January 27, 2025 • 34 mins
Around the table with friends we were talking about the kind of movies we like best. My vote was for movies about journalism — His Girl Friday, Broadcast News, The Insider, All the President's Men.
I don’t need to watch a movie to see my favourite journalist, I just call James Harding — the youngest ever editor of The Times, Washington editor of the Financial Times, and head of BBC News. In 2018 he founded Tortoise, an online news platform, with the principle of responsible, deep journalism. Slow news in the age of high-speed information.
James and I speak often about what’s happening in the world, our families, what he’s writing, where he’s going and a lot more. Today we’re in The River Cafe to talk about food and memories.
Two friends, a journalist and a cook together. That’s what I call news.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Recently talking with friends about the type of movies we
liked most. My vote was for movies about journalism and newspapers,
His Girl Friday, Broadcast News, The Insider, and most of all,
all the President's Men. I don't need to watch a
(00:20):
movie to see my favorite journalist. I just call my
great friend James Harding, the youngest ever editor of The Times, Washington,
editor of the Financial Times, and head of BBC News.
In twenty eighteen, he found a Tortoise, an online news platform,
and his vision for the principle of responsible deep journalism
(00:40):
slow news in the age of high speed information overwhelmed.
Richard and I were committed supporters from the very first day,
and it was then that James and my names for
each other changed. I became missus Graham Catherine Graham of
the Washington Post, and he became Ben as in Ben Bradley,
her brave and brilliant editor. James and I speak often
(01:02):
about what's happening in the world, our families, what he's writing,
where he is going, and a lot more. Today we're
in the River Cafe to talk about food and memories.
Two friends, a journalist and a cook together. That's what
I call news, Ben. Why should I say James has
chosen a recipe for horse Readish to read today on
(01:24):
the podcast Why did you choose horse Readish?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well? Before? Can I just tell you my favorite Missus
Graham story? Yes, So when I was in Washington, I
was with the fteam. I ended up meeting this couple. R. W.
Apple Junior. It was the Washington buwer chief of the
New York Times, Johnny Apple him and his wife was
Betsy Apple. It's absolutely extraordinary, kind of southern character. And
(01:52):
she was very good friends with Catherine Graham and they've
been friends, she told me at this dinner. They've been
friends for about eighty twenty years. And one day Missus
Graham and everyone in the Washington Post called her Missus Graham.
She was obviously the steel, the kind of backbone to
the paper all the way through Watergate. She'd called Betsy
(02:12):
and said, Betsy, we've been friends for a long time now,
maybe you'd like to start calling me kay And Betsy
Apple said, you know that's so lovely of uk. Of
course I'd be honored. Of course I'll call you k
and there was a pause and then she said, in public,
you're probably gonna want to still call me missus Graham.
(02:34):
And I always thought that was such a kind of
Washington moment. It was great, nice, right, you know your pa.
And I went back years later to interview Missus Graham.
She had this kind of salon, and I interviewed Ben Bradley.
I interviewed the two of them. So and Bradley had
so she was in her salon in Washington in Georgetown,
(02:56):
and he had an office up in the old Post building,
and by then he was no longer executive editor of
the paper, but he was still had a place there,
and he looked exactly like that Jason Robot's character and
all the President's men. And behind him he had a
cork board and he collected on his corkboard corrections and
errors in newspapers. He cut them out of newspapers and
he put them on and he read one out to
(03:18):
me that was like four hundred words long. It was
just a layer upon layer of mistake and error and
neglect and misjudgment. And I remember him talking about it
as if he was describing a martini. He's said at
the end, now that is a correction with a twist.
It was his ideal of it.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay, So let's read the recipe.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Horse radish sauce. One hundred grams of fresh horse radish
one tablespoon. Does it even qualify as a recipe? Yeah,
of course it is okay, good. One tablespoon of red
wine vinegar, one hundred and fifty milli liters of creme
fresh salt, and freshly ground pepper. There are only three
main ingredients in this source, so their quality is important.
