Speaker 1: Are we? Are we on? Are we a bit forty? Now?
Speaker 1: It's nice?
Speaker 2: Do you want?
Speaker 1: Do you guys want to come and sit closer? If
Speaker 1: I'm closer. When Matthew Freud suggested that I have my
Speaker 1: debut live podcast, my first call was to Josh Burger,
Speaker 1: Josh said yes. During his thirty years at Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: Josh brought to audiences the greatest movies Harry Potter, A
Speaker 1: Star Is Born, The Hangover, which I personally loved, and
Speaker 1: He'll make London a city of moviegoers and movie makers.
Speaker 1: As chairman of the British Film Institute, he turned it
Speaker 1: into something exciting and dynamic. In his spare time, he
Speaker 1: co produced the Tony Award winning Broadway musical Ain't Too
Speaker 1: Proud The Life and Times of the Temptations. In his
Speaker 1: spare spare time, Josh is my brand, and though I'm
Speaker 1: twenty years ahead of him, for endless reasons, I refer
Speaker 1: to him as my older brother. It's safe to say
Speaker 1: that I think I know practically everything there is to
Speaker 1: know about Josh Berger. But tonight, talking with him with
Speaker 1: you as an audience about food in his life, I
Speaker 1: think and hope that I'll learn more lucky me. So
Speaker 1: you also might know that Josh if you do listen.
Speaker 1: He also has a very important role in that he
Speaker 1: introduces every podcast of River Cafe Table four.
Speaker 2: Here we go, this is the job about which I'm proudest,
Speaker 2: and here goes. Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 3: Yay, thank you for coming me tonight. That is the
Speaker 3: end of the podcast.
Speaker 1: We're done, Let's get okay. So you talk a lot
Speaker 1: about going to restaurants for pleasure, but in the movie business,
Speaker 1: a lot of work gets done in restaurants. People do
Speaker 1: deals in restaurants, They interview people in restaurants. Would you
Speaker 1: do business over food?
Speaker 3: Definitely?
Speaker 2: I mean the place where I really learned the art
Speaker 2: of a sort of a business meal, where they really
Speaker 2: get it right is Spain. First of all, you go
Speaker 2: to lunch in Spain at about two or two thirty,
Speaker 2: and if you get it right and you're doing business
Speaker 2: with somebody, you'll still be there at five thirty or
Speaker 2: six o'clock. And so there's an unwritten rule in Spain
Speaker 2: when you're at a business lunch, which is you never
Speaker 2: talk about business until coffee and dessert, and so that
Speaker 2: means that you'd be sitting there with you know, somebody
Speaker 2: for two maybe three hours before you have any discussion.
Speaker 2: And of course you drink a bottle or two of
Speaker 2: wine before you get there. So needless to say, all
Speaker 2: of the business you do is fabulous because you are
Speaker 2: completely weentered by the time you know, dessert gets there.
Speaker 2: And I tell you, the best business meetings I've ever
Speaker 2: had in restaurants always were in Spain for that reason.
Speaker 3: It's a very smart idea.
Speaker 2: You know, you develop a rapport with somebody, you talk
Speaker 2: about what you're doing and what matters to you. So
Speaker 2: by the time you get to the business, it takes
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes and you kind of sort it out. So
Speaker 2: and any restaurant where you've got space, you know, just
Speaker 2: to answer your question, yeah, somewhere where you actually are
Speaker 2: not on top of other people and the service is
Speaker 2: that right balance of attentive but basically in the background.
Speaker 1: Does taking somebody out to a restaurant tell you about
Speaker 1: the person you're taking out as well the way they
Speaker 1: behave in a restaurant design o God?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can tell everything that matters probably about
Speaker 2: somebody during a meal in a restaurant. You know how
Speaker 2: they talk to you, but more importantly, how they talk
Speaker 2: to the people in the restaurant, and when people are
Speaker 2: polite to the people serving them, when they're rude, if
Speaker 2: they're short, if they are looking at you in the
Speaker 2: eye or not.
Speaker 3: I mean, all of those little.
Speaker 2: Those little clues are very helpful, especially if you're trying
Speaker 2: to assess whether or not to work with somebody, to
Speaker 2: be in business with somebody. It's very revealing, for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know the drill, but the
Speaker 1: drill is at every guest. And that's how we've really started.
