Best of Season 4 - Part One

 In October, I sat down at The River Cafe with director Guillermo del Toro for the first episode in a new season of Ruthie's Table 4. 40 guests later, season four has come to an end and we thought it would be fun to look back at some of those conversations.

Today we'll be hearing from Guillermo, Elton John, David Furnish, Zoe Saldaña, Josh Brolin, Bella Freud, Alice Walters, and Anthony Scaramucci.

Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
In October, I sat down at the River Cafe with
director Guillamo Del Toro for the first episode in a
new season of Ruthie's Table four. Forty guests later, season
four has come to an end, and we thought it
would be fun to look back at some of those conversations. Today,
we'll be hearing from Elton John, David Furnish so he

(00:26):
sailed Dona, Josh Brolin, Bella Freud, Alice Walters, and we'll
begin with Anthony Scarmucci, former White House communication director famously
for ten Days.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
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, I got
I ask fire from the White House, blown into Pennsylvania Avenue,
skinned the live by the media, rolled in Margarita Sault,
and I was on the Santa Monica promenade and if

(00:58):
you've ever been out there at that open were 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,
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

(01:19):
or not, but I remember what I said to him.
I said, yeah, I'm 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 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
could say, Okay, well that's happened to my mom or

(01:41):
happened to my dad and they were able to get
through it. I can do.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
What you described is one of the worst imaginable situations
of being fired. What was that? Tell me what that
was like?

Speaker 3 (01:53):
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 (02:04):
That's what the job was.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
So I was the White House Communications director for eleven
days my I mean, my wife hates Donald Trump like
almost as much as Malania 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

(02:29):
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,
is about ten years older than me, was given a

(02:50):
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

(03:11):
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.

(03:34):
I mean, Deersre 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. Deersre and I

(03:57):
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

(04:19):
get back to New York. So I missed the birth
with 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 waves. I don't want to be involved
with that fighting with him. Then I get fired, almost divorced.

(04:42):
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 you know I agree?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
I know, I think. Okay, tell me who eats better,
the Democrats for the Republicans.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
I had one meal with Trump in the White House
in the Blue Room.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Tell us it's like to eat.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
It was on a Wednesday, and you know how I
know it was a Wednesday. Was only there for one Wednesday, 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, But the chef in the White
House was making a beef Wellington and he loved it.

(05:21):
I think he had it. You know, I probably had
like two out of five weekday nights, and so I
had beef Wellington with him in a salad.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
What else did you mean with him?

Speaker 3 (05:31):
You know he likes me at Hamburger's on the campaign.
Remember I did nine months of campagny with Trump, so
it was a tremendous amount of fast food. This guy
eats McDonald's French fries, quarter pounders with cheese, Jimmy John's
cold cotes.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
They seemed to enjoy it. Does he sit there savoring
it or is it just getting the food down?

Speaker 5 (05:49):
No?

Speaker 3 (05:49):
No, no, he is a fast food maniac, by the way.
I mean he'll come off, come off the plane. Where
a campagny. He'd be like asking the cops where the
burger king went? And what do you want from burgeringh
I'm like, I don't want anything from.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Burg One of Zoe's Saldamia's mantras in life is feel
the fear and do it anyway? And what has it
she done? She dances, she acts, she sings, she speaks
several languages, and I think she loves to cook.

Speaker 6 (06:22):
My family has been in New York since nineteen sixties
and I lived there until I was ten. From ten
to seventeen, I was in Dominican Republic. I went back
to when I was seventeen. My mom is working, my
stepdad is working, My sisters and I were finding our
afternoon sort of placements. I was working also on the

(06:43):
weekends at burger King and stop there.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
What were you doing? I worked at Burger King And
what did you do there?

Speaker 7 (06:51):
I did the drive through. You know, Hi, welcome to burging,
I take your order.

Speaker 6 (06:56):
There is a lady from Guyanese, lady who is like
my and I just loved her accent. Welcome to bergecue
mate kioa. And I would I would like, I wasn't
making fun of her. I would just try to kind
of acquire this this accent because it was also like,
now that I'm back in New York, I'm reconnecting with
all these multicultures all over the place, and a lot
of a big part of them was connecting with other

(07:19):
Caribbean people. You know, we're from Spanish Antillas, so the
West Indies, eas English and Tillas and the British Islands
or whatever, like, we didn't really have that in Dominican Republic.
So now I'm connecting with Jamaicans, I'm connecting with people
from marou Ba, Saint Lucia, Grand Caman cool. But so

(07:41):
I I and Queens is definitely a very big West
Indian and so I was Brooklyn, West Indian melting pot.
So I was going bananas for the food.

Speaker 7 (07:50):
It was so good.

