October 18, 2022 • 24 mins
As part of our limited art series we are reposting our favourite episode from season 1 just in case you missed it the first time round. This is a conversation about food between two friends - Ruthie Rogers, a chef, and Tracey Emin, an artist.
Listen when you have a quiet time - time to hear Tracey convey to Ruthie what it meant to have the Salvation Army cook her and her brother Christmas dinner. Time to let Tracey explain why the solitude of being an artist makes restaurants crucial, and time to listen to her describe why she is passionate about eating eight apples a day.
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/
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and adamize studios artists coming together in the restaurant.
You know, Picasso drawn on the tablecloth and all that
kind of thing. It's really known throughout history. But it
is to do with the solitary nous of being in
the studio and the solitariness of being an artist being
(00:21):
very much alone. So this idea of coming together to
eat is such a nice thing. Here we are and
unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London, but I feel warmed,
as I always am, by being with my friend Tracy Emmon.
She's a great friend and a great artist. Tracy, over
(00:45):
to you, okay, so I'm My favorite thing to eat
here is the grilled squid with shred, chili and rocket.
Eight medium squid no bigger than your hand. Six large
fresh red chilies, seeded and very finely chopped, a hundred
(01:05):
and fifty meal, extra virgin oil, two DRAMs of rocket,
four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing. One lemon cut
into quarters to make the sauce. Put the chopped chilies
in a bowl and cover with extra virgin olive oil,
(01:26):
season heat a grill until very hot. Place the squid,
including the tentacles, scored side down on the grill, season
and grill for two minutes. Turn a squid pieces over.
They will immediately curl up and by which time they
will be cooked. Toss the rocket in the dressing. Arranged
(01:48):
two squid bodies with tentacles on each plate with the rocket.
Put a little of the chili sauce over the squid,
and serve with lemon. I'm so happy that you chose
such classic typically a representative of the River cafe recipe,
and I was wondering why you chose squid chilian rocket.
(02:11):
When I go to a restaurant, I always like to
choose food that I wouldn't cook myself, but god, it's
so easy to cook, so maybe I should do it.
But then, and also I'm Mediterranean, so um squeeties such
a Mediterranean food, And I always have this sort of
light in a primal thing that if I can eat Mediterranean,
(02:33):
eat part of my ancestral food as much as possible,
it makes me feel really good when I eat it,
So that's why I chose it. When you say that
you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean, because I thought
you were a market. Well Margat is yeah, Margaret Mediterranean market.
(02:53):
And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's Turkish Cypriot and
my great grandfather was from this Dan and he was
a slave in the Ottoman Empire and around eighteen, I
don't know, about nineteen hundred he was given his freedom
in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're known as the
(03:13):
there's a thing called like the black Turks, and they
actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire, and
my family on Mediterranean side is from that background, so um,
there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook, like
amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually grew
(03:34):
all our ound. Me and my dad grew all up
all my vegetables on my studio roof back in the nineties.
Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes, heritage tomatoes, beans,
green beans, everything, and then my dad would cook so
and my mom was a terrible cook. I hate saying it,
both's true. And the kind of food I grew up
(03:57):
on was a kind of strange mixture of this sort
of really amazing food that my dad could cook. I'm
this really terrible food that my mom could cook that
I really loved, and what you loved mother's food, egg
and chips. My mom was completely against me cooking, and
(04:18):
when we were cooking at school, my mom would actually
wrote me letters saying, my daughter will not learn to cook.
My daughter is not going to be a slave to
any man. But the truth was we didn't actually have
the money for the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But
even so it worked out kind of badly and kind
of good. I didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking
(04:39):
at school was pretty awful. And um, I only learned
to cook when I was much older, when I was
sort of a look around eighteen or nineteen, and even now,
I'm not a very good cook, but I really like
nice food. Yeah, and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah,
that's so interesting that she she didn't. I don't want
(05:00):
you to be stuck in the kitchen as a slave
or anyone to cook for her for a man, that's normal, yeah,
but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
(05:21):
not to be a slave to any man. Girl, she was.