Speaker 1: The idea of doing a podcast was that we would
Speaker 1: just do a recipe, just a recipe, every day of
Speaker 1: the year, and some very bright person said to me,
Speaker 1: RUTHI maybe we need a little bit more. So the
Speaker 1: idea of the recipe segued into a story about food
Speaker 1: in the guest's life. So with Josh, we're going to
Speaker 1: start with the recipe that you've chosen from the River
Speaker 1: Cafe cookbooks.
Speaker 2: Yes, I will read Banya Kauda with prosecco. These are
Speaker 2: autumn vegetables, but it's a seasonal dish. It serves six,
Speaker 2: and you would add the following seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: millilters of prosecco, three garlic cloves peeled, three hun undred
Speaker 2: grams of Swiss charred, one small pumpkin cut into six pieces,
Speaker 2: three celery hearts quartered, twelve salted anchovies cleaned and fillted,
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty grams on salted butter softened, and
Speaker 2: fifty millilters of the best River Cafe olive oil. So
Speaker 2: you put the prosecco into a saucepan, add the garlic
Speaker 2: and boil until the prosecco has reduced and the garlic
Speaker 2: is soft. Remove from the heat and set aside. Then
Speaker 2: bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil. Blanch
Speaker 2: the Swiss charred, making sure the stalks are softened before draining.
Speaker 2: Add the fennel, pumpkin and celery hearts to reduce the
Speaker 2: heat and simmer for ten minutes or until tender.
Speaker 3: To finish the sauce.
Speaker 2: Return the saucepan with the reduced prosecco and soften garlic
Speaker 2: to the heat and add the anchovy filets. Allow them
Speaker 2: to melt into the mixture. Gently whisk in the softened
Speaker 2: butter little by little, removing the pan from the heat.
Speaker 2: After the first addition of butter. When all the butter
Speaker 2: has been in corp breded, add the olive oil and
Speaker 2: black pepper, arrange the vegetables on a warm plate, and
Speaker 2: pour over the sauce and serve immediately.
Speaker 1: Yum yum. Yeah. So, of all the recipes that you
Speaker 1: could have chosen in the books, what made you choose
Speaker 1: man Katta? Josh Berger?
Speaker 2: So banya kouda is a dish which I first tried
Speaker 2: at the River Cafe. I don't like anchovies, and so
Speaker 2: banyicauda is always something that I wouldn't go near. And
Speaker 2: then I think I tried it off of somebody's plate,
Speaker 2: not knowing what it was, and it was just the
Speaker 2: best vegetable dish I think I had ever eaten. And
Speaker 2: the anchovies are you know, they just come together with
Speaker 2: all of the cooked vegetables and they make this beautiful, salty, warm,
Speaker 2: fabulous vegetable dish. And it's now my favorite vegetable dish
Speaker 2: in the world, and I order it every time it's
Speaker 2: on the menu. And whether it's a summer banyakauda or
Speaker 2: indeed a winter It is fabulous and I love it,
Speaker 2: and so it's pretty.
Speaker 1: It's very regional. It is very much from the Piedmonte
Speaker 1: region of Italy. And I think growing up in LA
Speaker 1: did you ever have a banicouta in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Well, benicauda means warm bath, you've had a I had
Speaker 2: warm baths, not that many, but I have to say,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that I had anything even close to abanicauda,
Speaker 2: except for maybe a pizza.
Speaker 1: So tell me about growing up in LA. You grew
Speaker 1: up in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I was born in Los Angeles, California, where I spent
Speaker 2: my first eighteen years really not leaving at all. And
Speaker 2: I grew up in the Beverly Hills part of Los
Speaker 2: Angeles to parents who were in the entertainment business. One
Speaker 2: was a manager and the other was an agent, and
Speaker 2: so they worked with actors and directors, and my father
Speaker 2: in particular worked in the music business and managed a.
Speaker 3: Lot of the motown artists.
Speaker 2: So I had a strange kind of childhood of a
Speaker 2: lot of recording sessions and American Bandstand and Soul Train
Speaker 2: on the weekends. But I grew up in a very
Speaker 2: entertainment world, which is not surprising because it's a sort
Speaker 2: of a one industry town, or at least it used
Speaker 2: to be back in the seventies and eighties when I
Speaker 2: grew up.
Speaker 1: And what about what were your childhood memories of food
Speaker 1: in both your home or going out to restaurants. What
Speaker 1: was that like?
Speaker 2: Well, I was in lots of restaurants with my father.
Speaker 2: My parents were divorced. There was no family meal as such.