Speaker 6 (07:51):
And so I worked with a whole bunch of Caribbean people,
but we were from different parts than at Burriking and
it was fun. I feel like that's when my curiosity
over human being, behavior and who we are as people began.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I think a restaurant does teach you that. Absolutely. I
would say that, walk into a restaurant, look at the
tape of everybody having fun, and everybody has a story.
That's why. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (08:13):
And one of my managers was this woman who must
have been in her late thirties, but she drove to
work in a motorcycle. You know, she was just top
Can I get up up, Junior?

Speaker 7 (08:23):
Like she would just talk like here. She just had
a way of talking.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
And I just remember, I would like just doze off
observing people and hearing their accents. Because now I'm in
New York again, I'm getting to hear the world. Again,
my life was very multicultural. It was from the beginning.
I think growing up in New York, you're just around
just the world at all times. Pick a block and

(08:48):
you'll have like three continents and ten different countries and
you can eat, and I feel like you do get
to know people and communities through their food, And a
lot happens when you break bread with individuals you just
I don't know, there's an unspoken word that makes it
permissible for you to connect with people that look obviously different,

(09:10):
speak differently, smell differently from you, and yet through the
food that they're sharing with you, you get a piece
of who they are and vice versa. So New York
is that special still to this day for me.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Did you have Chinese food? Did you have any?

Speaker 8 (09:25):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (09:25):
My god?

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Did you every Sunday?

Speaker 6 (09:26):
Did you om Like the American families, they go like
every Sunday to like a diner and they'll have like pancakes.
Oh god, why would I start.

Speaker 7 (09:36):
The day eating cake?

Speaker 6 (09:38):
Like I don't you know, But but like I said,
I have a savory tooth. So we would wake up
and go either to Flushing in Queens, which is the
second biggest sort of like Chinatown Asian community outside of
Chinatown in downtown Manhattan, or we would just go to
Chinatown and we would.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Have dim sumthing.

Speaker 6 (09:57):
You know, on Saturday nights you have Korean barbecue. Friday
nights you have Korean barbecue. Or or sometimes if my
family that was visiting from from Dominican Republic that are
half Dominican half Japanese, they were in town, we.

Speaker 7 (10:09):
Would go have Shabu shabu, or you go.

Speaker 6 (10:11):
You go to seventhiet Street in Roosevelt and you would
have like Indian food. That was our community there for
Indian food.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
That shows a real curiosity that they really cared.

Speaker 6 (10:23):
It was always through food, mind you, there was still
a simplicity. We didn't go any deeper than that. But
by the time I would meet someone that comes from
that part of the world, and if I've tried their
dish before, I felt like I already knew half of them.
Eating other world's foods feeds your curiosity and you do

(10:44):
remain open going Okay, so I know your dishes, some
of your dishes, like I want to know more about you.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
We have good news. Ruthie's Table Before is launching on
YouTube throughout the summer we'll be posting some of our
favorite interviews across the series. To watch, go to YouTube
dot com. Slash hat symbol Ruthie's table four pod, an

(11:19):
open kitchen in the River Cafe, gives me the chance
to watch people having dinner with their children. David and
Elton uniquely engage with theirs, focused, listening, laughing, all four
in their own private world. Recently, sitting next to Elton
at a dinner in the River Cafe, we had no
small talk. We spoke immediately about Elton John Aids Foundation,

(11:42):
the polarized world we seem to be living in and
what we need to do as citizens. David and Elton
are activists. They registered their civil partnership in two thousand
and five on the first day it was legal in
the UK, leading the way for others to follow with
confidence and with pride.

Speaker 9 (12:00):
I grew up after the war, so everything was.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
All about early life.

Speaker 8 (12:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (12:05):
I was born in the council house. I lived with
my mother, my grandmother, because my father was away in
the Air Force.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Was it your mother's mother, Yes.

Speaker 9 (12:13):
My grandmother. She was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
What was she like?

Speaker 10 (12:16):
She was wonderful. She could cook anything and make it
taste incredible. I mean, basic ingredients were hard to get.
After all, we were russianed and bacon was partly a
no no. But she made I never remember a bad
meal or going hungry, and everything that was left over
she made into something else the next day.

Speaker 9 (12:34):
And what I loved about her because I have the
biggest sweet tooth.

Speaker 10 (12:37):
Her bread puddings and her apple pies, and her scones
or scones, and her victorious sponges.

Speaker 9 (12:46):
Very simple. The kitchen was again, the coal cellar was
in the kitchen. It was you believe it.

