July 5, 2025 • 19 mins
In this behind-the-scenes bonus, I talk with executive chefs Sian Owen and Joseph Trivelli about the challenges and rewards of cooking for hundreds of guests to celebrate the Tate Modern's 25th birthday. We pay tribute to the tireless work of those who made it happen and reflect on grating kilos of parmesan and zesting endless lemons.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
A week ago, we were at the Tape Modern cooking
a sit down dinner for seven hundred people to celebrate
their twenty fifth birthday. I'm here today with Sean Owen
and Joseph Tavelli, executive chefs of the River Cafe, to
tell us how they did it. I can say that
I was there twenty five years ago for the opening
date when the Queen opened it. It was such an
(00:26):
amazing I did to have this new museum in the
Turbine Hall, you know, to have a museum that was
a fixture of London, and it was a power plant
on the south bank of the Thames, far from the Tape,
far from the National Gallery, and it has become now
an incredibly successful, happy place to go to look at
great art. So they wanted to celebrate their birthday. They
(00:48):
wanted to have a sit down dinner for seven hundred people.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I remember when we had that we were going to
be cooking for seven hundred thinking that I should put
my poke face on and just think, yeah, of course
we can do it, Yes, yes, we could definitely do it.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
And it was you know, just a really fun different challenge.
I think for char and I was quite nice. We've
been working here for about twenty five years, just about
as long as the thing wouldn't have been open, and
obviously it's like framed a lot of our experience in
London being able to go there.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
So it was an honor of course, massive ones there was.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I think we wouldn't necessarily done at seven hundred sit
down to it for many people, but for the Tape,
they just think we have to do this, you know.
And they also came saying that they really wanted us
to do it.
Speaker 6 (01:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They felt a connection with the Tape between the River Cafe.
They all late here. Richard was chairman of the Tape
for five years in the eighties, and I think there's
a deep connection, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
So yeah, one of the first meetings when we sat down,
they were really keen on having something that was very
like pure River Cafe, strong colors. They were they were
looking at it through their lens of how they see art,
I guess, and had planned the room and how the
(02:08):
room was going to look, and they wanted a menu.
I was saying to the waiters on the night of
the event, that the starter was basically red, the main
course was basically green, and the.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
Dessert was basically yellow. It was like very strong colors.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
So the red was tomatoesto, the green was a sea
bats plate with sousa verde and spinach and peas, which
are phenomenal at the moment.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
And then the dessert was lemon tar.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And not to forget our special what we're really known
for at the River Cafe cannopes.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Italian, very Italian.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
What is the Italian word for a cannope.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
One of the first challenges we came up with was
how to do bite sized cannopes that people in a
smart event would want to eat without spilling food on them.
And we're obviously because we're mostly known for robust sort
of cooking, it's not doesn't lend itself to canopies per se.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
What was really nice about the cannapase is we were told,
you know, you need, you know, half the amount of
cannopes that there are people because people just don't take cannape.
They come round, you know how it is, and you
just don't take it. But we just kept sending them
and they kept going, you know, which was a really
nice beginning.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
To the event.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's like, so we we we're going to make three
hundred of everything. The first one we definitely send out
at least for five hundred of them, and it kept
kept going.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That was the first one we did was a smash
brawl beans that we normally would serve on a mozzarella
plate at the River Cafe on a brisket, but we
we made it like micro sized. We made some ponisse,
which is like a chickpea pancake similar to farinata that
you can deep fry, cut it into a tiny disc
(03:56):
about the size of a twenty p piece maybe tiny,
maybe a little bigger tempe, and then we piped was
very on the River Cafe. We piped broad beans onto
the top that was like a post that we did
some polenta that we made solid polenta, and then we
cut that out into more discs that were bite size
(04:17):
and spooned devil crab that was marinated with lemon juice
and chili olive oil, fennel seeds on that. We did
a pizza setter with Ledgo playing Teledgo and time because
it's had to be kind of neat, and then we.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Did presciutto with figs. That was.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It seemed like an easy cando pey, but maybe with
retrospect we might be wasn't the most seasonal item we've
ever tried to dive.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And also, you know, the things were good. I was
worried being June instead of August, but they were good.
