June 28, 2022 • 26 mins
My favourite line in this conversation from our 41st episode of River Cafe Table 4, is Austin Butler saying he and I are ‘family’.
Austin arrived straight from playing Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s movie ‘Elvis’ in January 2021 and we met soon after.
London was just out of a COVID lockdown and, needing an immediate tradition, we decided to have dinner at my home every Sunday night with the same small group of friends. Austin would arrive early and cook with me, and this is what we did, every Sunday, for 39 weeks.
Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and an extraordinary friend.
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 River Cafe 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/
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Transcript
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 I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. My favorite line in
this conversation is when Austin Butler refers to his and
my relationship as family. Austin arrived here from filming bas
(00:23):
Lermann's movie Elvis, playing Elvis himself. London was just out
of COVID lockdown and needing an immediate tradition. We decided
to have dinner at my home every Sunday night with
the same small group of friends. Austin would turn up
early and cook with me, and this is what we
(00:45):
did every Sunday for thirty nine weeks. Austin is a
brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and a true friend.
And Austin is my family. So Austin, you and I
(01:06):
are here in the River Cafe to talk about food,
our memories, travel and a lot more. But maybe we
should just start with Australia. I was in Australia for
a year and a half. I was making the Elvis
with bass Larman. Did you have food on set? Tod
you sit down to meals, Yeah, Well we did this thing.
(01:29):
It's I'm realizing it's very European sort of thing where
you have these rolling lunches, which basically means you don't
have a lunch break. You eat while you're filming. And
I actually kind of like it because it keeps momentum
of filming. And so while we were filming a lot
(01:54):
of times it was just I was eating for It
was like gasoline, you know, eating for for energy. I
just got making the most thing black hand. And then
when we wrapped, Bas and I We're at his house
(02:17):
and there was a small group of us, and it
was the night that we wrapped it was it was
the first time that he and I both sort of
were able to go, ah, we did it. You know,
we've been working on this for I've been a task
for about two and a half years at that point,
maybe three years. He'd been doing this for longer, five
or eight years or something. And we we just we
(02:37):
danced until the sun came up. We just yeah, well
we had a little group there, but we we just
put on vinyl records and we just danced and we
ate oysters and we just we just lived life. It
was like this feeling of letting our hair down and um,
and then the sun started to come up and uh.
And Bass looked out and he lived across the street
(02:58):
from the sea, and he said, should we go swim
in the ocean right now? And this is the night
that we wrapped the film, and so we both we
were like, yeah, let's do it. So we ran across
the street and we jumped in the ocean and it's
like five in the morning now, and we swam in
the ocean and so the sun's rising and and I
(03:18):
was gonna not go that night as well, and I said,
I said, Bass, I can't believe I was gonna go
to sleep tonight. And he started singing Nesta and he goes,
no sleep tonight, No sleep tonight. He sat singing this
opera and I hadn't really heard that song, and he
was telling me the story of the opera and then
he said, I'll play it for you when we get
back to the shore. And he went back to the shore,
(03:39):
and I kind of took a second from myself in
the ocean where it's just me. I just watched the
sunrise and I sort of processed all that we had done.
And you don't know the final outcome of a film.
You you hope that you you did everything you possibly could,
and you gave every bit of your soul, but you
don't know how it's gonna be received. But at that moment,
I just kind of processed all that you had, the
(04:00):
work that we had done, and and and the joy
and the love that we put into it. And I
sort of had that moment. And as I sort of
slowly walked back the shore, I look at baths and
he's holding a speaker above his head like John Cusack
and say anything, and he's playing Nessador, the Pavaratti version,
and it's blaring at like five thirty in the morning
now on the beaches of the Gold Coast. It was
(04:23):
so magical and cinematic. And then we made breakfast. What
was that we made? We we looked in the refrigerator
and thought, okay, what can we make? Because he and
I both had been working so hard. And there's this
thing about filming where you're there's so many responsibilities that
other people end up almost treating you like you're a child.
(04:44):
In many areas, they walk you to the bathroom, you know,
if you if you're If I said I'm want to
go to the trailer, they walk me there and to
make sure I don't get lost. They treat you like
you can't do anything, and they bring you your food
and so you're very spoiled in many ways. But there's
something so relieving about that moment when you were finally
able to do something for yourself. And uh, and so
(05:05):
he and I that that was our moment. We opened
the refrigerator and we saw that, okay, we got eggs,
we got asparagus, we got some spinach there, we got
some tomatoes, we got some parmesan cheese. What can we do?
And so we kind of just made this breakfast. And
there's these this loaf of bread and so we cut
off bits of this bread and we toasted it and
just made this delicious meal. And that's one of the
(05:25):
most glorious memories of my life. Was like after we
finished this thing that was so terrifying and daunting, and
we gave it everything we could and then and then
we just sat there and as the morning sun sort
of laid down on us and ate that breakfast and
it was so glorious. It's it's about memories, isn't It's
about the time. And what about Tarantino? He was he
(05:46):
interested in food? Yeah, remember one night we were we
were doing night shoots and it was about three in
the morning. He had this amazing crepe maker come and
and make crepes and we were eating these amazing crepes
and and uh he said, he said, Austin, you know,
(06:06):
my thing is I want to give everybody such a
good experience on this job that their next job sucks.