She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
She's considered the idea of me having children to be
a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
(05:43):
did everything to stop me from being a single mother
and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
favorite Yeah, and yeah, she's when I think about it,
she was really not. My mom was very co the person,
but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
(06:05):
Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
My mom was brilliant dancer and when she was sort
of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
her go when you left her? And how old were
we when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
(06:28):
of growing vegetables and what how how old were you. Actually,
my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
My dad left us when we were about seven, and
my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
when we grew up, it was very different from other
(06:49):
people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor
were It's strange we had it. We were very wealthy
when we had that grow up until we were seven,
and then my dad lost everything and my dad was married,
so my dad spent three days with his wife, three
days with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
(07:09):
So um, and so when my dad was around, the
cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
(07:33):
really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
my dad was at home, and then when I was older,
I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
(07:55):
took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
that was the first trips Turkey site for since I
was a baby. And and it was like amazing m
to be with my dad, to be living with my dad.
They're cooking everything, and and my mom was kind of
a bit piste off because all that she'd done for me.
(08:15):
And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm you know, on
my my father's when you started out by saying you're Mediterranean,
and so to actually probably go and see the Mediterraneans
and have the food. But when we when we were
up until we were about six, we would go to
Turkey regularly once a year, and we spent when we
(08:35):
were really tiny, we spent two periods of six months there.
Once when I was about three or four, and then
another time when I was six, we spent six months
there and and all that time it would have been
Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And we used to drive
to Turkey, and this is really cool. We used to
have in the back of the our car. We had
(08:57):
a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs, you know,
with the rapportive seats, and my dad just with a
brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck a hole
through the roof through the you know the bits, and
then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and then
just sat us in the back of the car bouncing
(09:19):
up and we're twins bouncing up and down on these
chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive to Turkey,
and we'd stop on the way all the time, and
my dad would get the calor gas stove out and
fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go go
to fields and take watermelons and and things. So it
was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
(09:42):
being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
and it was different and it was different from everybody
else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
my mom working in a hotel as a waitress send
a chamber maid, and so it was like from high
(10:03):
to like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you
were having to cook for yourself. Did you what did
you read? What did you do? There was so my
mom was out a lot most of the time, working
leading and at weekends as well, she'd be out to
three in the morning, so we were on our own
and often my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever.
(10:25):
But my big thing was just like orange, just orange
squash and just tons of orange squash and sitting up
at night crocher and in bed and we and also
for example, like Christmas, like you said about this, a
lot of this podcast is about people sitting around the
table and remembering it. Oh there was no sitting around
the table for me. It was sitting and watching, to
(10:47):
tell you, with a tray with egg and chips. You know,
when my mom came home and Christmas was not Christmas.
We didn't have Christmas because my mom was always working.
Our Christmas was like a week after and kind of
cobbled together, but it was never going to feel the
same as the real Christmas. And one remember we had
Salvation Army one year, you know, coming around with food
(11:10):
and presents because we didn't have anything. My mom, if
she didn't work, we had nothing. And that is a
very different upbringing to a lot of people, I know,
And it's not a thing to feel sorry for. I'm
just staying the difference. And also it's pretty shocking to
go from this wealthy thing of being quite spoiled as
(11:32):
well in lots of ways up until I was seven
and then nothing. Do you remember being hungry? Yeah, and
I think my mom remembers asked, my mom's dead now?
But you know, my mom this, this is one of
the most shameful things that I have to say, But
in a way, I'm sort of proud of her. When
that the hotel was derelict behind, my mom went climbing
(11:56):
on the roof and took lead off the roofs to
sell it so we had something to eat. And that
is on another level, complete different level. And so much
of this is down to education and so much and
it's like the cooking thing and education and food. There
is really better ways to do this. But when you
(12:17):
actually have nothing, and you're hear about these people women
shoplifting to get their babies food, and it seems unimaginable,
but it's not when you've been that poor, that's not.
And it's happening now because we know that it's happening today,
and we know that. You know, when children couldn't get
to school because of the lockdown, they were missing the
(12:39):
only meal they had for the whole day. You know,
very many children only have lunch and that's it. I'm
a big supporter of the Salvation Army or sort mentioned earlier.
