April 14, 2025 • 33 mins
A few months ago, my friend David Chipperfield, the Pritzker and Stirling Prize-winning architect, asked me to support the work his foundation is doing on the food markets in Galicia. So here I am, in north-west Spain, to talk with him in front of an audience for a special live event.
David's introduction to Galicia was 33 years ago on a visit to Corrubedo, a small seaside village, where he and his wife Evelyn created a home. Now they have a small bar in the middle of the village. David is as passionate about Galicia's farm-to-table culture as he is about its people. For him, it's all part of the same conversation. Conversation that I am so excited and grateful to be having here with him in Casa Ria.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
the restaurant, sharing how we cook their food, where the
ingredients come from, as well as hints and advice for
cooking the recipes in the books. And now we're bringing
(00:21):
that same ethos to our podcast, a question and answer
episode with me and our two executive chefs, Sean Winnowen
and Joseph Travelli. All we need is to hear from
you about what you would like to know. Send a
voice note with your question to Questions at Rivercafe dot
co dot uk and you might just be our next
(00:42):
great guest on Ruthie's Table four. David Chipperfield and I
have been friends for so long that this morning I
had to ask him when we met. He reminded me
it was in Paris, Richard was building the Pompadou and
David was a student. The light has shone bright since
(01:05):
then for this Pritzker and Sterling Prize winner, the Noise
Museum in Berlin, Hepworth Wakefield and many others. A few
months ago, David asked me to see the work his
foundation is doing on the food Marcus in Galicia, their
crucial world sustainability, the economy and culture. And so here
I am in northwest Spain about to talk to him
(01:25):
in front of an audience for a special live event.
David's introduction to Calicia was thirty three years ago on
a visit to Corbado, a small seaside village where he
and his wife Evelyn created a home. Now they have
a small bar in the middle of the village. David
is as passionate about Alicia's farm to table culture as
(01:46):
he is about its people. For him, it's all part
of the same conversation, conversation that I am so excited
and grateful to be having here with him in Casarea.
David and Evelyn think that I went to have my
(02:07):
hair done today, but really what I was doing is
looking for an apartment to live here, because in the
last forty eight hours, having never been here before, I've
been in bars in eleven o'clock at night. I've eaten
a pig's nose and a pig's tail and a pig's ear.
I've met ambassadors and artists and fashion designers. And I've seen, really,
(02:32):
what I've seen here in the last forty eight hours
is the connection here in casarea. It could be in
the market, it could be meeting someone who is going
to tell us their fish. It's just a constant, constant
flow of connection and engagement and empathy and fun and
(02:53):
interest in the people who live here. And I'm in
awe of what they do. I feel so lucky and happy,
and the only emotion I feel right now is that
I don't want to go home.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Thank you, Ruthie, and thank you everybody for coming. It's
a really impressive group of people tonight, So thank you
for coming. Ruthie has been instrumental in changing the food
culture of London, your interest in where food comes from
(03:29):
and sourcing food, because you talk a lot about that.
When I hear you talking a lot about where you
get your tomatoes from. Galicia has this food culture, it
has this food production culture, it has this small scale production.
We've got many here and we at the same time,
we've seen the enormous migration of young people from the
(03:50):
rural because it's a hard life. The parents want them
to go away and go to university. Doesn't matter what
they study, and there isn't enough development of those agricultural
industries into the modern world. So we've got no new model.
We've only got the old model, the antique model of
(04:11):
small scale farming. And that is tough. And this is
a topic that we're interested in the way how do
you keep young people interested and how does the administration
in a way put confidence in that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I'm encouraged by a lot of really good you know,
thinking about food, about small farms, about farmers, about young people.
I think the exciting thing is also that I was
talking to We buy our tomato and jars for the
winter cook tomato sauce in Pulia, and he was telling
me today that a lot of the people from Pulia
(04:50):
young people, because how do you keep young people wanting
to stay in the communities where they grew up And
of course you want them to go explore the world,
but you also know how important the culture is. And
he was saying that people in ployee have gone young
people have gone to Milan to become bankers or you know,
work in industry or work in tech, and at starting
(05:12):
to come back because what draws them back is the quality,
you know, the quality of food that they can do.
It's exciting. They can make you know, jar tomatoes and
beautiful jars with beautiful graphics and make them you know, interesting,
and then they can experiment. In Mexico, you know, we
have so many friends who are making you know, their
(05:33):
parents with traditional made mescal or tequila, and they're doing
it in a different way. The wine producers that we
work with in Italy, their parents their you know, Renzo's generation.
They were farmers who made wine. And now these young
you know, they're now in their forties or fifties, decided
when they inherited, they go to La you know, California
and France and Bordeaux and see how to make wine
(05:56):
in a different way. Came back and changed the production
of you know, great into great wines. And so I
think if we can encourage people to work because food
and farming, agriculture and production is so exciting.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
One might say, very superficially here that the margins get
very small now and therefore the condition hospitality is very
tough because bars and restaurants can't afford to pay their
stuff that much. Yeah, yeah, and I think they pay
them very fairly and reasonably, you know, in the general,
(06:35):
but it's a very long day. It's a very hard business.
You know, it's tough.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
We glamorize being a chef, you know, we think, oh,
it's you know, passion to be a chef and work
in a restaurant. But for a lot of people, it
was either going in the army or going to be
a chef. And then and then if you became a chef,
it was so hard because you had to be there
at four in the morning, you had to soak the fire,
you had to be bullied by somebody who told you
(07:00):
what to do. And then everybody woke up and said,
wait a minute, we don't have to be like this.
You can come into work at nine, you can work
five days a week. You can be fed, you can
use good ingredients, you can be taught. You're not allowed
to be you know, if somebody bullies you, go to
the police. You know, there was a whole way of
making actually working in food in a restaurant something that
(07:21):
people wanted to do. And I think it could be
the same with farming. It can be with.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Its easily because do they want to work and I
hope they do.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, you know, it's been you know, we have had
people do you have about one hundred and twenty. But
we have a shop, we have a cafe, cafe, and
we do off site, you know, we do you know,
we do events and that. But I think whether you
have twelve or whether you have one hundred, it's the
way your culture. Getting back to the culture, what makes
(07:52):
somebody want to be an architect, you know, what makes
somebody want to be a fashion designer? You know what
draws you? And I think far is a real struggle.