Their things were ripe and the saltiness and then you're
able to have something that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
We just had to order them two weeks before so
that to make sure they were put perfect.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
We had to stand by peaches if the figs weren't
going to be good enough. But O be good.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Okay. Some people asked me had we ever done seven
hundred before? And I think the largest sit down we
did probably was about three fifty when we went to
Rome to be a wedding, and so the well, when
would you say you started feeling the challenge of it?
When when would you say that before we.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Go after food?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yes, yes, exactly, and when it was a process for
getting ready, how did you feel that?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
So we were trying to One of the things we
were trying to work out was how to starff it
because in trying to think of the numbers we had
to I would how we'd do any event from one hundred,
two hundred, three hundred would be to break it down
into manageable chunks and then multiply it back up again.
(05:48):
And so I was thinking that for every hundred people
you might cook for, you might need seven chefs. But
so we realized then we needed a six chefs, wasn't it.
We needed forty forty two chefs. So we needed forty
two chefs to do it comfortably with panache and make
it look easy, because.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
That's how we roll. We need forty two chefs.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
So okay, and bearing in mind the River Cafe was
also open and functioning. You come with a cafe as well,
we were like, okay, that's our entire brigade. So fortunately
we've got our River Cafe luminous pink telephone with all
our x chef's numbers on. So we started instantly texting
old chefs that we not that they're old, are all
(06:32):
young still, but to see if they were available to
help us, and really nicely, I would say, all of
the twenty people we asked all came back and said
they'd help. So then we realized that we had our
little logo hashtag getting the Band back together, not that
you can search it on any social media.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
If that would be really organized.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But we realized we were going to have forty two
chefs from twenty five thirty years at the River Cafe, which.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
Is really nice.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
One of them said, Michelle said to me, you know
r you when I worked with you. It was in
two thousand and three and I was single and I
was kind of, you know, running around London, and she said,
I now have a child in university. So you know,
it's the idea that two thousand and three was twenty
two years ago and she was there. But I thought
(07:24):
one of the very moving things was to see how
happy they were to be together, you know that they
was just like a reunion.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
It was a.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Serene but it was like generations of yeah, you know
that charl and I was the only people that worked
with everyone, and then all of a sudden, and it
was actually really nice to do a reunion around an activity.
You know.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
The activity was cooking for seven hundred people.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's amazing, so happy, really happy. All the photographs. So
if I was listening to this and I thought, Okay,
I'm going to do a sit down dinner for seven hundred.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
People, ask us.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, what was the process? How did you you were
sitting up in an office, what would you say one
day a week, for the last two days a week,
you know, the time that you spent from the beginning,
what was the process that you would say that you
could tell us a good story.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, I went into my kind of classic sort of form,
which is to go into list writing, which was really
like taking it to another level. There was one point
where I had so many pieces of paper that I
was panicking trying to understand the amount of paper that
we had. And so then we were like maybe someone
(08:37):
was like, maybe you should type it up, but I
was like, I can only read my own handwriting was
so me and Joseph, we we tried to break down
each dish to start with and think about how much
for usosso we'd need to make. So we had to
make you know, one bag of rice makes fifteen portions
approximately at the River Cafe, and we one needed to
have a standard recipe.
