In my career, I've been a chef, an author and now a podcaster. In Anthony Scaramucci’s career, he’s been Communication Director in the White House, a financial genius, founding Sky Capital, and the host of the podcast The Rest is Politics: US.
We’ve both had our ups and downs. His may have been higher ups and maybe downer downs, but we're not here to compete. We're here to talk about food, politics, family and memories. To date, I've only spent about 10 minutes with Anthony, but it doesn't feel that way. For me, the night we met in The River Cafe was an immediate connection. How lucky am I to have him here today? How lucky am I to share stories?
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with
Montclair in.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The last few days, telling friends my next podcast guest
was going to be Anthony Scaramucci. Everybody had a reaction,
a big one. How amazing, Ruthie, How did that happen? Ruthie?
Lucky you, lucky us to listen to the two of you.
When will it come out? In my career, I've been
a chef and an author and now a podcaster. In
(00:27):
his career, Antony has been a President's communication director in
the White House, a financial genius founding Sky Capital, and
the host of the Rest Is Politics US podcast. We
both had our ups and downs. His may have been
higher ups and maybe downer downs. But we're not here
to compete. We're here to talk about food, party politics,
(00:53):
food and party parties, food and family, food and memories.
Up to date, spent about ten minutes with Antony, but
it doesn't feel that way for me. The night we
met in the River Cafe was an immediate connection. I
agree with my friends. How lucky am I to have
him here today? How lucky am I to share stories?
(01:15):
How lucky am I to kind of feel he's my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Well? I mean, the feeling is it's very very sweet introduction.
I didn't prepare an introduction, but I just want you
to know that I'm a super fan of yours. And
the night that I had here was very memorable one
for me because I came with Jason Fox, who's a
legend here for the SAS show. I did the American
version called Special Forces, and so he dunked me in
(01:40):
a car and he trapped me in the car and
pushed me out of a helicopter, set me on fire.
I mean, I don't know what the hell I was
doing in that show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But he took you to the River caf That part
of the risk.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, no, no, no, The River Cave was the dessert after
brutalizing me in the desert. We were out on the
Wadi Rum desert. The show's ten days at age fifty eight,
I made it through six of them, so I was
proud of myself. But it was hard.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
What did you eat? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Oh? Terribly terribly.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I lost.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I lost probably we'll go by killer. I lost ten pounds.
I don't know, ye, yeah, I bought probably six kilos.
I mean it was a shit on a shingle corned
beef and on toast boiled eggs. It was terrible of
franks and beans. They were giving you sort of sas
food rations for the day, unlimited amount of water, but
(02:36):
the food was terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
What do you think you took away with you?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
You know, it's a great question. I think when you
go through something like that and it's a minor thing,
you get a lot more empathy for people that are
actually out in that desert for eighteen months, or they're
out there serving the country, whether it's the UK or
the US, and they're making a sacrifice to keep people safe.
I mean, you get a lot more empathy. The other
(03:00):
thing is, I think your life's happiness comes from your
expectation management.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And tell me about expectation managed.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Well, if you're sleeping on a cot in one hundred
and five degree weather in a canvas tent, and you've
got a little pillow this big and a little tiny uh,
and you're freezing at night because the temperature goes to
one oh five to forty eight. These are Fahrenheys, of course,
and you start freezing. You're like, you know, you learn
to appreciate what you have. You learn to appreciate the
(03:28):
comforts that you have. I do you know, I'm a
big believer that life is about expectations. Lower expectations, higher positivity,
higher outcomes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I think it's also interesting me, but you brought up
was about empathy, because there's all thinking about empathy so
much right now, especially since someone whose name I don't
actually like to mention on the podcast, which is Elon Musk,
said that liberals had too much empathy. I saw someone
wrote something in response to that and said, you know,
empathy is he said, he wrote, I used to try
(04:00):
and think what was evil? How do you define evil?
And then he said, thinking about it, I think evil
is when you have no empathy. And it turned out
that it was signed by someone who was it Nuremberg,
you know, judge at Neuremberg. And it made me think
about how empathy. If we don't have empathy, what do
we have. I think it's so well, crucially.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I think that's it, you know, I mean, ultimately the again,
I guess I'm sharing a lot of my personal follows.
I'll share it with you. I get the most joy
out of helping other people. I think that's an axiom
for most people. I tell people, you know, I have
an older brother that has an experienced drug addiction in
his life. He's going in and out of rehab. He
(04:45):
is figured out a way to stay sober by helping
other people. He's a sponsor. He's a phone call away
from someone that's depressed or in need of something, or
trying to help somebody stay off of whatever the drug
is that they're addicted to. And I think when you're
helping people, you're at your best. And if you're helping people,
(05:06):
your empathetic tours whatever their struggle is, you know. And
so to me, I think empathy is the whole thing
empathy is. But a lot of these norses is frankly,
they don't have a lot of empathy. There are people
political leaders and whatnot that they objectify people and they're
just in their field of vision. Do either do a
transaction that's favorable or unfavorable, and then they're immediately discarded
(05:27):
like it's it's almost like a video game for a
lot of these people, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And the other one that you talk about is resilience.
So we have empathy, but we also have resilience. And
I've been through quite a lot in the last ten
years as all as of Heath, and I thought, actually,
if you can teach your children resilience, I think that's
a great gift to have in life. That you you
(05:53):
have to be able to cave in as well, you have.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
To be able to Is it teachable?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
That's a good question.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
With my children. My observation, I guess, is that they're
observing you. I can say things to them, but it's
not going to really matter. It's your actions that are
going to be things that happened. So when I got
fired from the White House, which was a brutal time
for me, Ruthie, if you're ever having a bad day
and you're listening to this podcast, I want you to
imagine my day on the thirty first of July twenty seventeen.
(06:23):
I got I asked fire from the White House, blown
into Pennsylvania Avenue, skinned alive by the media, rolled in margarite, assault,
and I was on the Santa Monica promenade. Don't know
if you've ever been out there at that open door
promenade on third and fourth Street. And my son at
that time, he's thirty three now, but he was twenty five.
Then he put his arm around me and he said, Dad,
(06:46):
are you going to be okay. It was the first
time in my life where my son was parenting me
as opposed to be parenting him, and I didn't really
remember the feeling if I was going to be okay
or not, but I remember what I said to him.
I said, yeah, going to be okay. Watch what I
do with this. And I think it's very important for
kids to see their parents get through things, whatever they
(07:09):
may be, because then in their mind they have space
for their own failures. They have space for whatever they
come up short on in their lives where they can say, Okay,
well that's happened to my mom or happen to my dad,
and they were able to get through it. I can do.
I find a lot of my very wealthy friends. They
sanitize their life, Ruthie. They have a life that goes
up into the right. It's a perfect story. They made
(07:32):
no bad decisions. I can't tell you the number of
billionaire memoirs that I've read where I'm a gas that
the perfection of all their choices, and then you look
at their kids, and their kids are always eclipsed by
all that, and it creates great insecurity. I just think
it's super important for your children to see your fallibility,
(07:53):
your mistakes, but also your grind, your ability to get
up and get going after your.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Mistakes, the resilience that you have now. I bet your
son said to you, how are you going to cope
what you described as one of the worst imaginable situations
of being fired? What was that? Tell me what that
was like?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
First of all. First of all, I deserve to be fired.
We can talk about that too. Is you have to
be accountable. I should have never taken that job. I mean,
this is a joke inside the family. I mean, my
wife hates trust.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
That's what the job was.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Okay, So I was the White House communications director for
eleven days. My I mean, my wife hates Donald Trump,
like almost as much as Milania hates him. So I mean,
that's like way up here. And so I mean, and
she told me not to do it. And this is
a real cautionary tale. I did it for ego related reasons.
I had grown up in a blue collar family. I
went to Tufton Harvard Law School. I had started to
(08:49):
successful businesses, sold one in my late thirties, and so
I had some financial independence. And now I had a
chance to work for the American President. And the funny
thing about this is just a side of my bad
judgment or my immaturity. My mentor, who I totally respect,
was about ten years older than me, was given a
(09:11):
big job in the administration, and in December he called
me to say he wasn't taking it, and I said what,
And he said, no, I'm not going to take it.