Speaker 10 (12:52):
The laundry was done on the stove in a boiler,
and we had a mangle to It was a very
basic upbringing. But I can never remember the smell of
cooking was always wonderful, and she could cook anything. I
fell in love with very basic, simple English food at
that point.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
I think that a simple English food. As you talk
about bread pudding and apple pie, those are very They're
not easy to make, you know, And it's to do
with the ingredients and the method and the way you cook.

Speaker 10 (13:21):
Yeah, and things like spotty digging cast it. I walk
into a restaurant, say in Yorkshire or something like that,
and sometimes they have things like that on the menu
to go Oh my God, which for me is just
a sheer delight. I always sometimes think that you go
to some john for instance, they have ecoes cakes, and

(13:44):
the Echoes cakes are incredible, and they sell it with
the cheese and it's just like wow, man from Heaven. Nowadays,
unfortunately I can't eat it because I'm semi diabetic. But
I do like those English stalwarts a lot too.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Well. Growing up, you had a mother and a grandmother
and the house and your father was where he was.

Speaker 10 (14:02):
He was away in the Air Force in Aiden, and
so I didn't really see much for him.

Speaker 9 (14:06):
So it was a woman's household.

Speaker 10 (14:08):
My mom's sister, my aunt, was always there as well,
So I grew up with a bunch of women who
knew how to cook, which was great.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
And you all sat down to meal every night together.

Speaker 9 (14:18):
Yes, and we toasted our toast by the fire.

Speaker 10 (14:21):
The thing about my grandmother was that because we had
a garden, we grew all our own produce because it
was so much cheaper, and my grandmother had green fingers,
so we always had fresh vegetables.

Speaker 9 (14:32):
Hardly ever had processed peas.

Speaker 10 (14:33):
I mean, the great advantage in those days that food
wasn't really you know, instant you did, no instant whips,
no instant.

Speaker 9 (14:40):
There's mashed potato.

Speaker 10 (14:41):
It was all genuinely from the garden, which was delicious. So,
I mean, I remember shelling the peas every Sunday morning.
That's that was like David, Sunday roast was very important
for the family gathering. So shelling the peas was one thing.
Peeling the potatoes with another broad being to another. So
we always had good produce because we couldn't afford to

(15:02):
buy them because you know, teams times were hard after
the war and the ruts, and we had a tiny
bottle of orange juice which you diluted and poured the
water into. But I never felt as if we were
missing anything.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
It denied. Yeah, but neither of your mother's worked. They
didn't have to combine a career with cooking.

Speaker 10 (15:20):
Your mother my mother worked all the time, and this
worked really really hard as well. And she worked in
the shop, she worked in a dairy, she worked at
the Air Force. She's always but she'd always come home
and make dinner. Yeah, she was very hard working woman,
but still cooked.

Speaker 5 (15:35):
She raised Dalton as a single mom, and so you
know his ability to study and take lessons and learn
and everything. His mum worked very very hard providing for
the family to allow him to do that. That's what
got him on his path to be who he is today.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Did you ever go to restaurants?

Speaker 10 (15:52):
The only time I remember going to a restaurant is
when I went to a Chinese restaurant in Harrow. We
lived in Pinna, and these restaurants suddenly became the rage.
Coffee bars were the rage before that, but we went
for Chinese meal. Was the first restaurant I can ever
remember going to, and it was just wow. We had
bean sprouts and it was just so delicious and it

(16:14):
was so exotic, and I remember I was so excited
to go to this Chinese restaurant.

Speaker 9 (16:19):
There weren't many in the area.

Speaker 10 (16:20):
One in Horrow, there wasn't certainly one in Pillar, but
it was just an incredible occasion. And that's the first
exotic food I ever really had. How old were you,
I don't know, eight nine maybe yeah?

Speaker 8 (16:30):
And did you get a restaurant It was a very
very special tree. Yeah, because again it was expensive and
it was a big treat. What we never had was
fast food. But my mother was very anti fast food.
She just didn't didn't think it was good for us.
I think she was ahead of her time with that.

Speaker 9 (16:48):
There wasn't any fast food when I grew up.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Fast food was spoiling the cases.

Speaker 10 (16:54):
And I went to school there suddenly became There was
a Wimpy Bar when I was about fifteen. That's the
first fast food place I can remember.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
My dad was more of a subservient type and my
mother was not. My mother just made things happen. She
was always making things happen, whether it was food, whether
it was whatever she was involved with. Was had a
high octane gasoline involved.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
My friend Josh Brolin. So you describe Josh living on
a ranch early age, your mother taking you out of
an urban existence and into the wild, and that includes
animals and her passion for animals, her protection of animals.
Can you tell me a bit about what that was like.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
As a drived out of La to a place called
Pastor Robos, California, which is about two hundred miles north
of Los Angeles. I think I was five at the time.
And she always had animals. Before that, she had cages
and so she had she ran a wildlife way station.
She would take animals who had illegally been taken out
of the wild, and she would have those people jailed,