And the Salvation Army feed sixty people a day a day,
and it's more now and and all of these support
of food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really
(13:01):
really bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left,
when you left? When did did you? Did you London
at thirteen? Left school at thirteen, and I had to
go back to school by law for lost four months
from Christmas till May. Otherwise my mom social services would
(13:21):
have been involved or whatever. And my mom my mom
didn't mind if we didn't go to school. And I
was brought up with absolutely no rules. And I guess
this might be slightly the gypsy side and things no
rules whatsoever. We made our own rules up. If I
didn't want to go to school, I didn't go to school.
I didn't want to bush my teeth, I didn't want
to brush me. I wouldn't have sex, have sex as
long as I was not going to get pregnant. All
(13:42):
of these from the age of about thirteen fourteen, and
and not going to school was because school was so depressing.
It was like, oh my god, I'll get there and
they chaut at me, or this would happen, all that
would happen. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do,
So the last few months when I went back, I
just did art for four months more or less three
(14:04):
days a week, and then left when I was fifteen,
and then came to London the day I could leave school,
that the first of May, I think it was. I
just came straight to London with a bag to David
Bowie albums and some clothes and stare. I stayed in
all different places. I stayed in a school in Warren
(14:26):
Street which was pretty educational, with quite a lot of
well known they're quite well known people now, very successful
people lived there, and I stayed with different friends different floors.
Stayed in a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time.
And and it's a real mystery how I never really
got into trouble or but I was kind of sassy
(14:48):
and sort of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit.
So I learned a lot and I grew up, but
I was always a lot more mature from my age.
I don't know why. I just grew up very quickly.
I had to, and but I don't really have such
big regrets over that because it wasn't It wasn't my fault,
it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
(15:12):
in that poverty at that time in London when you
first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
St Martin's and the Royal College of Art whatever, so
it was a good influence in lots ways. And I
(15:33):
was so hungry and they said, you're hungry, traced us,
So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
And then they told me they were cooking dog and
I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
was one of my And when I bring this up
but in a STOTEP, when I see any of them,
they always, yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
(15:53):
my only real big story about food. I think Parvarty,
you know, Parvarty and food youth and food lonely this
and food being the first into world but you don't
know where you're sleeping, what you're eating, you know, the
lack of being taken care of is It's true because
(16:14):
now I have this thing that I've work on, my
war cupboard, and I have one in in France and
my house there and one in London, and my war
cover is just full of like literally, if there was
like a war, I've got enough food to keep me
going in tins and tins of sardines and all kinds
of stuff and everything. And it just gives me a
(16:36):
sense of security. And I really love going shopping for
really nice food and putting it in the fridge and
looking at it, and it makes me feel so safe
and cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long
time to realize that I had to hang up about it.
I think probably only in the last few years that
I realized how much it meant to me to that
(16:57):
food makes you feel secure, uncomfortable. And for a long
time I didn't eat. I used to be so thin
and every day and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
I didn't care about food at all. For years and
years and years. I was very um, sort of not
anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
things as a priority for living. But now now it
(17:18):
really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
with it and food and art and food and creating,
and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
(17:41):
being together with other artists when you were in art school,
was that something that you sort of where you exposed
to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
There was that whole What was it like being now?
When I when I was at art school, i worked.
I used to get in a ways, getting late in
the morning, getting about quarter to eleven, which I was.
(18:02):
I went to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal
College of Art. Did painting at the Royal College of Art.
When I was at Royal College of Art, I get
in about quarter to eleven in the morning and I'd
stayed at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at
the weekends as well. I had no social life when
I was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
(18:24):
about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
left art school years later when when I m I
think one of the first things I did as soon
as I started having got money was oysters, and I
just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
(18:49):
well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
or something. It was using and um, I used to
just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
what I like, what I don't like. And I think
my my biggest moment was I was on about a
(19:11):
hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
sind you muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
(19:33):
a house in the south of France? What is what
is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
but yes, it is on the Mediterranean and I'm on
the top of a hill, on top of a hill
looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
(19:55):
just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
it is really beautiful, and it's in the middle of
the nature reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and it's
a sort of twenty five minute drive to the little
town to buy food and everything. So what I tend
to do is do one shop in the week and
that's it. And then I have my war cupboard. And
(20:16):
my favorite cooking is when I get down and I've
got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
with what I come up with everything. And and I
just cook for myself there as well, because there's no
there's no restaurants anywhere to eat near me, and I
(20:37):
love to produce there. Do you go and you going
around vegetables. I don't know if you if you do
want to talk about this, but we've had quite a
tumultuous time. But probably nobody, certainly in this room, certainly
not mean more than you with your illness. And I
think your illness must have affected the way you eat
(20:59):
because it was to do with your digestive system, isn't it?