You know, it can rain when you need sun, and
it can have sun when you need rain, and it
can be nobody buys corn anymore. It's very hard. You're
working in the wine is wine is like farming. They
(08:13):
have a bad rain and then a hail and then
you know, we know that. So how do you make
it though part of something that you want to do.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
A few people say, we're just not willing to pay
enough for our food, and that's one of the problems.
A lot of the restaurants here. They are very fixed
in prices, you know, and it's a much flatter society here.
It's much more difficult to leave ridge money out of food.
The margins are quite tight. But at the same time,
(08:45):
I would say the qualities are very yeah, really hard.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I've eaten so well here, you know, really from the
lunch we had, I can name all the meals we've had,
you know, and I've only been here a short time.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
We've had a piece lunch, and you've had about.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
The fish we had the first you getting off the
plane and having that fish and then sitting in nearby
that night. And the pig, yes, the pig. But the
breakfast and the tortilla, and what David and Evelyn and
so Leicester you're doing here. I mean, the kitchen here is.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Amazing Anincdotally it's often said that we're buying more cookbooks
but doing less cooking. Clearly, the idea that people still
cook is pretty fundamental part of the whole food ecology.
I mean, do you have the feeling that people are
still cooking?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I think they are. I think, you know, young people
who can't I mean, you know, maybe afford to go out,
or they have children at home and don't go out.
I think that cookbooks are kind of aspirational, you know.
Nor Efron rote a very famous essay for Gourmet, saying
I get Gourmet magazine every month and I'm looking at
it from cover to cover, and I've never made a recipe,
(09:57):
you know. And I think there is that thing of
looking at a cook book and thinking I will make this,
I will do it, I'll be a better person if
I do, or whatever, and then you put it away
and you go back to making what you do. But
I do think people like to read. I think the
internet has changed a lot of people look at recipes online,
which is great, you know, or on YouTube, which is great,
(10:17):
you know. I think that anything that makes people want
to cook. Do people cook for you? Do your friends
cook for you?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yes, there's certainly a sort of London dinner party cooking,
but I suppose I'm talking about you know, every day yeah,
for your kids.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. I don't think it's hard. I mean it is
really hard because now we're all working with the idea
of one of the woman who stayed home and shocked
and prepared and cooked and food was on the table
when you came home. It has changed. It's just a
lot of pressure because very often those women are going
to do the night shift at Amazon or you know,
(10:54):
they'd rather do homework with their kids and cook a
meal for them. I'd like to take the value j
out of it. I would like people to think, instead
of ordering on delivery, I can put a bag of
pasta in the boiling water and serve it with broccoli
and you're done. But I think the reality is it's hard.
It's hard to do everything.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
As things become more and more expensive even to buy,
then the reliability of process food that you can buy
becomes simpler. Again, slightly anecdotal, but I heard a mother
talking on BBC Radio for saying that she tried, and
(11:36):
you know, she felt morally undistressed to cook every night
for her children and sit down. She said, but I
can cook reasonably well and I can do it, but
so many of my friends don't know how to cook.
And also that it's a risk because if you can
buy things and you don't cook your supper well for
your kids, you might have blown your budget and secondly
(12:01):
they might not want to eat it, whereas if you
give them process, you know, a Hamburg or something guaranteed.
And your friend Jamie Oliver, so those of you that
know the chef Jamie Oliver, who had a very has
had really big influence in England, came from your kitchen.
(12:22):
He was one of your kids.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, he was, he is still and.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
He's been incredibly a good advocate for sort of normal food.
I think Blair pointed him as a sort of ambassador
for school food, so they tried to improve school food.
But how do you see the larger food culture.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, your first point about people not cooking at home
and not knowing how to cook, you know, I go
back to Blair and would say education, education, education, because
I think if you judge, how do you judge a culture,
how did you judge a society? You know, it could
take Paris where if you walk, you know, I have
a photograph of a cole mat Turnell which is a
(13:08):
state school for young children, and they put their menus
on the outside of the of the school and you see,
you know, they start with Celaria ramalogue and then they
have a soup, and then they have a fish or
a meat. Then they have a cheese course for four
year olds, and then they had a dessert. And I
have this photograph and I thought that tells you something.
(13:30):
I think that tells you something about a culture that
prioritizes feeding little children, well you know, for free. This
is not a private school. And I think that the
way a society feeds their children the way they feed
sick children. You know, I could go on and on.
I don't want to get too political, but I really
(13:50):
do think that the way and I can see it here.
You can see in the market, you can see the
way somebody offered me. One thing I thought I would
do is buy a piece of cheese today because I
hadn't been able to do that, and she wouldn't take
you know, she gave it to me. And that culture
of sharing, and.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It's not always true. Sometimes they take money.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Well, they didn't take it for me. For their food,
they didn't take it, but they were just it was
just I don't know, it's a way somebody cuts a
piece of bread. I think it really goes deep into
a culture. How we can fix it, I think it's
not sure, but I do think if we invest in
people then now.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I mean, Japan had had an anxiety because they shifted
diet a bit. They're eating more Western foods, and they
panicked about child obesity and that they were getting a
large percentage of child to see, so they introduced regulations
into the school. All school food now has to be
(14:47):
produced on the school. It all has to be fresh food.
It has to be cooked in it, and they've got
child to b C down to four percent or something.
So it's as simple as that, surely, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In our schools they have candy machines, don't they The
machine that sells suits, you know, so it's a complex issue.
I think cooking is joyous, you know. I think that
it is fun. It brings people together. I think that
there are so many ways to do it. And I
think that you know, there are ways to communicate that
and to give that to people, you know, definitely, and
(15:23):
you know, as you say, you need a food culture.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, and presumably at certain point these things have to
be stimulated or promoted or encouraged by simple regulations or not.
I mean, we saw something in England which I was
quite surprised at. They the last government, conservative government put
the tax on sugar in drinks.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Now it's happened in New Mexico. A huge, huge difference.
You must have noticed it, you know that. You know,
they text Coca Cola and the gcase. People are buying
huge bottles and that has really helped. Yeah, I agree.