And it was such a wonderful thing. So every every
night there would be some new food thing that he
would he would organize, so you just had this thing
to look forward to. And and the other thing that
he did was after every hundred rolls of film, which,
(06:30):
believe it or not, this was the first time I
had shot anything on film, because everything since I grew
up was on digital essentially with every person that I've
worked with, and so that was really special, just hearing
the sound of the film going through the camera when
you're sitting in the car. And but every hundred rolls
of film, you'd throw a party and it would have
a theme, so you'd have you know, that Grappo would
(06:52):
come out and and so everybody and they'd be singing
these songs and or Margarita's would come out. I need
to have a mariachi band or so there every hundred rolls,
whether it be ten in the morning or you know,
three in the morning, it was something to look forward to.
I think that does actually give people a kind of
commitment to the person you're working for. You know that
(07:13):
they're taking care of you, know they're thinking about you,
They're recognizing that you're working hard and that you want
to give them something back. It's a lot, doesn't it
When you lived by yourself. He once told me that
you chose a house in Los Angeles because it had
a pizza of it. Oh that was There's this beautiful
(07:36):
house that had belonged to Gary oldman before, and he
had built a pizza oven. And I became obsessed with
learning how to make the perfect fire and this pizza oven,
the specific type of wood and exactly how to lay it.
And I got one of those laser temperature gauges so
I could make it a thousand degrees and learned how
(07:57):
to make the pizza sauce, the dough and everything, and
and it was actually Christmas that I made the most pieces,
I think, And the first couple kind of came out rough,
and then and then I started to get really into
the zone of it. And it's amazing to me how
you how fast you could cook a pizza and in
that heat thirty seconds or forty five seconds you can
(08:18):
cook a whole pizza. Yeah, so I cook pizzas from
my whole family, and such a great experience just getting
to feed them, and and and the special thing of
all kind of being around the fire. And and we
had this table out there and it sort of looked
like the Secret Garden and as well in his backyard.
And cooked all these pieces. And then I started getting
into other things. I thought, what else can I cook
(08:40):
at this fire? And there's a restaurant in l a
called Patch that is in Laurel Canyon that makes this
um salmon on a seedar plank, and so I thought,
I want to learn how to make that. And so
I ended up getting these cedar planks and you soaking
them in water and putting the salmon on top and
seasoning it and sticking it in the wood fire of whatever.
It came out so incredibly, this is something solitary. When
(09:04):
I talked to Michael Caine, he said that he'd loved
to write a book You Had to Garden, and he
liked to cook because doing a movie, you are surrounded
by hundreds of people surrounded whatever you're doing. You just
describe being walked to the bathroom or trying to find
your trail. There's always someone around. And then he chose
three solitary things that you can do on your own.
(09:27):
So it sounds like maybe that cooking was something that
you could do without Absolutely makes you feel so sufficient, Yeah,
and also giving giving it back to people that you
want to feed. Absolutely, it becomes my love language in
a way. I cook so much for the people around me.
(09:48):
I'll look into their eyes when they're eating it and
try to see if they love it as much as
they say they do, and and try to figure out
ways of making it better. And it sounds the way
you're talking about it like a performance. Yeah. Do you
think there are parallels between acting or performing or singing
and cooking looking into people's eyes and seeing how they
(10:08):
are responding to your performance. Absolutely. Grilled white peaches with
Emiretto serves six six ripe white peaches, one vanilla pod,
(10:31):
two tablespoons cast or sugar d and twenty million leaders amaretto.
Pre heat of into one ninety degrees celsius heat a
grilled pan until very hot. Cut each peach in half
and remove the stone. Place the peach halves cut side
down on the hot pan and grill until slightly charred.
(10:53):
Remove from the pan and place face up on an
ovenproof dish. Slice the vanilla po odd length ways and
put with the sugar into a mortar pound until the
vanilla pod is broken up and combined with the sugar.
Scatter the vanilla sugar over the peaches and pour over
half of the armoretto. Bake for ten minutes or until
(11:17):
the peaches are soft. Add the remaining amoretto, and serve
hot or cold with a spoonful of crime fresh. Thank you,
that sounds delicious. Austin amaretto an Italian liqueur peaches grilled.
Is that anything to do with any food you grew
up with in California? Yeah? So, I was born in Anaheim,
(11:43):
right near Disneyland, and we used to have these. We
used to have trees in the backyard that that it
wasn't We didn't have peaches, but we had grapefruit trees,
and we had an orange tree in the backyard, and
and so like the smell of of fresh fruit. I
remember momm picking it and us having this fresh fruit
and the kitchen and these lemons and grapefruit, and so
(12:07):
that's that's sort of what that made me think of,
did you amount could cook? She was a great cook,
and especially as the years went on, I remember eating
a lot of fish sticks and you know, the things
that you'd get in the freezer aisle, and uh, little
corn dogs that she would make. Because when I was born,
(12:29):
she wanted to be a stay at home and she
was a dental high genius at the time, and then
she uh she ended up starting daycare out of the house,
and so she would watch the children of the mothers
who taught at the school right right around the corner
that I eventually went to elementary school there, and so
so we always had little children in the house and
(12:50):
so she she had to make these meals that were
really quick and easy. Um So as a kid, I
just remember eating those and tuna fish sandwiches and peanut
butter and jelly sam witches and um so, nothing really
gourmet at all. And then as the years went on,
she became vegetarian, and then she became vegan, and then
she got really into making special things with portobello mushrooms
(13:13):
and bell peppers, stuffed with goose coups or things like that.