(04:04):
Look for a horse radish route that is firm and clean,
free of cuts and deep lemishes. The white of the
flesh of the horse radish, the fresher it is. And
for the vinegar, we use vulpire vinegar made on an
estate in Tuscany. And the crome fresh adds creaminess and
balance to the sauce. The freshness of this source makes
all the difference compared to one in a jar.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
There you go, So why have all the recipes thirty
seven years? Well, the least us thirty seven. Our first
cookbook was nineteen ninety four. But what you made you
think about using horse readish as a recipe.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So I've been lucky to come to the River Cafe,
and then you find yourself looking at this amazing menu
and every time doing that annoying thing to the brilliant
people who come and ask you for your order, looking
at the menu, thinking long and hard about what you're
going to have, deciding what you're going to have. The
person arrives, indecision strikes, You're in the grip of it,
(05:01):
and then eventually what happens is I'll order the beef
with the horse radish because of the horse radish, because
it's kind of creamy and strong and just irresistible. And
I've got a soft spot for condiments, all of those
pickles and chimneys and chili based, but horse radish is
(05:24):
one that is I'm sure there's a word for ruthie.
I don't know what it is, that mixture of something
that is sweet and sharp and spicy all at the
same time. And yours is the best in the world,
the horse radish. And I say this having done the work.
You know, I've really had a look at a lot
of horse radishes, and this horse, rightig horse is the best.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
There you go, so we will go back to the
early days, as we could start at the beginning. You
grew up in a household in North London.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So on my father's side, my family came from Germany
with German Jews in thirty six Berlin with family's Hirshevitz.
My grandmother Elsie, my daughter's called Elsie. My grandmother Elsie
was this incredibly strong character, pulled everyone together. The family table,
(06:13):
the Friday night table, was incredibly important place. The food
was terrible. She was sure, We completely sure. You can
ask all members of the family. It's one of those
family facts, you know, there are very few things that
all families can agree on, but the fact that granny's
food was just terrible. She was a big smoker, eighty
to one hundred and twenty a day, silk cut and
(06:38):
she would cook with the cigarette and the ash would
just bend slowly dipping. Would it fall into the boiling
pot of tongue that she was cooking, Yes, yes it
would fall. And so you would watch this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Do you think she didn't want to cook?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I don't think she was.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
She probably didn't want well, it sounds like a cracking woman,
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Maybe she was an amazing woman. So her story was
that she wanted to be a journalist, she wanted to
be a journalist, and actually at home I have her
old Erica typewriter next to my desk. In thirty three,
when the Nazis came in, one of the first things
they did was bar Jews from working in journalism, and
(07:22):
so she left in thirty six. And she definitely would
have been one of those journalists who was a great
eater rather than a great feeder. She was someone who
cared a lot about ideas and opinions and politics, and
she had loads of that of her own. But you're right,
she didn't love the cooking front off. On my mom's side,
(07:43):
my mother's family were where Jews had gone from Manchester
to Cape Town. My great grandfather had had tb they
moved there to South Africa. That side of the family
were really really lovers of food, of cooking and cakes
and fruit and my mum, to my great good fortune,
(08:04):
is an amazing cook. Yeah, I met wonderful cook and
all of those sweet things you know, as I said,
chocolate cakes and fruitcakes and sponges, but also chickens and
casseroles and soups, and that you can even hear in
my voice that feeling of just being taken care of
by food.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Your father is a very well known doctor. Tell me
about him.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Funny and alive and interested is everything in food. Loves food,
but I would say loves meals with people even more.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, and did he ever cook? Did your male ever
go into your kitchen or did your father he was.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I remember, I don't remember much. The moment that I
remember with my dad around the stove was I slipped
trying to climb over a barbed wire fence when I
was I can't remember, like six, seven eight. And I
remember my dad had made us breakfast scrambled eggs every day.
He made no this was just this was a Saturday morning,
I think, and I'd gashed my throat. There was a
(09:03):
cut under my throat and it needed stitches. And I
remember my dad swashing out the pot from the scrambled eggs,
boiling the water to sterilize the suitures, and then stitching
me up on the kitchen table. I remember thinking that's
quite that's quite a lot of use of the pot
in the morning. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, So you grew up in.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
A house where food from your grandparents, whether were your
grandmother is a great cook or not, but there was
food and discussion and around the table.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Would you come home from school? How many similars my sister?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So, my sister and would sit there and would have
supper together, remembery.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
A typical dinner in your house, would you?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes? We were talk because I'm sure that now that
our kids, we've got two thirteen and eleven, and I
think you're always re remembering, idealizing a version of a
dinner that may have actually only happened twice in your
entire teenage years. But the idea of sitting at the
(10:06):
table eating, And the one thing that is absolutely repeating
is that my parents were endlessly exhausted and frustrated by
my table manners, and that turns out to be hereditary.