And so did you did you have to start eating
when you were ill? Or because actually it's not my
digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag. And
and yes, it has affected the way that I eat
because I can't have I still can't couldn't have. I
(21:20):
can't have a full bow. I can't be because it
affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely changed
since I was ill, which is quite strange. It's like totally,
I mean totally changed. To tell me, what do you
I am vast amounts of fish, vast amounts of apples,
(21:45):
vast amounts of fruit all day long. I am a
lot of which is not supposed to be good for me.
By eat a lot of cold food, and I don't
know why, much more than hot food. I am a
lot more lemon all the time because they alkaline. I
am my diet and it's not conscious thing either. It's
(22:06):
really subc I haven't even tried. I'm not even thinking
about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange. So you
haven't been directed by doctors of what you can. I
eat quite healthily, So they when you're when you're coming
out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they tell
you this, and they tell you that. But I'm kind
of quite forward thinking on good food. So when I
(22:27):
eat something bad, it's because I really want to. And
when you there are so many reasons we eat, isn't
There are reasons we eat because we're hungry, eat because
we're in a beautiful place and we want to celebrate,
or we eat because we are feeling a certain way.
We need comfort. If you needed food, if you needed
(22:49):
it for comfort, is there a food that you might
reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples. I eat
probably about six to eight apples a day a day. Apples.
I couldn't live without apples. What kind I like? I've
(23:13):
forgotten what they called it. Those pink ones and they're
kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I absolutely love them.
I washed them, put them on the bread board, and
I get the knife and I don't cut them equally.
I just slice all bits off until I get the course,
so it's all different shapes. And maybe I take three
of them and I'm like a big pile on a
(23:35):
very beautiful blue Delf plate. And then I sit anywhere
and just slowly eat three apples at a time that
are all different bits, shapes and pieces, and it makes
me feel so good. That's what we want you to feel, Dracy,
we want you to feel good. Thank you, Frankie. To
(24:15):
visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to
shop The River Cafe dot co dot uk. Ruthie's Table
four 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 Podcasts, or wherever you
(24:36):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and adamize studios artists coming together in the restaurant.
You know, Picasso drawn on the tablecloth and all that
kind of thing. It's really known throughout history. But it
is to do with the solitary nous of being in
the studio and the solitariness of being an artist being
(00:21):
very much alone. So this idea of coming together to
eat is such a nice thing. Here we are and
unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London, but I feel warmed,
as I always am, by being with my friend Tracy Emmon.
She's a great friend and a great artist. Tracy, over
(00:45):
to you, okay, so I'm My favorite thing to eat
here is the grilled squid with shred, chili and rocket.
Eight medium squid no bigger than your hand. Six large
fresh red chilies, seeded and very finely chopped, a hundred
(01:05):
and fifty meal, extra virgin oil, two DRAMs of rocket,
four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing. One lemon cut
into quarters to make the sauce. Put the chopped chilies
in a bowl and cover with extra virgin olive oil,
(01:26):
season heat a grill until very hot. Place the squid,
including the tentacles, scored side down on the grill, season
and grill for two minutes. Turn a squid pieces over.
They will immediately curl up and by which time they
will be cooked. Toss the rocket in the dressing. Arranged
(01:48):
two squid bodies with tentacles on each plate with the rocket.
Put a little of the chili sauce over the squid,
and serve with lemon. I'm so happy that you chose
such classic typically a representative of the River cafe recipe,
and I was wondering why you chose squid chilian rocket.
(02:11):
When I go to a restaurant, I always like to
choose food that I wouldn't cook myself, but god, it's
so easy to cook, so maybe I should do it.
But then, and also I'm Mediterranean, so um squeeties such
a Mediterranean food, And I always have this sort of
light in a primal thing that if I can eat Mediterranean,
(02:33):
eat part of my ancestral food as much as possible,
it makes me feel really good when I eat it,
So that's why I chose it. When you say that
you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean, because I thought
you were a market. Well Margat is yeah, Margaret Mediterranean market.