(16:05):
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(16:27):
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Speaker 2 (16:34):
Now, your whole food thing began in the office. It
was the canteen of Richard Rogers Architects. Why did you
do that? Tell us how it started with Rose Gray
and how did the Oh.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Sorry because it's a long story, but Richard and I
were living in Paris designing a building and we came
back to London having lived in Paris for five years,
and he really it was Richard really thought that he
didn't want to move into a building in the city
or building, you know, in an office. He wanted to
(17:16):
create a community. And I think living in Paris made
us very aware of being you know, outsiders and sticking
together quite closely with people we worked with with our family,
and so we came back. He really looked for a
place where there could be a community and we found
these warehouses on the Thames, which quite in the western
(17:37):
part of London, Harrismith, and they were originally Duckham's Oil,
you know, And so there was noisy, it was dirty,
it was quite industrial. And he and his partners bought
the site and tore down one of the warehouses so
you could see the river. They took a large part
(17:57):
of the space, but they also there was somebody who
framed payings. There was graphic designers, there was another architect.
The idea was how to create a community. And the
most important thing for Richard being Italian, having lived in
Frads loving food a mother was a great cook, was
gathering together over food, you know, how could you do that?
(18:18):
And so there was a very small space and we
talked about it. I'd worked in publishing and I worked
in the office doing books, and I was trained as
a graphic designer. And so the idea was we would
interview various restaurants or small cafes that would want to
come into this very small space. And I can actually
remember the night that we were skiing and I turned
(18:40):
to Richard and said, the only thing worse than not
having a place to eat would be to have a
mediocre one and these are mediocre. I think I'll do it.
I honestly said, I think I'll do it. And so
from that idea we went back to London and Rose Gray,
a magnificent woman who was a friend, a great friend
of Zad's family as well, had come back from New York.
(19:03):
She'd worked with Keith McNally on setting up Nells, and
she was back in London. She was cooking and I said,
let's go, you know, can we meet for a coffee.
Neither of us really knew very much about doing a
restaurant but.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
The reason you wanted to do it was because you
wanted this to be a sort of social center of.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
The place where people could come and have lunch. And
we weren't even allowed to open. We wanted to open
to the public. We wanted to be the best Italian
restaurant in London. The idea that we wanted to start
a canteen for the office wasn't really our idea, but
we had the restriction of not being allowed to open
to the public, and we could only be open for lunch.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And why Italian, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
A good yeah. Richard. Richard's family were in Florence. His connection.
His mother was Italian from Trieste. We spent a lot
of time in Italy and Rose had actually lived in
Luca for two years with her children.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I had the sense that you were also It wasn't
just Italian food, it was the idea that you were
also interested in where the food came from, and you
did all your trips, research trips about where the recipes
came from.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
We really wanted to cook the kind of Italian food
that we had eaten in Italy. And if you went
to restaurants, the Italian restaurants in London were mostly run
and started by managers or waiters, and they brought the
kind of food that they thought people would want to
eat in London. Quite heavy, you know, parmeganni was delicious,
(20:30):
plus spaghetti with meatballs, cheap coianty, and we wanted to
bring the kind of food that we had cooked and
eaten in Italy. Bread, soups, pasta, sauces that were simple.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That all seems fairly obvious now, but thirty five years
ago that must have been.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
It was very challenging. We used to bring back We
used to go to Italy and bring back parmesan cheese
we used to go and bring back a proshuto. I
remember carrying a proshuoto. And famously Rose once brought back
a huge pumpkin and she gave the pumpkin a seating
business class and she's at an economy. You know. But
it changed, It did change.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And have you seen that change over these years?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean, yeah, radically, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
that as I sometimes say, when cheap lights started happening,
that you could fly to Florence or fly to Naples
for fifteen pounds. More and more people went there, went
to Italy and thought, wow, I can eat this in Italy.
I'd like to eat in England. In the beginning, people
would we'd serve a Papa pomodoro, which was made of
(21:32):
bread and tomatoes and basil, and people would say, well,
at the time, why should I pay five pounds for this?
People became much more involved, I think in the kind
of food you could.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Eat and what are the changes have you seen over
this period?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, what else is Well, it's been thirty seven years,
so there has been I think people, you know, eating
out more. I think that people go to restaurants, do
want to know about sourcing and then I think for us,
a big radical step was when we became involved with
the people who produced our wine. And so, you know,
we were very tusk and based in the beginning, but
(22:09):
then we went to Piedmonte to meet the wine producers,
or Sicily to meet the wine producers, or Pulia. It
took us into the world of people who were creating
something and then also people who were then starting to
really think about bringing food from Italy to England. We
brought back seeds, We brought back the seeds for cavalon narrow.
(22:31):
I have to give rosa credit for that, and found
a farmer near Southampton who grew it for us, you know,
And so we were able to have cavalonero in nineteen
eighty nine, you know, when nobody even could get it
at all, so we could make rebelita. You know, you
can't make rebelita really without cavalonaro. And then became very
involved in olive oil well as well, because the people
(22:52):
who make the wine also make the olive oil. So
we bottled our own olive oil. You know, we'd go
and do that.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I use your cookbooks, you know, thirty years or whatever,
and I think the cookbooks were also a way of
explaining the idea of River Cafe. No, I mean, do
you have that feeling that they were sort of fundamental
to the idea of the River Cafe, not just as
a place, but as another way of looking at food.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Now, when we were asked to write our first cookbook,
the River Cafe Cookbook, and we said, we're not cookbook writers,
were you know, chefs? So no, and then we started thinking, well,
how can we In a way, it almost became a
handbook for the people who work. So they'd come up,
a chef would be working, say how do I make rotolo?
Or how do I make a tomato sauce? And you know,
(23:46):
we have to explain. And then we thought, well if
we write them down, and I think it's a long
story again. So well, but the cookbooks, the first cookbook
that we did, we've wrote the recipe down. We took
a photograph of the food right away, no styling, we
just took and so if you follow these directions, you
will be able to make something that we make. You know,
(24:06):
it's simple, it's easy, it's accessible. This is the way
we cook in the River Cafe. This is the way
you can cook at home. It was kind of bringing
restaurant food to the domestic kitchen. The River Cafe wind
you said lunch is now running from Monday to Thursday.