Speaker 2: That just wasn't a part of my childhood. And I
Speaker 2: just kind of remember certain certain things that I ate,
Speaker 2: which I kind of loved. And there was a British
Speaker 2: woman named Sarah, who was my father's girlfriend after my
Speaker 2: parents split, who made me a belt from Britain, and
Speaker 2: somehow it seemed so exotic that it was a British
Speaker 2: bacon medicine tomato sandwich, and it really was the best
Speaker 2: thing I had ever eaten up until that point.
Speaker 3: I was about seven eight years old. I didn't hear
Speaker 3: what was it? He said, here, here, oh here, here,
Speaker 3: I agree, there we go. We love it.
Speaker 2: And I had it with a root beer, which I
Speaker 2: don't know if anybody's familiar with that drink, but it
Speaker 2: was a very very good combination and then from there though,
Speaker 2: I would say that the thing that I was most
Speaker 2: involved in eating regularly was breakfast cereal. And I was
Speaker 2: a real expert on breakfast cereal, and I ate I
Speaker 2: think everyone that was on the market, because I would
Speaker 2: make it a point of trying all of them. And
Speaker 2: there was a time that I could do it like
Speaker 2: a blind tasting and name every breakfast cereal and I
Speaker 2: would eat. I would eat it for breakfast, and I
Speaker 2: would also eat it at night and even in the daytime.
Speaker 2: And it's nothing to be proud of, but I am
Speaker 2: still somewhat addicted to breakfast cereal.
Speaker 1: As a child. Would you be expected to buy them
Speaker 1: the cereals yourself or would your parents or someone in
Speaker 1: the house. When I would go to them, to a
Speaker 1: cupboard full of breakfast cereals, you could choose them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I would go to the market, I would buy
Speaker 2: them myself. My mother would buy them, my father would
Speaker 2: buy them. My father still buys them to you know.
Speaker 2: When I come to Los Angeles and I stay with him,
Speaker 2: he still loads up with you know, coco crispies and
Speaker 2: cocoa pops and lucky charms.
Speaker 1: There used to be saying that the box had more
Speaker 1: nutrition than the cereal.
Speaker 3: Very possible.
Speaker 2: Another thing I would do is I also read the
Speaker 2: boxes and I would commit to memory everything that was
Speaker 2: on the boxes.
Speaker 3: This is what I was left to do as a child.
Speaker 1: Well, I always think that one of the ni again
Speaker 1: knowing you really well, that you are an exceptional guest.
Speaker 1: You are somebody who feels very comfortable in other people's houses.
Speaker 1: We all as hosts love having you in our house.
Speaker 1: And I think that that might come from spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time in other people's houses as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up in a nice after school going to did
Speaker 1: you remember any of the food from Would you choose
Speaker 1: kind of who you wanted to go to which house
Speaker 1: because of the food, or would you just go to
Speaker 1: people's houses.
Speaker 3: I would go to people's houses.
Speaker 2: I mean I've been, of course, in anticipation of this conversation,
Speaker 2: I've been trying to remember anything that I could about
Speaker 2: the food that I would eat in my friend's houses.
Speaker 2: And I did spend an inordinate amount of time in
Speaker 2: other people's houses growing up. My mother worked, my father worked,
Speaker 2: and so I had a couple of sort of very
Speaker 2: close friends, and I would spend much time in their place,
Speaker 2: and I would have dinner there invariably almost every night,
Speaker 2: and I just can't remember one of the meals, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: But I do remember. I remember my mother cooked. She
Speaker 2: really cooked two things that I remember and that I
Speaker 2: loved and I still love a pot roast and a
Speaker 2: lasagna and a stuffed cabbage as well the third thing.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I called her the other day and
Speaker 2: I asked her why was the stuff cabbage so good?
Speaker 2: And she told me because she added brown sugar and
Speaker 2: sours salt. I don't even know what sour salt is,
Speaker 2: but sara salt.
Speaker 1: Does anybody know what sour salt is? No, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of it.
Speaker 2: No, It's a very obscure recipe, maybe from Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you were thrust into the world of
Speaker 1: motown and music and was there food there? Would you
Speaker 1: go to the equivalent of what music terms as a
Speaker 1: set or a studio, would there be food there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean I remember I remember going to sets of
Speaker 2: like those TV shows that I mentioned, which I used
Speaker 2: to go to on the weekend with my dad and
Speaker 2: his clients. And I think, frankly TV sets then and
Speaker 2: even today, and recording sessions in the studio. It's all
Speaker 2: the same kind of food, you know, It's just it's
Speaker 2: kind of fast food. It's sandwiches, it's donuts, it's cookies,
Speaker 2: nothing particularly good. I mean, I think there's a focus today,
Speaker 2: at least on a movie set or a TV set,
Speaker 2: to have some healthier options, because that's sort of the
Speaker 2: age that we're in. But back then, it was great
Speaker 2: for a kid because it was just junk food everywhere.