I spent enough time with Trump to know that we're
like oil and water and it's going to end badly
for me if I take the job. And my ego's
in the right place and I'm not going to take
the job. But that wasn't me, Ruthie. I took the
(09:31):
job because my ego and my pride were driving me
to the notion that I was going to work in
the White House and help solve some problems and work
on policy and help people. I mean, it was a
little bit of idealism in there, but what there really
was was a lot of ego centers. It was filling
the self narrative of me, and it was quite detrimental.
(09:54):
I mean, Deirdre and I almost got divorced. I missed
the birth of my fifth child I was in It
still pains me to talk about it, but I'll share
it here. James was born on July twenty fourth, twenty seventeen.
It was a Monday. I was with President Trump at
the Boy Scouts event in West Virginia. Deersa and I
(10:18):
were fighting. She was due on August eighth or ninth,
and she was delivering prematurely, a couple of weeks early.
And there's a sixty mile no fly zone around Air
Force One. So an Air Force One comes into an area,
they have fighter planes, but they also have you know,
you can't go over Air Force One. You can't fly
over that airspace. And so it was an impossibility to
(10:40):
get back to New York. So I missed the birth
of my son. So you have to imagine this week.
I'm working for President Trump. It is not going well
because there's a lot of internescent fighting in the White House.
Trump is doing things that a lot of us are
looking at same ways. I don't want to be involved
with that. Fighting with him, and I get fired, almost divorced.
(11:03):
Missed the birth of my son. So again, if you're
having a bad weekend, he was having a bad week,
give me a call. I can tell you about a
really bad week. But we should take it back to food.
But I'm just saying, do.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You know I agree? I know? Okay, tell me who
eats better the Democrats for the Republicans.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
I had one meal with Trump in the White House,
in the Blue Room. It was on a Wednesday. And
you know how I know it was a Wednesday. Was
only there for one Wednesday, we kid, so I know
it was a Wednesday. So I had beef Wellington. The
son of a bitch is going to lift the five
hundred years old He eats well done meat with ketchup. Okay,
(11:38):
but the chef in the White House was making a
beef Wellington and he loved it. I think he had it.
You know, I had like two out of five weekday nights,
and so I had beef Wellington with him in a salad.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
What else did you mean with him?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You know he likes hav Me had Hamburger's on the campaign.
Remember I did nine months of campaigning with Trump, so
it was a tremendous amount of fast food. Did you
ever hear Jimmy Johns the fast food place? So Jimmy
Johns is like a Midwestern sandwich shop. It's like all
cold cuts. I mean, it's unbelievable that his orderies are
still flowing. I mean, this guy eats McDonald's french fries,
(12:13):
quarter pounders with cheese, Jimmy John's cold cuts.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Do they seem to enjoy it? Does he say they're
savoring it? Or is it just getting the food down?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
No? No, no, he is a fast food maniac. By the way,
I mean, he'll come off. He would come off the
plane where a campaign, he'd be like asking the cops
where the burger king was and he'd like, what do
you want from burgering? I'm like, I don't want anything.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Was campaigning with the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Like, well, here's the problem with the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
He's a good cook.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
By the way, she's she's she's a great cook. She's
an incredibly nice person. She's a very smart person. But
they did her a disservice because you can't you have
whatever you think of Trump. At the time that she
was running against him, he was arguably the most famous
person in the world, or one of the most famous
(13:01):
people in the world, and she had one hundred and
seven days to get to know the Americans and the
Americans to get to know her. But also she was
working with Joe Biden's team. She's not her own team.
It wasn't like her office is based in Delaware, it
wasn't based in northern California. So this was a tremendous disadvantage.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Did you travel with her?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So I went to I went to Philadelphia with her
for the debate. The first of all, let me let
everybody on at Thirty of Them series, I'm a lifelong Republican.
The Republicans have so much envy for the Democrats. Gonna
tell you why. Okay, people are gonna hate me for this,
but they that Democrats have the celebrities that Democrats have,
(13:43):
the artists, the Democrats have the cool people in the culture. Okay,
the Democrats have more fun. Their parties are better, the
entertainment is better, the food is better. The Democrats have
the culture, which is why Trump is pissed off of
them all to which is why he you know, decapitated
the Kennedy Center, right because you know, the Democrats look
(14:05):
at him, or the artists look at him like a
knuckle dragging ogre, and so you know he's gonna, I guess,
bruise them by taking over the Kennedy Center. And like
you know, he knocked out board members of the Kennedy
Center were giving tens of millions of dollars of donations
to the arts and to the performing arts in the country.
(14:27):
And so he's not going to replace that money. He's
not going to give anybody his money. That's not how
he operates. So and by the way, you know, we're
in the United Kingdom. You're not allowed to compare Trump
to these fascists. So I'll try not to do that.
But Mussolini did dead took over the arts. What happened
to Mussolini in the end? People turned on him, right,
So I mean, you do enough crazy stuff over time
(14:49):
that people will turn on you and.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
The message you're giving us all because.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think it's you. I mean you're doing people are
doing very crazy things in the United States right now.
Listen to the Boss, Listen to Bruce Springsteen. They'll tell
you what I.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Was really proud of him, because I think there's a
lot of thought going on, is how do we oppose
what is the opposition right now? You know, how do
we express our frustration or disdain or anger for what
our country is representing?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Right now?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
So how would you let me? So let me say
something I think it's important. This is original programming for
me because I haven't really shared this with anybody. Think
about my life experience. I was with Trump, and I
was with Trump seeing something, and then it was manifesting
and overlaying what I saw on President Trump. And so
(15:44):
what did I see? I saw a group of people
in our country, the United States, who were feeling economically
left out this twenty sixteen. In my neighborhood, I would
describe the neighbor I grew up in as economically asper.
My father didn't make a lot of money, but he
certainly thought its kids would go on to make some
money and live the American dream. It was upward mobility,
(16:08):
I would say. When I was campaigning with President Trump
and I was by accident with him because I was
with Jeff Bush Jet Bush lost, he asked me to
go work for him, and so I accepted. I mean,
I made a lot of mistakes, but perhaps that was
the first one. But what I saw is very relevant
for twenty twenty five because I'm sure it's happening here
in the United Kingdom. There is a feeling of lower
(16:31):
and middle income people that they're not getting ahead for
their children. Forget about themselves for a minute, my dad
economically aspirational. Today, same person, they're feeling economically desperational. They
don't have the same living standards that they once had
in blue collar America. And by the way, when I
(16:52):
was with the president President Trump in twenty sixteen, I
priced my dad's wages and I told him that those
ways are now down twenty six and a half percent
in real terms, that would put my family not in
a small house, but renting somewhere, possibly on an EBT
or governmental assistance card. And so there's a real dilemma
(17:13):
going on in the country now. He unfortunately has taken
advantage of it for his own personal purposes, and those
people are galvanized to him because they don't feel there
are other alternatives. There haven't heard anything from the establishment
politicians in thirty years. You know, those people's grandparents voted
for Linda Johnson, they voted for Jack Kennedy. Maybe the
(17:35):
great grandparents voted for FDR, but the Democrats left them.
The Republicans were never with them. And so Trump's populous
message has galvanized a lot of people. And of course
you've had the Democrats make a lot of missteps in
terms of the way they handle the last election. But
there's it would be remiss of me not to bring
(17:55):
up the dilemma, why are fifty percent of the United
States voting with him? There were forty of us that
worked for him, that begged people not to vote for him.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I would say the disaffection and the you know, the separation,
the feeling of being abandoned for the class of America
who felt that the society they were promised, the expectations
they thought they would have, were played to by a
populist who did it through racism, through status division, through divisions.
(18:28):
So if they wanted that ianization, would they go for
Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? That said, I understand what
you're talking about, but we'll do it through what you said,
through empathy. We'll care about the people who don't have
health care, or care about the people who are waiting
at the border to have a new life. Instead of
saying these people do not deserve this, we were angry
(18:50):
at these people. And that's what that's what's what I
think was manipulated by is that. It's a long conversation,
but I think there were two ways to go. There's
the and you worked for com you worked for the Democrats,
and I know there's so many problems, but I work.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I worked for her. I helped her on the debate prep.
I spent hours with her team uh in her debate preparator.
Iways just say this, Bernie was too far to the
left for the US left. The country is a primarily
centrist country in some ways center right. Hillary Clinton would
have been a very good president, but she unfortunately doesn't
have the personality for our time. You know, maybe she
(19:26):
could have if she campaigned in a different era. This
is a hiring decision that's based on popularity. Now, you
know it's not a hiring decision that's based on qualifications.