(02:53):
And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's Turkish Cypriot and
my great grandfather was from this Dan and he was
a slave in the Ottoman Empire and around eighteen, I
don't know, about nineteen hundred he was given his freedom
in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're known as the
(03:13):
there's a thing called like the black Turks, and they
actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire, and
my family on Mediterranean side is from that background, so um,
there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook, like
amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually grew
(03:34):
all our ound. Me and my dad grew all up
all my vegetables on my studio roof back in the nineties.
Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes, heritage tomatoes, beans,
green beans, everything, and then my dad would cook so
and my mom was a terrible cook. I hate saying it,
both's true. And the kind of food I grew up
(03:57):
on was a kind of strange mixture of this sort
of really amazing food that my dad could cook. I'm
this really terrible food that my mom could cook that
I really loved, and what you loved mother's food, egg
and chips. My mom was completely against me cooking, and
(04:18):
when we were cooking at school, my mom would actually
wrote me letters saying, my daughter will not learn to cook.
My daughter is not going to be a slave to
any man. But the truth was we didn't actually have
the money for the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But
even so it worked out kind of badly and kind
of good. I didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking
(04:39):
at school was pretty awful. And um, I only learned
to cook when I was much older, when I was
sort of a look around eighteen or nineteen, and even now,
I'm not a very good cook, but I really like
nice food. Yeah, and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah,
that's so interesting that she she didn't. I don't want
(05:00):
you to be stuck in the kitchen as a slave
or anyone to cook for her for a man, that's normal, yeah,
but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
(05:21):
not to be a slave to any man. Girl, she was.
She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
She's considered the idea of me having children to be
a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
(05:43):
did everything to stop me from being a single mother
and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
favorite Yeah, and yeah, she's when I think about it,
she was really not. My mom was very co the person,
but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
(06:05):
Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
My mom was brilliant dancer and when she was sort
of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
her go when you left her? And how old were
we when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
(06:28):
of growing vegetables and what how how old were you. Actually,
my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
My dad left us when we were about seven, and
my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
when we grew up, it was very different from other
(06:49):
people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor
were It's strange we had it. We were very wealthy
when we had that grow up until we were seven,
and then my dad lost everything and my dad was married,
so my dad spent three days with his wife, three
days with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
(07:09):
So um, and so when my dad was around, the
cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
(07:33):
really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
my dad was at home, and then when I was older,
I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
(07:55):
took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
that was the first trips Turkey site for since I
was a baby. And and it was like amazing m
to be with my dad, to be living with my dad.
They're cooking everything, and and my mom was kind of
a bit piste off because all that she'd done for me.
(08:15):
And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm you know, on
my my father's when you started out by saying you're Mediterranean,
and so to actually probably go and see the Mediterraneans
and have the food. But when we when we were
up until we were about six, we would go to
Turkey regularly once a year, and we spent when we
(08:35):
were really tiny, we spent two periods of six months there.
Once when I was about three or four, and then
another time when I was six, we spent six months
there and and all that time it would have been
Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And we used to drive
to Turkey, and this is really cool. We used to
have in the back of the our car. We had
(08:57):
a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs, you know,
with the rapportive seats, and my dad just with a
brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck a hole
through the roof through the you know the bits, and
then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and then
just sat us in the back of the car bouncing
(09:19):
up and we're twins bouncing up and down on these
chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive to Turkey,
and we'd stop on the way all the time, and
my dad would get the calor gas stove out and
fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go go
to fields and take watermelons and and things. So it
was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
(09:42):
being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
and it was different and it was different from everybody
else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
my mom working in a hotel as a waitress send
a chamber maid, and so it was like from high
(10:03):
to like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you
were having to cook for yourself. Did you what did
you read? What did you do? There was so my
mom was out a lot most of the time, working
leading and at weekends as well, she'd be out to
three in the morning, so we were on our own
and often my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever.
(10:25):
But my big thing was just like orange, just orange
squash and just tons of orange squash and sitting up
at night crocher and in bed and we and also
for example, like Christmas, like you said about this, a
lot of this podcast is about people sitting around the
table and remembering it. Oh there was no sitting around
the table for me. It was sitting and watching, to
(10:47):
tell you, with a tray with egg and chips. You know,
when my mom came home and Christmas was not Christmas.
