November 2, 2021 • 19 mins
Michael Caine is a man Ruthie admires and adores. Listen to him on Ruthies Table 4 describing the food of wartime Britain, insisting that every movie he made began over a lunch, and reading our recipe for pannacotta - his favourite desert.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie's Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi. I'm Michael Caine and I'm here with a very
good friend of mine called Ruthie Rogers.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I often say that the real reason I have a
restaurant is that once a week I get to walk
Michael Caine from Table four through the crowded restaurant to
his car and say good night to a man I
admire and I adore.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Is that me? Oh? Yeah, well, I love the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I always say, what do we always say? Now? We
both say it the only reason she has a restaurant.
In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have
chosen from one of our cookbooks. I talk about food,
the food they cook, the food they eat, and most
(00:57):
of all, the food of their memories.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The River Cafe have a dessert which is my favorite,
and it's called Pannacotta with grapper. So what I'm going
to do is I'm going to give you the recipe
in cash. You want to make it for yourself, Okay,
Pour nine hundred milligrams of cream into a pan, Add
(01:22):
the vanilla pods, add the lemon ride, bring to the boil.
Simmer and reducee by a third pass through a sieve.
Then scrape the seeds from inside the vanilla pods back
into the cream and discard the alter pods. Remove the
gelatine from the milk. Heat the milk until hot, then
(01:42):
return the gelatine to the milk and stir until dissolved.
Pour through a sieve into a hot cream and leave
to cool, stirring occasionally. Lightly whip the remaining cream with
the icing sugar, fold into the cold cream mixture and
then add grapper. It is now ready to be poured
into six small balls and put into the fridge for
(02:05):
at least three hours or if you like, overnight.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So, Michael, here we are Yeh River Cafe. But let's
go back to the beginning. You were born in London.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I was born in Burmasey, which is South London.
But I'm a company because I was born in a
part of Burmasey which is opposite bow Bells. And if
you're born within the sound of bow bells, you're a company.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
What about food? Do you have memories of food?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah? My memory of food is this. My father was
a Billies Gape fish market porter and he was a
big gambler, and so he never bought steak or anything.
It was too deer. But he used to nick a
lot of fish. So for fifteen years I ate fish,
every kind of fish you can imagine, and I realized
that's a very healthy thing. And also another accidental healthy
(02:56):
thing for me was the Second World War. You couldn't
get any sugar. You couldn't get any of those things,
those drinks that you have now with all this sugar
in it. Then I was evacuated into the country away
from the smug which in Bermondsey then was terrible because
of everyone had cold fires. But I was evacuated to
the country and I lived on a farm for six years.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Do you remember the food there.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Oh, the food was wonderful. I mean some of the
food I caught myself because I could outrun a rabbit.
And I used to catch a rabbit with a stick
and give it to my mother to cook for dinner.
Pheasant partridge. We remember all those things, and so thinking
back on it, health wise, I was very lucky. And
not on top of all that, my mother insisted I
ate porridge for breakfast. For fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You had fish, you had pheasants, had.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Porridge, rabbit and everything had fresh vegetables. We lived on
a farm. We used to go and knick the cabbage.
And eventually we came back to London and the council
gave us a prefabricated house which was made of asbestos,
and they put them up like in two weeks, and
people were sort of sympathizing with people like me who
(04:05):
were having to live in these prefabricated houses. And what
they didn't know was what life was like before because
in the flat we lived in when I was a
little boy, there was no toilet. For a start. You
had to go down to the garden, so I had
very strong legs, or you bought a pot pop, you know.