Having a popularity contest versus sitting around in a boardroom
trying to make a decision.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Did you think she would win?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I got that wrong. I thought she was gonna win.
Alistair Campbell and I Rory Stewart actually bet money on it.
I traveled in enough areas of the Swings days to
see her momentum and her rallies were building, and I
thought she was gonna win. I was very surprised by
(20:09):
the results. But remember he won by like one and
a half points. He only won by three hundred thousand votes.
You know, but the Democrats did something, and if Democrats
are listening, it'd be really mad at me. But I
did Gavin Newsom's podcast that I told him this, how
do you let Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy out of
your party? As an example, Lennon Johnson would have never
done that. Okay, Joe Biden And it turns out it
(20:33):
was probably Joe Biden's staff, now that we're learning about
Joe Biden. But he gets disinvited from the Electric Vehicle summit.
What are you guys doing? Lindon Johnson had one of
the best lines ever. Let's get all the elephants into
tent this way. If they have to take a piss,
they piss out of the tent. Don't let an elephant
outside of the tent that could potentially piss into the tent.
Elon and Bobby Kennedy really helped Donald Trump more than
(20:54):
people realize.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
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Speaker 3 (21:31):
So I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. My
mother ever went to college. So I grew up in
Port Washington, which is on Long Island. Some very wealthy
areas there, but like in places like Greenwich or Port Washington,
Great Neck, there are also blue collar areas. I mean
there's places where you got to put the landscapers and
the sheet rock people and the plumbers. And so my
(21:52):
dad was a union guy. He was a crane operator
in the town. So he's spent forty one years as
a construction worker. Smoker, drinker, super hard guy, not gonna
bes anybody. So he was very tough on us as kids. Three.
I have an older brother and a younger sister. My
(22:13):
mother was a cosmetologist. Okay, so when I go on
TV I have my makeup, she will call me and
tell me I've got the wrong color. Your Mac number
five is my you know, cosmetology like cosmetics, and so
we rarely saw her on Saturdays because she was with
bridal parties on Saturdays making them up. And she worked
(22:35):
at a local nail salon and sold cosmetics and did
makeup artists basically. But those are my parents' jobs, super
hard working, very tight, lots of tight financial situation, a
lot of middle class upbringing. I would never dishonor my
parents by telling you I grew up poor. I did
not grow poor. We had a great middle class upbringing,
(22:59):
but a small house, you know, and we had you know,
I mean had a little hallway kitchen with a sixpansive
beautiful kitchen here we had my mother had this little
hallway kitchen, and then off the kitchen there was a
little vestibule that had a round table that really could
fit six, but we always had eight to ten people
shoved into.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
The table, friends and family.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Family, and I have a big the neighbor I grew
up in. I have about twelve cousins that grew up
alongside of my brother and sister. So so my grandmother
was alive. She was a huge cook, took everything.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
She the first generation to come from its.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
First generation got to the US in nineteen twenty three.
My other grandparents got to the US a little earlier
than that, but she was eighteen and nineteen twenty three
she married my grandfather. Obviously he was from the same
town as her. It was an arranged marriage, and so
he went to Italy, back to the town he was from,
(23:57):
and him and his mom and dad selected my grandmother
and they did some kind of agreement, and believe it
or not, there was a dowry and all kinds of stuff,
and she moved to New York had three children.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Her coming from a town in Italy into a country
you didn't know what the.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Man you didn't couldn't couldn't, couldn't speak the English, read
ill progress. So you grew up in upstate New York.
You remember, do you remember what town in the Gascock?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And before that, I was from Monticello. I was born
in Monticello.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Probably know those towns well because I have a house
in Green County, a house by window Mountain. But anyway,
you know, she comes. She's ten years younger than my grandfather.
They have three kids. My two uncles go to the
Second World War. My uncle Anthony, who I'm named after,
was a Normandy beach survived. It was wounded in a
(24:51):
town in France on the way to Paris. Was in
an army hospital for about two months. I rejected the
opportunity to get disc George and he fought in the
Battle of the Bulge and then he went on to
Potsdam and so he had an incredible story in the war.
My other uncle got to the war for the Battle
(25:11):
of the Bulge as well. But I'm from a family
of Italian immigrants. On both sides. It was old school stuff, Ruthie.
We're talking about stepping on grapes at about we're talking
about in a bathtub. I can remember my uncles and
grandfather wash your feet and you get up on the grapes,
you step, crush him down. They scoop all that up,
(25:34):
put it in a press. I mean this wine we
were see you and I are old enough to remember
the tropicana class charge. You remember, Okay, so my grandfather
was probably forty proof red wine. Okay, we're talking about
like grape spike, grape juice, and I can remember, but
I just remember I remember getting drunk on it at
age eight or nine. I mean he would he would
(25:56):
put it in a glass tropic cana I just thought
it was grape juice. I was drinking it was getting
drunk off the sub. But but we had we had pigs.
Slaughter the pig.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
You'd make in your garden.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
No, he would, No, he would in Port Washington. He
would go buy the pig from one of the farms.
He would cook it or cure it, or you know,
take the legs off and make pursude. He'd wrap it.
You'd have a little area of the you have a
little section of the grandfather, my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And so I mean we this was made made projutto
homemade naughkey. Uh, I can still And when I go
to Rios, and I know you're familiar with rails. When
I go to Raos, I tell those guys up there
to taste like my nana's meatballs from the nineteen seventies.
Is that same way that they processed the meat. They
fry it a little bit, they poach it a little bit,
(26:50):
they put it in the sauce.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And so this is your grandmother who came from the
small town, came to America. A man who made prescuto,
carried on this Italian culture putting bacci.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, my uncles played the accordion. Remember this is some
old school stuff. I mean, so I a song el progress.
So you know, this is the other thing about growing
up like that. No Italian spoken by any of our
cousinme because my grandmother was strict about it. The you know,
the Italians, as you know, were discriminated against when they
(27:22):
came in. There were signs in this no Nina, no
Italians need apply. So we you know, my grandmother was
very strict about us speaking Italian. My parents speak Italian.
My uncles, of course spoke Italian, they're not a deceased,
but none of us spoke Italian. But they were old
school people. I mean, you know, when I'm sixty one now,
(27:43):
when I think about that time in my life. Even
though my father was rough on us and he was
a hard blue collar guy, not educated, there was a
family atmosphere that was very solidifying. I think you learn
from your family what they care about. And my grandmother
had one of the best lines ever, which I always
say to my kids, what other people think of you
(28:04):
as none of your business. And it's very important to
tell kids, especially in the age of social media, because
they can get on the social media and it can
give them a distortion of what's going on in the world.
They can feel insecure or left out or have fomo.
And the message from the nineteen twenties and thirties is
an immigrant Italian relax. You know what I mean? You know,
(28:25):
don't care. Mel Brooks has a great line which I
always tell the kids, You'll relax. None of us are
getting out of your life. You relax, you're fire from
a job, who cares, have a step back in your business. Relax.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos to
our podcast, a Question an Answer episode with me and
our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your
question to Questions at Rivercafe dot co dot org. Okay,
and you might just be our next great guest. On
(29:03):
Ruthie's Table four, it's interesting about food and food and memories.
And you talk about you know your grandmother in a
way that there are probably many many ways to describe
your grandmother who did but you also your memories are
of the food you had. I can picture your mother's kitchen.
(29:26):
I was wondering if you might tell me about how
food is in your house right now.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Listen. I mean food is the center of everything in
the family like ours. I mean, my wife is also
Italian mother, and my wife is actually has Norwegian and
German in her genealogy, but her grandmother was Italian and
her mother was raised in an Italian culture. So our
house is also as that Italian thing where everything is
(29:53):
sort of centered around food. But I will say this
to you, that something that I miss that we really
try to get back to, which is really hard in
our current culture, which is what we're doing right now.