So she got a little bit more into it later on.
But when I was growing up, it wasn't extremely healthy
in the house. It was it was kind of efficient meals.
And she's probably working so hard. She was working so
much in it. I mean, there was twelve kids in
the house sometimes and all different ages. And when I
(13:36):
was when I started going to elementary school, we lived
around the corner from that same school, and I would
walk home every lunch and she'd have a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich waiting for me, and uh, and we
watched this home decorating show called Surprise by Design and UH,
and then we would we would come up with things
that we were going to do around the house, and
(13:56):
so we'd we'd lay a brick path in the backyard
or or um plant little flowers or that sort of thing.
We get inspired by this show. And I just remember
how excited I was to walk home every day and
just eat the sandwich that she made for me, and special.
That was a beautiful memory of your mother making something
for you and going home for lunch. That's that's Would
(14:18):
you have dinner as well? Would you all sit down
to dinner. What was that Well, my parents divorced on
our seven and a lot of my memories go back
to that time because it was when sort of the
stability of family split up and my dad moved into
this this person that he worked with, and he moved
into their garage and they had sort of a converted
(14:41):
garage and we had a tiny, little miniature fridge and
that was that was where we kept on our groceries.
And we had air mattresses that we slept on and
we put them down at night and then we put
them up and we put down a table during the day.
And so it was this one room that was our
entire house, and it was just this old garage and
there was a treadmill in the corner that was their
(15:02):
old treadmill, and we would we would make food there
and so we shared their kitchen. Better than that, we
had sort of just this one room. And um, I
started cooking as a kid because with my my dad
had he had work and so he would say, hey,
I'll pay you two dollars if you cooked dinner tonight,
(15:23):
and so it was a way that I could stock
up money as a kid, was cooking dinner, and there
was like three staple things maybe, and one of the
main ones that I remember is burritos. We'd make Dennison's
Chili beans burritos, which this can of beans with some
sour cream and cheese. And I haven't eaten one of
those in years, but we used to eat that every
night and um, and then a special occasion would be
(15:46):
getting a five dollar pizza from down the road or
something like that. So those were that was like the
idea of a fancy meal was ordering a pizza out
when I was a kid, which I think then years
later coming to a place like like your restaurant here,
going to French laundry for the first time or something
like that was was so I felt I felt so
(16:07):
out of my element in a way when I first
started going to really nice restaurants, because you know, five
dollars sounded like a lot from me when I was
a kid. Would you do the shopping or would he
order out? What? We would always we usually get a
Costco as a kid, and uh yeah, we'd get food
and bulk and then make meals out of that. Um.
(16:28):
And then at a certain point, I think when I
moved I moved out when I was seventeen and I
started I wanted to learn how to make food and
wanted to know how flavors fit together. And I started
making some money, and so I started trying restaurants in
l A or um. And then I worked in New
York for the first time, and that was really eye
(16:49):
opening because it's not just getting to try great little
Italian restaurants. And I remember going to Roberta's for the
first time, which is this restaurant in Brooklyn. Had a
friend of mine who owned all these restaurants in l A.
He said, this is the restaurant that made me want
to open a restaurant. And uh So going to Roberta's
and and and trying there, and it feels a lot
(17:10):
like here, where you feel like your home, you know
you you enter. And I realized I have a lot
of um instability in my life. There hasn't been a
lot of continuity in many areas of my life since
I was young. Um just because I travel a lot,
and and even the nature of doing a film or
(17:32):
TV show, you you sort of make a family of
the entire crew and then it splits up. And through therapy,
I sort of realized that that was that I was
almost like reliving my childhood of my parents getting divorced,
for you know, many years of making a family and
then it splits up, and you make a family and
it splits up. And so I'd seek out ways of
(17:54):
having stability and consistency and most of that from me
while on location, whether I was in Vancouver, New Zealand,
or Australia, here in London, or wherever I was, I
would I would find restaurants that became my second home,
and I get to the point where I'd go there
every day and the staff then knew me and I
(18:16):
knew them, and and suddenly it felt like there was
there was this thing that was separate from my work,
that felt like home. Even if I've woken up with anxiety,
or if i feel sad, or I feel overwhelmed, I
go to a restaurant, I think what you've created here
is so beautiful because I feel it here as well.
I'll come here with a book, and you know, and
(18:37):
I get to see you, and I get to read,
and I know the people who work here, and and
that goes even deeper because you and I have a
family relationship. Beyond that, I think I always say that
in an irregular world, we do need regular things. And
I think even if we have you know, your life,
you know the way you describe it, it's very moving
(18:58):
and very honest and a revelation of who you are.
But I think that even if you have a consistency
and you have those foundations and you have that life,
it's still we seek out. You know, you talk to
people about the Sunday lunch, people going home for Sunday lunch,
(19:19):
or Friday night supper or Christmas. The Christmas lunch has
to be the same every year, and so food does
mean that, doesn't It gives you a sense of stability.
And I always wanted a restaurant to feel like home,
you know, that is a place. I'm always amazed that
people will come to a restaurant even if they've had
a really bad day, you know, or something bad has happened.