But when we walked into the prefab the first time,
(04:27):
my brother Stanley and I, we were stunned. We were
in a place which for the first time had electric light,
an indoor toilet, and it had a little garden. It
was unbelievable in the middle of London and the Elephant Castle.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Do you remember the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The kitchen was lovely. It was an electric stove and
a refrigerator, you know, it was a refrigerator. We'd never
seen a refrigerator and we had a bathroom. I mean
when we used to have a bath in the kitchen,
in a bath that my mothers pour hot watering in
the kettle.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
So you imagine mother and father moving with their children
to this prefabricated house which it had had a bathroom,
it had a kitchen, it had a view, it had
a garden. So how do you think that changed her
way of being with you and cooking for you.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It was fabulous for her because it cut out masses
of work to do things, you know, And she was
so happy and the food got even better.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Why do you like the pana cootta?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, the panakotta has little bits of fruit in it,
and I can eat that without conscience because I'm eating fruit,
you know. And I said, oh, look it's a BlackBerry.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It just happened to have a little bit of extra
panicotta with it because it was quite old and I
can't stuff down sugar as much as i'd like to,
and there's quite a lot of sugar in it.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It's quite a bit. But she just read the have
you ever made it?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Oh? No, I never make desserts. I only does and
veitch because I'm afraid of eating them.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Oh, okay. And what do you make when you make
a main course? What do you like to cook?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, I'm the one responsible in the house for Sunday lunch,
so I do roast beef, roast lam Christmas, I do
the roast turkey. I do the best, allegedly the best
roast potatoes anybody who ever came ever eaten. Yeah, I'm
very good at that. Well, the trick is, when they're
cooked is to mash them just a little bit, just
crack them open, put oil on them, and then bake
(06:29):
them again, so they always got baked inside. Oh yeah,
but I've never eaten panicotta in any other reund but yours. Okay, Well,
I always eat it every time I come.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
You do? You come usually on a Wednesday or Thursday.
You always sit on table for and you always sit
at the same seat. And I was just wondering how
you feel about restaurants and food.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, I love restaurants. I've owned a couple. I don't
use restaurants for occasions. Restaurants are part of my life.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Because your mom worked in the Lion's Corner house.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, my mother was a cook in a lion's corner house.
That was the first sort of brasserie in England that
I ever saw. There were no braiseries in England, but
Lion's Corner House was a brasserie. I realized later when
I went to France and loved the braseries in France,
and I came back to England and I met Peter
Langan and we both said there isn't a brasserie in London,
(07:28):
and we opened Langard's brasseriie together, what was it like
being involved in a restaurant fabulous?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
What did you like about it?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well? I loved the idea right from the start of
designing the restaurant and didn't getting drunk for nothing.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
How did you design it? What would your design be?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Of the design there is? I said, how we got
to design this? Said Peter Langer, my partner. He said,
We've got masses of walls. It was an enormous restaurant.
He said, we cover them with pictures, paintings. I said, paintings.
I said, I'm the money. I said no, he said,
we'll get wonderful paintings for very little money. Because I
had the perfect partner, who's going to help me? Choose him?
(08:07):
I said, what's his name? He said, David? Helpney. David
even did the menu forever. Yeah, so I had a
great time.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
When you sort of started out acting and being an
actor on your own. Was food important to you then?
Would you grab something or did you go back to
your Now?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I used to go to the cheapest possible restaurant I
could find. I mean, I had no money. I found
an Italian restaurant in Soho that served three course meal
for half a crown.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Half a crown and six. I interviewed Paul McCartney the
other day and he was telling me that the first
really good meal that he remembers was going with George
Martin to Latoine and that was an awakening for him
of what food could be. Do you remember an experience
going from an expensive, cheap restaurants to actually having your first.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, my first thing was when my dad died. He
left me a bit of money, about one hundred pounds,
and I was so sad. I thought, I'm going to
get on a train and go to Paris. And I
got on a train on my own and went to Paris.
And I stayed there for about seven months. And I
adored the food in Paris. I loved it, but I
(09:25):
adore English.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I remember how old you were when you went to Paris.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I was seventeen seventeen.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, so you took the hundred pounds at the one
hundred pounds last year seven months.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
No I worked. I used to sell on the street,
freaked freak for a franc used to get free for
a franc. I used to sell that. And I had
a French mate who had a cafe so there. Then
I had an American friend, another sort of broke like me,
and he worked in the air terminal, so I used
(09:55):
to go in there and I could get free food
from him. And I used to have an empty suitcase.