We're at the table, we have no phones, we're eating,
we're talking to each other, We're locked in, and I
really benefit from that as a kid, you know, with
(30:15):
my grandparents in the room where my you know, my
grandmother had some of the best lines. I always tell
people my grandmother used to say to us that the
best among us, and she said it in Italian. I
wouldn't even know how to say it in Italian, but
it translates like this, the best among us choose not
to judge human frailty so harshly. It's not a beautiful
(30:38):
way to think about people. And then you know the
other thing that she always said to us, which I
try to take with me. She's very religious. She was
very Roman Catholic. She went to church, confession, communion, the
whole thing. But she really believed in karma. She was like,
if you do, you know, be the first one to give,
(30:58):
you know, don't you know. And I'm bastardizing it now,
I'm making it more modern. But it was like, a
don't be transactional, be nonlinear in life, you know what
I mean, do a favor for somebody without them asking,
or you know, hand the extra dollar to somebody that
may need it. There was a generosity about her that
I tried to take with me. She was also a maid,
(31:20):
so I always say this to my kids. You know,
when I'm in a hotel, I'm always leaving money in
the room because it could be somebody's grandmother. You know.
I think about my grandmother, what she had to do,
the wrisk she had to take to come to the
United States, marrying somebody she really didn't know, building a family,
but also had to work. It was a dual income
family to survive. But she couldn't get a job and
(31:44):
she didn't speak English, so she was turning beds, you know.
And so I think about that all time, and I
think people have to put in perspective their lives and
treat the other people around them with some level of kindness.
And that's something you're great at, which is why your
restaurant is learning. The food is great, but you're great
at that. But when I think about food, that is
(32:07):
part of that giving thing, you know, like I'm always
I mean, if you come to my house, you're gonna
eat to the point of explosion, right, because.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
We have to make sure it's about sharing. It's also
about comfort, isn't it. So you know, if we think
that food alleviates hunger or it makes us feel connected
to people we might not know, taste this. Try this.
One of the nice things I love is being at
the past and seeing people eating with their children often
or with each other, sharing food, tasting each other's food,
(32:36):
responding to it. It's also it is comfort.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And so you know, for my grandmother to come to
your restaurant, it would be the luxury of luxuries, right
because she cooked it. She cooked it from scratch, then
she cleaned up, you know, and so if she came
here and she didn't have to cook it, and she
didn't have to clean up. It was a great experience.
I got to tell this story before we leave because
(33:02):
it's about American Italian American patriarchy. So my old boss,
who's a great guy, I was on the Golden Sack
sales desk. He was a Jewish guy from San Francisco.
He's like, mooch, your grandmother and your mother they cook.
I said, yeah, they cook. He says, all right, you
(33:22):
do Sunday you do Sunday meals? I said, yeah, we
do Sunday meals one o'clock on a Sunday after church.
All right, I want to impose my fiance on your mother.
I got to come out and have an old school
Italian home cooked meal. You're welcome anytime. And so he
came up to the little house with the litanoleum, you
know Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch called, wanted the
(33:42):
paneling back. I mean, that's the house I grew up in.
And we were at that little table verse six where
we had eight people there or ten, and my mother
cooked up a storm. My sister was there helping her.
And when the meal was over, my sister and mother
got up and they started cleaning. Okay, did I get
up and start cleaning? I did not, And his fiance
(34:04):
got up and started cleaning, and Gary looked over me says,
you're not going to get up and helped them clean,
and I looked at them. I said, no. That never
dawned on me. Okay, it was so patrioical. Okay that
literally didn't get it, didn't get up. And so we're
now fast forward to where we are today. Right. I
always try to remind people we've come a long way
(34:25):
from that experience, but some of us grow up like that,
So go a little easy on us. So we're doing
the best weekend. I mean, I'm I'm all about the equality,
I'm all about the whole thing. But in a traditional family,
that's how it went down, and there was no there
was even a discussion about it. But I was twenty
seven or twenty eight years old when it dawned me, Wait,
you're doing You need me to watch that vision having
(34:47):
made ruthy, I've changed diapers.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I watched, But you haven't read your recipe yet. We
like to tell people how to make, how to do
a recipe, and you can change it you can read
it any way you want.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
I mean, look, I'm I mean, this is linguini with
fresh and dried oregano. But there's also some amazing red
Datorini tomatoes in this. So it's two handfuls of fresh
oregano finally chopped, twenty five grams of dried oregano on
the branch and the leaves are crumbled. And then these
Daturini tomatoes. There's twelve red Daturini tomatoes. They are quartered
(35:24):
and seeded, but they're not cooked yet, and that's one
of the more brilliant things about this dish. There are
twelve yellow Dati tomatoes. They're quartered and seeded. And then
there's one hundred milli liters of extra version olive oil.
And then this is the kicker, which makes the thing
taste amazing. It's one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, which
(35:46):
you can taste it in the sauce. It is absolutely delicious.
Two hundred and fifty grams of linguini. Of course, we're
going to cook Dad al Dante, and here's what we do.
You take the red wine vinegar. This lists of recipe.
It's important that you serve this on hot plates, but
you mix the fresh and dried oregano together, combined the
(36:07):
tomatoes with extra version olive oil, the red wine vinegar,
and sea salt and black pepper. So he mixed all
of that up. Then you set that aside to marinate.
If I set that right, marinate, cook the linguini and
a generous amount of boiling salted water. Then drain and
return to the pan. Toss with the oregano mixture and
(36:31):
the marinated tomatoes until very hot. Then, sirve, But I
noticed something that your chef did which I thought was awesome.
He took some of the water which was loaded with
salt and some of the starch from the pasta, and
he poured that into the saute, which gave it a
little bit of a thickening quality, and added a little
dash of salt. So I thought that was majestic. So
(36:53):
this is linguini with fresh and dried oregano. And I
don't know how did I do? Did I say that? All?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Right?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
So well, and I'm ready to eat. The guy did
another another portion of that, so my head can explode
from the shirt that I'm wearing. Yeah, so amazing.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
My last question to you, because I was starting to
talk about what food means to us, and it means
memories of your family. It means sharing with your children,
teaching them values and feeling empathy, resilience. It can all
be your grandmother's kitchen. What if you needed to have
comfort food, you told me you love peanut butter and jelly,
(37:35):
which is fine. One of my guests, Austin Butler, when
he was I asked him his comfort food. He remembered
eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with his mother
before she died, and that was something he meant to him.
But I think we do go to food for comfort.
You've had the need of comfort, you have had need
for comfort in your life.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Were huge awesome Butler fans. By the way, my son
has a close relationship with him, and I mean door
that guy. But here's what I would say to you
for me and food, and I think you'll get this
because you ethereally have this. When I think of food,
I do think of my grandparents, and I do think
(38:16):
of the preparation, but I also think of the simplicity.
And I think it's very very important for people, whatever
they're doing in their life, whatever they're aspiring to, some
things are going to go well. Other things are not
going to go well. But food for me is that anchor.
It reminds me of what is important. And I'm going
(38:36):
to send you I did this thing for Vox Media
and they said, okay, so what did you do after
you got fired?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
What I do?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I flew to Italy? Why do I fly to Italy?
Because the Italians know they're going to die, they already
had their empire. They're going to serve me a slice
of pizza. I'm gonna eat some pasta and have a
glass of red wine. Who gives a shit about getting fired?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Right?
Speaker 3 (38:57):
And the point I'm making is that food for me
in my life has been like the anchor to the simplicity,
the anchor to that low expectation that man, can I
just have this meal? And I want to tell you
this story and I hope it makes the podcast. A
deceased friend who is a Holocaust survivor, and I was
(39:19):
a young man and I was working at Goldman Sachs
at the time, and he was a Holocaust child refugee.
He met his wife in the refugee camp in Europe
before they were sent to the United States into a
foster situation. He ended up marrying her, and he had
the indelible ink on his forearm. And he was the nicest,
(39:41):
loveliest person, literally you could imagine. And I used to
go to dinner with him at a local Italian restaurant
and I'm going to show you something with my hand,
and for the people are listening to audio, I'll explain
what I'm doing. When the plate got served, Ruthie, he
would look over at me, wash my hand. He would
go like this. He would go like this, and this
(40:04):
sweeping of his hand, looking at the abundance on the plate.
He was sending a message to me. He was like Anthony.
I was in a refugeek. I was in a concentration
camp as a young kid, got rickets. They didn't feed me.
Now I'm in the United States. He had this beautiful
wicker furniture company that he built, and he was a
multi millionaire many times over. And every time the plate
(40:28):
landed in front of him, Ruthie, he took his hand
and he sweeped it over the plate, like acknowledging the
miracle of the abundance and the simplicity of that meal.
