club has hundreds of huts,
Speaker 3: I don't know how many, but all over the Alps,
Speaker 3: and as a member you can stay and eat and
Speaker 3: it's cooked by dedicated people that live there for a
Speaker 3: season and it's very basic food. So one of my
Speaker 3: favorite dishes of all time is this barley barley soup
Speaker 3: that is the guests and soup. That's how I grew up.
Speaker 2: It's just barley.
Speaker 3: Well it has dried meat in it. Yeah, so it's barley,
Speaker 3: It's got some herbs. It is a broth and the
Speaker 3: dried meat comes in in the end. It's very rich
Speaker 3: and a bit of milk or cream cream. So it's
Speaker 3: a very rich soup. One of the most delicious soup.
Speaker 3: I mean, I grew up on these type of soups.
Speaker 3: And when you arrive in your hot you well, you
Speaker 3: have a sandwich on the mountainop, but then you go
Speaker 3: back to the hut and that's the soup. It's because
Speaker 3: they can prepare it and heat it up a few times.
Speaker 3: So it was amazing.
Speaker 2: That's a kind of an amazing image to think that would
Speaker 2: you have the soup out of the mountains as well?
Speaker 2: Would you have it, would you have it when you
Speaker 2: weren't hiking for the last twelve hours, and would you
Speaker 2: sit down to a soup like that?
Speaker 3: Oh no, we'd still do. I mean, if I go
Speaker 3: back to Switzerland now and we go to the mountains
Speaker 3: and you arrive and you want to have a lungourin
Speaker 3: or something small and something just something basic. I would
Speaker 3: have a guest and some bit. So it's like a
Speaker 3: great plate of it's a bit like a pasta, like
Speaker 3: a spaghetti. You know, it's it's it's it's not. Well,
Speaker 3: it's not that easy to make it good. Very basic,
Speaker 3: but you've got to be precise.
Speaker 2: That's what we know. Isn't it the few ingredients you have,
Speaker 2: you've never attempted it?
Speaker 3: No? Oh no, no, I wouldn't. I couldn't do. No,
Speaker 3: it's some dishes that are so connected with the place
Speaker 3: you would not go near it.
Speaker 2: So often you come here with your children for dinner.
Speaker 2: You come to my house with your children. Tell me
Speaker 2: about cooking as a family.
Speaker 3: So the kitchen is the heart of our house. So
Speaker 3: we Manuela being a cooking instructor. But before she joined
Speaker 3: the gallery, she is just she's the master of ceremonies.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah she could. I mean she cooks. This is
Speaker 3: an extraordinary chef, and so she would orchestrate all five
Speaker 3: of us. Everybody can can contribute to what is cooked today.
Speaker 3: That's the first question in the morning is what are
Speaker 3: we cooking for supper? So no, it's extraordinly important. It's
Speaker 3: where everything's being discussed very old fashioned. I mean that's Manreela.
Speaker 3: She lost her father young her Urslo worked so and
Speaker 3: he had two siblings and Orcelan didn't come for lunch.
Speaker 3: I like my mother because she worked and Manreela cooked.
Speaker 3: There's great pictures of Mariella standing and they'll stand cooking
Speaker 3: for the siblings. And so it's a critical integral part
Speaker 3: of the well being of our family and what we
Speaker 3: do now with very strange. So if if twice a
Speaker 3: week or as we feel, two kids are not there
Speaker 3: studying America, the oldest two in America, so we would
Speaker 3: when we are doing dinner, we FaceTime them and they
Speaker 3: sit and we put them on and they are there. Scotland,
Speaker 3: the kitchen is is this marvelous, marvelous big room and
Speaker 3: it's big, got a big table where we eat and
Speaker 3: another big table where we cook, and an open fire
Speaker 3: and so we love, we love doing that. And one
Speaker 3: of the highlights of my early life childhood was actually
Speaker 3: going to the woods and I was a boy scout.
Speaker 3: Manrela was a boy scout too, by the way, so
Speaker 3: we word camp and we would cook on the fire.