I'd sleep on the sofa as I was waiting for
a plane if I didn't have enough money. But I
love Paris, and I learned to speak French. I speak
very good friends, It's good.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Do you remember, like the first grand meal that you
had when you had money, which will you take into
a restaurant and had something amazingly sophisticated to eat and
that made you interested in food, even food.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah. The restaurant was the White Elephant, that was Encouragement Street. Yes,
and we went there. I'm trying to think what the
hell it was We had. Oh it was to do
with cavia. Ah, and there was cavia all over the place,
and I never got over that. I'd never eaten the
caviar obviously couldn't afford it. But then this whole dish
(10:41):
was cavire. It was wonderful. I know who it was too.
Harry Saltzmith had given me the part in Ichris File,
and he took me to the White Elephant. And of
course I was under contract. You know, I could have
anything I liked, and I suddenly realized that's what my
life is going to be.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
But having great food could be possible.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, having enough money to have great.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Food, because I think food is an aspiration, isn't it
Having great food or something that you can it opens
you up to a world.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Is why I come here.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
What about when you went to make the Italian Job
in Italy? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Oh? I had a wonderful time. It was a great
restaurant every evening.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Did they cook on set? Do you eat? No?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
No, we didn't buy that much with lunch because a
movie is a hard thing to make, you know, especially
when with all those cars and crowds, like an Italian job.
So we concentrated on that all day. I mean, you
wind up having a sandwich or a bowl of spaghetti,
but then you'd have a great meal in the evening.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And if you are in a film, do you really
try and avoid food or do you find it's good
to sit.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Down and have no I avoid food. Yeah, I don't
want to go to sleep in the afternoon when I
was supposed to be doing ten pages of dialogue. Food
makes you go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
When you make movies in la Is there a restaurant
that you go to?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, Chasins.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
We ate the Chasin tell us about Chasins.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Chasins was almost like a club. I used to go
there every Friday and you look around the room and
Alfred Hitchcock was always sitting there. Kerry Grant was over there,
you know, and it was one of those incredible places,
you know. But everybody only ever went to the same
restaurant on the same day. If you went to Chasings
(12:22):
on a Tuesday, would have been crowded, but there'd been
no stars there. The stars were there Friday night, and
Spargo was another one Thursday. Everyone was in Spargo. And
the great thing about that is that there was great
food and a great atmosphere. But there were stars everywhere,
just all the movie stars I've been seeing in movies
all my life. My grandfather knew Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock
(12:46):
was born in South London. His father had a grocery
store next door to my great grandfather with Alfred Hitchcock.
When I went to Universal making a picture Gambit with
Shirley McLean, was given a dressing room bungalow next door
to his. His was a permanent one, it was always in.
Mine was a temporary one. And I've got to know
(13:06):
him very welcome from both from South London. And I
said him one day I saw, I said, I saw
strangers on a train and there wasn't one shot of
a train in the entire movie, going along a track
to somewhere. He said, whose viewpoint on the train would
that have been? And there in one line he summed
(13:30):
up directing movies. And I remember that you never did
a movie.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
With his Scot, did you.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I bet people who did movies and they loved him.
I never did. I never got that lucky.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
If you sit near the wood of and you get
a great view of what we're cooking, whether it's dover soles, turbots, pigeons,
or pieces of beef. Today we're making potatoes eleven oregano,
parsley and black olive alfuna. The potatoes are in here
now with all the herbs, good olive, all season twelve.
You have to incorporate all your.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Mouthy lemons chopped and chopped garlic a little bit later.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
If I put them into soon, the garlic would probably
go too quickly, as with the lemon. Now the potatoes
have had a bit of a head start.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Then we'll get all the lemon and the garlic in
that and they will all come together.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
The other thing I think about restaurants, having worked in
one and having an open kitchen really seeing the people
who come in, is that people do very private things
in a public space. So they'll use a restaurant to
fire someone, or they'll use a restaurant admit an affair,
or they'll use a restaurant to get divorced. You see
a lot of tears, but if you talk to my waiters,
(14:44):
they will tell you about the amazing amount of people
who'll cry.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Well, people at my table have cried, but with laughter, wait,
jokes and stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I consider myself a Duff commits.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
When you've been asked to be in a movie, will
you have had meetings with you know?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh, in Hollywood you're always with executives and it's quite serious.