Speaker 3: I loved that.
Speaker 2: But my godfather was Barry Gordy, the founder of Motown,
Speaker 2: and so I spent my weekends at his house often,
Speaker 2: and so on Sundays, sort of late in the day,
Speaker 2: the sort of dinner that would be served early was
Speaker 2: Southern fried cooking, which was his background and his heritage.
Speaker 3: And in a way, that could be the first.
Speaker 2: Cuisine that I understood to be a particular category of
Speaker 2: American cuisine that I loved.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was fried chicken and collared greens and black eyed
Speaker 2: peas and macaroni and cheese, and I mean it was
Speaker 2: just all of it was completely delicious. I used to
Speaker 2: really look forward to that Sunday and that Sunday evening meal,
Speaker 2: and it was funny because it would be served in
Speaker 2: these beautiful.
Speaker 3: You know, silver servers. But it was, you know, just
Speaker 3: his very earthy food.
Speaker 2: And yeah, black and cod and black and redfish actually
Speaker 2: is the one that loved black and redfish is it's
Speaker 2: just sort of a southern, a Southern way of cooking fish,
Speaker 2: I think from Louisiana and Mississippi, where I don't know
Speaker 2: how they do it. I mean they blacken this redfish.
Speaker 2: I mean they really char it. It's very very smoky
Speaker 2: and kind of the skin is crispy and really tasty
Speaker 2: and spicy.
Speaker 1: Well, we could go to when you went to university.
Speaker 1: Was that an awakening at any point?
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: I left LA and I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 2: I was going to Harvard, and it wasn't There wasn't
Speaker 2: no awakening yet while I was there. You know, I
Speaker 2: liked school food in high school and in college, you know,
Speaker 2: this kind of mass produced food. But the awakening happened
Speaker 2: more when I took a year off of school and
Speaker 2: I went to live in Italy to work, and I
Speaker 2: was in Venice and a guy was selling a raw tomato.
Speaker 2: I think he was just trying to get rid of
Speaker 2: the last bits of him he said, here, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you, you know, a couple of tomatoes
Speaker 2: for I don't know, a couple of lira or whatever
Speaker 2: at the time, and it was really hot and I
Speaker 2: was really thirsty, and so I bit into a tomato
Speaker 2: of all things, and it was like the greatest thing
Speaker 2: I had ever tasted in my life.
Speaker 3: And I had just gotten to Italy, and so began
Speaker 3: this a kind of revelation.
Speaker 2: About food and about how good food can be in
Speaker 2: Italy and I was living in I was traveling around,
Speaker 2: but I was living in Milan, and really the place
Speaker 2: that I discovered this was in a neighborhood restaurant in
Speaker 2: Milan near where I lived, and it was just, you know,
Speaker 2: a lady in the kitchen and her husband was the
Speaker 2: maitre d This was in nineteen eighty six and the
Speaker 2: fall of eighty six and the winter of eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and I just happened upon this place and then I
Speaker 2: went there three times a week, and I got to
Speaker 2: know the family and they taught me about Italian food,
Speaker 2: and I ate so many different incredible meals and it
Speaker 2: wasn't you know, some of the famous dishes, but it
Speaker 2: was just you know, the fish. It's like Ilpeche, you know, theola,
Speaker 2: like the chicken, the meat, the fish, the vegetables e contorni,
Speaker 2: you know, and they just serve. You don't even know
Speaker 2: what you were eating half the time. And it was
Speaker 2: just mind blowing. And I was alone a lot of
Speaker 2: the time, which meant that I could really sort of appreciated,
Speaker 2: you know, there's no talking, and I was learning Italian
Speaker 2: as well, so I would speak to these these people
Speaker 2: and they would explain to me about what I was eating.
Speaker 2: And I think at that point I realized that this
Speaker 2: was going to be like a love affair, like for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. And I kind of got
Speaker 2: very enthusiastic about food, no matter what the food was,
Speaker 2: and I still am.