Speaker 6 (08:59):
So then we knew that if we.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Needed to make seven hundred portions, we'd need to make
forty five bags of rice, which is forty five.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Kilos of rice.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So it's a kind of small light person's weight in rice,
and then we needed two hundred and forty jars of
samazano tomato used to.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Do it, which was like a lorry load.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
And just seeing these things because you can plan it
all out and you can be like, okay, so it's.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
Sixty grams of peas each.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
The way we don't actually work like that here is
just you know, we eyeball everything really, but we knew
that we had to be more precise for this amount
of covers. But then you don't know what I mean,
two hundred kilos of spinach looks like, you know, would
it would fill this room easily? You know, So then
we had to then we had to arrive here the
(09:49):
day before and work out how to manage that, where
to put it well.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And twenty six hundred and twenty six kilos of pieas
that needed to be part.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
I remember when I did say to.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You peace, you know, and you said you know, you
both said yeah, we're doing peas. And so there was
no sense of let's do something and a shortcut to
get it done in an easier way. I mean, was
it there was?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We were Yeah, we were helped massively by our suppliers
that's the truth. And I think those relationships that are
very old really paid off.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
You know, so especially the Toura particularly tell us about
what we first tell people with Natura is our main
badge supply vegeable supplier. And we've worked with Natura since
they began, haven't we. Yeah, that's right, yeah, And they
import directly from the Miland market, and you know, for
(10:45):
the last probably twenty years, you can get like the
best is.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Like advertising free other diabet the best Italian produce.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
The peak stuff and really, really really kindly, they their
office agreed that they'd pod two hundreds how many kilos
of two hundred kilos apiece?
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Not quite, but.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It was such a monumental effort and so kind and
then they precked all the spinach for us, and then
they like manually and then we got the whole lorry
load of it delivered and we opened the back doors
of the.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Lorry and it was just peace and spinach and we
were like, oh my god, I've got to cook that now,
and we were like, okay, get some pots on.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
It was really it was because we cook as if
we were at the River Cafe. We didn't cook like
we were in a mass production kitchen, so we did
it exactly as we do here, but just took like
five hours to blanch that much spinach as opposed to
five minutes.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
And making the risotto took you know, it took like
four or.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Five hours to just you know, get that amount of
onions and celery and garlic chopped. We needed like fifty
in kilos of grated parmesan. So once you start going
up the quantities, it it started to like I was
getting really stressed on. I was just souping everything up
into hours and Saint Ruthie, do you know how long
it's going to take to cut the lemon tarte? If
(12:09):
it takes ten minutes to portion, and I was like,
it's gonna take five.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Hours and it did. Really called that.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Two of them five hours, and I said, well maybe
if you'd had four of you, it could have taken
two and a half hours. But they wanted to cut. Yeah,
they wanted, you know, they do say cooking his repetition.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
We really saw in this Bella was amazing because of fairness.
She put that she actually put on her Instagram and
the recipe for fifty lemon tarts, yeah, which is really
cool because that's about how many liters of lemon juiceted lemons.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And yeah, I mean I really want to say again
that the tour just to can you imagine their office,
you know, they're you know, they're a sizeable company in
London where everyone decided to you know, I was sent
pictures of them on their desks that's their computer people
podding peas. They all did it and apparently it was
good team building also for them. I feel like it was.
It was just really a throughout quite positive experience.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So we knew that the challenge of doing this dinner
was had all sorts of challenges, but there were no
I have to say, there were no kitchens that we
could use, you know, so what we looked at was
doing the kitchens in the meeting room around the space
that were there basically at the bottom of the turbine hall,
(13:32):
there were the tables and then if you think of that,
around the circumference in a way with these meetings rooms
to take the food out. So can you describe the
challenge of how you cooked in somewhere there was no
extraction and no.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Well we were massively helped by this company called the
Last Supper who organized huge events. I think for them
it's even for them it's a big event. But they'd
certainly do more big events than we do, and they
just impeccably organized. And so when we arrived in there
are three kind of classrooms adjacent to the quite big
classrooms adjacent to the turbine hall, and in each one
(14:09):
they'd set up for us a kitchen with you know,
two long tables each.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Just four normal induction.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Tops and three ovens each, you know, electric ovens, and
but efficiently, cleanly, quite basic. And the fact that they
were the mirror of each other meant that we could
get the whole team together and explain to them, this
is what's happening.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
You know, you're all going to be doing this at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
When we were going through the kit list though, because
we were trying to make, you know, have all the
kit right, but then when you have for every kitchen
with four inductions and four trestle tables and two ovens,
but then actually what we actually needed was twenty four inductions,
you know, forty eight tables as soon as it and
then everything was coming in in these massive quantities. So
(15:04):
on the face of it, it was sort of a
simple meal for one hundred and twenty in a kitchen.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Just to be specific, how do you make a resulta
for seven hundred people?