(24:27):
Reserve a booking at www. River cafet co uk or
give us a call.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I wonder if we should open it up to some
questions to give you the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Thank you so much for being here and question for me.
I know that you have a very particular culture at
the River Cafe, the way that you train the staff
to care about the food, the trips that you do
to Italy source, even hiring people that have trained up
bally Malo in Ireland. Could you talk a little bit
(25:05):
more about how you install that into like every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, well, the Italy trips are really you know, something
that Rose and I did when we were just starting
out and we thought, you know, I really like David
and even and to have a personal relationship. So we
started out with the people that we bought our wine from,
and then we realized that for a lot of the
young people working in the River Cafe cooking making the
(25:29):
thinnest violi you can see your hand through, or doing
a slow cook field sauce, or making a polentic cake.
They were cooking greatful, but a lot of them. I
think life is about exposure, and I just say the
way my children have been exposed, or my friend's children,
and so they hadn't been exposed to actually Italian life
(25:51):
for Italy, and so we started taking chefs and managers
and waiters and it became really important. We still we'll
do it, you know. Now we take because we're bigger.
We take about fifteen sixteen people to Tuscany. We do
it around the olive oil and we take them to
see how olive oil is made, the pressing the olives,
(26:13):
and then the producers give us. It's quite hard work.
You get up in the morning, I know, and then
you go to a winery, you taste the wine, you
see the olive oil. Then you have lunch. They always
in the house of the producer. Again it's a home
cooked Italian meal, Tuscan meal. And then you do it
again and you go to it. So it's but they
come back so excited and so knowledgeable, so that when
(26:37):
they pour that bit of olive oil over somebody's brisquetta,
they really respect it and they understand it. And so
that's that's the Italy trip. Then I suppose we have
we change the menu every meal, so the chef comes
in and writes a menu depending like you do at home.
But we have in the fridge. What if we ordered
what's left over? How do I feel? What would I
(26:57):
like to eat if I was eating in the River
Cafe tonight? So I think that gives a lot of interest.
And they and also the chefs come in and they
don't know what they're gonna cook, so that gives a
kind of interest. And then I suppose we have again
the open kitchen. We work in a kitchen where it's
so open that nobody can shout, you know, which is
(27:18):
you know, you have a kind of order, which is
I once said to a friend of mine, as a director,
look at the kitchen, isn't it like a play? And
he said, no, actually, Ruthy, it's like a ballet, you know,
because everybody's moving the whole time, you know, and you
go over to the grill and say is it ready yet?
Or you go, you know, to the pasta and say, oh,
you're done? Can I put the lamb on now? You know?
(27:38):
So I think making and we don't. Yeah, and they
and a team and also we don't really encourage people
to do more than five shifts and sometimes a six.
They can't do more than one double, and they have
to have two days off, usually in a row, and
that again gives you a sense of a genuine place.
(28:00):
Everybody has a view out to the river. If you're
on the bar, you can look out. If you're you know,
washing up, you can move outside. It's so we try
and create an environment like that. But we're not alone.
I think a lot of people are doing that. Yeah,
that's not to say I just want to say that
it sounds like we're a family, happy cozy, you know,
hugging restaurant. We're actually if that, you know, curtain goes
(28:23):
up at twelve thirty and you haven't done your sauce,
so you haven't raided the cheese, or you haven't squeezed
your lemons, you're in trouble, you know, because our role
is to make a happy kitchen. But it's really rigorous.
You have to We have people coming in to eat,
and the whole attention is on is a carpet cleaned,
is the are the menus out? You know? It's it's
(28:45):
it's very professional too.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yes, any other questions, so I may lower the level
of a discussion here with this silly question. But I
dared to ask you that because perhaps of my I'm
an anglophile, because I love York Side pudding, Yorkshire, and
I was wondering what it would be like, Like I said,
(29:09):
what would be like? How would you imagine what would
be the difficulties, the challenges, or even have the success
of opening a British restaurant in Rome?
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, I think that I can't take Rome, but I
know that hawksmore. And there's another restaurant opening in New York,
you know, and bringing very much kind of Yorkshire putting
in roast beef to New York. Rome. Not sure.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
But after Yorkshire putting, what what do you do? What's
the next Thingish thing?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Fergus it's done for you know, Fergus has done lots
of you know, we were talking about that today that
it would just be great if when you went to
dinner at Buckingham Palace, you know, you have had steak
and kidney pudding or roast beef instead of a kind
of faux French meal. You know that you would actually
celebrate British cooking. And I think sometimes when you talk
(30:11):
to people about you know, growing up in Lancashire or
Yorkshire or Cornwall. They will talk, oh, my mother used
to make this dish, you know, and they will wax
lyrical about their grandmother's cooking. So I'm sure it's there.
I don't think it does translate very easily to restaurants.
The best British cooking I've had has been in people's houses,
you know, really great food Sad's mom. You know, It's
(30:34):
just it's eating in people's houses. I think I'm not
sure how it translates to restaurants. Rome, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
We'll leave it to you for me to open the
British restaurant in Barcelona.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah. People ask me if I wanted to open a
river cafe Milad and I thought, no way. You know,
I don't think they'd really want, you know, an American
and a British woman doing Italian food that I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
If I can say. As a complete foreigner to Galicia,
one of the things that I find quite interesting is
there's a tendency for Galicians to like their own food
above others, which is quite unique because if you, yeah,
if you're in London, you say, what out of food
do you like? That no one will say English food,
oh I like Thai. Oh yeah, I mean but here,
(31:27):
given a choice between a Galician product and another product,
is it from here or not? It's okay they And
I think that's an incredible place to begin too, because if,
as we are now concerned that local and seasonal is
an issue, then you do need to want to be
(31:52):
restricted by those things, as opposed to thinking that their penalties.
You know, why can't I have something? There's very few
things now in a London context, you know that people
would understand that you you can't give them this time
of the year. I mean, your restaurant is one of
the few. I would say that you sort of positively
(32:15):
gravitate towards things which are seasonal, and then your cookbooks
have done that. But I would say one of the
struggles in terms of sustainability is to persuade people that
you can't have any product at any time, from anywhere,
at any season. And I think if you're trying to
talk about sustainability, I would have to say, and this
(32:37):
is my you know, it's right. The Foundation talks about
a lot is I think actually the food culture here
is in a very healthy state because in a sense
the culture is already sort of on board. They're very
unadventurous in a way. When I first came here, I
was surprised that you look at a menu and it
just has the same things that every restaurant you go to,
(32:59):
twelve twelve things. Now I think it's fantastic. 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.