So was that painful?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Did they sit at the table and correct you the
whole thing? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's I had a French friend and I said, you
have the most incredible pasture, you sort of say, and
she said, and I said, that's great.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
How did your parents do it?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And she said, I have only terrible memories of my
childhood because every meal I had to sit up straight.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I ended up with good pasture. But I really don't.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Like sitting down to dinner anymore. But I can't imagine
it was that bad.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It wasn't bad at all. It wasn't bad at all.
It was just sort of like having the radio on,
you know. It was that was the noise. And I
think with my kids it's the same. So.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, and when you left this cocoon of a home
being for and then you were at Cambridge, Yes, and
was that a shark?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It was incredible shock just I mean, you know, have
you ever just driven up there? In part? I remember
standing in front of the college and it looked like
a palace, you know, it was just an amazing place
and the But I don't associate it with food. I
associate it with architecture and light and trees and obviously
(11:30):
people overwhelming with people and a pub with beer and crisps,
you know, and a lot of hanging about. But I
don't It's funny, actually, I can't think of time in
my life where I think less about food.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I think you're not alone. So you were, you
were writing at that time.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It was ninety two, so it was a weird time. Actually,
people looking for work, you know, coming out of university
wasn't easy, and there was this amaz program to go
and learn Japanese and I learned, I learned Japanese. They
were there was a rather wonderful, eccentric man who'd run
a big Japanese firm who'd set up this scholarship program,
(12:12):
and there were seven of us. We all learned Japanese
for a year at SOAS and then went out to
work in Tokyo for a year. And I was just
absolutely life changing because you'd suddenly seen the world in
a completely different way. The start of it was a
homestay and there was the first experience of food.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Different domestic Japanese food.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I don't I don't. While I was at university, I
did a number of trips which really threw me into
a world of different food. I'd i'd done my first
real piece of journalism. I'd gone into Pakistan and into
southern Afghanistan. I remember eating kind of wobbly white sheet
fat out of a pile of rice and thinking, Okay,
(12:58):
this is different. And then I remember arriving in Japan,
going on this home stay up in Kusher, up in Hokkaido,
and thinking, okay, this is really a different breakfast we
are into for Japanese. So they would they would give
us a thing called NATO, which was a sort of fermented,
very fermented bean, and you'd have it with rice. It
(13:18):
was very sticky, it had a really pungent smell to it,
and front enough, you know, I'm sitting here in your
cheese rooms. It's the equivalent of taking a Japanese person
to the cheese room, the most painful and unfound and welcome,
but for breakfast. But then you sort of, you kind
of nearly got into it, and you sort of were
getting into it to impress your Japanese hosts. But as
soon as you could do anything like toast, you were
(13:40):
back for that. So Japan changed the way.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I ate tell me more about food in Tokyo. So
you were give us a job to work, so I had.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
So what you did is you went to go and
learn Japanese in the morning, and then we were all
placed in a different place of work. I worked in
the office of a politician, the Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan,
a guy called Kato Koichi, And I remember the first
day arriving, and it was one political scandal after another.
I arrived in my office building and there were police
(14:10):
fans outside the office building because one of the kingmakers
of the Japanese political party, the LDP had been found
to have bars of gold in his desk. Draw that
it was. It was that, but I spent a year there.
There was a hierarchy of duties. The most important to
them was probably photocopying and tea. And then sometimes I
(14:35):
pretend that it was really not very hard. It was
pull the boiling water in. But I but I did
go and do things, some of those things you'd expect.
The tea, but food was an incredibly important part of
life in Japan because the days were very, very long.
The office days went often until sort of eleven midnight.
(14:58):
You'd have these late night meetings with Japanese journalists. So
the Chief Cabinet Secretary ran background briefings with in effect,
the Tokyo political reporting teams, and they would come to
his flat, and my job was to serve the tea
and hang up the coats and then just sit and listen.
(15:19):
And it was an absolutely fascinating window on Japanese politics.