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Really genuinely, you think about how you make a risutta
for seven people, and you just multiplied tims ahundred you
multiple times one hundred. Honestly, that's what we did. And
I think my suspicion is at some of the early
meetings that other people that were involved in this kind
of size of kind of slightly or maybe I thought
that we were approaching it a little bit like how
(15:34):
did we just scale up a dinner party to such as?
Speaker 5 (15:37):
But that is what we did, and it really worked.
Speaker 6 (15:40):
But we did.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
We had the guys making the result of working in pairs,
weren't they So they had to make fifteen bags fifteen
bags of rice that much? So did fifteen bags of
rice between the two of them? Yes, But because there
were such good cooks each team making the rice, and
they've all River Cafe trained, so we trust them implicitly
to know. And we had a standard recipe for the
(16:03):
for the one bag rice and then the fifteen bag
rice for each person to work on. And then everyone
knows exactly what they're aiming for.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
But I think chart touch on something really crucial there.
I think what was great was having really good staff
that we could we trusted. Often they'd come to me
and they'd say, what do you think? And I said, well, actually,
you know what, let's work out together. What time you're
going to put the sea bass in the avenor you
told me you know how we went around every little
past of all like, so, what's your view of how
(16:35):
you're going to send this out? And we all let
them put a little bit of their knowledge and into.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
It, and I think that really helped.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So we're talking about scaling up, this is about you know,
I'm taking, as you say, Rosarta for seven or a
Risuta for seven hundred. But what you also just touched
upon in terms of the people that you trust to
do it and the people who worked with So there
wasn't that frustration or there wasn't that kind of concern
which gives you confidence. Do you think it all comes
(17:04):
down to the people that you chose to or not
all of it, but a lot of it comes to
the people that.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Yeah, because they were all know the house styles. There
was no explaining to do there.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Everyone knew those dishes, so they could just all of
them could cook that for ten, all of them could
know how to cook that for a hundred and they
all they had to do was work in. Each team
was only cooking for one hundred and twenty, so actually
that's quite manageable for them as chefs. And then me
and Joseph were working across all of it, which was
(17:37):
quite funny because we were working down the corridor. We
were just passing each other the whole time. But then
also really nicely, we neither one of us had to
take the sole responsibility.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
For it, which I actually wouldn't have liked to.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Take the responsibility on my own for that because there
was so many questions and we ran into problems when
we had the van. Our vans came in, but they
wouldn't let us stand on the floor of the Tate
Modern car park unless we had high vis on. But
none of us taken high vis because we had anticipated
needing it, and so there was there was a bit
(18:10):
of like confusion, and then Joseph was dealing with him
and then he was, you know, like one of us
could deal with one issue trying to get some high vis,
another one who could deal with another issue, but on
your own it would have been would have been too much.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I think I thought it was going really well, you know,
and we were sending out the main courses and as
I say, Sean and I were running between all these kitchens,
and I've realized that we'd sent out seven hundred main
courses in eighteen minutes minutes.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
And I just and at that point, I was just like, Hey,
that's it. This has just gone really well.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I mean, I wasn't, to be honest, I wasn't anticipating
would be quite that fast, and I was really you know,
we were incredibly pleased.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Maria told me last night that she had three hundred
and fifty letters and ninety nine percent of them mentioned
they've never had food like yet. So I will give
credit right now to the two of you, because I
think it all, it all filtered down, you know, it
all all came across, and so I think you really
have to pat yourselves on the bag. Thanks how long?