(19:42):
Sometimes we need those days the most that you come morning,
I could hardly leave the house. I just felt anxious
for some reason, and then I got myself. I just said,
you know, I just got to get to the cafe.
And once you get there, then suddenly there's life around you,
and it's sort of buzzes, and you feel humanity wash
over you, and and things that are happening outside of
(20:02):
your own experience that and then and then you eat
delicious food and that really helps. Did you eat pizzas
in Italy when you went on that trip that you
took a road trip? Yeah, I had a lot of
(20:24):
pizza there. We we took this. One of the best
trips I've ever taken was this. I spent a month
just road tripping through Italy. That was probably four years
ago or something before I was. And we started in Milan,
drove from Milan to the coast and went to Portofino first,
(20:49):
and I only ever spent maybe a week in Italy
before this, and sounds incredible. And then drove down and
went to Chinqui Tera and hiked between the little villages
and when through the vineyards there had pesto. Oh, my gosh,
the best pesto pasta besides yours. They can make a
better one in mine. I'm not competible. It was incredible.
(21:12):
And then drove down through Tuscany, drove through Florence and
and did that for a couple of days, and drove
out to this little bed and breakfast in Tuscany. It
was run by this this beautiful Italian woman and her
husband and they had two daughters. And one of the
daughters would play piano in the afternoon and you'd hear
it reverberating through the vineyard and and so it's just
(21:34):
us in this family. And she'd bring for cotch up
and and you eat it around the pool in the
afternoon and and then uh, and then at night her
husband would would One night he caught a wild boar
and so then she made this wild boar and it
was just absolutely divine. And one of their daughters was
dating a young man who was eighteen years old that
(21:57):
he was half Israelian, half Italian. And he told me,
he said, you know, I I am a pilot. And
I said, oh, you're a pilot. That's that's fantastic. And
he said and he said, you know, I can fly
you if you want me to. And I said, wow, yeah,
I mean that would be cool. But I thought, I'm
not trusting our lives in this eighteen year old kids hands,
you know. And then the next night his his mom
(22:21):
came to dinner. She was in the Israeli Air Force,
and she said, you know, he's actually a very good pilot.
And I said, you know what, you only live once.
I mean, where where can we go? And he said,
you know, I can fly you to Elba It's where
and and I thought, well, last where Napoleon was exiled,
and you could go to that little island and that
would be really cool. And I said, you know what,
(22:41):
let's do it. Let's I'll pay for gas, I'll pay
for the plane whatever we need. And so we end
up we end up getting in the car and he
couldn't drive a car, but you can fly a plane.
And so we drive us all it's it's me and
my girlfriend at the time and him and his girlfriend,
and we we drive up to Flowlawrence and we end
(23:01):
up getting to the little like separate private area of
the airport and uh, we go through security and and
then he ends up going to a little garage and
by hand pulling out a little four seater Cessna see
you pictured the skinny little Italian. Oh my gosh, he
pulls this thing out by hand. I'm thinking, oh my god,
(23:22):
what are we doing here? It felt like riding in
a go cart or something. And we get into the
plane and go through all the pre flight checks and
then we take off and he and then I can't
hear him at all. It's static in the headphones, and
I see panic over his face. And we were in
the air now and we're flying. I'm thinking, he's the
only person that can land this plane, and his panic
(23:44):
on his face, and I can't hear him, and it's static.
And then I realized that he just couldn't figure out
how to switch a sortain switch, and and so we
couldn't hear each other. And once he figured that out,
then peace came upon the airplane. And and then he
told me, you know, it's a very dangerous landing place
in Elba because you have to fly in this zig
zag shape, and and so let's then I'm going to God.
We trust, and we end up zig zagging through the
(24:07):
mountains of Elba and landing and we got there safely, thankfully,
and and then we clearly and then we we ate
Pasta with him and his girlfriend that day for lunch,
and they flew back and we stayed and rode around
on Vespers and eight Pasta, all these different beaches on Elba,
and went to the vineyards that Napoleon used to go to.
(24:28):
And then he came back three days later and picked
us up on the plane and we flew back to
Florence and that was it was magic. So so the
adventure of travel, the adventure of eating, it's like over dinner.
You you create these adventures. You know, the culture of
a country is so taken through its food. And very often,
as as you know, we meet somebody who comes back
(24:49):
from a country and we don't ask what museum they
went to or you know, what what gallery they saw,
what church? What we do? But you know, this also
tells you so much by the saying, as you've just
described the food that they ate, the culture of the dinners,
or the shooting a boar or catching a fish, or
it's as exciting as getting on a plane crazily, I
(25:12):
might say, by somebody who don't know. You know, it's
all about curiosity and exploring and opening ourselves up. And
so if we think about you know, we've talked about
food as um memory of the food that you've found
that sets and traveling and working and the food that
(25:32):
we connects us all I suppose it connects our memories,
it connects each other. Is a sense of excitement, but
it's also set of comfort. What would be the food
you would probably go to for comfort. I've been away
from home for a long time, and as well as
the fact that my mother is not longer here. She
(25:53):
passed away when I was twenty three, and I almost
hadn't put it into conscious thought. But I often will.