And then occasionally I would be asked to write a
short speech in English, which felt very grand.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So it's an immersion, isn't it. It's a complete immersion.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It's an emersion, and also it was a very strong
food and drinking culture in the office. Well, so the
day would end and then us know, what would happen
was that we'd leave the office at about eight and
we would then all get taken out to eat and drink.
You know, the boss either takebisan or USN would take
(15:55):
you out, and we'd be taken either to Chinese restaurants
or Japanese restaurants, and depending who was there. And it's
such a culture of eating out. You know. Actually, I
think in the year that I was there, I was
probably invited into someone else's home to eat once, but
you'd be invited out to eat all the time. And
(16:15):
you'd eat in these incredible places, and that's where you
discovered everything. And you'd see these sushi places that fullgoul
you know, that kind of fish the supposedly so it's
a puffer fish, and it's famously poisonous if you cut
it up wrong, but if you cut it up right,
it's very delicate. All of these incredible treats, but then
also an enormous amount of drinking beer and Missleworry Witten
(16:39):
whisky and water, all of that, and that was a
whole lifestyle. I was twenty two. They couldn't believe it.
And then you would sort of kind of wheel home,
you know, because even after the thing finished, you then
go for a few drinks, and then you'd stop at
home on the way home for a bowl of ramen
miso ramen. That was the sort of thing that more
(17:01):
or less kept you from getting a cold and did
a little bit to help you out with a hangover
the next.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
By that time, it would time, and then you'd be
in the office.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Not that eight thirty. Yeah, yeah, I mean in the office,
you know, in charge of the photocopying machine. So I
don't think it was going to.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Get I don't quite believe that. But so that you're right,
I'm not I was in charge.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I sell you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
But did you travel all of chapas regional food with
the food in the north different from the food in
the south, And did you go.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
To the mountains killing Yeah, so in the north it
was up in the island, it was it was much
more of those kind of soups and noodles. But I
then came back from Japan, I got a job at
the ft That was the sort of nineteen ninety four
ninety six, I went to China, and that was essentially
(17:55):
three years and a bit of just eating. And then
that was my only job, finding off working in restaurant.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Come to think of it, you worked in a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I worked in the village restaurant in Shanghai. I did.
It was a very interesting thing, thinking back on China
then and China now. The chef in a village restaurant,
or the owner of the village restaurant. I went to
her restaurant. She is wonderful and warm and welcoming, and
I said, how does it work? And she took me
into the kitchen at the back, and there was this
(18:25):
amazing chef kind of just drumming these huge blades, these
huge chopping knives, and I thought, I would love to
learn how to do that, how just to get those
wrists moving at that speed. And so they had me
in and I learned to cook. One thing. I learned
to cook snake soup. I mean when I say I
worked in a restaurant, I worked in a restaurant. I
worked in a restaurant for I would like say, six hours,
(18:46):
but they would probably say forty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
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(19:15):
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Speaker 3 (19:22):
Now do you think food and journalism and food and writing?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And food is a revelation to both the culture you're in,
the city you're in, the government that you're in. It
tells you know, the culture of a country is told
by the food and the way it's prepared and the
way it's.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Even going to a market.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
I always say to people and they go to Venice,
they say where should I go first? Should I go
to the academy or as I go to a market,
go to the rialito and see whether they shout, or
whether they serve, or whether they wrap it up or
whether they're don't.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
You think, oh my God, tell me so. My nephew
Alpha is a chef and he's just got a job
going to work in Japan. He flies into Tokyo and
he had the jobs front off. He's going to be
a pizza chef, head chef in a restaurant making pizza
in the Japanese mountains. He's got one day in Tokyo.
(20:21):
I thought, there's only one thing to go and see
ski gee the fish market. Yeah, and that's the place
you would want to you'd want to go, I mean,
and I think you're right. Markets are the place. But
in China, China and Italy in that sense are the same.