Speaker 6 (19:07):
The best? No, you are, No, you really you really are.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And I think that, you know, the best ingredient that
we've had for this whole thing has been the two
of you. Multiply that time seven hundred and we'd be
really roky.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Thank you, Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four
in partnership with Montclair
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
A week ago, we were at the Tape Modern cooking
a sit down dinner for seven hundred people to celebrate
their twenty fifth birthday. I'm here today with Sean Owen
and Joseph Tavelli, executive chefs of the River Cafe, to
tell us how they did it. I can say that
I was there twenty five years ago for the opening
date when the Queen opened it. It was such an
(00:26):
amazing I did to have this new museum in the
Turbine Hall, you know, to have a museum that was
a fixture of London, and it was a power plant
on the south bank of the Thames, far from the Tape,
far from the National Gallery, and it has become now
an incredibly successful, happy place to go to look at
great art. So they wanted to celebrate their birthday. They
(00:48):
wanted to have a sit down dinner for seven hundred people.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I remember when we had that we were going to
be cooking for seven hundred thinking that I should put
my poke face on and just think, yeah, of course
we can do it, Yes, yes, we could definitely do it.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
And it was you know, just a really fun different challenge.
I think for char and I was quite nice. We've
been working here for about twenty five years, just about
as long as the thing wouldn't have been open, and
obviously it's like framed a lot of our experience in
London being able to go there.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
So it was an honor of course, massive ones there was.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I think we wouldn't necessarily done at seven hundred sit
down to it for many people, but for the Tape,
they just think we have to do this, you know.
And they also came saying that they really wanted us
to do it.
Speaker 6 (01:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They felt a connection with the Tape between the River Cafe.
They all late here. Richard was chairman of the Tape
for five years in the eighties, and I think there's
a deep connection, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
So yeah, one of the first meetings when we sat down,
they were really keen on having something that was very
like pure River Cafe, strong colors. They were they were
looking at it through their lens of how they see art,
I guess, and had planned the room and how the
(02:08):
room was going to look, and they wanted a menu.
I was saying to the waiters on the night of
the event, that the starter was basically red, the main
course was basically green, and the.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
Dessert was basically yellow. It was like very strong colors.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
So the red was tomatoesto, the green was a sea
bats plate with sousa verde and spinach and peas, which
are phenomenal at the moment.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
And then the dessert was lemon tar.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And not to forget our special what we're really known
for at the River Cafe cannopes.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Italian, very Italian.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
What is the Italian word for a cannope.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
One of the first challenges we came up with was
how to do bite sized cannopes that people in a
smart event would want to eat without spilling food on them.
And we're obviously because we're mostly known for robust sort
of cooking, it's not doesn't lend itself to canopies per se.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
What was really nice about the cannapase is we were told,
you know, you need, you know, half the amount of
cannopes that there are people because people just don't take cannape.
They come round, you know how it is, and you
just don't take it. But we just kept sending them
and they kept going, you know, which was a really
nice beginning.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
To the event.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
It's like, so we we we're going to make three
hundred of everything. The first one we definitely send out
at least for five hundred of them, and it kept
kept going.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That was the first one we did was a smash
brawl beans that we normally would serve on a mozzarella
plate at the River Cafe on a brisket, but we
we made it like micro sized. We made some ponisse,
which is like a chickpea pancake similar to farinata that
you can deep fry, cut it into a tiny disc
(03:56):
about the size of a twenty p piece maybe tiny,
maybe a little bigger tempe, and then we piped was
very on the River Cafe. We piped broad beans onto
the top that was like a post that we did
some polenta that we made solid polenta, and then we
cut that out into more discs that were bite size
(04:17):
and spooned devil crab that was marinated with lemon juice
and chili olive oil, fennel seeds on that. We did
a pizza setter with Ledgo playing Teledgo and time because
it's had to be kind of neat, and then we.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Did presciutto with figs. That was.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It seemed like an easy cando pey, but maybe with
retrospect we might be wasn't the most seasonal item we've
ever tried to dive.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
And also, you know, the things were good. I was
worried being June instead of August, but they were good.