After a big week or if I'm feeling really overwhelmed,
I'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that
becomes my thing. I made one the other day. Uh
and and it's just that that comforting sensation. Um. Yeah,
(26:17):
so that that's one of my go to comfort foods
for sure. I'll see your cards on Sunday night, my
days partner, Yeah, I see thank you. To visit the
online shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the
River Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table four
(26:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. My favorite line in
this conversation is when Austin Butler refers to his and
my relationship as family. Austin arrived here from filming bas
(00:23):
Lermann's movie Elvis, playing Elvis himself. London was just out
of COVID lockdown and needing an immediate tradition. We decided
to have dinner at my home every Sunday night with
the same small group of friends. Austin would turn up
early and cook with me, and this is what we
(00:45):
did every Sunday for thirty nine weeks. Austin is a
brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and a true friend.
And Austin is my family. So Austin, you and I
(01:06):
are here in the River Cafe to talk about food,
our memories, travel and a lot more. But maybe we
should just start with Australia. I was in Australia for
a year and a half. I was making the Elvis
with bass Larman. Did you have food on set? Tod
you sit down to meals, Yeah, Well we did this thing.
(01:29):
It's I'm realizing it's very European sort of thing where
you have these rolling lunches, which basically means you don't
have a lunch break. You eat while you're filming. And
I actually kind of like it because it keeps momentum
of filming. And so while we were filming a lot
(01:54):
of times it was just I was eating for It
was like gasoline, you know, eating for for energy. I
just got making the most thing black hand. And then
when we wrapped, Bas and I We're at his house
(02:17):
and there was a small group of us, and it
was the night that we wrapped it was it was
the first time that he and I both sort of
were able to go, ah, we did it. You know,
we've been working on this for I've been a task
for about two and a half years at that point,
maybe three years. He'd been doing this for longer, five
or eight years or something. And we we just we
(02:37):
danced until the sun came up. We just yeah, well
we had a little group there, but we we just
put on vinyl records and we just danced and we
ate oysters and we just we just lived life. It
was like this feeling of letting our hair down and um,
and then the sun started to come up and uh.
And Bass looked out and he lived across the street
(02:58):
from the sea, and he said, should we go swim
in the ocean right now? And this is the night
that we wrapped the film, and so we both we
were like, yeah, let's do it. So we ran across
the street and we jumped in the ocean and it's
like five in the morning now, and we swam in
the ocean and so the sun's rising and and I
(03:18):
was gonna not go that night as well, and I said,
I said, Bass, I can't believe I was gonna go
to sleep tonight. And he started singing Nesta and he goes,
no sleep tonight, No sleep tonight. He sat singing this
opera and I hadn't really heard that song, and he
was telling me the story of the opera and then
he said, I'll play it for you when we get
back to the shore. And he went back to the shore,
(03:39):
and I kind of took a second from myself in
the ocean where it's just me. I just watched the
sunrise and I sort of processed all that we had done.
And you don't know the final outcome of a film.
You you hope that you you did everything you possibly could,
and you gave every bit of your soul, but you
don't know how it's gonna be received. But at that moment,
I just kind of processed all that you had, the
(04:00):
work that we had done, and and and the joy
and the love that we put into it. And I
sort of had that moment. And as I sort of
slowly walked back the shore, I look at baths and
he's holding a speaker above his head like John Cusack
and say anything, and he's playing Nessador, the Pavaratti version,
and it's blaring at like five thirty in the morning
now on the beaches of the Gold Coast. It was
(04:23):
so magical and cinematic. And then we made breakfast. What
was that we made? We we looked in the refrigerator
and thought, okay, what can we make? Because he and
I both had been working so hard. And there's this
thing about filming where you're there's so many responsibilities that
other people end up almost treating you like you're a child.
(04:44):
In many areas, they walk you to the bathroom, you know,
if you if you're If I said I'm want to
go to the trailer, they walk me there and to
make sure I don't get lost. They treat you like
you can't do anything, and they bring you your food
and so you're very spoiled in many ways. But there's
something so relieving about that moment when you were finally
able to do something for yourself. And uh, and so
(05:05):
he and I that that was our moment. We opened
the refrigerator and we saw that, okay, we got eggs,
we got asparagus, we got some spinach there, we got
some tomatoes, we got some parmesan cheese. What can we do?
And so we kind of just made this breakfast. And
there's these this loaf of bread and so we cut
off bits of this bread and we toasted it and
just made this delicious meal. And that's one of the
(05:25):
most glorious memories of my life. Was like after we
finished this thing that was so terrifying and daunting, and
we gave it everything we could and then and then
we just sat there and as the morning sun sort
of laid down on us and ate that breakfast and
it was so glorious. It's it's about memories, isn't It's
about the time. And what about Tarantino? He was he
(05:46):
interested in food? Yeah, remember one night we were we
were doing night shoots and it was about three in
the morning. He had this amazing crepe maker come and
and make crepes and we were eating these amazing crepes
and and uh he said, he said, Austin, you know,
(06:06):
my thing is I want to give everybody such a
good experience on this job that their next job sucks.