The conversation is food and the way in which you
(20:44):
you know that. I'm going to spare your listeners my
terrible Chinese. But it's the very fact that the greeting
in Chinese was always have you eaten?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Really?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
That was your hello. And the interesting thing was that
regional food you talked about all the time, all the time,
every way you went to you know, what was what
you ate in Shinyang was different from what you ate
in Kunming, what you ate in Shanghai was obviously totally
different from Beijing, and it meant something incredibly important. And
today if you meet anyone from any of those places
(21:18):
and you talk about those foods. I mean, and it
was also I think I think true about politics, and
I think I think it's more true than we think
about the way we conceive of our society and our
politics too. I went to a talk by Chimamundan Goziadice,
(21:39):
the Nigerian author, but she said something incredible at the
end of this talk at the Royal Academy, which was
and there was a whole talk about the origins of
being a writer, but her very last line, Ruthie was
and remember, dignity is always as important as food. And
(21:59):
I thought to myself, if you were to try and
distill a great philosophy around politics, I would probably go
for dignity is always as important as food, and food
is always as important as dignity. But it's quite a
just distillation of everything.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But you were in Afghanistan, You're going to ask two opposite.
When you're in Afghanistan and Pakistan and you were working
as a report, did you have a fearful of food?
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Were you hungry? Do you have days?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah? Yeah, But that's I mean, that was that that
happened occasionally, But I wasn't No, I wasn't fearful.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Were you ever in a zone where people were food denied?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yes, I've been in places and that and that is
there northern Pakistan, there were huge refugee camps were there.
I mean actually as a reporter in many places, and
I think that that I remember traveling up through southern
Africa and then flying from there to France, and I
(23:07):
find that, as everyone does, incredibly difficult. You just can't
make sense of it. You know, I remember going to
Gaza the first time. You know that all of those things,
it's really you know, there's nothing you can say about
it that doesn't sound either kind of glob or simplistic,
(23:28):
but it's it's really hard to make sense of and
live with. And in China, I think that's the curious thing.
So when I was in China and at mid nineties,
that whole experience of the Great Leap Forward and the
famine and hungry ghosts that was within touching distance. People
(23:52):
had memories of that and it had affected their families
and their and their parents. And so the period that
I lived in China was this just incredible explosion of
excitement and optimism and food. You know, in Shanghai, restaurants
were opening all the time. People were going out in
a way that they never had and obviously now that
(24:13):
then became commonplace. But living in a country, when it
takes off and the experience people have around food and
the joy and pleasure of eating and meals together, it's
an amazing thing to win us.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And what about the opposite, When you went to Washington.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And then you were thrust into the world of American food,
does that stay with you, that experience of when were
you in Washington.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I was in Washington in the early two thousands, so
I was in Washington just after nine to eleven, through
Bush the Bush Kerry election and into two thousand and five.
When I think of food in the States, I think
of food almost everywhere but Washington. So I think of
kind of meatloaf in New Hampshire or going down into
(24:57):
you know, Gumbo and Louisiana, these things that are real.
But again, the US in that sense is quite a
lot like China. It also has foods that it's really
proud of Washington food, those sort of steaks in the
Capitol Grill, and that sense, I mean that there was
a particular restaurant called the Capitol Grill. It was dark
and it was furnished like it was a set from
our Hollywood movie about Washington restaurant, and you know, people
(25:22):
lobbying and being lobbied. It's not a very it's not
a very romantic restaurant scene. Mexico, Oh my god, Mexico City.
Do you remember that restaurant? We went to Contromar count tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
We spent those one of the We sat there.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
For hours, hours and hours. Now, that is one of
the great restaurant cultures in the world. That you go there.
I agree Friday afternoon, arrived two, maybe three, possibly even
four o'clock in the afternoon and have lunch from four
till nine. I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
I love the Mexico say.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I love the way the Mexicans have a very late
breakfast and they have lunch at four and then they
have an apple for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
And they're all finished at about and they finished at
And also think what's interesting there was when I was there,
they also don't ask you what you do. Like the
culture of lunch. If there's a whole culture, like the
way you talk to people, and it's so it's much
less transactional and much more social.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
The River Cafe Winter you said, Lunch is now running
from Monday to Thursday, reserve a booking a www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. So Tortoise,
I would like to talk because do you feel that
with starting this vision it's a bit like starting a
(26:45):
family or building a home that you had an idea
of how you wanted people to eat or to have
time to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
To have time to eat is really key and I
think being honest about caring about food. So if there's
an all night election coming up, we talk a lot
about what are we going to eat? Yeah, you know,
the whole idea of taught us was how would you
get away from this torrent of news and information and
(27:13):
stop and think and try and make sense of what
was happening in the world. And the best way you
were going to do that was to have a conversation.