We need to think about that in our lives, you know,
we have to. When the plate hits and we're able
to eat it and we're nourished by this beautiful earth
(40:48):
that we're living on. Think of that man who started
his life, the early part of his life in a
concentration camp, and how grateful he was for that meal.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Gratitude. I'm a gratitude. I feel gratitude to you for coming.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Thank you very much, and though it's great to be here,
thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with
Montclair in.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The last few days, telling friends my next podcast guest
was going to be Anthony Scaramucci. Everybody had a reaction,
a big one. How amazing, Ruthie, How did that happen? Ruthie?
Lucky you, lucky us to listen to the two of you.
When will it come out? In my career, I've been
a chef and an author and now a podcaster. In
(00:27):
his career, Antony has been a President's communication director in
the White House, a financial genius founding Sky Capital, and
the host of the Rest Is Politics US podcast. We
both had our ups and downs. His may have been
higher ups and maybe downer downs. But we're not here
to compete. We're here to talk about food, party politics,
(00:53):
food and party parties, food and family, food and memories.
Up to date, spent about ten minutes with Antony, but
it doesn't feel that way for me. The night we
met in the River Cafe was an immediate connection. I
agree with my friends. How lucky am I to have
him here today? How lucky am I to share stories?
(01:15):
How lucky am I to kind of feel he's my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Well? I mean, the feeling is it's very very sweet introduction.
I didn't prepare an introduction, but I just want you
to know that I'm a super fan of yours. And
the night that I had here was very memorable one
for me because I came with Jason Fox, who's a
legend here for the SAS show. I did the American
version called Special Forces, and so he dunked me in
(01:40):
a car and he trapped me in the car and
pushed me out of a helicopter, set me on fire.
I mean, I don't know what the hell I was
doing in that show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But he took you to the River caf That part
of the risk.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, no, no, no, The River Cave was the dessert after
brutalizing me in the desert. We were out on the
Wadi Rum desert. The show's ten days at age fifty eight,
I made it through six of them, so I was
proud of myself. But it was hard.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
What did you eat? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Oh? Terribly terribly.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I lost.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I lost probably we'll go by killer. I lost ten pounds.
I don't know, ye, yeah, I bought probably six kilos.
I mean it was a shit on a shingle corned
beef and on toast boiled eggs. It was terrible of
franks and beans. They were giving you sort of sas
food rations for the day, unlimited amount of water, but
(02:36):
the food was terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
What do you think you took away with you?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
You know, it's a great question. I think when you
go through something like that and it's a minor thing,
you get a lot more empathy for people that are
actually out in that desert for eighteen months, or they're
out there serving the country, whether it's the UK or
the US, and they're making a sacrifice to keep people safe.
I mean, you get a lot more empathy. The other
(03:00):
thing is, I think your life's happiness comes from your
expectation management.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And tell me about expectation managed.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Well, if you're sleeping on a cot in one hundred
and five degree weather in a canvas tent, and you've
got a little pillow this big and a little tiny uh,
and you're freezing at night because the temperature goes to
one oh five to forty eight. These are Fahrenheys, of course,
and you start freezing. You're like, you know, you learn
to appreciate what you have. You learn to appreciate the
(03:28):
comforts that you have. I do you know, I'm a
big believer that life is about expectations. Lower expectations, higher positivity,
higher outcomes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I think it's also interesting me, but you brought up
was about empathy, because there's all thinking about empathy so
much right now, especially since someone whose name I don't
actually like to mention on the podcast, which is Elon Musk,
said that liberals had too much empathy. I saw someone
wrote something in response to that and said, you know,
empathy is he said, he wrote, I used to try
(04:00):
and think what was evil? How do you define evil?
And then he said, thinking about it, I think evil
is when you have no empathy. And it turned out
that it was signed by someone who was it Nuremberg,
you know, judge at Neuremberg. And it made me think
about how empathy. If we don't have empathy, what do
we have. I think it's so well, crucially.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I think that's it, you know, I mean, ultimately the again,
I guess I'm sharing a lot of my personal follows.
I'll share it with you. I get the most joy
out of helping other people. I think that's an axiom
for most people. I tell people, you know, I have
an older brother that has an experienced drug addiction in
his life. He's going in and out of rehab. He
(04:45):
is figured out a way to stay sober by helping
other people. He's a sponsor. He's a phone call away
from someone that's depressed or in need of something, or
trying to help somebody stay off of whatever the drug
is that they're addicted to. And I think when you're
helping people, you're at your best. And if you're helping people,
(05:06):
your empathetic tours whatever their struggle is, you know. And
so to me, I think empathy is the whole thing
empathy is. But a lot of these norses is frankly,
they don't have a lot of empathy. There are people
political leaders and whatnot that they objectify people and they're
just in their field of vision. Do either do a
transaction that's favorable or unfavorable, and then they're immediately discarded
(05:27):
like it's it's almost like a video game for a
lot of these people, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And the other one that you talk about is resilience.
So we have empathy, but we also have resilience. And
I've been through quite a lot in the last ten
years as all as of Heath, and I thought, actually,
if you can teach your children resilience, I think that's
a great gift to have in life. That you you
(05:53):
have to be able to cave in as well, you have.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
To be able to Is it teachable?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
That's a good question.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
With my children. My observation, I guess, is that they're
observing you. I can say things to them, but it's
not going to really matter. It's your actions that are
going to be things that happened. So when I got
fired from the White House, which was a brutal time
for me, Ruthie, if you're ever having a bad day
and you're listening to this podcast, I want you to
imagine my day on the thirty first of July twenty seventeen.
(06:23):
I got I asked fire from the White House, blown
into Pennsylvania Avenue, skinned alive by the media, rolled in margarite, assault,
and I was on the Santa Monica promenade. Don't know
if you've ever been out there at that open door
promenade on third and fourth Street. And my son at
that time, he's thirty three now, but he was twenty five.
Then he put his arm around me and he said, Dad,
(06:46):
are you going to be okay. It was the first
time in my life where my son was parenting me
as opposed to be parenting him, and I didn't really
remember the feeling if I was going to be okay
or not, but I remember what I said to him.
I said, yeah, going to be okay. Watch what I
do with this. And I think it's very important for
kids to see their parents get through things, whatever they
(07:09):
may be, because then in their mind they have space
for their own failures. They have space for whatever they
come up short on in their lives where they can say, Okay,
well that's happened to my mom or happen to my dad,
and they were able to get through it. I can do.
I find a lot of my very wealthy friends. They
sanitize their life, Ruthie. They have a life that goes
up into the right. It's a perfect story. They made
(07:32):
no bad decisions. I can't tell you the number of
billionaire memoirs that I've read where I'm a gas that
the perfection of all their choices, and then you look
at their kids, and their kids are always eclipsed by
all that, and it creates great insecurity. I just think
it's super important for your children to see your fallibility,
(07:53):
your mistakes, but also your grind, your ability to get
up and get going after your.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Mistakes, the resilience that you have now. I bet your
son said to you, how are you going to cope
what you described as one of the worst imaginable situations
of being fired? What was that? Tell me what that
was like?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
First of all. First of all, I deserve to be fired.
We can talk about that too. Is you have to
be accountable. I should have never taken that job. I mean,
this is a joke inside the family. I mean, my
wife hates trust.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
That's what the job was.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Okay, So I was the White House communications director for
eleven days. My I mean, my wife hates Donald Trump,
like almost as much as Milania hates him. So I mean,
that's like way up here. And so I mean, and
she told me not to do it. And this is
a real cautionary tale. I did it for ego related reasons.
I had grown up in a blue collar family. I
went to Tufton Harvard Law School. I had started to
(08:49):
successful businesses, sold one in my late thirties, and so
I had some financial independence. And now I had a
chance to work for the American President. And the funny
thing about this is just a side of my bad
judgment or my immaturity. My mentor, who I totally respect,
was about ten years older than me, was given a
(09:11):
big job in the administration, and in December he called
me to say he wasn't taking it, and I said what,
And he said, no, I'm not going to take it.
I spent enough time with Trump to know that we're
like oil and water and it's going to end badly
for me if I take the job. And my ego's
in the right place and I'm not going to take
the job. But that wasn't me, Ruthie. I took the
(09:31):
job because my ego and my pride were driving me
to the notion that I was going to work in
the White House and help solve some problems and work
on policy and help people. I mean, it was a
little bit of idealism in there, but what there really
was was a lot of ego centers. It was filling
the self narrative of me, and it was quite detrimental.