We didn't have Christmas because my mom was always working.
Our Christmas was like a week after and kind of
cobbled together, but it was never going to feel the
same as the real Christmas. And one remember we had
Salvation Army one year, you know, coming around with food
(11:10):
and presents because we didn't have anything. My mom, if
she didn't work, we had nothing. And that is a
very different upbringing to a lot of people, I know,
And it's not a thing to feel sorry for. I'm
just staying the difference. And also it's pretty shocking to
go from this wealthy thing of being quite spoiled as
(11:32):
well in lots of ways up until I was seven
and then nothing. Do you remember being hungry? Yeah, and
I think my mom remembers asked, my mom's dead now?
But you know, my mom this, this is one of
the most shameful things that I have to say, But
in a way, I'm sort of proud of her. When
that the hotel was derelict behind, my mom went climbing
(11:56):
on the roof and took lead off the roofs to
sell it so we had something to eat. And that
is on another level, complete different level. And so much
of this is down to education and so much and
it's like the cooking thing and education and food. There
is really better ways to do this. But when you
(12:17):
actually have nothing, and you're hear about these people women
shoplifting to get their babies food, and it seems unimaginable,
but it's not when you've been that poor, that's not.
And it's happening now because we know that it's happening today,
and we know that. You know, when children couldn't get
to school because of the lockdown, they were missing the
(12:39):
only meal they had for the whole day. You know,
very many children only have lunch and that's it. I'm
a big supporter of the Salvation Army or sort mentioned earlier.
And the Salvation Army feed sixty people a day a day,
and it's more now and and all of these support
of food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really
(13:01):
really bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left,
when you left? When did did you? Did you London
at thirteen? Left school at thirteen, and I had to
go back to school by law for lost four months
from Christmas till May. Otherwise my mom social services would
(13:21):
have been involved or whatever. And my mom my mom
didn't mind if we didn't go to school. And I
was brought up with absolutely no rules. And I guess
this might be slightly the gypsy side and things no
rules whatsoever. We made our own rules up. If I
didn't want to go to school, I didn't go to school.
I didn't want to bush my teeth, I didn't want
to brush me. I wouldn't have sex, have sex as
long as I was not going to get pregnant. All
(13:42):
of these from the age of about thirteen fourteen, and
and not going to school was because school was so depressing.
It was like, oh my god, I'll get there and
they chaut at me, or this would happen, all that
would happen. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do,
So the last few months when I went back, I
just did art for four months more or less three
(14:04):
days a week, and then left when I was fifteen,
and then came to London the day I could leave school,
that the first of May, I think it was. I
just came straight to London with a bag to David
Bowie albums and some clothes and stare. I stayed in
all different places. I stayed in a school in Warren
(14:26):
Street which was pretty educational, with quite a lot of
well known they're quite well known people now, very successful
people lived there, and I stayed with different friends different floors.
Stayed in a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time.
And and it's a real mystery how I never really
got into trouble or but I was kind of sassy
(14:48):
and sort of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit.
So I learned a lot and I grew up, but
I was always a lot more mature from my age.
I don't know why. I just grew up very quickly.
I had to, and but I don't really have such
big regrets over that because it wasn't It wasn't my fault,
it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
(15:12):
in that poverty at that time in London when you
first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
St Martin's and the Royal College of Art whatever, so
it was a good influence in lots ways. And I
(15:33):
was so hungry and they said, you're hungry, traced us,
So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
And then they told me they were cooking dog and
I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
was one of my And when I bring this up
but in a STOTEP, when I see any of them,
they always, yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
(15:53):
my only real big story about food. I think Parvarty,
you know, Parvarty and food youth and food lonely this
and food being the first into world but you don't
know where you're sleeping, what you're eating, you know, the
lack of being taken care of is It's true because
(16:14):
now I have this thing that I've work on, my
war cupboard, and I have one in in France and
my house there and one in London, and my war
cover is just full of like literally, if there was
like a war, I've got enough food to keep me
going in tins and tins of sardines and all kinds
of stuff and everything. And it just gives me a
(16:36):
sense of security. And I really love going shopping for
really nice food and putting it in the fridge and
looking at it, and it makes me feel so safe
and cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long
time to realize that I had to hang up about it.