Their things were ripe and the saltiness and then you're
able to have something that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
We just had to order them two weeks before so
that to make sure they were put perfect.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
We had to stand by peaches if the figs weren't
going to be good enough. But O be good.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Okay. Some people asked me had we ever done seven
hundred before? And I think the largest sit down we
did probably was about three fifty when we went to
Rome to be a wedding, and so the well, when
would you say you started feeling the challenge of it?
When when would you say that before we.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Go after food?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yes, yes, exactly, and when it was a process for
getting ready, how did you feel that?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
So we were trying to One of the things we
were trying to work out was how to starff it
because in trying to think of the numbers we had
to I would how we'd do any event from one hundred,
two hundred, three hundred would be to break it down
into manageable chunks and then multiply it back up again.
(05:48):
And so I was thinking that for every hundred people
you might cook for, you might need seven chefs. But
so we realized then we needed a six chefs, wasn't it.
We needed forty forty two chefs. So we needed forty
two chefs to do it comfortably with panache and make
it look easy, because.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
That's how we roll. We need forty two chefs.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
So okay, and bearing in mind the River Cafe was
also open and functioning. You come with a cafe as well,
we were like, okay, that's our entire brigade. So fortunately
we've got our River Cafe luminous pink telephone with all
our x chef's numbers on. So we started instantly texting
old chefs that we not that they're old, are all
(06:32):
young still, but to see if they were available to
help us, and really nicely, I would say, all of
the twenty people we asked all came back and said
they'd help. So then we realized that we had our
little logo hashtag getting the Band back together, not that
you can search it on any social media.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
If that would be really organized.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But we realized we were going to have forty two
chefs from twenty five thirty years at the River Cafe, which.
Speaker 6 (07:02):
Is really nice.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
One of them said, Michelle said to me, you know
r you when I worked with you. It was in
two thousand and three and I was single and I
was kind of, you know, running around London, and she said,
I now have a child in university. So you know,
it's the idea that two thousand and three was twenty
two years ago and she was there. But I thought
(07:24):
one of the very moving things was to see how
happy they were to be together, you know that they
was just like a reunion.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
It was a.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Serene but it was like generations of yeah, you know
that charl and I was the only people that worked
with everyone, and then all of a sudden, and it
was actually really nice to do a reunion around an activity.
You know.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
The activity was cooking for seven hundred people.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's amazing, so happy, really happy. All the photographs. So
if I was listening to this and I thought, Okay,
I'm going to do a sit down dinner for seven hundred.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
People, ask us.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, what was the process? How did you you were
sitting up in an office, what would you say one
day a week, for the last two days a week,
you know, the time that you spent from the beginning,
what was the process that you would say that you
could tell us a good story.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, I went into my kind of classic sort of form,
which is to go into list writing, which was really
like taking it to another level. There was one point
where I had so many pieces of paper that I
was panicking trying to understand the amount of paper that
we had. And so then we were like maybe someone
(08:37):
was like, maybe you should type it up, but I
was like, I can only read my own handwriting was
so me and Joseph, we we tried to break down
each dish to start with and think about how much
for usosso we'd need to make. So we had to
make you know, one bag of rice makes fifteen portions
approximately at the River Cafe, and we one needed to
have a standard recipe.
Speaker 6 (08:59):
So then we knew that if we.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Needed to make seven hundred portions, we'd need to make
forty five bags of rice, which is forty five.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Kilos of rice.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So it's a kind of small light person's weight in rice,
and then we needed two hundred and forty jars of
samazano tomato used to.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Do it, which was like a lorry load.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
And just seeing these things because you can plan it
all out and you can be like, okay, so it's.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
Sixty grams of peas each.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
You know.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
The way we don't actually work like that here is
just you know, we eyeball everything really, but we knew
that we had to be more precise for this amount
of covers. But then you don't know what I mean,
two hundred kilos of spinach looks like, you know, would
it would fill this room easily? You know, So then
we had to then we had to arrive here the
(09:49):
day before and work out how to manage that, where
to put it well.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And twenty six hundred and twenty six kilos of pieas
that needed to be part.