But it's never dinner. It's always lunch. I would never
discuss business at dinner. You've got to come to lunch
for that, because I'm not wasting the dinner doing it.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Do you think that's just you or is it most people?
You go into Hollywood restaurants at lunch time and it's
all business. Yeah, it's all business lunches.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
When Richard and I went to New York, the thing
that I was really interested was we were often taken
out to lunch by his clients, to the Four Seasons
and the Secret Building. And the thing I still notice
is that nobody drinks. No. You know, Richard asked for
a glass of white wine, and I think they thought
he was an alcoholic, you know, having and if you
go around, they're having fantastic food, but with iced tea.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
With New York, I find a restaurant and live in it.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
My restaurant in New York was Elaines. Yeah. Elaine was
a lady who owned this restaurant named after her, and
she was one of my closest friends. And she was
everyone's close, just mine, and you always met people there. Yeah,
I mean it was a very showbiz area. Yeah, very showbiz.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I know for myself that people will return to a
restaurant where they're welcomed with warmth, with kindness, and the
food might not be the top priority, but people will
come back to a restaurant if their chicken was overcooked
or their lemon tart was a bit you know, curdly.
But I certainly will not go back to a restaurant
where I've been treated badly or I've been people been arrogant,
(16:30):
or you know, you go. I want people to feel
safe when they.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Go on restaurant where I got treated badly. I never
did because I'm so fussy about restaurants, and yeah, I
read about them, you know, before I go the first time. Yeah,
and I've always been in restaurants all over the world,
but the River Cafe in particular. Someone took me there
the first time, and I was stunned by the restaurant.
(16:54):
I had never seen a restaurant like that. It was
the highest restaurant I've been in the widest and being
well known, and people coming asking for autographs. You sit
so far apart from each other that no one recognizes you,
especially if like me, got a baseball cap and dark glasses.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
You know that helps.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
And you can see all the staff cooking, and there
was a big boiler doing pizzas with great big flames
coming out.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You would be meaning the wood oven.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, And I had never seen a restaurant like that.
I mean of the sixties, the big popular restaurants for
small Italian brasseries which took over from the English restaurant.
You know, where you had to leave a sort of
nine o'clock about half past eight. You see the headweight.
They're looking at his watch. Great, when are the bloody
people leaving? But what there was also he sees the timing.
(17:43):
You stay as long as you like. You leave when
you finished the dinner, not when the waiters have got
fed up.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think that when Rose and I started the River Cafe,
we were at a point in restaurant world. And it
wasn't just us. It was Alice Walters in San Francisco
and Sally Clark in London and Roly in London as well.
And I think we were at a point where you
could either go to a very very established, well cooked
meal formal it was an occasion you would go out,
(18:10):
you'd dress up, and you'd be humiliated by the wine waiter,
you know, but you would have a good meal. And
then there were the kind of like you said, the
cheap Italians or the Greek or the places where you
could go and have a great time but maybe not
eat so well. And we thought, well, why can't you
combine the two. Why can't you do a place that
has elegance and it has drama, all the things we
(18:32):
look for, but also you could have fun.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
From my point of view as an actor, I realized
that I love writing. I'm writing a book now another one. Yeah,
And I loved a garden and I love to cook.
And if you think that there are three things, you
do them on your own. My life is spent with
one hundred and fifty people all day, and when I
(18:57):
go home, I write, cook or garden on my own.
And that's why I chose those things. I didn't know
i'd chosen them for that.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
One of the questions that I ask everybody at the
end of the conversation is we have food when we're hungry.