(18:07):
and she would nurse those animals back to health if
they'd been defanged or declawed. She would find the most
habitable zoo. You know, she would find those lion country
safari type places. But you know, there were a lot
of There were wolves. My brother got sixty stitches in
his leg from a wolf. We clean the cages. There
were mountain lions. I have a picture right here. I mean,

(18:29):
you want me to show you the picture. I have
a picture of an adolescent mountain lion in my crib.
In my crib.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Oh my gosh, that you that you.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
That's a mountain lion.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
God.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
I mean that if you look at every single picture
of me as a kid, if you swipe as my
face looks like it's the attempt to eat it off
has been had.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
It makes me kind of crazy to think of that. No, yeah,
I'm sorry, this makes me crazy.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
Oh it's insane. Yeah, it's insane. That's nothing.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
And there was no protection for you. There was never
anybody around us said this case.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
I would, and I don't victimize in my book. When
you read my book, I don't victimize myself, and I
don't feel victimized, but there is an indictment. I was
talking to Howard Stern about man. They said, you don't
indict your parents. They said, I do. The reality. Yes,
they're incredibly irresponsible because that was the least of it.
We had to clean those cages. You go in there

(19:36):
at eight years old and you have a rake and
you're looking at a wolf in the eye. But if
you look down too much, it's going to see you
as prey and weak. But if you if you confront
too much, it's going to see it as a confrontation
and attack.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Do you remember domestic life? Would you sit down to
meals with every food always on the table?

Speaker 9 (19:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Always? That was the one thing. It's the one through
line that I remember in my childhood, because you know,
I'd wake up sometimes, my brother and I would wake
up three o'clock in the morning with my mother shaking
us and saying I want a waterburger, and then would drive,
you know, fifteen hundred miles with us in the car,
even though we.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Had school and fifteen.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Oh, yeah, fifteen hundred miles. My mother didn't fly. She
had she had been a stewardess. What is a Waterburger
Texan burger that started in Corpus Christie. It's like r
in and out Burger in America.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
As it was the name of a brand and she
had a craving for it. That was it.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
You'd get in the car and you'd be in the
car for four or five days.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
What would that feel like?

Speaker 9 (20:41):
It was? It was good.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
There was something that was great about the adventure of it,
which I think is still in me my brother. It's
interesting because my brother didn't have it was my dad
describes the fight in him that that I had.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
So she would with waking up at three and morning,
or having the animals that you describe so vividly in
your book. With a ranch. It was a kind of
structure of that. We would always sit down to a
meal or.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
Always Yeah, that's why I say, that's the only kind
of domestic reality within our family. My dad was constantly
traveling because he was working. My mom was always looking
for something to do and something to kind of mix up,
and then there would be her cooking.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
So describe her kitchen in the house.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
The house was just put up for sale, so I
was able to see an actual picture because the ranch
is three miles from the ranch that we're on now. Okay,
so where I grew up is three miles away from
where our ranch is now.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Where is that.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
Pastor Robles, California? Where is that Central Coast California?

Speaker 2 (21:49):
How far from?

Speaker 4 (21:50):
Four hours north of La three and a half hours
south of San Francisco. Yeah, Selina's valley, close to Steinbeck
Country and all that. But so I could see what
my memory was. But it's a very Spanish type, you know,
Spanish tiles, all handpicked by her. Yeah, and the stove

(22:11):
was always I always remember the flames, high flames and
the stove, and then I would get up. I don't
know why I started doing this. I'm thinking about it now.
I would get up on Saturdays usually, and I would
cook breakfast for my whole family. You're still making the flame,
the flame, the eggs over medium, over easy. I had

(22:31):
the toast, I had the bacon, I had biscuits sometimes.
But I don't know why. I don't know what it
was about. There was some meditating, obviously, I wanted to
please them. I loved the Maybe that was just me
trying to extend that thing, like you stay in bed
I'm going to take it together. Yeah, I'm going to

(22:52):
take care of you. It's funny, I haven't thought of that.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
And so you think recipes or did you just instinctive? Please?

Speaker 4 (22:58):
No, it was instinctive. It was always intinctive. And in
my kids, my older kids who are thirty six and
thirty one now, will tell you that I made either
the greatest food or the worst food that I would eat,
because if we were out at the ranch and it
was like, look, this is what we have, Like I
didn't go to the grocery store today, this is what
we have. So you have to experiment with what you have.