Speaker 1: Two other people I think I talked to talked about Milan,
Speaker 1: and it was Norman Bloster has said that he had
Speaker 1: his first risotto in Milan, and up until then he
Speaker 1: just had rice, you know, and what that meant, you know,
Speaker 1: just eating your your first risotto. You know, I think
Speaker 1: Milan is probably a really good place to discover food.
Speaker 1: Did you ever think about cooking or did you just
Speaker 1: want to keep eating out?
Speaker 2: Well, my roommate Paolo Savignano taught me how to make pasta.
Speaker 2: And the other thing he taught me what how to
Speaker 2: do was with vegetables, like raw vegetables, And the one
Speaker 2: that really made an impression was finocchio fennel, which was
Speaker 2: just take a I never knew what a fenel was actually,
Speaker 2: so he pulled this thing out, started cutting it into pieces,
Speaker 2: and then just olive oil salt on a piece of
Speaker 2: raw fennel.
Speaker 3: It's one of the greatest things in the world.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, isn't it, because coming from California, which is
Speaker 1: the garden of the United States, now you know the
Speaker 1: artichokes and fennel and tomatoes, and I was that we
Speaker 1: really now look at California as a place where we
Speaker 1: get these great vegetables, and yet we kind of probably
Speaker 1: turned our back on the ingredient. And then it all changed,
Speaker 1: and now in California the ingredient is so important though,
Speaker 1: the way they grow vegetables and an apple valley surrounding
Speaker 1: you know, Los Angeles, is huge, isn't it. But there
Speaker 1: still is that thing about that man giving you the
Speaker 1: ripest tomato in venice exactly.
Speaker 2: And actually something I didn't mention when I finished university,
Speaker 2: I went to live in Paris. That was the first
Speaker 2: place I worked after school for Warner Brothers. And I
Speaker 2: had a great friend through my one of my best
Speaker 2: friends from college, this guy Alex, who was a chef
Speaker 2: and he was training at Tayvon and so while he
Speaker 2: was there, every Sunday night, we would have a dinner
Speaker 2: with all of these friends from school who were living
Speaker 2: in Paris at the same time. And every person there
Speaker 2: was a kind of a core group, and everybody would
Speaker 2: bring one or two people. So we had these dinner
Speaker 2: parties every Sunday, and Alex would try out his recipes
Speaker 2: and the things he was learning. I mean, and actually
Speaker 2: I have to say that, you know, aside from my
Speaker 2: year off in Milan where I kind of discovered great
Speaker 2: ingredients and great food, and then Alex really taught me
Speaker 2: about buying great, great food that you just reminded me,
Speaker 2: you know. I used to go to the market with
Speaker 2: him off the Rue Dutamp on the Saturday morning and
Speaker 2: we'd buy just whatever was there that he liked the
Speaker 2: look of and then we'd go back and he would
Speaker 2: just throw something together and just make brunch for the
Speaker 2: two of us, and then Sunday nights we'd have these
Speaker 2: dinner parties and that was the best food I had
Speaker 2: ever eaten up until that time.
Speaker 1: So you talk about the exposure to Europe. You know
Speaker 1: about Milan, about France, but you also you have to
Speaker 1: bring in Spain here, because I know you talk about
Speaker 1: Spain a lot. You love Spain, You eat Spanish food,
Speaker 1: cook Spanish fruit. Talk about Spain for a minute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I moved to Madrid and I had been warned,
Speaker 3: you know, Spain.
Speaker 2: People had said to me the food is not that
Speaker 2: great and it's all basically golden brown and everything's fried,
Speaker 2: and you know, you're not going to.
Speaker 3: Love the food.
Speaker 2: And of course everybody who told me that really had
Speaker 2: just been there for a week on holiday and didn't
Speaker 2: really know the food. And I have to say it
Speaker 2: might be the country that I most like eating in
Speaker 2: because of the variety. In number one, I mean, Spain
Speaker 2: is a country of a half dozen countries. You know,
Speaker 2: Galicia and what you eat there versus the Basque country
Speaker 2: versus Catalunya versus Castilla, versus Andalucia versus Valencia. I mean,
Speaker 2: every part of that country has really its own cuisine
Speaker 2: and they're very distinct really because so many different groups
Speaker 2: of people have been through that country and have run it.
Speaker 2: The Moorish influence in Spain, I think has created just great,
Speaker 2: great variety of food and the fish and the meat,
Speaker 2: and the sauces and the soups, because I'm obsessed with soups,
Speaker 2: and I you know, just from Asturias and the favada
Speaker 2: and the Lentejas, the lentils of Spain. I still think
Speaker 2: it might be one of the greatest dishes in the world.