I think probably only in the last few years that
I realized how much it meant to me to that
(16:57):
food makes you feel secure, uncomfortable. And for a long
time I didn't eat. I used to be so thin
and every day and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
I didn't care about food at all. For years and
years and years. I was very um, sort of not
anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
things as a priority for living. But now now it
(17:18):
really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
with it and food and art and food and creating,
and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
(17:41):
being together with other artists when you were in art school,
was that something that you sort of where you exposed
to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
There was that whole What was it like being now?
When I when I was at art school, i worked.
I used to get in a ways, getting late in
the morning, getting about quarter to eleven, which I was.
(18:02):
I went to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal
College of Art. Did painting at the Royal College of Art.
When I was at Royal College of Art, I get
in about quarter to eleven in the morning and I'd
stayed at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at
the weekends as well. I had no social life when
I was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
(18:24):
about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
left art school years later when when I m I
think one of the first things I did as soon
as I started having got money was oysters, and I
just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
(18:49):
well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
or something. It was using and um, I used to
just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
what I like, what I don't like. And I think
my my biggest moment was I was on about a
(19:11):
hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
sind you muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
(19:33):
a house in the south of France? What is what
is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
but yes, it is on the Mediterranean and I'm on
the top of a hill, on top of a hill
looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
(19:55):
just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
it is really beautiful, and it's in the middle of
the nature reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and it's
a sort of twenty five minute drive to the little
town to buy food and everything. So what I tend
to do is do one shop in the week and
that's it. And then I have my war cupboard. And
(20:16):
my favorite cooking is when I get down and I've
got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
with what I come up with everything. And and I
just cook for myself there as well, because there's no
there's no restaurants anywhere to eat near me, and I
(20:37):
love to produce there. Do you go and you going
around vegetables. I don't know if you if you do
want to talk about this, but we've had quite a
tumultuous time. But probably nobody, certainly in this room, certainly
not mean more than you with your illness. And I
think your illness must have affected the way you eat
(20:59):
because it was to do with your digestive system, isn't it?
And so did you did you have to start eating
when you were ill? Or because actually it's not my
digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag. And
and yes, it has affected the way that I eat
because I can't have I still can't couldn't have. I
(21:20):
can't have a full bow. I can't be because it
affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely changed
since I was ill, which is quite strange. It's like totally,
I mean totally changed. To tell me, what do you
I am vast amounts of fish, vast amounts of apples,
(21:45):
vast amounts of fruit all day long. I am a
lot of which is not supposed to be good for me.
By eat a lot of cold food, and I don't
know why, much more than hot food. I am a
lot more lemon all the time because they alkaline. I
am my diet and it's not conscious thing either. It's
(22:06):
really subc I haven't even tried. I'm not even thinking
about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange. So you
haven't been directed by doctors of what you can. I
eat quite healthily, So they when you're when you're coming
out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they tell
you this, and they tell you that. But I'm kind
of quite forward thinking on good food. So when I
(22:27):
eat something bad, it's because I really want to. And
when you there are so many reasons we eat, isn't
There are reasons we eat because we're hungry, eat because
we're in a beautiful place and we want to celebrate,
or we eat because we are feeling a certain way.
We need comfort. If you needed food, if you needed
(22:49):
it for comfort, is there a food that you might
reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples. I eat
probably about six to eight apples a day a day. Apples.
I couldn't live without apples. What kind I like? I've
(23:13):
forgotten what they called it. Those pink ones and they're
kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I absolutely love them.
I washed them, put them on the bread board, and
I get the knife and I don't cut them equally.
I just slice all bits off until I get the course,
so it's all different shapes. And maybe I take three
of them and I'm like a big pile on a
(23:35):
very beautiful blue Delf plate. And then I sit anywhere
and just slowly eat three apples at a time that
are all different bits, shapes and pieces, and it makes
me feel so good. That's what we want you to feel, Dracy,
we want you to feel good. Thank you, Frankie. To
(24:15):
visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to
shop The River Cafe dot co dot uk. Ruthie's Table
four 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 Podcasts, or wherever you
(24:36):
listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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