Speaker 3: And so that's still to me an absolute highlight. And
Speaker 3: the sausage, the wheal sausage, which is a pork sausage.
Speaker 3: We would when I'm in Switzerland take them over and
Speaker 3: we I love the English sausages and we have occasionally them,
Speaker 3: but you can't stick them on a you can't put
Speaker 3: them on a stick. They follow, so you need a grill.
Speaker 3: The Swiss sausage you can really put on a on
Speaker 3: a stick. So we would go down in the woods
Speaker 3: in Somerset and do once a week if weather allows,
Speaker 3: and during COVID it was three times a week. We
Speaker 3: do barbecue in the woods. And then the kids grew
Speaker 3: up and to this day they do it. They do
Speaker 3: this the snake bread. And Manuela, in fact is her
Speaker 3: grandfather and grandmother were bakers. They're a bakery. So I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's been a family, so it's baking. It's I
Speaker 3: don't like baking so much and I really don't like
Speaker 3: making Christmas cookies. But the kids are crazy.
Speaker 2: So they are I think again, you know, they can
Speaker 2: connection doing something together, the family being together, eating together,
Speaker 2: the process and the idea that you sit down to
Speaker 2: dinner in your FaceTime, you know, because of the gab.
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful we have and we show the food
Speaker 3: and we share the pictures and we send pictures of
Speaker 3: each other boat they make spetsley. Eliass does loves doing spetsley.
Speaker 2: How did you find being in lockdown? You had your
Speaker 2: children with you.
Speaker 3: We were lucky. We were in Somerset on the farm
Speaker 3: and our Lockdown project was Manuela's dream of a farm
Speaker 3: shop that we opened. Now tell me about the farm show.
Speaker 3: So it's almost a social practice. So it's an entrepreneurial approach.
Speaker 3: We invite small businesses from the area to come up
Speaker 3: with ideas for products or they have products and we
Speaker 3: sell them there in addition to our own. It's a
Speaker 3: community farm show. Yeah, and we sell a lot of
Speaker 3: produce from farmers as well and produces small local producers.
Speaker 3: Then we have some Swiss essentials like we do have
Speaker 3: some We have two Swiss jeeses, so one from where
Speaker 3: we are from and another one from Niyakstad.
Speaker 2: So frutiful. The idea that you go to a city,
Speaker 2: you go to, you go to the country, you go
Speaker 2: to you know, to the wilds of Scotland, and you
Speaker 2: create you create a link through food and so food
Speaker 2: is connection. Food is memory of your time in Switzerland
Speaker 2: and your grandparents. And of course it's also a comfort
Speaker 2: isn't it. And so my last question to you is
Speaker 2: what is your comfort food.
Speaker 3: My comfort food is a dish. I'm afraid it's a swete.
Speaker 3: I think it's a very sweet ish. It's called Bierka musli.
Speaker 3: So it's amuse. Yes, I need comfort food, sometimes for breakfast,
Speaker 3: sometimes at lunch, or sometimes for dinner. And it's one
Speaker 3: of the few dishes that you can really eat any
Speaker 3: hour of the day, you can, you know. And and
Speaker 3: the peninsula in La used to have a Swiss chef
Speaker 3: and there was always the best boot muslin in America.
Speaker 3: And I got there and I had it literally any
Speaker 3: time of the day. But it's hard to make, to
Speaker 3: make it right. It's a bit like the Barsley soup,
Speaker 3: and it's it's it lasts all day. It's for me
Speaker 3: and Alma. Actually my daughter, our daughter put it in
Speaker 3: here as in our cookbook, the fifty Year Cookbook. So
Speaker 3: it's the musli, the Swiss burgermusi. And that would be
Speaker 3: my comfort phot I'd love to share it with you
Speaker 3: one day. I'd be happy to try try and make
Speaker 3: one for you. I can do it. Actually, I can
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: I'll be there. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I love you, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
Speaker 2: to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk.
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