(23:19):
And sometimes that kind of experimenting would turn out brilliant,
and sometimes it would turn out like regurgitation. I remember
my daughter crying and saying, it tastes so bad. I'd go,
you have to eat it. Yeah, And I think that
was the kind of connective tissue I had of my
mother because the one time that my family was a

(23:40):
family family, the kind of family that you see and
leave it to beaver, even though it was as far
from leave it to beaver as you can imagine, was dinner.
And my mother always cooked. My mother cooked every day,
cooking was her thing. Cooking was her art, Cooking was
her canvas last.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Night and the amount of times that telephones were slammed
down or noise was made, or people running away, or
the anger or the fury or the that looking back
on that, yeah, you know, and then sitting down to
dinner with dinners calm though, which you kind of want
the food eating properly, or would they also be a

(24:23):
place for dramatic interest.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
No, it wasn't. No, even the thing that you're that
you're referencing is the phone being slammed down and her
throwing cups through a window at my dad and all that,
which was immediately followed by a breakfast. Immediately, I say,
I didn't even think that it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
It was just breakfast.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
We just went literally right back to this default of
you know, the semblance of normal, some normalcy. There was
nothing normal about it. Yeah, but when you look around
and everybody's kind of got this kind of gorgeous morning smile,
like like we were outside and vitamin D yeah, getting

(25:07):
ready for the day, and it's like, do you remember
what we were doing just like for the last four hours,
which was total insanity. And I think That's why when
I went out into the when I went out into
the world, it was that was the shock. The shock
wasn't what I was experiencing because I didn't know any different.
And then I got older and went out into the

(25:28):
world and started dealing with people on the level that
I had gotten used to, and then you see people reacting.
I think that's why I like being in Italy, because
I think people are just less they're more animated. Yeah,
it seems to vibe with how I was raised, without

(25:48):
the chaos, without ca Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
My husband came for a very Italian family and he
they were you could he could stay out till five
in the morning, He could do everything that he wanted
to do. He didn't have to dress in a certain
he had to be home from meal times. That was us,
you know, that was the structure, you know. And Jake
Jilanov said he opened up his podcast saying that food
was the only functional thing in a dysfunctional family, you know.

(26:13):
And I know him and his parents and his sharans
and you know, but he said it as can I
say that. And he talked about going to the market
and I don't know. Westwood of Pacific Palisades with his
father and seeing seeing the food, and what about your
mother's dinners.

Speaker 4 (26:28):
Her dinners were there was a lot of Mexican food,
there was a lot of Italian food, there was a
lot of Southern food. Did you think so? My mother
she learned at our ranch. Now we have an entire,
very large bookshelf of just her cookbooks.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
I would love to see those sometimes.

Speaker 4 (26:47):
Oh God, I love tell me about I mean, they're
all original cookbooks from decades. You know. I have in
the book too. Let me see if I can find it.
There's a thing that in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
She said that she introduced herself as in restaurants. She
would go into.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
Restaurants, she would always end up in the kitchen, that she.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Would end up in the kitchen.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Always, yeah, always, I think that. Let's say a dusty
fires she made it, and the cook in the back,
a lanky twenty eight year old who didn't know that
he was her prey for the evening. She showed him
how to better stir the sauce. She made him hold
his hand over hers as they flipped a dish in
a pan. She asked him who his favorite country Western

(27:30):
singers were and if he had ever been to a
proper rodeo. He was toast As far as I was concerned,
I knew it was going to be a long night,
and that I might as well go back out into
that parking lot and see what I could find in
the desert beyond it. Parents of the bones we cut
our teeth on, But they never talk about the parents'
own teeth. They never talk about the bite you learned
to see coming. I dreamed about her last night, and

(27:53):
I awoke happy but sweating, because every moment with her
was exciting. I couldn't just go have a meal in
a restaurant. She had to take over the entire restaurant.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Did you find it exciting or sometimes embarrassing?

Speaker 9 (28:09):
Both?

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Yeah, I think both, because why wouldn't it be embarrassing
as a child, you know, like, don't bring attention to us.
But then at the same time I could tell I mean,
it was like living with salvad Or Dolly. It was
like I remember hearing my dad saying I saw Salvador
Dolly running down the street. It was like running down

(28:31):
Lexington Avenue with a port chopped capon. It's like there's
just those people. Why him, Why did he do that. Yeah,
why did she do that? Why did he dress that way?
Why were they You know, somebody wears jeans and a
black T shirt every day, and somebody dresses in the
nicest dresses. They can get versace in this and that.
My mom just acted the way she was, unapologetically herself.