And it was such a wonderful thing. So every every
night there would be some new food thing that he
would he would organize, so you just had this thing
to look forward to. And and the other thing that
he did was after every hundred rolls of film, which,
(06:30):
believe it or not, this was the first time I
had shot anything on film, because everything since I grew
up was on digital essentially with every person that I've
worked with, and so that was really special, just hearing
the sound of the film going through the camera when
you're sitting in the car. And but every hundred rolls
of film, you'd throw a party and it would have
a theme, so you'd have you know, that Grappo would
(06:52):
come out and and so everybody and they'd be singing
these songs and or Margarita's would come out. I need
to have a mariachi band or so there every hundred rolls,
whether it be ten in the morning or you know,
three in the morning, it was something to look forward to.
I think that does actually give people a kind of
commitment to the person you're working for. You know that
(07:13):
they're taking care of you, know they're thinking about you,
They're recognizing that you're working hard and that you want
to give them something back. It's a lot, doesn't it
When you lived by yourself. He once told me that
you chose a house in Los Angeles because it had
a pizza of it. Oh that was There's this beautiful
(07:36):
house that had belonged to Gary oldman before, and he
had built a pizza oven. And I became obsessed with
learning how to make the perfect fire and this pizza oven,
the specific type of wood and exactly how to lay it.
And I got one of those laser temperature gauges so
I could make it a thousand degrees and learned how
(07:57):
to make the pizza sauce, the dough and everything, and
and it was actually Christmas that I made the most pieces,
I think, And the first couple kind of came out rough,
and then and then I started to get really into
the zone of it. And it's amazing to me how
you how fast you could cook a pizza and in
that heat thirty seconds or forty five seconds you can
(08:18):
cook a whole pizza. Yeah, so I cook pizzas from
my whole family, and such a great experience just getting
to feed them, and and and the special thing of
all kind of being around the fire. And and we
had this table out there and it sort of looked
like the Secret Garden and as well in his backyard.
And cooked all these pieces. And then I started getting
into other things. I thought, what else can I cook
(08:40):
at this fire? And there's a restaurant in l a
called Patch that is in Laurel Canyon that makes this
um salmon on a seedar plank, and so I thought,
I want to learn how to make that. And so
I ended up getting these cedar planks and you soaking
them in water and putting the salmon on top and
seasoning it and sticking it in the wood fire of whatever.
It came out so incredibly, this is something solitary. When
(09:04):
I talked to Michael Caine, he said that he'd loved
to write a book You Had to Garden, and he
liked to cook because doing a movie, you are surrounded
by hundreds of people surrounded whatever you're doing. You just
describe being walked to the bathroom or trying to find
your trail. There's always someone around. And then he chose
three solitary things that you can do on your own.
(09:27):
So it sounds like maybe that cooking was something that
you could do without Absolutely makes you feel so sufficient, Yeah,
and also giving giving it back to people that you
want to feed. Absolutely, it becomes my love language in
a way. I cook so much for the people around me.
(09:48):
I'll look into their eyes when they're eating it and
try to see if they love it as much as
they say they do, and and try to figure out
ways of making it better. And it sounds the way
you're talking about it like a performance. Yeah. Do you
think there are parallels between acting or performing or singing
and cooking looking into people's eyes and seeing how they
(10:08):
are responding to your performance. Absolutely. Grilled white peaches with
Emiretto serves six six ripe white peaches, one vanilla pod,
(10:31):
two tablespoons cast or sugar d and twenty million leaders amaretto.
Pre heat of into one ninety degrees celsius heat a
grilled pan until very hot. Cut each peach in half
and remove the stone. Place the peach halves cut side
down on the hot pan and grill until slightly charred.
(10:53):
Remove from the pan and place face up on an
ovenproof dish. Slice the vanilla po odd length ways and
put with the sugar into a mortar pound until the
vanilla pod is broken up and combined with the sugar.
Scatter the vanilla sugar over the peaches and pour over
half of the armoretto. Bake for ten minutes or until
(11:17):
the peaches are soft. Add the remaining amoretto, and serve
hot or cold with a spoonful of crime fresh. Thank you,
that sounds delicious. Austin amaretto an Italian liqueur peaches grilled.
Is that anything to do with any food you grew
up with in California? Yeah? So, I was born in Anaheim,
(11:43):
right near Disneyland, and we used to have these. We
used to have trees in the backyard that that it
wasn't We didn't have peaches, but we had grapefruit trees,
and we had an orange tree in the backyard, and
and so like the smell of of fresh fruit. I
remember momm picking it and us having this fresh fruit
and the kitchen and these lemons and grapefruit, and so
(12:07):
that's that's sort of what that made me think of,
did you amount could cook? She was a great cook,
and especially as the years went on, I remember eating
a lot of fish sticks and you know, the things
that you'd get in the freezer aisle, and uh, little
corn dogs that she would make. Because when I was born,
(12:29):
she wanted to be a stay at home and she
was a dental high genius at the time, and then
she uh she ended up starting daycare out of the house,
and so she would watch the children of the mothers
who taught at the school right right around the corner
that I eventually went to elementary school there, and so
so we always had little children in the house and
(12:50):
so she she had to make these meals that were
really quick and easy. Um So as a kid, I
just remember eating those and tuna fish sandwiches and peanut
butter and jelly sam witches and um so, nothing really
gourmet at all. And then as the years went on,
she became vegetarian, and then she became vegan, and then
she got really into making special things with portobello mushrooms
(13:13):
and bell peppers, stuffed with goose coups or things like that.
So she got a little bit more into it later on.