We have food when we're celebrating, but sometimes we just
want food for comfort. What would that be your comfort food?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, years ago, sausage of mesh. Yes, now it's caveo.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Okay. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe,
go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi. I'm Michael Caine and I'm here with a very
good friend of mine called Ruthie Rogers.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I often say that the real reason I have a
restaurant is that once a week I get to walk
Michael Caine from Table four through the crowded restaurant to
his car and say good night to a man I
admire and I adore.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Is that me? Oh? Yeah, well, I love the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I always say, what do we always say? Now? We
both say it the only reason she has a restaurant.
In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have
chosen from one of our cookbooks. I talk about food,
the food they cook, the food they eat, and most
(00:57):
of all, the food of their memories.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The River Cafe have a dessert which is my favorite,
and it's called Pannacotta with grapper. So what I'm going
to do is I'm going to give you the recipe
in cash. You want to make it for yourself, Okay,
Pour nine hundred milligrams of cream into a pan, Add
(01:22):
the vanilla pods, add the lemon ride, bring to the boil.
Simmer and reducee by a third pass through a sieve.
Then scrape the seeds from inside the vanilla pods back
into the cream and discard the alter pods. Remove the
gelatine from the milk. Heat the milk until hot, then
(01:42):
return the gelatine to the milk and stir until dissolved.
Pour through a sieve into a hot cream and leave
to cool, stirring occasionally. Lightly whip the remaining cream with
the icing sugar, fold into the cold cream mixture and
then add grapper. It is now ready to be poured
into six small balls and put into the fridge for
(02:05):
at least three hours or if you like, overnight.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So, Michael, here we are Yeh River Cafe. But let's
go back to the beginning. You were born in London.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I was born in Burmasey, which is South London.
But I'm a company because I was born in a
part of Burmasey which is opposite bow Bells. And if
you're born within the sound of bow bells, you're a company.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
What about food? Do you have memories of food?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah? My memory of food is this. My father was
a Billies Gape fish market porter and he was a
big gambler, and so he never bought steak or anything.
It was too deer. But he used to nick a
lot of fish. So for fifteen years I ate fish,
every kind of fish you can imagine, and I realized
that's a very healthy thing. And also another accidental healthy
(02:56):
thing for me was the Second World War. You couldn't
get any sugar. You couldn't get any of those things,
those drinks that you have now with all this sugar
in it. Then I was evacuated into the country away
from the smug which in Bermondsey then was terrible because
of everyone had cold fires. But I was evacuated to
the country and I lived on a farm for six years.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Do you remember the food there.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Oh, the food was wonderful. I mean some of the
food I caught myself because I could outrun a rabbit.
And I used to catch a rabbit with a stick
and give it to my mother to cook for dinner.
Pheasant partridge. We remember all those things, and so thinking
back on it, health wise, I was very lucky. And
not on top of all that, my mother insisted I
ate porridge for breakfast. For fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
You had fish, you had pheasants, had.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Porridge, rabbit and everything had fresh vegetables. We lived on
a farm. We used to go and knick the cabbage.
And eventually we came back to London and the council
gave us a prefabricated house which was made of asbestos,
and they put them up like in two weeks, and
people were sort of sympathizing with people like me who
(04:05):
were having to live in these prefabricated houses. And what
they didn't know was what life was like before because
in the flat we lived in when I was a
little boy, there was no toilet. For a start. You
had to go down to the garden, so I had
very strong legs, or you bought a pot pop, you know.