An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
the restaurant, sharing how we cook their food, where the
ingredients come from, as well as hints and advice for
cooking the recipes in the books. And now we're bringing
(00:21):
that same ethos to our podcast, a question and answer
episode with me and our two executive chefs, Sean Winnowen
and Joseph Travelli. All we need is to hear from
you about what you would like to know. Send a
voice note with your question to Questions at Rivercafe dot
co dot uk and you might just be our next
(00:42):
great guest on Ruthie's Table four. David Chipperfield and I
have been friends for so long that this morning I
had to ask him when we met. He reminded me
it was in Paris, Richard was building the Pompadou and
David was a student. The light has shone bright since
(01:05):
then for this Pritzker and Sterling Prize winner, the Noise
Museum in Berlin, Hepworth Wakefield and many others. A few
months ago, David asked me to see the work his
foundation is doing on the food Marcus in Galicia, their
crucial world sustainability, the economy and culture. And so here
I am in northwest Spain about to talk to him
(01:25):
in front of an audience for a special live event.
David's introduction to Calicia was thirty three years ago on
a visit to Corbado, a small seaside village where he
and his wife Evelyn created a home. Now they have
a small bar in the middle of the village. David
is as passionate about Alicia's farm to table culture as
(01:46):
he is about its people. For him, it's all part
of the same conversation, conversation that I am so excited
and grateful to be having here with him in Casarea.
David and Evelyn think that I went to have my
(02:07):
hair done today, but really what I was doing is
looking for an apartment to live here, because in the
last forty eight hours, having never been here before, I've
been in bars in eleven o'clock at night. I've eaten
a pig's nose and a pig's tail and a pig's ear.
I've met ambassadors and artists and fashion designers. And I've seen, really,
(02:32):
what I've seen here in the last forty eight hours
is the connection here in casarea. It could be in
the market, it could be meeting someone who is going
to tell us their fish. It's just a constant, constant
flow of connection and engagement and empathy and fun and
(02:53):
interest in the people who live here. And I'm in
awe of what they do. I feel so lucky and happy,
and the only emotion I feel right now is that
I don't want to go home.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Thank you, Ruthie, and thank you everybody for coming. It's
a really impressive group of people tonight, So thank you
for coming. Ruthie has been instrumental in changing the food
culture of London, your interest in where food comes from
(03:29):
and sourcing food, because you talk a lot about that.
When I hear you talking a lot about where you
get your tomatoes from. Galicia has this food culture, it
has this food production culture, it has this small scale production.
We've got many here and we at the same time,
we've seen the enormous migration of young people from the
(03:50):
rural because it's a hard life. The parents want them
to go away and go to university. Doesn't matter what
they study, and there isn't enough development of those agricultural
industries into the modern world. So we've got no new model.
We've only got the old model, the antique model of
(04:11):
small scale farming. And that is tough. And this is
a topic that we're interested in the way how do
you keep young people interested and how does the administration
in a way put confidence in that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I'm encouraged by a lot of really good you know,
thinking about food, about small farms, about farmers, about young people.
I think the exciting thing is also that I was
talking to We buy our tomato and jars for the
winter cook tomato sauce in Pulia, and he was telling
me today that a lot of the people from Pulia
(04:50):
young people, because how do you keep young people wanting
to stay in the communities where they grew up And
of course you want them to go explore the world,
but you also know how important the culture is. And
he was saying that people in ployee have gone young
people have gone to Milan to become bankers or you know,
work in industry or work in tech, and at starting
(05:12):
to come back because what draws them back is the quality,
you know, the quality of food that they can do.
It's exciting. They can make you know, jar tomatoes and
beautiful jars with beautiful graphics and make them you know, interesting,
and then they can experiment. In Mexico, you know, we
have so many friends who are making you know, their
(05:33):
parents with traditional made mescal or tequila, and they're doing
it in a different way. The wine producers that we
work with in Italy, their parents their you know, Renzo's generation.
They were farmers who made wine. And now these young
you know, they're now in their forties or fifties, decided
when they inherited, they go to La you know, California
and France and Bordeaux and see how to make wine
(05:56):
in a different way. Came back and changed the production
of you know, great into great wines. And so I
think if we can encourage people to work because food
and farming, agriculture and production is so exciting.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
One might say, very superficially here that the margins get
very small now and therefore the condition hospitality is very
tough because bars and restaurants can't afford to pay their
stuff that much. Yeah, yeah, and I think they pay
them very fairly and reasonably, you know, in the general,
(06:35):
but it's a very long day. It's a very hard business.
You know, it's tough.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
We glamorize being a chef, you know, we think, oh,
it's you know, passion to be a chef and work
in a restaurant. But for a lot of people, it
was either going in the army or going to be
a chef. And then and then if you became a chef,
it was so hard because you had to be there
at four in the morning, you had to soak the fire,
you had to be bullied by somebody who told you
(07:00):
what to do. And then everybody woke up and said,
wait a minute, we don't have to be like this.
You can come into work at nine, you can work
five days a week. You can be fed, you can
use good ingredients, you can be taught. You're not allowed
to be you know, if somebody bullies you, go to
the police. You know, there was a whole way of
making actually working in food in a restaurant something that
(07:21):
people wanted to do. And I think it could be
the same with farming. It can be with.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Its easily because do they want to work and I
hope they do.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, you know, it's been you know, we have had
people do you have about one hundred and twenty. But
we have a shop, we have a cafe, cafe, and
we do off site, you know, we do you know,
we do events and that. But I think whether you
have twelve or whether you have one hundred, it's the
way your culture. Getting back to the culture, what makes
(07:52):
somebody want to be an architect, you know, what makes
somebody want to be a fashion designer? You know what
draws you? And I think far is a real struggle.
You know, it can rain when you need sun, and
it can have sun when you need rain, and it
can be nobody buys corn anymore. It's very hard. You're
working in the wine is wine is like farming. They
(08:13):
have a bad rain and then a hail and then
you know, we know that. So how do you make
it though part of something that you want to do.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
A few people say, we're just not willing to pay
enough for our food, and that's one of the problems.