(28:55):
And there's light growing up on the ranch. When you
have to feed forty eight horses are fifty eight horses
every morning. When you're doing it, it sucks, it's horrible.
It's just labor. But when you look back on it,
you go thank God for that upbringing. Thank God I
had to get up and get out into the elements

(29:15):
every single morning before I went to school. It made
me who I am.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Whenever I'm with Bella Freud, which isn't often enough, I
always wish I could see more of her. She's in
fashion and I'm in food. A meal is a moment,
and an outfit changes daily. Right now, I'm wearing Fella's
iconic nineteen seventy sweater. A few years ago she created
an Nemesis sweater for the River Cafe, and one of

(29:48):
my most treasured possessions is Abella sweater, saying Bella, this
Fella that in our early years, Bella's father, Lucien Freud,
came almost every day to the River Cafe. When with Bella,
we were told never to interrupt, as this was their
precious time. Thank you, Ruthie. It's so nice to have

(30:08):
you here. And it is true you did come with
your dad.

Speaker 11 (30:11):
Yeah, and sometimes he do risk me away when I'm
here and I don't know.

Speaker 7 (30:16):
I love it.

Speaker 11 (30:17):
You beckon to me and say come here, and then
you stand behind a corner.

Speaker 7 (30:20):
Are they talking?

Speaker 2 (30:21):
What are they doing? In this world? We have to
talk or just talk about each other. What are your
memories of your dad coming here?

Speaker 11 (30:28):
I remember we came here when it first started. We
jump in the car and then he drove very fast,
terribly terrifyingly. I'm very good at kind of masquerading a calmness,
and some of it's learnt from sitting next to him
while he drove in this petrifying way. He'd drive very

(30:48):
fast towards something and then swerve suddenly, so then we'd
arrive and.

Speaker 7 (30:55):
Lived another moment. Great food.

Speaker 11 (30:57):
And I remember he also used to come here with
Lee Barry and Lee used to learned all about food
from eating out with Dad and coming here and I
always remember this moment, him saying, yes, the poach pears
are very good.

Speaker 7 (31:13):
It was so lovely.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I remember one day, Yeah, he came and we had
a sign on the door because we were painting the restaurant.
We closed for lunch. We only opened for lunch, and
I said, listen, I'm really really sorry that you know,
we're closed today, but I'll cook you something. And he said,
I have a better idea. I'm going to take you
out to lunch. And yeah, he took me to Kensington

(31:34):
Place and we had lunch. He was just fantastic. Yeah,
you know, spontaneous and kind and just caring and talking
to me and asking me about me, you know, and
it was very It was one of the great moments
of my life. Yeah, he was fun.

Speaker 11 (31:50):
He was such a good company, and he made you
feel so special.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
I used to come in those trousers with all over them,
and you know, he was great. It was exciting. It
was very interesting. You were saying that a lot of
your experience of eating with him was in restaurants.

Speaker 11 (32:06):
I remember going because I lived in the country and
i'd comp to London and all my sort of encounters
with him as I got to know him when I
was little were we used to go to marine IC's
when I was very small, and then he would take
us to this Greek restaurant in notting Hill. But it

(32:26):
was always a meeting to do with being in a
restaurant and the food. I would be quite nervous, so
the food was probably secondary, but that was the context.
And then you know, when i'd sit for him when
I moved to London when I was sixteen, we'd work

(32:48):
and have this break and zoom out, go somewhere very
fast and come back. But then sometimes he would cook.
Usually I would do a night painting, so I'd arrive
before the life painted at night and he would do.

Speaker 7 (33:06):
So you'd have day sitters and night sitis.

Speaker 11 (33:08):
And so he could work all the time and there'd
be like this wonderful routine of arriving. And he used
to have Lapsang soushong tea, so we'd have some tea
and then he would have things like liver pattern and stuff.
I mean, it was just from the local. You know,

(33:29):
it wasn't fancy or anything, but it was something that
actually tasted. It was delicious, and so it would always
be excited. There was almost nothing in his fridge too,
so between the two of them, but what there was
was really good. So we would sit around and talk

(33:50):
and read or whatever and have this tea and things,
and then we'd start working.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
And what was that like for you at that point
you were sixty six? I'd sit there, would he talk
to you? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (34:02):
And we always got on.

Speaker 11 (34:04):
Even as a baby, we had a close relationship. But
it was really the start of me getting to know him.
And then it was nice to be able to do
something for him, which was sitting for him.

Speaker 7 (34:18):
So I was good at that.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
And he would talk to you and he would, yeah,
he would How long would they go on?

Speaker 7 (34:24):
So the first session.

Speaker 11 (34:26):
Would be an hour, and then it would be forty
five minutes. That's when I would get slightly uncomfortable, and
he'd say, would you like a break? And so we'd
have a after every forty five minutes, we'd have a break,
and he would talk a lot, And he must have
loved that it was to have your daughter sitting there
and to be working, and to be painting or drying,

(34:51):
and to have you there must have been very important
to him, don't you think.