And as we said, some of the best conversations are
around a table, and the best thing to have on
the table is food. And so we're very interested in
food as a way of bringing people together, and sometimes
it's been really deliberate. So you know, recently we were
(27:35):
trying to get a better understanding of what's really happening
in Iran and to try to bring a whole group
of people, and we're really lucky. You know, a brilliant
Persian chef came and cooked a whole night. It was
absolutely incredible. Tell me, it was just actually fine enough.
It was Someone had said to me, look, no one
really covers Iran, which is true. There's a context, there's
(27:56):
there's Iran coverage because it's very difficult. It's very difficult
post anyone to Tehran. I tried for a long time
at the BBC. But also if you think about it,
if you think about what's going on in terms of
human rights and the politics of Iran, actually the focus
and the attention paid is minimal. So someone said, let's
(28:18):
have a conversation about Iran. Let's bring together a whole
bunch of journalists and commentators and people with points of view.
And then she said, rather wonderfully, wouldn't this be much
better over a really good Persian dinner? And of course
it was. And I think there's something interesting, Ruthie, about
news and polarization and food, because I think there's a
(28:40):
sense among some people that the world is more polarized
than it really is. I think there's a willingness of
people to hear each other more than we sometimes acknowledge,
but you have to bring them together in the right
way first, and there are certain things, I would say,
food and music that can really do that. And once
(29:03):
you've got together around the food and the music, the
argument about the ideas can be as deep and divided,
but it's warmer and more human, and so that's part
of the spirit of it.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, if we're thinking about news, James, and we're here
to talk about food and family and food and memories
and food and work, but we're also here to talk
about food and news. And one of the most exciting
things that has happened here for me personally as your friend,
and also as a reader of newspapers, as somebody who
(29:35):
cares and can't put them down and wants more to read,
is the idea that you are going to have a
newspaper the Observer, which is all part of our history.
Like a lot of food, it's part of our history
and it's also the future.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Well, here I'm just witnessing great writers and thinkers and
photographers and lovers of food at work. The Observer is
the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. Founded in seventeen ninety one,
it's had some of the greatest people ever walked through
its door. Rachel bar was the first female editor of
(30:11):
the National newspaper in the eighteen nineties. It sort of
called out the Versailles Treaty as being a problem waiting
to happen. George Orwell had it as it was his paper.
He called it the Enemy of Nonsense. David Astor was
this inspiring editor of it who used to say that
journalism is too important and too fun to be left
(30:32):
a journalist to brought a whole group of people in.
But if you ask people what they love about The Observer,
it's food. The reality is that it had whether it
was Jane Grigson or Katherine Whitehorn, but for the better
part of thirty years. I think the best writer on
(30:54):
food and recipes Nigel Slater, and not just the way
he writes, because he really writes about food or the
recipes he creates. And you must know him well, Ruthie.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I do. I respect him and I like him.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
He's extraordinary anyway. The Observer cares as much about art
and food as it does about politics in the world,
and there are very few. And I remember when I
started out at the time someone said to me, remember
in the nineteen sixties, Harold Wilson wasn't the story. The
Beatles the story. And if you go back over time
(31:30):
and you look at the front pages of every paper,
they all led with Harold Wilson. And what I love
about The Observer is this sense that, no, no, we
realize that where people are arts and food as much,
if not more than politics and ideas in the world.
And so the hope is that you can take something
that has for a long time just been a newspaper,
(31:51):
just in print with its journalism sitting on the website
of The Guardian, and create something that genuinely has a
life of its own, and you bring the Observer food.
It's got less wonderful magazine, the Observer Food monthly, but
you bring it to life digitally, you bring it to
life in a bunch of live events, and more people
and a new generation of people get to have that
(32:14):
love and respect for the culture of food that I
think has been at the heart of The Observer.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah, we excited about that.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I'm excited about it too. I'm actually even you.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Know why it's exciting as well.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
It's a successible but it changes, you know, you have
a column that you look to what's new in food,
what's happening in food, what's somebody cooking and food?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
What ingredients are coming in today?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Which ones are you saying goodbye to the politics of
food the.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Way we grow it.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
There's so much, so much time, and you know, without
having to buy a book, as.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You say, it's a way into culture, a way really
into economics. That's why I think that Chimamanda line really
sat with me. Because so many newsrooms know what they're
against right, they're driven by a kind of anger or fear.