A lot of the restaurants here. They are very fixed
in prices, you know, and it's a much flatter society here.
It's much more difficult to leave ridge money out of food.
The margins are quite tight. But at the same time,
(08:45):
I would say the qualities are very yeah, really hard.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I've eaten so well here, you know, really from the
lunch we had, I can name all the meals we've had,
you know, and I've only been here a short time.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
We've had a piece lunch, and you've had about.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
The fish we had the first you getting off the
plane and having that fish and then sitting in nearby
that night. And the pig, yes, the pig. But the
breakfast and the tortilla, and what David and Evelyn and
so Leicester you're doing here. I mean, the kitchen here is.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Amazing Anincdotally it's often said that we're buying more cookbooks
but doing less cooking. Clearly, the idea that people still
cook is pretty fundamental part of the whole food ecology.
I mean, do you have the feeling that people are
still cooking?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I think they are. I think, you know, young people
who can't I mean, you know, maybe afford to go out,
or they have children at home and don't go out.
I think that cookbooks are kind of aspirational, you know.
Nor Efron rote a very famous essay for Gourmet, saying
I get Gourmet magazine every month and I'm looking at
it from cover to cover, and I've never made a recipe,
(09:57):
you know. And I think there is that thing of
looking at a cook book and thinking I will make this,
I will do it, I'll be a better person if
I do, or whatever, and then you put it away
and you go back to making what you do. But
I do think people like to read. I think the
internet has changed a lot of people look at recipes online,
which is great, you know, or on YouTube, which is great,
(10:17):
you know. I think that anything that makes people want
to cook. Do people cook for you? Do your friends
cook for you?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yes, there's certainly a sort of London dinner party cooking,
but I suppose I'm talking about you know, every day yeah,
for your kids.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. I don't think it's hard. I mean it is
really hard because now we're all working with the idea
of one of the woman who stayed home and shocked
and prepared and cooked and food was on the table
when you came home. It has changed. It's just a
lot of pressure because very often those women are going
to do the night shift at Amazon or you know,
(10:54):
they'd rather do homework with their kids and cook a
meal for them. I'd like to take the value j
out of it. I would like people to think, instead
of ordering on delivery, I can put a bag of
pasta in the boiling water and serve it with broccoli
and you're done. But I think the reality is it's hard.
It's hard to do everything.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
As things become more and more expensive even to buy,
then the reliability of process food that you can buy
becomes simpler. Again, slightly anecdotal, but I heard a mother
talking on BBC Radio for saying that she tried, and
(11:36):
you know, she felt morally undistressed to cook every night
for her children and sit down. She said, but I
can cook reasonably well and I can do it, but
so many of my friends don't know how to cook.
And also that it's a risk because if you can
buy things and you don't cook your supper well for
your kids, you might have blown your budget and secondly
(12:01):
they might not want to eat it, whereas if you
give them process, you know, a Hamburg or something guaranteed.
And your friend Jamie Oliver, so those of you that
know the chef Jamie Oliver, who had a very has
had really big influence in England, came from your kitchen.
(12:22):
He was one of your kids.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, he was, he is still and.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
He's been incredibly a good advocate for sort of normal food.
I think Blair pointed him as a sort of ambassador
for school food, so they tried to improve school food.
But how do you see the larger food culture.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, your first point about people not cooking at home
and not knowing how to cook, you know, I go
back to Blair and would say education, education, education, because
I think if you judge, how do you judge a culture,
how did you judge a society? You know, it could
take Paris where if you walk, you know, I have
a photograph of a cole mat Turnell which is a
(13:08):
state school for young children, and they put their menus
on the outside of the of the school and you see,
you know, they start with Celaria ramalogue and then they
have a soup, and then they have a fish or
a meat. Then they have a cheese course for four
year olds, and then they had a dessert. And I
have this photograph and I thought that tells you something.
(13:30):
I think that tells you something about a culture that
prioritizes feeding little children, well you know, for free. This
is not a private school. And I think that the
way a society feeds their children the way they feed
sick children. You know, I could go on and on.
I don't want to get too political, but I really
(13:50):
do think that the way and I can see it here.
You can see in the market, you can see the
way somebody offered me. One thing I thought I would
do is buy a piece of cheese today because I
hadn't been able to do that, and she wouldn't take
you know, she gave it to me. And that culture
of sharing, and.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
It's not always true. Sometimes they take money.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Well, they didn't take it for me. For their food,
they didn't take it, but they were just it was
just I don't know, it's a way somebody cuts a
piece of bread. I think it really goes deep into
a culture. How we can fix it, I think it's
not sure, but I do think if we invest in
people then now.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I mean, Japan had had an anxiety because they shifted
diet a bit. They're eating more Western foods, and they
panicked about child obesity and that they were getting a
large percentage of child to see, so they introduced regulations
into the school. All school food now has to be
(14:47):
produced on the school. It all has to be fresh food.
It has to be cooked in it, and they've got
child to b C down to four percent or something.
So it's as simple as that, surely, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In our schools they have candy machines, don't they The
machine that sells suits, you know, so it's a complex issue.
I think cooking is joyous, you know. I think that
it is fun. It brings people together. I think that
there are so many ways to do it. And I
think that you know, there are ways to communicate that
and to give that to people, you know, definitely, and
(15:23):
you know, as you say, you need a food culture.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, and presumably at certain point these things have to
be stimulated or promoted or encouraged by simple regulations or not.
I mean, we saw something in England which I was
quite surprised at. They the last government, conservative government put
the tax on sugar in drinks.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Now it's happened in New Mexico. A huge, huge difference.
You must have noticed it, you know that. You know,
they text Coca Cola and the gcase. People are buying
huge bottles and that has really helped. Yeah, I agree.