But when we walked into the prefab the first time,
(04:27):
my brother Stanley and I, we were stunned. We were
in a place which for the first time had electric light,
an indoor toilet, and it had a little garden. It
was unbelievable in the middle of London and the Elephant Castle.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Do you remember the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
The kitchen was lovely. It was an electric stove and
a refrigerator, you know, it was a refrigerator. We'd never
seen a refrigerator and we had a bathroom. I mean
when we used to have a bath in the kitchen,
in a bath that my mothers pour hot watering in
the kettle.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
So you imagine mother and father moving with their children
to this prefabricated house which it had had a bathroom,
it had a kitchen, it had a view, it had
a garden. So how do you think that changed her
way of being with you and cooking for you.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It was fabulous for her because it cut out masses
of work to do things, you know, And she was
so happy and the food got even better.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Why do you like the pana cootta?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, the panakotta has little bits of fruit in it,
and I can eat that without conscience because I'm eating fruit,
you know. And I said, oh, look it's a BlackBerry.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
It just happened to have a little bit of extra
panicotta with it because it was quite old and I
can't stuff down sugar as much as i'd like to,
and there's quite a lot of sugar in it.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
It's quite a bit. But she just read the have
you ever made it?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Oh? No, I never make desserts. I only does and
veitch because I'm afraid of eating them.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Oh, okay. And what do you make when you make
a main course? What do you like to cook?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, I'm the one responsible in the house for Sunday lunch,
so I do roast beef, roast lam Christmas, I do
the roast turkey. I do the best, allegedly the best
roast potatoes anybody who ever came ever eaten. Yeah, I'm
very good at that. Well, the trick is, when they're
cooked is to mash them just a little bit, just
crack them open, put oil on them, and then bake
(06:29):
them again, so they always got baked inside. Oh yeah,
but I've never eaten panicotta in any other reund but yours. Okay, Well,
I always eat it every time I come.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
You do? You come usually on a Wednesday or Thursday.
You always sit on table for and you always sit
at the same seat. And I was just wondering how
you feel about restaurants and food.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, I love restaurants. I've owned a couple. I don't
use restaurants for occasions. Restaurants are part of my life.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Because your mom worked in the Lion's Corner house.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, my mother was a cook in a lion's corner house.
That was the first sort of brasserie in England that
I ever saw. There were no braiseries in England, but
Lion's Corner House was a brasserie. I realized later when
I went to France and loved the braseries in France,
and I came back to England and I met Peter
Langan and we both said there isn't a brasserie in London,
(07:28):
and we opened Langard's brasseriie together, what was it like
being involved in a restaurant fabulous?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
What did you like about it?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well? I loved the idea right from the start of
designing the restaurant and didn't getting drunk for nothing.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
How did you design it? What would your design be?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Of the design there is? I said, how we got
to design this? Said Peter Langer, my partner. He said,
We've got masses of walls. It was an enormous restaurant.
He said, we cover them with pictures, paintings. I said, paintings.
I said, I'm the money. I said no, he said,
we'll get wonderful paintings for very little money. Because I
had the perfect partner, who's going to help me? Choose him?
(08:07):
I said, what's his name? He said, David? Helpney. David
even did the menu forever. Yeah, so I had a
great time.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
When you sort of started out acting and being an
actor on your own. Was food important to you then?
Would you grab something or did you go back to
your Now?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I used to go to the cheapest possible restaurant I
could find. I mean, I had no money. I found
an Italian restaurant in Soho that served three course meal
for half a crown.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Half a crown and six. I interviewed Paul McCartney the
other day and he was telling me that the first
really good meal that he remembers was going with George
Martin to Latoine and that was an awakening for him
of what food could be. Do you remember an experience
going from an expensive, cheap restaurants to actually having your first.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, my first thing was when my dad died. He
left me a bit of money, about one hundred pounds,
and I was so sad. I thought, I'm going to
get on a train and go to Paris. And I
got on a train on my own and went to Paris.
And I stayed there for about seven months. And I
adored the food in Paris. I loved it, but I
(09:25):
adore English.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I remember how old you were when you went to Paris.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I was seventeen seventeen.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, so you took the hundred pounds at the one
hundred pounds last year seven months.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
No I worked. I used to sell on the street,
freaked freak for a franc used to get free for
a franc. I used to sell that. And I had
a French mate who had a cafe so there. Then
I had an American friend, another sort of broke like me,
and he worked in the air terminal, so I used
(09:55):
to go in there and I could get free food
from him. And I used to have an empty suitcase.