Speaker 7 (34:55):
Well, I suppose he could see that I was really invested.
I love sitting for him.

Speaker 11 (35:01):
I was so interested in everything, and I learned, you know,
he like people I was interested in, like Jean Cocta
and Dagger Leven, all these people. And then he'd tell
me about Fat Swaller and I'd learn about things that.

Speaker 7 (35:16):
I didn't know.

Speaker 11 (35:17):
And he was playing music sometimes he had he had
a record player, and sometimes he'd put on Fat Swallow
or sometimes Johnny Cash.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
He liked Cash.

Speaker 11 (35:29):
And then we'd dance around the edge of the room
because he had this very nice carpet, so he'd say, oh,
careful of the carpet, and then we but.

Speaker 7 (35:36):
We dance around the edge of it. It was not very.

Speaker 11 (35:40):
Often, but sometimes. And then sometimes he would cook a grass.
He loved them.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
He did like game that. Actually, it's interesting that you
say that, because I kind of remember in game season,
did at least have a grouse or a party.

Speaker 11 (35:57):
Yeah, he'd get them from Alan's in Mount Street, which
I don't think exists anymore, but he could.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (36:05):
It was a really good cook and it was very simple.

Speaker 11 (36:08):
He had a sort of crummy old cooker, and he
was very specific and particular about how things were, and
everything tasted amazing. And so it was exciting. And then
even if he made scrambled eggs, he would it would
just be completely delicious. And he had olive oil and

(36:32):
good salt and Perrier water he was It was the
first time I ever saw bottled water. And then he'd
have very very good wine and champagne sometimes and.

Speaker 7 (36:44):
Would you like it, would you like a glass?

Speaker 11 (36:47):
You know, everything was just it was like, you know,
somewhere between being in a squat and a top restaurant.
It was just all the sensation and the experience and
the tail. It was unforgettable. And so I've always been
more interested in that sort of condensed taste rather than

(37:10):
an abundance of food.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Imagine estate bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for the
River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our subscription
is available for six or twelve months, with each oil
chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with each delivery.
It's a perfect way to bring some River Cafe flavor
into your home, or to show someone you really care

(37:38):
for them with the gift. Visit our website shop the
Rivercafe dot co UK to place your order now. Alice,
I'd love to hear your story of starting Chapanese, and

(37:58):
I know that it was a most part of your
activism as a president in the early sixties when the
United States was in the tumult of the free speech
movement of the Vietnam War and you were at Berkeley.
Tell me what really inspired you to start a restaurant.

Speaker 12 (38:19):
Well, it began really in that free speech movement with
the leadership of Mario Savio, and he said said to
all of us, you need to visit other cultures, understand
the way people think around the world. And he said,

(38:39):
if you can, you should take off your junior year
and go to some other country. So I did. I
went to France in nineteen sixty five, and it really
did change my life, not just because of the food
that was so extraordinary, but because of the beauty of

(39:03):
the culture of France. I fell in love with Notre Dame,
sitting by the sand drinking a glass of wine. I
walked everywhere. I loved the farmer's markets. And I came
back home and I just said, I want to live

(39:24):
like the French. And I had friends who felt the
same way, and in our naive day, we thought, well,
maybe if we open a little French restaurant. The food
will come, and it.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Did it sure did. Did you have chefs who knew
how to do a meal for people who came in
at seven? Some people came in at nine, Some people
wanted fish, some people wanted how did you?

Speaker 12 (39:54):
Did you know how to welc had one meant you.
I wanted it to be like the little restaurants in Paris,
where you ate things that you may not have ever
had before, that we could curate according to the season
and what we love to cook well strangely and over time.

(40:18):
And because it was very affordable, people liked it a lot,
and they came because it was in an old house,
and they came and they felt like they were eating
at home. And that is a really part of I

(40:40):
think my Monestsory training, which said that you need to
appeal to all of your senses because they are our
pathways into our minds. And so I wanted the restaurant
to smell good. I used to burn rosemary up in
front of the restaurants, so it smelled like the South

(41:02):
of France. And I knew that a fireplace in the
kitchen with given aroma. I knew that candles on the
table would be beautiful, but it was taste I was
looking for when I got back from France. I wanted
to eat and live like the French, and I didn't

(41:26):
find taste until I found the farmers.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
When you say you wanted to eat like the French
age and shopped like the French shopped, can you tell
me about what that meant.

Speaker 12 (41:39):
Well, it meant that you only ate food in season,
and only local food.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
You know.