(16:05):
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(16:27):
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Speaker 2 (16:34):
Now, your whole food thing began in the office. It
was the canteen of Richard Rogers Architects. Why did you
do that? Tell us how it started with Rose Gray
and how did the Oh.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Sorry because it's a long story, but Richard and I
were living in Paris designing a building and we came
back to London having lived in Paris for five years,
and he really it was Richard really thought that he
didn't want to move into a building in the city
or building, you know, in an office. He wanted to
(17:16):
create a community. And I think living in Paris made
us very aware of being you know, outsiders and sticking
together quite closely with people we worked with with our family,
and so we came back. He really looked for a
place where there could be a community and we found
these warehouses on the Thames, which quite in the western
(17:37):
part of London, Harrismith, and they were originally Duckham's Oil,
you know, And so there was noisy, it was dirty,
it was quite industrial. And he and his partners bought
the site and tore down one of the warehouses so
you could see the river. They took a large part
(17:57):
of the space, but they also there was somebody who
framed payings. There was graphic designers, there was another architect.
The idea was how to create a community. And the
most important thing for Richard being Italian, having lived in
Frads loving food a mother was a great cook, was
gathering together over food, you know, how could you do that?
(18:18):
And so there was a very small space and we
talked about it. I'd worked in publishing and I worked
in the office doing books, and I was trained as
a graphic designer. And so the idea was we would
interview various restaurants or small cafes that would want to
come into this very small space. And I can actually
remember the night that we were skiing and I turned
(18:40):
to Richard and said, the only thing worse than not
having a place to eat would be to have a
mediocre one and these are mediocre. I think I'll do it.
I honestly said, I think I'll do it. And so
from that idea we went back to London and Rose Gray,
a magnificent woman who was a friend, a great friend
of Zad's family as well, had come back from New York.
(19:03):
She'd worked with Keith McNally on setting up Nells, and
she was back in London. She was cooking and I said,
let's go, you know, can we meet for a coffee.
Neither of us really knew very much about doing a
restaurant but.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
The reason you wanted to do it was because you
wanted this to be a sort of social center of.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
The place where people could come and have lunch. And
we weren't even allowed to open. We wanted to open
to the public. We wanted to be the best Italian
restaurant in London. The idea that we wanted to start
a canteen for the office wasn't really our idea, but
we had the restriction of not being allowed to open
to the public, and we could only be open for lunch.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And why Italian, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
A good yeah. Richard. Richard's family were in Florence. His connection.
His mother was Italian from Trieste. We spent a lot
of time in Italy and Rose had actually lived in
Luca for two years with her children.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I had the sense that you were also It wasn't
just Italian food, it was the idea that you were
also interested in where the food came from, and you
did all your trips, research trips about where the recipes
came from.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
We really wanted to cook the kind of Italian food
that we had eaten in Italy. And if you went
to restaurants, the Italian restaurants in London were mostly run
and started by managers or waiters, and they brought the
kind of food that they thought people would want to
eat in London. Quite heavy, you know, parmeganni was delicious,
(20:30):
plus spaghetti with meatballs, cheap coianty, and we wanted to
bring the kind of food that we had cooked and
eaten in Italy. Bread, soups, pasta, sauces that were simple.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That all seems fairly obvious now, but thirty five years
ago that must have been.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
It was very challenging. We used to bring back We
used to go to Italy and bring back parmesan cheese
we used to go and bring back a proshuto. I
remember carrying a proshuoto. And famously Rose once brought back
a huge pumpkin and she gave the pumpkin a seating
business class and she's at an economy. You know. But
it changed, It did change.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And have you seen that change over these years?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I mean, yeah, radically, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
that as I sometimes say, when cheap lights started happening,
that you could fly to Florence or fly to Naples
for fifteen pounds. More and more people went there, went
to Italy and thought, wow, I can eat this in Italy.
I'd like to eat in England. In the beginning, people
would we'd serve a Papa pomodoro, which was made of
(21:32):
bread and tomatoes and basil, and people would say, well,
at the time, why should I pay five pounds for this?
People became much more involved, I think in the kind
of food you could.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Eat and what are the changes have you seen over
this period?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, what else is Well, it's been thirty seven years,
so there has been I think people, you know, eating
out more. I think that people go to restaurants, do
want to know about sourcing and then I think for us,
a big radical step was when we became involved with
the people who produced our wine. And so, you know,
we were very tusk and based in the beginning, but
(22:09):
then we went to Piedmonte to meet the wine producers,
or Sicily to meet the wine producers, or Pulia. It
took us into the world of people who were creating
something and then also people who were then starting to
really think about bringing food from Italy to England. We
brought back seeds, We brought back the seeds for cavalon narrow.
(22:31):
I have to give rosa credit for that, and found
a farmer near Southampton who grew it for us, you know,
And so we were able to have cavalonero in nineteen
eighty nine, you know, when nobody even could get it
at all, so we could make rebelita. You know, you
can't make rebelita really without cavalonaro. And then became very
involved in olive oil well as well, because the people
(22:52):
who make the wine also make the olive oil. So
we bottled our own olive oil. You know, we'd go
and do that.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I use your cookbooks, you know, thirty years or whatever,
and I think the cookbooks were also a way of
explaining the idea of River Cafe. No, I mean, do
you have that feeling that they were sort of fundamental
to the idea of the River Cafe, not just as
a place, but as another way of looking at food.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Now, when we were asked to write our first cookbook,
the River Cafe Cookbook, and we said, we're not cookbook writers,
were you know, chefs? So no, and then we started thinking, well,
how can we In a way, it almost became a
handbook for the people who work. So they'd come up,
a chef would be working, say how do I make rotolo?
Or how do I make a tomato sauce? And you know,
(23:46):
we have to explain. And then we thought, well if
we write them down, and I think it's a long
story again. So well, but the cookbooks, the first cookbook
that we did, we've wrote the recipe down. We took
a photograph of the food right away, no styling, we
just took and so if you follow these directions, you
will be able to make something that we make. You know,
(24:06):
it's simple, it's easy, it's accessible. This is the way
we cook in the River Cafe. This is the way
you can cook at home. It was kind of bringing
restaurant food to the domestic kitchen. The River Cafe wind
you said lunch is now running from Monday to Thursday.
(24:27):
Reserve a booking at www. River cafet co uk or
give us a call.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I wonder if we should open it up to some
questions to give you the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Thank you so much for being here and question for me.