Speaker 6 (10:00):
I remember when I did say to.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
You peace, you know, and you said you know, you
both said yeah, we're doing peas. And so there was
no sense of let's do something and a shortcut to
get it done in an easier way. I mean, was
it there was?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
We were Yeah, we were helped massively by our suppliers
that's the truth. And I think those relationships that are
very old really paid off.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
You know, so especially the Toura particularly tell us about
what we first tell people with Natura is our main
badge supply vegeable supplier. And we've worked with Natura since
they began, haven't we. Yeah, that's right, yeah, And they
import directly from the Miland market, and you know, for
(10:45):
the last probably twenty years, you can get like the
best is.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
Like advertising free other diabet the best Italian produce.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
The peak stuff and really, really really kindly, they their
office agreed that they'd pod two hundreds how many kilos
of two hundred kilos apiece?
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Not quite, but.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It was such a monumental effort and so kind and
then they precked all the spinach for us, and then
they like manually and then we got the whole lorry
load of it delivered and we opened the back doors
of the.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
Lorry and it was just peace and spinach and we
were like, oh my god, I've got to cook that now,
and we were like, okay, get some pots on.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
It was really it was because we cook as if
we were at the River Cafe. We didn't cook like
we were in a mass production kitchen, so we did
it exactly as we do here, but just took like
five hours to blanch that much spinach as opposed to
five minutes.
Speaker 6 (11:44):
And making the risotto took you know, it took like
four or.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Five hours to just you know, get that amount of
onions and celery and garlic chopped. We needed like fifty
in kilos of grated parmesan. So once you start going
up the quantities, it it started to like I was
getting really stressed on. I was just souping everything up
into hours and Saint Ruthie, do you know how long
it's going to take to cut the lemon tarte? If
(12:09):
it takes ten minutes to portion, and I was like,
it's gonna take five.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
Hours and it did. Really called that.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Two of them five hours, and I said, well maybe
if you'd had four of you, it could have taken
two and a half hours. But they wanted to cut. Yeah,
they wanted, you know, they do say cooking his repetition.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
We really saw in this Bella was amazing because of fairness.
She put that she actually put on her Instagram and
the recipe for fifty lemon tarts, yeah, which is really
cool because that's about how many liters of lemon juiceted lemons.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And yeah, I mean I really want to say again
that the tour just to can you imagine their office,
you know, they're you know, they're a sizeable company in
London where everyone decided to you know, I was sent
pictures of them on their desks that's their computer people
podding peas. They all did it and apparently it was
good team building also for them. I feel like it was.
It was just really a throughout quite positive experience.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So we knew that the challenge of doing this dinner
was had all sorts of challenges, but there were no
I have to say, there were no kitchens that we
could use, you know, so what we looked at was
doing the kitchens in the meeting room around the space
that were there basically at the bottom of the turbine hall,
(13:32):
there were the tables and then if you think of that,
around the circumference in a way with these meetings rooms
to take the food out. So can you describe the
challenge of how you cooked in somewhere there was no
extraction and no.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Well we were massively helped by this company called the
Last Supper who organized huge events. I think for them
it's even for them it's a big event. But they'd
certainly do more big events than we do, and they
just impeccably organized. And so when we arrived in there
are three kind of classrooms adjacent to the quite big
classrooms adjacent to the turbine hall, and in each one
(14:09):
they'd set up for us a kitchen with you know,
two long tables each.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Just four normal induction.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Tops and three ovens each, you know, electric ovens, and
but efficiently, cleanly, quite basic. And the fact that they
were the mirror of each other meant that we could
get the whole team together and explain to them, this
is what's happening.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
You know, you're all going to be doing this at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
When we were going through the kit list though, because
we were trying to make, you know, have all the
kit right, but then when you have for every kitchen
with four inductions and four trestle tables and two ovens,
but then actually what we actually needed was twenty four inductions,
you know, forty eight tables as soon as it and
then everything was coming in in these massive quantities. So
(15:04):
on the face of it, it was sort of a
simple meal for one hundred and twenty in a kitchen.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Just to be specific, how do you make a resulta
for seven hundred people?