(09:54):
I mean, Deirdre and I almost got divorced. I missed
the birth of my fifth child I was in It
still pains me to talk about it, but I'll share
it here. James was born on July twenty fourth, twenty seventeen.
It was a Monday. I was with President Trump at
the Boy Scouts event in West Virginia. Deersa and I
(10:18):
were fighting. She was due on August eighth or ninth,
and she was delivering prematurely, a couple of weeks early.
And there's a sixty mile no fly zone around Air
Force One. So an Air Force One comes into an area,
they have fighter planes, but they also have you know,
you can't go over Air Force One. You can't fly
over that airspace. And so it was an impossibility to
(10:40):
get back to New York. So I missed the birth
of my son. So you have to imagine this week.
I'm working for President Trump. It is not going well
because there's a lot of internescent fighting in the White House.
Trump is doing things that a lot of us are
looking at same ways. I don't want to be involved
with that. Fighting with him, and I get fired, almost divorced.
(11:03):
Missed the birth of my son. So again, if you're
having a bad weekend, he was having a bad week,
give me a call. I can tell you about a
really bad week. But we should take it back to food.
But I'm just saying, do.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You know I agree? I know? Okay, tell me who
eats better the Democrats for the Republicans.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
I had one meal with Trump in the White House,
in the Blue Room. It was on a Wednesday. And
you know how I know it was a Wednesday. Was
only there for one Wednesday, we kid, so I know
it was a Wednesday. So I had beef Wellington. The
son of a bitch is going to lift the five
hundred years old He eats well done meat with ketchup. Okay,
(11:38):
but the chef in the White House was making a
beef Wellington and he loved it. I think he had it.
You know, I had like two out of five weekday nights,
and so I had beef Wellington with him in a salad.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
What else did you mean with him?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You know he likes hav Me had Hamburger's on the campaign.
Remember I did nine months of campaigning with Trump, so
it was a tremendous amount of fast food. Did you
ever hear Jimmy Johns the fast food place? So Jimmy
Johns is like a Midwestern sandwich shop. It's like all
cold cuts. I mean, it's unbelievable that his orderies are
still flowing. I mean, this guy eats McDonald's french fries,
(12:13):
quarter pounders with cheese, Jimmy John's cold cuts.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Do they seem to enjoy it? Does he say they're
savoring it? Or is it just getting the food down?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
No? No, no, he is a fast food maniac. By the way,
I mean, he'll come off. He would come off the
plane where a campaign, he'd be like asking the cops
where the burger king was and he'd like, what do
you want from burgering? I'm like, I don't want anything.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Was campaigning with the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Like, well, here's the problem with the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
He's a good cook.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
By the way, she's she's she's a great cook. She's
an incredibly nice person. She's a very smart person. But
they did her a disservice because you can't you have
whatever you think of Trump. At the time that she
was running against him, he was arguably the most famous
person in the world, or one of the most famous
(13:01):
people in the world, and she had one hundred and
seven days to get to know the Americans and the
Americans to get to know her. But also she was
working with Joe Biden's team. She's not her own team.
It wasn't like her office is based in Delaware, it
wasn't based in northern California. So this was a tremendous disadvantage.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Did you travel with her?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So I went to I went to Philadelphia with her
for the debate. The first of all, let me let
everybody on at Thirty of Them series, I'm a lifelong Republican.
The Republicans have so much envy for the Democrats. Gonna
tell you why. Okay, people are gonna hate me for this,
but they that Democrats have the celebrities that Democrats have,
(13:43):
the artists, the Democrats have the cool people in the culture. Okay,
the Democrats have more fun. Their parties are better, the
entertainment is better, the food is better. The Democrats have
the culture, which is why Trump is pissed off of
them all to which is why he you know, decapitated
the Kennedy Center, right because you know, the Democrats look
(14:05):
at him, or the artists look at him like a
knuckle dragging ogre, and so you know he's gonna, I guess,
bruise them by taking over the Kennedy Center. And like
you know, he knocked out board members of the Kennedy
Center were giving tens of millions of dollars of donations
to the arts and to the performing arts in the country.
(14:27):
And so he's not going to replace that money. He's
not going to give anybody his money. That's not how
he operates. So and by the way, you know, we're
in the United Kingdom. You're not allowed to compare Trump
to these fascists. So I'll try not to do that.
But Mussolini did dead took over the arts. What happened
to Mussolini in the end? People turned on him, right,
So I mean, you do enough crazy stuff over time
(14:49):
that people will turn on you and.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
The message you're giving us all because.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think it's you. I mean you're doing people are
doing very crazy things in the United States right now.
Listen to the Boss, Listen to Bruce Springsteen. They'll tell
you what I.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Was really proud of him, because I think there's a
lot of thought going on, is how do we oppose
what is the opposition right now? You know, how do
we express our frustration or disdain or anger for what
our country is representing?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Right now?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
So how would you let me? So let me say
something I think it's important. This is original programming for
me because I haven't really shared this with anybody. Think
about my life experience. I was with Trump, and I
was with Trump seeing something, and then it was manifesting
and overlaying what I saw on President Trump. And so
(15:44):
what did I see? I saw a group of people
in our country, the United States, who were feeling economically
left out this twenty sixteen. In my neighborhood, I would
describe the neighbor I grew up in as economically asper.
My father didn't make a lot of money, but he
certainly thought its kids would go on to make some
money and live the American dream. It was upward mobility,
(16:08):
I would say. When I was campaigning with President Trump
and I was by accident with him because I was
with Jeff Bush Jet Bush lost, he asked me to
go work for him, and so I accepted. I mean,
I made a lot of mistakes, but perhaps that was
the first one. But what I saw is very relevant
for twenty twenty five because I'm sure it's happening here
in the United Kingdom. There is a feeling of lower
(16:31):
and middle income people that they're not getting ahead for
their children. Forget about themselves for a minute, my dad
economically aspirational. Today, same person, they're feeling economically desperational. They
don't have the same living standards that they once had
in blue collar America. And by the way, when I
(16:52):
was with the president President Trump in twenty sixteen, I
priced my dad's wages and I told him that those
ways are now down twenty six and a half percent
in real terms, that would put my family not in
a small house, but renting somewhere, possibly on an EBT
or governmental assistance card. And so there's a real dilemma
(17:13):
going on in the country now. He unfortunately has taken
advantage of it for his own personal purposes, and those
people are galvanized to him because they don't feel there
are other alternatives. There haven't heard anything from the establishment
politicians in thirty years. You know, those people's grandparents voted
for Linda Johnson, they voted for Jack Kennedy. Maybe the
(17:35):
great grandparents voted for FDR, but the Democrats left them.
The Republicans were never with them. And so Trump's populous
message has galvanized a lot of people. And of course
you've had the Democrats make a lot of missteps in
terms of the way they handle the last election. But
there's it would be remiss of me not to bring
(17:55):
up the dilemma, why are fifty percent of the United
States voting with him? There were forty of us that
worked for him, that begged people not to vote for him.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I would say the disaffection and the you know, the separation,
the feeling of being abandoned for the class of America
who felt that the society they were promised, the expectations
they thought they would have, were played to by a
populist who did it through racism, through status division, through divisions.
(18:28):
So if they wanted that ianization, would they go for
Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? That said, I understand what
you're talking about, but we'll do it through what you said,
through empathy. We'll care about the people who don't have
health care, or care about the people who are waiting
at the border to have a new life. Instead of
saying these people do not deserve this, we were angry
(18:50):
at these people. And that's what that's what's what I
think was manipulated by is that. It's a long conversation,
but I think there were two ways to go. There's
the and you worked for com you worked for the Democrats,
and I know there's so many problems, but I work.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I worked for her. I helped her on the debate prep.
I spent hours with her team uh in her debate preparator.
Iways just say this, Bernie was too far to the
left for the US left. The country is a primarily
centrist country in some ways center right. Hillary Clinton would
have been a very good president, but she unfortunately doesn't
have the personality for our time. You know, maybe she
(19:26):
could have if she campaigned in a different era. This
is a hiring decision that's based on popularity. Now, you
know it's not a hiring decision that's based on qualifications.
Having a popularity contest versus sitting around in a boardroom
trying to make a decision.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Did you think she would win?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I got that wrong. I thought she was gonna win.
Alistair Campbell and I Rory Stewart actually bet money on it.