But when I was growing up, it wasn't extremely healthy
in the house. It was it was kind of efficient meals.
And she's probably working so hard. She was working so
much in it. I mean, there was twelve kids in
the house sometimes and all different ages. And when I
(13:36):
was when I started going to elementary school, we lived
around the corner from that same school, and I would
walk home every lunch and she'd have a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich waiting for me, and uh, and we
watched this home decorating show called Surprise by Design and UH,
and then we would we would come up with things
that we were going to do around the house, and
(13:56):
so we'd we'd lay a brick path in the backyard
or or um plant little flowers or that sort of thing.
We get inspired by this show. And I just remember
how excited I was to walk home every day and
just eat the sandwich that she made for me, and special.
That was a beautiful memory of your mother making something
for you and going home for lunch. That's that's Would
(14:18):
you have dinner as well? Would you all sit down
to dinner. What was that Well, my parents divorced on
our seven and a lot of my memories go back
to that time because it was when sort of the
stability of family split up and my dad moved into
this this person that he worked with, and he moved
into their garage and they had sort of a converted
(14:41):
garage and we had a tiny, little miniature fridge and
that was that was where we kept on our groceries.
And we had air mattresses that we slept on and
we put them down at night and then we put
them up and we put down a table during the day.
And so it was this one room that was our
entire house, and it was just this old garage and
there was a treadmill in the corner that was their
(15:02):
old treadmill, and we would we would make food there
and so we shared their kitchen. Better than that, we
had sort of just this one room. And um, I
started cooking as a kid because with my my dad
had he had work and so he would say, hey,
I'll pay you two dollars if you cooked dinner tonight,
(15:23):
and so it was a way that I could stock
up money as a kid, was cooking dinner, and there
was like three staple things maybe, and one of the
main ones that I remember is burritos. We'd make Dennison's
Chili beans burritos, which this can of beans with some
sour cream and cheese. And I haven't eaten one of
those in years, but we used to eat that every
night and um, and then a special occasion would be
(15:46):
getting a five dollar pizza from down the road or
something like that. So those were that was like the
idea of a fancy meal was ordering a pizza out
when I was a kid, which I think then years
later coming to a place like like your restaurant here,
going to French laundry for the first time or something
like that was was so I felt I felt so
(16:07):
out of my element in a way when I first
started going to really nice restaurants, because you know, five
dollars sounded like a lot from me when I was
a kid. Would you do the shopping or would he
order out? What? We would always we usually get a
Costco as a kid, and uh yeah, we'd get food
and bulk and then make meals out of that. Um.
(16:28):
And then at a certain point, I think when I
moved I moved out when I was seventeen and I
started I wanted to learn how to make food and
wanted to know how flavors fit together. And I started
making some money, and so I started trying restaurants in
l A or um. And then I worked in New
York for the first time, and that was really eye
(16:49):
opening because it's not just getting to try great little
Italian restaurants. And I remember going to Roberta's for the
first time, which is this restaurant in Brooklyn. Had a
friend of mine who owned all these restaurants in l A.
He said, this is the restaurant that made me want
to open a restaurant. And uh So going to Roberta's
and and and trying there, and it feels a lot
(17:10):
like here, where you feel like your home, you know
you you enter. And I realized I have a lot
of um instability in my life. There hasn't been a
lot of continuity in many areas of my life since
I was young. Um just because I travel a lot,
and and even the nature of doing a film or
(17:32):
TV show, you you sort of make a family of
the entire crew and then it splits up. And through therapy,
I sort of realized that that was that I was
almost like reliving my childhood of my parents getting divorced,
for you know, many years of making a family and
then it splits up, and you make a family and
it splits up. And so I'd seek out ways of
(17:54):
having stability and consistency and most of that from me
while on location, whether I was in Vancouver, New Zealand,
or Australia, here in London, or wherever I was, I
would I would find restaurants that became my second home,
and I get to the point where I'd go there
every day and the staff then knew me and I
(18:16):
knew them, and and suddenly it felt like there was
there was this thing that was separate from my work,
that felt like home. Even if I've woken up with anxiety,
or if i feel sad, or I feel overwhelmed, I
go to a restaurant, I think what you've created here
is so beautiful because I feel it here as well.
I'll come here with a book, and you know, and
(18:37):
I get to see you, and I get to read,
and I know the people who work here, and and
that goes even deeper because you and I have a
family relationship. Beyond that, I think I always say that
in an irregular world, we do need regular things. And
I think even if we have you know, your life,
you know the way you describe it, it's very moving
(18:58):
and very honest and a revelation of who you are.
But I think that even if you have a consistency
and you have those foundations and you have that life,
it's still we seek out. You know, you talk to
people about the Sunday lunch, people going home for Sunday lunch,
(19:19):
or Friday night supper or Christmas. The Christmas lunch has
to be the same every year, and so food does
mean that, doesn't It gives you a sense of stability.
And I always wanted a restaurant to feel like home,
you know, that is a place. I'm always amazed that
people will come to a restaurant even if they've had
a really bad day, you know, or something bad has happened.
(19:42):
Sometimes we need those days the most that you come morning,
I could hardly leave the house. I just felt anxious
for some reason, and then I got myself. I just said,
you know, I just got to get to the cafe.