If you can have one that knows what it's for,
dignity is always as important as food, and food is
(33:08):
always as important as dignity. You know what you're about
and you get up every day and go, well, these
are the things we're seeking out.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Going for food as comfort if you need and as
I say, I hope you don't need comfort. You don't
need a life you need it. But I have a
pair of socks. Talked about my socks that James Harding
brought to me. They are definitely giving me the good.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
They're really good.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
If we're going to go and join through and have
lunch and have some comfort, here, is there a food
that when you do need comfort that you will turn to.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
You can go parently one or parody two. Here. Parently
one is chicken soup.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
That's a good one, and.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
The other is spaghetti bolonnaise, and either of those every day,
all day long. But my comfort treat is Cituanese food
mar putauf on a good bowl of white rice and
a cold beer. That is a happy place.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Let's go do that.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
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.
Recently talking with friends about the type of movies we
liked most. My vote was for movies about journalism and newspapers,
His Girl Friday, Broadcast News, The Insider, and most of all,
all the President's Men. I don't need to watch a
(00:20):
movie to see my favorite journalist. I just call my
great friend James Harding, the youngest ever editor of The Times, Washington,
editor of the Financial Times, and head of BBC News.
In twenty eighteen, he found a Tortoise, an online news platform,
and his vision for the principle of responsible deep journalism
(00:40):
slow news in the age of high speed information overwhelmed.
Richard and I were committed supporters from the very first day,
and it was then that James and my names for
each other changed. I became missus Graham Catherine Graham of
the Washington Post, and he became Ben as in Ben Bradley,
her brave and brilliant editor. James and I speak often
(01:02):
about what's happening in the world, our families, what he's writing,
where he is going, and a lot more. Today we're
in the River Cafe to talk about food and memories.
Two friends, a journalist and a cook together. That's what
I call news, Ben. Why should I say James has
chosen a recipe for horse Readish to read today on
(01:24):
the podcast Why did you choose horse Readish?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well? Before? Can I just tell you my favorite Missus
Graham story? Yes, So when I was in Washington, I
was with the fteam. I ended up meeting this couple. R. W.
Apple Junior. It was the Washington buwer chief of the
New York Times, Johnny Apple him and his wife was
Betsy Apple. It's absolutely extraordinary, kind of southern character. And
(01:52):
she was very good friends with Catherine Graham and they've
been friends, she told me at this dinner. They've been
friends for about eighty twenty years. And one day Missus
Graham and everyone in the Washington Post called her Missus Graham.
She was obviously the steel, the kind of backbone to
the paper all the way through Watergate. She'd called Betsy
(02:12):
and said, Betsy, we've been friends for a long time now,
maybe you'd like to start calling me kay And Betsy
Apple said, you know that's so lovely of uk. Of
course I'd be honored. Of course I'll call you k
and there was a pause and then she said, in public,
you're probably gonna want to still call me missus Graham.
(02:34):
And I always thought that was such a kind of
Washington moment. It was great, nice, right, you know your pa.
And I went back years later to interview Missus Graham.
She had this kind of salon, and I interviewed Ben Bradley.
I interviewed the two of them. So and Bradley had
so she was in her salon in Washington in Georgetown,
(02:56):
and he had an office up in the old Post building,
and by then he was no longer executive editor of
the paper, but he was still had a place there,
and he looked exactly like that Jason Robot's character and
all the President's men. And behind him he had a
cork board and he collected on his corkboard corrections and
errors in newspapers. He cut them out of newspapers and
he put them on and he read one out to
(03:18):
me that was like four hundred words long. It was
just a layer upon layer of mistake and error and
neglect and misjudgment. And I remember him talking about it
as if he was describing a martini. He's said at
the end, now that is a correction with a twist.
It was his ideal of it.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Okay, So let's read the recipe.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Horse radish sauce. One hundred grams of fresh horse radish
one tablespoon. Does it even qualify as a recipe? Yeah,
of course it is okay, good. One tablespoon of red
wine vinegar, one hundred and fifty milli liters of creme
fresh salt, and freshly ground pepper. There are only three
main ingredients in this source, so their quality is important.