I traveled in enough areas of the Swings days to
see her momentum and her rallies were building, and I
thought she was gonna win. I was very surprised by
(20:09):
the results. But remember he won by like one and
a half points. He only won by three hundred thousand votes.
You know, but the Democrats did something, and if Democrats
are listening, it'd be really mad at me. But I
did Gavin Newsom's podcast that I told him this, how
do you let Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy out of
your party? As an example, Lennon Johnson would have never
done that. Okay, Joe Biden And it turns out it
(20:33):
was probably Joe Biden's staff, now that we're learning about
Joe Biden. But he gets disinvited from the Electric Vehicle summit.
What are you guys doing? Lindon Johnson had one of
the best lines ever. Let's get all the elephants into
tent this way. If they have to take a piss,
they piss out of the tent. Don't let an elephant
outside of the tent that could potentially piss into the tent.
Elon and Bobby Kennedy really helped Donald Trump more than
(20:54):
people realize.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
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(21:16):
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Speaker 3 (21:31):
So I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. My
mother ever went to college. So I grew up in
Port Washington, which is on Long Island. Some very wealthy
areas there, but like in places like Greenwich or Port Washington,
Great Neck, there are also blue collar areas. I mean
there's places where you got to put the landscapers and
the sheet rock people and the plumbers. And so my
(21:52):
dad was a union guy. He was a crane operator
in the town. So he's spent forty one years as
a construction worker. Smoker, drinker, super hard guy, not gonna
bes anybody. So he was very tough on us as kids. Three.
I have an older brother and a younger sister. My
(22:13):
mother was a cosmetologist. Okay, so when I go on
TV I have my makeup, she will call me and
tell me I've got the wrong color. Your Mac number
five is my you know, cosmetology like cosmetics, and so
we rarely saw her on Saturdays because she was with
bridal parties on Saturdays making them up. And she worked
(22:35):
at a local nail salon and sold cosmetics and did
makeup artists basically. But those are my parents' jobs, super
hard working, very tight, lots of tight financial situation, a
lot of middle class upbringing. I would never dishonor my
parents by telling you I grew up poor. I did
not grow poor. We had a great middle class upbringing,
(22:59):
but a small house, you know, and we had you know,
I mean had a little hallway kitchen with a sixpansive
beautiful kitchen here we had my mother had this little
hallway kitchen, and then off the kitchen there was a
little vestibule that had a round table that really could
fit six, but we always had eight to ten people
shoved into.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
The table, friends and family.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Family, and I have a big the neighbor I grew
up in. I have about twelve cousins that grew up
alongside of my brother and sister. So so my grandmother
was alive. She was a huge cook, took everything.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
She the first generation to come from its.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
First generation got to the US in nineteen twenty three.
My other grandparents got to the US a little earlier
than that, but she was eighteen and nineteen twenty three
she married my grandfather. Obviously he was from the same
town as her. It was an arranged marriage, and so
he went to Italy, back to the town he was from,
(23:57):
and him and his mom and dad selected my grandmother
and they did some kind of agreement, and believe it
or not, there was a dowry and all kinds of stuff,
and she moved to New York had three children.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Her coming from a town in Italy into a country
you didn't know what the.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Man you didn't couldn't couldn't, couldn't speak the English, read
ill progress. So you grew up in upstate New York.
You remember, do you remember what town in the Gascock?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
And before that, I was from Monticello. I was born
in Monticello.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Probably know those towns well because I have a house
in Green County, a house by window Mountain. But anyway,
you know, she comes. She's ten years younger than my grandfather.
They have three kids. My two uncles go to the
Second World War. My uncle Anthony, who I'm named after,
was a Normandy beach survived. It was wounded in a
(24:51):
town in France on the way to Paris. Was in
an army hospital for about two months. I rejected the
opportunity to get disc George and he fought in the
Battle of the Bulge and then he went on to
Potsdam and so he had an incredible story in the war.
My other uncle got to the war for the Battle
(25:11):
of the Bulge as well. But I'm from a family
of Italian immigrants. On both sides. It was old school stuff, Ruthie.
We're talking about stepping on grapes at about we're talking
about in a bathtub. I can remember my uncles and
grandfather wash your feet and you get up on the grapes,
you step, crush him down. They scoop all that up,
(25:34):
put it in a press. I mean this wine we
were see you and I are old enough to remember
the tropicana class charge. You remember, Okay, so my grandfather
was probably forty proof red wine. Okay, we're talking about
like grape spike, grape juice, and I can remember, but
I just remember I remember getting drunk on it at
age eight or nine. I mean he would he would
(25:56):
put it in a glass tropic cana I just thought
it was grape juice. I was drinking it was getting
drunk off the sub. But but we had we had pigs.
Slaughter the pig.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
You'd make in your garden.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
No, he would, No, he would in Port Washington. He
would go buy the pig from one of the farms.
He would cook it or cure it, or you know,
take the legs off and make pursude. He'd wrap it.
You'd have a little area of the you have a
little section of the grandfather, my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And so I mean we this was made made projutto
homemade naughkey. Uh, I can still And when I go
to Rios, and I know you're familiar with rails. When
I go to Raos, I tell those guys up there
to taste like my nana's meatballs from the nineteen seventies.
Is that same way that they processed the meat. They
fry it a little bit, they poach it a little bit,
(26:50):
they put it in the sauce.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And so this is your grandmother who came from the
small town, came to America. A man who made prescuto,
carried on this Italian culture putting bacci.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, my uncles played the accordion. Remember this is some
old school stuff. I mean, so I a song el progress.
So you know, this is the other thing about growing
up like that. No Italian spoken by any of our
cousinme because my grandmother was strict about it. The you know,
the Italians, as you know, were discriminated against when they
(27:22):
came in. There were signs in this no Nina, no
Italians need apply. So we you know, my grandmother was
very strict about us speaking Italian. My parents speak Italian.
My uncles, of course spoke Italian, they're not a deceased,
but none of us spoke Italian. But they were old
school people. I mean, you know, when I'm sixty one now,
(27:43):
when I think about that time in my life. Even
though my father was rough on us and he was
a hard blue collar guy, not educated, there was a
family atmosphere that was very solidifying. I think you learn
from your family what they care about. And my grandmother
had one of the best lines ever, which I always
say to my kids, what other people think of you
(28:04):
as none of your business. And it's very important to
tell kids, especially in the age of social media, because
they can get on the social media and it can
give them a distortion of what's going on in the world.
They can feel insecure or left out or have fomo.
And the message from the nineteen twenties and thirties is
an immigrant Italian relax. You know what I mean? You know,
(28:25):
don't care. Mel Brooks has a great line which I
always tell the kids, You'll relax. None of us are
getting out of your life. You relax, you're fire from
a job, who cares, have a step back in your business. Relax.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos to
our podcast, a Question an Answer episode with me and
our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your
question to Questions at Rivercafe dot co dot org. Okay,
and you might just be our next great guest. On
(29:03):
Ruthie's Table four, it's interesting about food and food and memories.
And you talk about you know your grandmother in a
way that there are probably many many ways to describe
your grandmother who did but you also your memories are
of the food you had. I can picture your mother's kitchen.
(29:26):
I was wondering if you might tell me about how
food is in your house right now.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Listen. I mean food is the center of everything in
the family like ours. I mean, my wife is also
Italian mother, and my wife is actually has Norwegian and
German in her genealogy, but her grandmother was Italian and
her mother was raised in an Italian culture. So our
house is also as that Italian thing where everything is
(29:53):
sort of centered around food. But I will say this
to you, that something that I miss that we really
try to get back to, which is really hard in
our current culture, which is what we're doing right now.
We're at the table, we have no phones, we're eating,
we're talking to each other, We're locked in, and I
really benefit from that as a kid, you know, with
(30:15):
my grandparents in the room where my you know, my
grandmother had some of the best lines. I always tell
people my grandmother used to say to us that the
best among us, and she said it in Italian. I
wouldn't even know how to say it in Italian, but
it translates like this, the best among us choose not
to judge human frailty so harshly. It's not a beautiful
(30:38):
way to think about people. And then you know the
other thing that she always said to us, which I
try to take with me. She's very religious. She was
very Roman Catholic. She went to church, confession, communion, the
whole thing. But she really believed in karma. She was like,
if you do, you know, be the first one to give,
(30:58):
you know, don't you know. And I'm bastardizing it now,
I'm making it more modern. But it was like, a
don't be transactional, be nonlinear in life, you know what
I mean, do a favor for somebody without them asking,
or you know, hand the extra dollar to somebody that
may need it. There was a generosity about her that
I tried to take with me. She was also a maid,
(31:20):
so I always say this to my kids. You know,
when I'm in a hotel, I'm always leaving money in
the room because it could be somebody's grandmother. You know.