Speaker 2: I go hunting for it when I get to Spain.
Speaker 2: I was so wildly happy in that country with every
Speaker 2: day of my food experiences, and also the idea that
Speaker 2: you can just walk around town and just walk into
Speaker 2: a bar and say what's the specialty, and they'll make
Speaker 2: you like the greatest mushrooms you've ever had.
Speaker 3: And then you'll go next door.
Speaker 2: And you'll get a tortillespaniola, which is a basically egg
Speaker 2: and onion and potato omelet that is so unbelievably delicious.
Speaker 2: And then if you've chuck chort etho in it, it's
Speaker 2: even better. And you can walk to the to every
Speaker 2: neighborhood in big Spanish cities and find twenty five different
Speaker 2: bars that each has a specialty, and I would highly
Speaker 2: recommend San Sebastian for that because that is huge. San
Speaker 2: Sebastian is the best city in the world for top
Speaker 2: us bars because each one, again has a specialty, and
Speaker 2: the variety is just mind boggling. You could go there
Speaker 2: for a week and go to a different place every
Speaker 2: hour and you wouldn't exhaust it.
Speaker 3: And then there's the wine.
Speaker 2: The wine in Spain is I think my favorite wine,
Speaker 2: and please don't tell our hosts in France, but.
Speaker 3: Again, the variety of it. Ea, I mean, where to begin.
Speaker 2: I Pescaia and I love the you know, the sort
Speaker 2: of smaller, more humble wines, and the white wines of Galicia,
Speaker 2: the Albertino and is just fantastic with seafood, and then
Speaker 2: Chaco Leaf from the Basque country, which the guys when
Speaker 2: you go into a you go into the bar and
Speaker 2: then they hold the bottle way that the bottle the
Speaker 2: leather pouch, and then they hold it up here and
Speaker 2: then they pour it.
Speaker 3: All the way down. It's like acrobatic. It's fabulous.
Speaker 1: You are married to Dana Harmon, who is Israeli, and
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of your conversation with me
Speaker 1: lately has been about two subjects. One is what it's
Speaker 1: like to eat in Tel Aviv and Jappa and the
Speaker 1: way the cultural food of that area has changed so
Speaker 1: much and what people are cooking there. Would you either
Speaker 1: of you like to talk about food in Israel right now?
Speaker 3: For sure?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's it's definitely one of the
Speaker 2: most exciting exciting places to eat in the world. I mean,
Speaker 2: they just there's something about I don't know, the creativity
Speaker 2: and the risk king and the ingredients and the fact
Speaker 2: that many of these chefs come from you know, Argentina, Mexico, Iraq,
Speaker 2: Iran America, and so that there's just these you know,
Speaker 2: these really interesting combinations of ingredients and foods and it's
Speaker 2: very original and it's unbelievably good. But you know, the
Speaker 2: truth is, I think it's true in a lot of cities, though,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's one city where there's a lot of
Speaker 2: exciting chefs, but you know, London has a similarly exciting
Speaker 2: collection of chefs that come from all over the world
Speaker 2: as well, in New York and Los Angeles and Paris,
Speaker 2: and I mean it's it's probably the most exciting time,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of restaurants and creativity. Probably ever
Speaker 2: with food and food technology as well.
Speaker 1: If food is celebration, it's love, it's being together, it's delicious,
Speaker 1: and food is comfort. To you, Josh Berger, at the
Speaker 1: end of our conversation, what would be your comfort food?
Speaker 2: So my comfort food would probably be bukatini a la mariana.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm sure you're going to say cereal.
Speaker 1: Be sure you don't want to say cereal.
Speaker 3: You can surprise you.
Speaker 1: Oh I never would. I'm sure you're going to say serious.
Speaker 2: Well, basically I would have said the spaghetti, you know,
Speaker 2: tomato pasta, which is our favorite meal always, and that
Speaker 2: is in fact the right answer. But I was I
Speaker 2: was listening to you know, over time, I listened to
Speaker 2: all the podcasts that you do, and everybody says the
Speaker 2: same thing, and it's just it would be So it's
Speaker 2: just not interesting at this point to say that. So
Speaker 2: I thought I'd go with which feels more interesting and
Speaker 2: actually is even better because it is the best pasta
Speaker 2: dish I think in the world.
Speaker 3: I recommend it comfort or not.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Josh, I love you, love you, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe.
Speaker 1: Go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 2: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 2: Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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