And once you get there, then suddenly there's life around you,
and it's sort of buzzes, and you feel humanity wash
over you, and and things that are happening outside of
(20:02):
your own experience that and then and then you eat
delicious food and that really helps. Did you eat pizzas
in Italy when you went on that trip that you
took a road trip? Yeah, I had a lot of
(20:24):
pizza there. We we took this. One of the best
trips I've ever taken was this. I spent a month
just road tripping through Italy. That was probably four years
ago or something before I was. And we started in Milan,
drove from Milan to the coast and went to Portofino first,
(20:49):
and I only ever spent maybe a week in Italy
before this, and sounds incredible. And then drove down and
went to Chinqui Tera and hiked between the little villages
and when through the vineyards there had pesto. Oh, my gosh,
the best pesto pasta besides yours. They can make a
better one in mine. I'm not competible. It was incredible.
(21:12):
And then drove down through Tuscany, drove through Florence and
and did that for a couple of days, and drove
out to this little bed and breakfast in Tuscany. It
was run by this this beautiful Italian woman and her
husband and they had two daughters. And one of the
daughters would play piano in the afternoon and you'd hear
it reverberating through the vineyard and and so it's just
(21:34):
us in this family. And she'd bring for cotch up
and and you eat it around the pool in the
afternoon and and then uh, and then at night her
husband would would One night he caught a wild boar
and so then she made this wild boar and it
was just absolutely divine. And one of their daughters was
dating a young man who was eighteen years old that
(21:57):
he was half Israelian, half Italian. And he told me,
he said, you know, I I am a pilot. And
I said, oh, you're a pilot. That's that's fantastic. And
he said and he said, you know, I can fly
you if you want me to. And I said, wow, yeah,
I mean that would be cool. But I thought, I'm
not trusting our lives in this eighteen year old kids hands,
you know. And then the next night his his mom
(22:21):
came to dinner. She was in the Israeli Air Force,
and she said, you know, he's actually a very good pilot.
And I said, you know what, you only live once.
I mean, where where can we go? And he said,
you know, I can fly you to Elba It's where
and and I thought, well, last where Napoleon was exiled,
and you could go to that little island and that
would be really cool. And I said, you know what,
(22:41):
let's do it. Let's I'll pay for gas, I'll pay
for the plane whatever we need. And so we end
up we end up getting in the car and he
couldn't drive a car, but you can fly a plane.
And so we drive us all it's it's me and
my girlfriend at the time and him and his girlfriend,
and we we drive up to Flowlawrence and we end
(23:01):
up getting to the little like separate private area of
the airport and uh, we go through security and and
then he ends up going to a little garage and
by hand pulling out a little four seater Cessna see
you pictured the skinny little Italian. Oh my gosh, he
pulls this thing out by hand. I'm thinking, oh my god,
(23:22):
what are we doing here? It felt like riding in
a go cart or something. And we get into the
plane and go through all the pre flight checks and
then we take off and he and then I can't
hear him at all. It's static in the headphones, and
I see panic over his face. And we were in
the air now and we're flying. I'm thinking, he's the
only person that can land this plane, and his panic
(23:44):
on his face, and I can't hear him, and it's static.
And then I realized that he just couldn't figure out
how to switch a sortain switch, and and so we
couldn't hear each other. And once he figured that out,
then peace came upon the airplane. And and then he
told me, you know, it's a very dangerous landing place
in Elba because you have to fly in this zig
zag shape, and and so let's then I'm going to God.
We trust, and we end up zig zagging through the
(24:07):
mountains of Elba and landing and we got there safely, thankfully,
and and then we clearly and then we we ate
Pasta with him and his girlfriend that day for lunch,
and they flew back and we stayed and rode around
on Vespers and eight Pasta, all these different beaches on Elba,
and went to the vineyards that Napoleon used to go to.
(24:28):
And then he came back three days later and picked
us up on the plane and we flew back to
Florence and that was it was magic. So so the
adventure of travel, the adventure of eating, it's like over dinner.
You you create these adventures. You know, the culture of
a country is so taken through its food. And very often,
as as you know, we meet somebody who comes back
(24:49):
from a country and we don't ask what museum they
went to or you know, what what gallery they saw,
what church? What we do? But you know, this also
tells you so much by the saying, as you've just
described the food that they ate, the culture of the dinners,
or the shooting a boar or catching a fish, or
it's as exciting as getting on a plane crazily, I
(25:12):
might say, by somebody who don't know. You know, it's
all about curiosity and exploring and opening ourselves up. And
so if we think about you know, we've talked about
food as um memory of the food that you've found
that sets and traveling and working and the food that
(25:32):
we connects us all I suppose it connects our memories,
it connects each other. Is a sense of excitement, but
it's also set of comfort. What would be the food
you would probably go to for comfort. I've been away
from home for a long time, and as well as
the fact that my mother is not longer here. She
(25:53):
passed away when I was twenty three, and I almost
hadn't put it into conscious thought. But I often will.
After a big week or if I'm feeling really overwhelmed,
I'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that
becomes my thing. I made one the other day. Uh
and and it's just that that comforting sensation. Um. Yeah,
(26:17):
so that that's one of my go to comfort foods
for sure. I'll see your cards on Sunday night, my
days partner, Yeah, I see thank you. To visit the
online shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the
River Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table four
(26:43):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
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Host
Ruth Rogers
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