I think about my grandmother, what she had to do,
the wrisk she had to take to come to the
United States, marrying somebody she really didn't know, building a family,
but also had to work. It was a dual income
family to survive. But she couldn't get a job and
(31:44):
she didn't speak English, so she was turning beds, you know.
And so I think about that all time, and I
think people have to put in perspective their lives and
treat the other people around them with some level of kindness.
And that's something you're great at, which is why your
restaurant is learning. The food is great, but you're great
at that. But when I think about food, that is
(32:07):
part of that giving thing, you know, like I'm always
I mean, if you come to my house, you're gonna
eat to the point of explosion, right, because.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
We have to make sure it's about sharing. It's also
about comfort, isn't it. So you know, if we think
that food alleviates hunger or it makes us feel connected
to people we might not know, taste this. Try this.
One of the nice things I love is being at
the past and seeing people eating with their children often
or with each other, sharing food, tasting each other's food,
(32:36):
responding to it. It's also it is comfort.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And so you know, for my grandmother to come to
your restaurant, it would be the luxury of luxuries, right
because she cooked it. She cooked it from scratch, then
she cleaned up, you know, and so if she came
here and she didn't have to cook it, and she
didn't have to clean up. It was a great experience.
I got to tell this story before we leave because
(33:02):
it's about American Italian American patriarchy. So my old boss,
who's a great guy, I was on the Golden Sack
sales desk. He was a Jewish guy from San Francisco.
He's like, mooch, your grandmother and your mother they cook.
I said, yeah, they cook. He says, all right, you
(33:22):
do Sunday you do Sunday meals? I said, yeah, we
do Sunday meals one o'clock on a Sunday after church.
All right, I want to impose my fiance on your mother.
I got to come out and have an old school
Italian home cooked meal. You're welcome anytime. And so he
came up to the little house with the litanoleum, you
know Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch called, wanted the
(33:42):
paneling back. I mean, that's the house I grew up in.
And we were at that little table verse six where
we had eight people there or ten, and my mother
cooked up a storm. My sister was there helping her.
And when the meal was over, my sister and mother
got up and they started cleaning. Okay, did I get
up and start cleaning? I did not, And his fiance
(34:04):
got up and started cleaning, and Gary looked over me says,
you're not going to get up and helped them clean,
and I looked at them. I said, no. That never
dawned on me. Okay, it was so patrioical. Okay that
literally didn't get it, didn't get up. And so we're
now fast forward to where we are today. Right. I
always try to remind people we've come a long way
(34:25):
from that experience, but some of us grow up like that,
So go a little easy on us. So we're doing
the best weekend. I mean, I'm I'm all about the equality,
I'm all about the whole thing. But in a traditional family,
that's how it went down, and there was no there
was even a discussion about it. But I was twenty
seven or twenty eight years old when it dawned me, Wait,
you're doing You need me to watch that vision having
(34:47):
made ruthy, I've changed diapers.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I watched, But you haven't read your recipe yet. We
like to tell people how to make, how to do
a recipe, and you can change it you can read
it any way you want.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
I mean, look, I'm I mean, this is linguini with
fresh and dried oregano. But there's also some amazing red
Datorini tomatoes in this. So it's two handfuls of fresh
oregano finally chopped, twenty five grams of dried oregano on
the branch and the leaves are crumbled. And then these
Daturini tomatoes. There's twelve red Daturini tomatoes. They are quartered
(35:24):
and seeded, but they're not cooked yet, and that's one
of the more brilliant things about this dish. There are
twelve yellow Dati tomatoes. They're quartered and seeded. And then
there's one hundred milli liters of extra version olive oil.
And then this is the kicker, which makes the thing
taste amazing. It's one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, which
(35:46):
you can taste it in the sauce. It is absolutely delicious.
Two hundred and fifty grams of linguini. Of course, we're
going to cook Dad al Dante, and here's what we do.
You take the red wine vinegar. This lists of recipe.
It's important that you serve this on hot plates, but
you mix the fresh and dried oregano together, combined the
(36:07):
tomatoes with extra version olive oil, the red wine vinegar,
and sea salt and black pepper. So he mixed all
of that up. Then you set that aside to marinate.
If I set that right, marinate, cook the linguini and
a generous amount of boiling salted water. Then drain and
return to the pan. Toss with the oregano mixture and
(36:31):
the marinated tomatoes until very hot. Then, sirve, But I
noticed something that your chef did which I thought was awesome.
He took some of the water which was loaded with
salt and some of the starch from the pasta, and
he poured that into the saute, which gave it a
little bit of a thickening quality, and added a little
dash of salt. So I thought that was majestic. So
(36:53):
this is linguini with fresh and dried oregano. And I
don't know how did I do? Did I say that? All?
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Right?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
So well, and I'm ready to eat. The guy did
another another portion of that, so my head can explode
from the shirt that I'm wearing. Yeah, so amazing.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
My last question to you, because I was starting to
talk about what food means to us, and it means
memories of your family. It means sharing with your children,
teaching them values and feeling empathy, resilience. It can all
be your grandmother's kitchen. What if you needed to have
comfort food, you told me you love peanut butter and jelly,
(37:35):
which is fine. One of my guests, Austin Butler, when
he was I asked him his comfort food. He remembered
eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with his mother
before she died, and that was something he meant to him.
But I think we do go to food for comfort.
You've had the need of comfort, you have had need
for comfort in your life.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Were huge awesome Butler fans. By the way, my son
has a close relationship with him, and I mean door
that guy. But here's what I would say to you
for me and food, and I think you'll get this
because you ethereally have this. When I think of food,
I do think of my grandparents, and I do think
(38:16):
of the preparation, but I also think of the simplicity.
And I think it's very very important for people, whatever
they're doing in their life, whatever they're aspiring to, some
things are going to go well. Other things are not
going to go well. But food for me is that anchor.
It reminds me of what is important. And I'm going
(38:36):
to send you I did this thing for Vox Media
and they said, okay, so what did you do after
you got fired?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
What I do?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I flew to Italy? Why do I fly to Italy?
Because the Italians know they're going to die, they already
had their empire. They're going to serve me a slice
of pizza. I'm gonna eat some pasta and have a
glass of red wine. Who gives a shit about getting fired?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Right?
Speaker 3 (38:57):
And the point I'm making is that food for me
in my life has been like the anchor to the simplicity,
the anchor to that low expectation that man, can I
just have this meal? And I want to tell you
this story and I hope it makes the podcast. A
deceased friend who is a Holocaust survivor, and I was
(39:19):
a young man and I was working at Goldman Sachs
at the time, and he was a Holocaust child refugee.
He met his wife in the refugee camp in Europe
before they were sent to the United States into a
foster situation. He ended up marrying her, and he had
the indelible ink on his forearm. And he was the nicest,
(39:41):
loveliest person, literally you could imagine. And I used to
go to dinner with him at a local Italian restaurant
and I'm going to show you something with my hand,
and for the people are listening to audio, I'll explain
what I'm doing. When the plate got served, Ruthie, he
would look over at me, wash my hand. He would
go like this. He would go like this, and this
(40:04):
sweeping of his hand, looking at the abundance on the plate.
He was sending a message to me. He was like Anthony.
I was in a refugeek. I was in a concentration
camp as a young kid, got rickets. They didn't feed me.
Now I'm in the United States. He had this beautiful
wicker furniture company that he built, and he was a
multi millionaire many times over. And every time the plate
(40:28):
landed in front of him, Ruthie, he took his hand
and he sweeped it over the plate, like acknowledging the
miracle of the abundance and the simplicity of that meal.
We need to think about that in our lives, you know,
we have to. When the plate hits and we're able
to eat it and we're nourished by this beautiful earth
(40:48):
that we're living on. Think of that man who started
his life, the early part of his life in a
concentration camp, and how grateful he was for that meal.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Gratitude. I'm a gratitude. I feel gratitude to you for coming.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Thank you very much, and though it's great to be here,
thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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