I know that you have a very particular culture at
the River Cafe, the way that you train the staff
to care about the food, the trips that you do
to Italy source, even hiring people that have trained up
bally Malo in Ireland. Could you talk a little bit
(25:05):
more about how you install that into like every single day.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, well, the Italy trips are really you know, something
that Rose and I did when we were just starting
out and we thought, you know, I really like David
and even and to have a personal relationship. So we
started out with the people that we bought our wine from,
and then we realized that for a lot of the
young people working in the River Cafe cooking making the
(25:29):
thinnest violi you can see your hand through, or doing
a slow cook field sauce, or making a polentic cake.
They were cooking greatful, but a lot of them. I
think life is about exposure, and I just say the
way my children have been exposed, or my friend's children,
and so they hadn't been exposed to actually Italian life
(25:51):
for Italy, and so we started taking chefs and managers
and waiters and it became really important. We still we'll
do it, you know. Now we take because we're bigger.
We take about fifteen sixteen people to Tuscany. We do
it around the olive oil and we take them to
see how olive oil is made, the pressing the olives,
(26:13):
and then the producers give us. It's quite hard work.
You get up in the morning, I know, and then
you go to a winery, you taste the wine, you
see the olive oil. Then you have lunch. They always
in the house of the producer. Again it's a home
cooked Italian meal, Tuscan meal. And then you do it
again and you go to it. So it's but they
come back so excited and so knowledgeable, so that when
(26:37):
they pour that bit of olive oil over somebody's brisquetta,
they really respect it and they understand it. And so
that's that's the Italy trip. Then I suppose we have
we change the menu every meal, so the chef comes
in and writes a menu depending like you do at home.
But we have in the fridge. What if we ordered
what's left over? How do I feel? What would I
(26:57):
like to eat if I was eating in the River
Cafe tonight? So I think that gives a lot of interest.
And they and also the chefs come in and they
don't know what they're gonna cook, so that gives a
kind of interest. And then I suppose we have again
the open kitchen. We work in a kitchen where it's
so open that nobody can shout, you know, which is
(27:18):
you know, you have a kind of order, which is
I once said to a friend of mine, as a director,
look at the kitchen, isn't it like a play? And
he said, no, actually, Ruthy, it's like a ballet, you know,
because everybody's moving the whole time, you know, and you
go over to the grill and say is it ready yet?
Or you go, you know, to the pasta and say, oh,
you're done? Can I put the lamb on now? You know?
(27:38):
So I think making and we don't. Yeah, and they
and a team and also we don't really encourage people
to do more than five shifts and sometimes a six.
They can't do more than one double, and they have
to have two days off, usually in a row, and
that again gives you a sense of a genuine place.
(28:00):
Everybody has a view out to the river. If you're
on the bar, you can look out. If you're you know,
washing up, you can move outside. It's so we try
and create an environment like that. But we're not alone.
I think a lot of people are doing that. Yeah,
that's not to say I just want to say that
it sounds like we're a family, happy cozy, you know,
hugging restaurant. We're actually if that, you know, curtain goes
(28:23):
up at twelve thirty and you haven't done your sauce,
so you haven't raided the cheese, or you haven't squeezed
your lemons, you're in trouble, you know, because our role
is to make a happy kitchen. But it's really rigorous.
You have to We have people coming in to eat,
and the whole attention is on is a carpet cleaned,
is the are the menus out? You know? It's it's
(28:45):
it's very professional too.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Yes, any other questions, so I may lower the level
of a discussion here with this silly question. But I
dared to ask you that because perhaps of my I'm
an anglophile, because I love York Side pudding, Yorkshire, and
I was wondering what it would be like, Like I said,
(29:09):
what would be like? How would you imagine what would
be the difficulties, the challenges, or even have the success
of opening a British restaurant in Rome?
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah, I think that I can't take Rome, but I
know that hawksmore. And there's another restaurant opening in New York,
you know, and bringing very much kind of Yorkshire putting
in roast beef to New York. Rome. Not sure.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
But after Yorkshire putting, what what do you do? What's
the next Thingish thing?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Fergus it's done for you know, Fergus has done lots
of you know, we were talking about that today that
it would just be great if when you went to
dinner at Buckingham Palace, you know, you have had steak
and kidney pudding or roast beef instead of a kind
of faux French meal. You know that you would actually
celebrate British cooking. And I think sometimes when you talk
(30:11):
to people about you know, growing up in Lancashire or
Yorkshire or Cornwall. They will talk, oh, my mother used
to make this dish, you know, and they will wax
lyrical about their grandmother's cooking. So I'm sure it's there.
I don't think it does translate very easily to restaurants.
The best British cooking I've had has been in people's houses,
you know, really great food Sad's mom. You know, It's
(30:34):
just it's eating in people's houses. I think I'm not
sure how it translates to restaurants. Rome, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
We'll leave it to you for me to open the
British restaurant in Barcelona.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah. People ask me if I wanted to open a
river cafe Milad and I thought, no way. You know,
I don't think they'd really want, you know, an American
and a British woman doing Italian food that I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
If I can say. As a complete foreigner to Galicia,
one of the things that I find quite interesting is
there's a tendency for Galicians to like their own food
above others, which is quite unique because if you, yeah,
if you're in London, you say, what out of food
do you like? That no one will say English food,
oh I like Thai. Oh yeah, I mean but here,
(31:27):
given a choice between a Galician product and another product,
is it from here or not? It's okay they And
I think that's an incredible place to begin too, because if,
as we are now concerned that local and seasonal is
an issue, then you do need to want to be
(31:52):
restricted by those things, as opposed to thinking that their penalties.
You know, why can't I have something? There's very few
things now in a London context, you know that people
would understand that you you can't give them this time
of the year. I mean, your restaurant is one of
the few. I would say that you sort of positively
(32:15):
gravitate towards things which are seasonal, and then your cookbooks
have done that. But I would say one of the
struggles in terms of sustainability is to persuade people that
you can't have any product at any time, from anywhere,
at any season. And I think if you're trying to
talk about sustainability, I would have to say, and this
(32:37):
is my you know, it's right. The Foundation talks about
a lot is I think actually the food culture here
is in a very healthy state because in a sense
the culture is already sort of on board. They're very
unadventurous in a way. When I first came here, I
was surprised that you look at a menu and it
just has the same things that every restaurant you go to,
(32:59):
twelve twelve things. Now I think it's fantastic. Thank you
for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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