Speaker 12 (41:48):
I fell in love with those wild strawberries in the hall,
and all of a sudden they were gone, and they said, oh,
you have to go up in the woods and pick them.
And I just didn't believe that people spent their time
doing that and bringing them down from the woods and

(42:11):
selling them to the restaurant tours. And of course at
the end that's what we did. We really bought the
food directly. And when we started doing that at Chipen's,
everybody in the state wanted to sell to us because
we left out the middleman.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Guermo del Toro in his extraordinary movies Pans Labermyth The
Shape of Water, Pinocchio takes us to his worlds. But
when he and I met in the River Cafe, my
world we started talking and we didn't really stop for
two hours. When our conversation moves to the really important
topic of the day, Ta Kila Gama asked for two bottles,

(43:01):
announcing he wanted to teach me the ultimate way to
experience his and my favorite drink. Can you just tell
me and everybody else what is tequila? What is the
definition of.

Speaker 13 (43:12):
Well, it needs to come from the region build like
Champagne or Bordeaux, or it needs to come from the
region of Tequila, which is which is a town in Jalisco,
which is where I am from, you know. And the
agave plant which takes so long to grow, you know,
and you can harvest it. It takes so many years

(43:33):
to harvest it that the fields are very very large,
and it's a very fraud industry, the magay industry, because
the price goes incredibly off and incredibly down, and there's
a lot of fluctuation. And then they cook what they
call the pineapple, the heart of the plant, and they

(43:54):
cook it in some places, like many of the brands
that are now squeezing it, yeah, forcefully, you know. They
they just cook it fast, cook it, modern pressurize it.
Blah blah blah, but the really good tequila, they cook
it the same way with a traditional oven. They almost

(44:15):
caramelized it, and they.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Roasted roast yeah, and caramelized yeah.

Speaker 13 (44:19):
And then and then obviously they have to extract the
juice from the plant. The heart of the plant gives
you that. And then it has to be aged and
it takes quite a bit. And depending on on how
long they aged and in what type of wood, that
gives the tequila characteristics.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
So this is Fernando, Fernando, what do we serve in
the river cafe?

Speaker 13 (44:44):
When you serve all the Bonehulu range, the Blanco, theo
and the nineteen forty two and Papatio blanco.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Okay, so what do we what is that one? This
is actually the first time I'm seeing this bottle.

Speaker 9 (45:00):
I did some research.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I like it.

Speaker 9 (45:03):
It's very woody, very very woody.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
So name the tequila. What is it called? Okay? So
I found that this morning in my the telegraph I
think it was a telegraph of the Times did the
questionnaire with me, and they said what is your luxury?
I said, well, I have two luxuries. One is going
to museum when it's closed, because you have and the
other luxury is tequila. So I didn't get many museums.

(45:29):
But now when anybody comes to my house they bring
me tequila.

Speaker 13 (45:33):
I thought it would be good to bring you things
from my hometown or my region to go with the tequila.
Somebody in, mister help. It's nice in the fruit jam,
it's sort of like a queen space, you know, but
it's made those several fruits. And again this is this
is from my region.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
When we when we serve cheese, I like cheese as
it comes, but very often in it. So you'll find
that a cheeseplate or cheeses will come with a jam
with the sweet, especially in the north of Italy. And
we we make our own. Yeah, we make a fig,
we make a quince, and we serve it with cheese,

(46:16):
don't we We have the cheese clap Okay, what about
the we have here the paste, the paste, and we
have the cheese. Tell me about the cheese. Well under order.

Speaker 13 (46:26):
My favorite cheese in the world for me with with
what sweet thing is the Manchego, Because the Manchego to
me is like a milkshake. It's like really really milky,
is really really deserty. I'll think it with a cookie.
What I like is a combination of a very raw cookie,

(46:48):
you know, with a with the manchego and a little
bit of the paste.

Speaker 9 (46:54):
Oh thank you. This is very nice.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Okay, so let's strike, come on, try one a biscuit.
Let's get a biscuit. Yeah, I'm interested in their favorites.
These digestive biscuits. You wouldn't get these in Mexico, would you?
So what would you eat this with? Without it? This
is a very get a wheat cracker because he's in
sightly sweet.

Speaker 13 (47:17):
They the maial with this on them, you'll see why.

Speaker 5 (47:21):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Okay, with this and with this. So I'm putting half
a digestive biscuit and now I'm going to put the
jam and then I'm going to take a good Oh
my god, oh my god.

Speaker 13 (47:35):
Oh, Monday is Sunday and I'm seeing the Lord.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Life is good. Huh, this is really good.

Speaker 9 (47:45):
This is your lucky day right now.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Fernando here with two hundred and thirty five people in
the restaurant working, but he's here with us like they
can manage next week heading into the summer break, I'll
be back with more highlights from season four.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
See you then, thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table
four in partnership with Montclair