I'd sleep on the sofa as I was waiting for
a plane if I didn't have enough money. But I
love Paris, and I learned to speak French. I speak
very good friends, It's good.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Do you remember, like the first grand meal that you
had when you had money, which will you take into
a restaurant and had something amazingly sophisticated to eat and
that made you interested in food, even food.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah. The restaurant was the White Elephant, that was Encouragement Street. Yes,
and we went there. I'm trying to think what the
hell it was We had. Oh it was to do
with cavia. Ah, and there was cavia all over the place,
and I never got over that. I'd never eaten the
caviar obviously couldn't afford it. But then this whole dish
(10:41):
was cavire. It was wonderful. I know who it was too.
Harry Saltzmith had given me the part in Ichris File,
and he took me to the White Elephant. And of
course I was under contract. You know, I could have
anything I liked, and I suddenly realized that's what my
life is going to be.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
But having great food could be possible.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, having enough money to have great.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Food, because I think food is an aspiration, isn't it
Having great food or something that you can it opens
you up to a world.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Is why I come here.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
What about when you went to make the Italian Job
in Italy? What was that like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Oh? I had a wonderful time. It was a great
restaurant every evening.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Did they cook on set? Do you eat? No?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
No, we didn't buy that much with lunch because a
movie is a hard thing to make, you know, especially
when with all those cars and crowds, like an Italian job.
So we concentrated on that all day. I mean, you
wind up having a sandwich or a bowl of spaghetti,
but then you'd have a great meal in the evening.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And if you are in a film, do you really
try and avoid food or do you find it's good
to sit.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Down and have no I avoid food. Yeah, I don't
want to go to sleep in the afternoon when I
was supposed to be doing ten pages of dialogue. Food
makes you go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
When you make movies in la Is there a restaurant
that you go to?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, Chasins.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
We ate the Chasin tell us about Chasins.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Chasins was almost like a club. I used to go
there every Friday and you look around the room and
Alfred Hitchcock was always sitting there. Kerry Grant was over there,
you know, and it was one of those incredible places,
you know. But everybody only ever went to the same
restaurant on the same day. If you went to Chasings
(12:22):
on a Tuesday, would have been crowded, but there'd been
no stars there. The stars were there Friday night, and
Spargo was another one Thursday. Everyone was in Spargo. And
the great thing about that is that there was great
food and a great atmosphere. But there were stars everywhere,
just all the movie stars I've been seeing in movies
all my life. My grandfather knew Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock
(12:46):
was born in South London. His father had a grocery
store next door to my great grandfather with Alfred Hitchcock.
When I went to Universal making a picture Gambit with
Shirley McLean, was given a dressing room bungalow next door
to his. His was a permanent one, it was always in.
Mine was a temporary one. And I've got to know
(13:06):
him very welcome from both from South London. And I
said him one day I saw, I said, I saw
strangers on a train and there wasn't one shot of
a train in the entire movie, going along a track
to somewhere. He said, whose viewpoint on the train would
that have been? And there in one line he summed
(13:30):
up directing movies. And I remember that you never did
a movie.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
With his Scot, did you.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I bet people who did movies and they loved him.
I never did. I never got that lucky.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
If you sit near the wood of and you get
a great view of what we're cooking, whether it's dover soles, turbots, pigeons,
or pieces of beef. Today we're making potatoes eleven oregano,
parsley and black olive alfuna. The potatoes are in here
now with all the herbs, good olive, all season twelve.
You have to incorporate all your.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Mouthy lemons chopped and chopped garlic a little bit later.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
If I put them into soon, the garlic would probably
go too quickly, as with the lemon. Now the potatoes
have had a bit of a head start.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Then we'll get all the lemon and the garlic in
that and they will all come together.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
The other thing I think about restaurants, having worked in
one and having an open kitchen really seeing the people
who come in, is that people do very private things
in a public space. So they'll use a restaurant to
fire someone, or they'll use a restaurant admit an affair,
or they'll use a restaurant to get divorced. You see
a lot of tears, but if you talk to my waiters,
(14:44):
they will tell you about the amazing amount of people
who'll cry.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Well, people at my table have cried, but with laughter, wait,
jokes and stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I consider myself a Duff commits.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
When you've been asked to be in a movie, will
you have had meetings with you know?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh, in Hollywood you're always with executives and it's quite serious.