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Really genuinely, you think about how you make a risutta
for seven people, and you just multiplied tims ahundred you
multiple times one hundred. Honestly, that's what we did. And
I think my suspicion is at some of the early
meetings that other people that were involved in this kind
of size of kind of slightly or maybe I thought
that we were approaching it a little bit like how
(15:34):
did we just scale up a dinner party to such as?
Speaker 5 (15:37):
But that is what we did, and it really worked.
Speaker 6 (15:40):
But we did.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
We had the guys making the result of working in pairs,
weren't they So they had to make fifteen bags fifteen
bags of rice that much? So did fifteen bags of
rice between the two of them? Yes, But because there
were such good cooks each team making the rice, and
they've all River Cafe trained, so we trust them implicitly
to know. And we had a standard recipe for the
(16:03):
for the one bag rice and then the fifteen bag
rice for each person to work on. And then everyone
knows exactly what they're aiming for.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
But I think chart touch on something really crucial there.
I think what was great was having really good staff
that we could we trusted. Often they'd come to me
and they'd say, what do you think? And I said, well, actually,
you know what, let's work out together. What time you're
going to put the sea bass in the avenor you
told me you know how we went around every little
past of all like, so, what's your view of how
(16:35):
you're going to send this out? And we all let
them put a little bit of their knowledge and into.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
It, and I think that really helped.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So we're talking about scaling up, this is about you know,
I'm taking, as you say, Rosarta for seven or a
Risuta for seven hundred. But what you also just touched
upon in terms of the people that you trust to
do it and the people who worked with So there
wasn't that frustration or there wasn't that kind of concern
which gives you confidence. Do you think it all comes
(17:04):
down to the people that you chose to or not
all of it, but a lot of it comes to
the people that.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
Yeah, because they were all know the house styles. There
was no explaining to do there.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Everyone knew those dishes, so they could just all of
them could cook that for ten, all of them could
know how to cook that for a hundred and they
all they had to do was work in. Each team
was only cooking for one hundred and twenty, so actually
that's quite manageable for them as chefs. And then me
and Joseph were working across all of it, which was
(17:37):
quite funny because we were working down the corridor. We
were just passing each other the whole time. But then
also really nicely, we neither one of us had to
take the sole responsibility.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
For it, which I actually wouldn't have liked to.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Take the responsibility on my own for that because there
was so many questions and we ran into problems when
we had the van. Our vans came in, but they
wouldn't let us stand on the floor of the Tate
Modern car park unless we had high vis on. But
none of us taken high vis because we had anticipated
needing it, and so there was there was a bit
(18:10):
of like confusion, and then Joseph was dealing with him
and then he was, you know, like one of us
could deal with one issue trying to get some high vis,
another one who could deal with another issue, but on
your own it would have been would have been too much.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I think I thought it was going really well, you know,
and we were sending out the main courses and as
I say, Sean and I were running between all these kitchens,
and I've realized that we'd sent out seven hundred main
courses in eighteen minutes minutes.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
And I just and at that point, I was just like, Hey,
that's it. This has just gone really well.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I mean, I wasn't, to be honest, I wasn't anticipating
would be quite that fast, and I was really you know,
we were incredibly pleased.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Maria told me last night that she had three hundred
and fifty letters and ninety nine percent of them mentioned
they've never had food like yet. So I will give
credit right now to the two of you, because I
think it all, it all filtered down, you know, it
all all came across, and so I think you really
have to pat yourselves on the bag. Thanks how long?
Speaker 6 (19:07):
The best? No, you are, No, you really you really are.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And I think that, you know, the best ingredient that
we've had for this whole thing has been the two
of you. Multiply that time seven hundred and we'd be
really roky.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Thank you, Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four
in partnership with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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