But it's never dinner. It's always lunch. I would never
discuss business at dinner. You've got to come to lunch
for that, because I'm not wasting the dinner doing it.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Do you think that's just you or is it most people?
You go into Hollywood restaurants at lunch time and it's
all business. Yeah, it's all business lunches.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
When Richard and I went to New York, the thing
that I was really interested was we were often taken
out to lunch by his clients, to the Four Seasons
and the Secret Building. And the thing I still notice
is that nobody drinks. No. You know, Richard asked for
a glass of white wine, and I think they thought
he was an alcoholic, you know, having and if you
go around, they're having fantastic food, but with iced tea.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
With New York, I find a restaurant and live in it.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
My restaurant in New York was Elaines. Yeah. Elaine was
a lady who owned this restaurant named after her, and
she was one of my closest friends. And she was
everyone's close, just mine, and you always met people there. Yeah,
I mean it was a very showbiz area. Yeah, very showbiz.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I know for myself that people will return to a
restaurant where they're welcomed with warmth, with kindness, and the
food might not be the top priority, but people will
come back to a restaurant if their chicken was overcooked
or their lemon tart was a bit you know, curdly.
But I certainly will not go back to a restaurant
where I've been treated badly or I've been people been arrogant,
(16:30):
or you know, you go. I want people to feel
safe when they.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Go on restaurant where I got treated badly. I never
did because I'm so fussy about restaurants, and yeah, I
read about them, you know, before I go the first time. Yeah,
and I've always been in restaurants all over the world,
but the River Cafe in particular. Someone took me there
the first time, and I was stunned by the restaurant.
(16:54):
I had never seen a restaurant like that. It was
the highest restaurant I've been in the widest and being
well known, and people coming asking for autographs. You sit
so far apart from each other that no one recognizes you,
especially if like me, got a baseball cap and dark glasses.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
You know that helps.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
And you can see all the staff cooking, and there
was a big boiler doing pizzas with great big flames
coming out.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You would be meaning the wood oven.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, And I had never seen a restaurant like that.
I mean of the sixties, the big popular restaurants for
small Italian brasseries which took over from the English restaurant.
You know, where you had to leave a sort of
nine o'clock about half past eight. You see the headweight.
They're looking at his watch. Great, when are the bloody
people leaving? But what there was also he sees the timing.
(17:43):
You stay as long as you like. You leave when
you finished the dinner, not when the waiters have got
fed up.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think that when Rose and I started the River Cafe,
we were at a point in restaurant world. And it
wasn't just us. It was Alice Walters in San Francisco
and Sally Clark in London and Roly in London as well.
And I think we were at a point where you
could either go to a very very established, well cooked
meal formal it was an occasion you would go out,
(18:10):
you'd dress up, and you'd be humiliated by the wine waiter,
you know, but you would have a good meal. And
then there were the kind of like you said, the
cheap Italians or the Greek or the places where you
could go and have a great time but maybe not
eat so well. And we thought, well, why can't you
combine the two. Why can't you do a place that
has elegance and it has drama, all the things we
(18:32):
look for, but also you could have fun.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
From my point of view as an actor, I realized
that I love writing. I'm writing a book now another one. Yeah,
And I loved a garden and I love to cook.
And if you think that there are three things, you
do them on your own. My life is spent with
one hundred and fifty people all day, and when I
(18:57):
go home, I write, cook or garden on my own.
And that's why I chose those things. I didn't know
i'd chosen them for that.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
One of the questions that I ask everybody at the
end of the conversation is we have food when we're hungry.
We have food when we're celebrating, but sometimes we just
want food for comfort. What would that be your comfort food?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, years ago, sausage of mesh. Yes, now it's caveo.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Okay. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe,
go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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