(04:04):
Look for a horse radish route that is firm and clean,
free of cuts and deep lemishes. The white of the
flesh of the horse radish, the fresher it is. And
for the vinegar, we use vulpire vinegar made on an
estate in Tuscany. And the crome fresh adds creaminess and
balance to the sauce. The freshness of this source makes
all the difference compared to one in a jar.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
There you go, So why have all the recipes thirty
seven years? Well, the least us thirty seven. Our first
cookbook was nineteen ninety four. But what you made you
think about using horse readish as a recipe.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So I've been lucky to come to the River Cafe,
and then you find yourself looking at this amazing menu
and every time doing that annoying thing to the brilliant
people who come and ask you for your order, looking
at the menu, thinking long and hard about what you're
going to have, deciding what you're going to have. The
person arrives, indecision strikes, You're in the grip of it,
(05:01):
and then eventually what happens is I'll order the beef
with the horse radish because of the horse radish, because
it's kind of creamy and strong and just irresistible. And
I've got a soft spot for condiments, all of those
pickles and chimneys and chili based, but horse radish is
(05:24):
one that is I'm sure there's a word for ruthie.
I don't know what it is, that mixture of something
that is sweet and sharp and spicy all at the
same time. And yours is the best in the world,
the horse radish. And I say this having done the work.
You know, I've really had a look at a lot
of horse radishes, and this horse, rightig horse is the best.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
There you go, so we will go back to the
early days, as we could start at the beginning. You
grew up in a household in North London.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So on my father's side, my family came from Germany
with German Jews in thirty six Berlin with family's Hirshevitz.
My grandmother Elsie, my daughter's called Elsie. My grandmother Elsie
was this incredibly strong character, pulled everyone together. The family table,
(06:13):
the Friday night table, was incredibly important place. The food
was terrible. She was sure, We completely sure. You can
ask all members of the family. It's one of those
family facts, you know, there are very few things that
all families can agree on, but the fact that granny's
food was just terrible. She was a big smoker, eighty
to one hundred and twenty a day, silk cut and
(06:38):
she would cook with the cigarette and the ash would
just bend slowly dipping. Would it fall into the boiling
pot of tongue that she was cooking, Yes, yes it
would fall. And so you would watch this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Do you think she didn't want to cook?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I don't think she was.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
She probably didn't want well, it sounds like a cracking woman,
you know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Maybe she was an amazing woman. So her story was
that she wanted to be a journalist, she wanted to
be a journalist, and actually at home I have her
old Erica typewriter next to my desk. In thirty three,
when the Nazis came in, one of the first things
they did was bar Jews from working in journalism, and
(07:22):
so she left in thirty six. And she definitely would
have been one of those journalists who was a great
eater rather than a great feeder. She was someone who
cared a lot about ideas and opinions and politics, and
she had loads of that of her own. But you're right,
she didn't love the cooking front off. On my mom's side,
(07:43):
my mother's family were where Jews had gone from Manchester
to Cape Town. My great grandfather had had tb they
moved there to South Africa. That side of the family
were really really lovers of food, of cooking and cakes
and fruit and my mum, to my great good fortune,
(08:04):
is an amazing cook. Yeah, I met wonderful cook and
all of those sweet things you know, as I said,
chocolate cakes and fruitcakes and sponges, but also chickens and
casseroles and soups, and that you can even hear in
my voice that feeling of just being taken care of
by food.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Your father is a very well known doctor. Tell me
about him.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Funny and alive and interested is everything in food. Loves food,
but I would say loves meals with people even more.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, and did he ever cook? Did your male ever
go into your kitchen or did your father he was.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I remember, I don't remember much. The moment that I
remember with my dad around the stove was I slipped
trying to climb over a barbed wire fence when I
was I can't remember, like six, seven eight. And I
remember my dad had made us breakfast scrambled eggs every day.
He made no this was just this was a Saturday morning,
I think, and I'd gashed my throat. There was a
(09:03):
cut under my throat and it needed stitches. And I
remember my dad swashing out the pot from the scrambled eggs,
boiling the water to sterilize the suitures, and then stitching
me up on the kitchen table. I remember thinking that's
quite that's quite a lot of use of the pot
in the morning. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, So you grew up in.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
A house where food from your grandparents, whether were your
grandmother is a great cook or not, but there was
food and discussion and around the table.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Would you come home from school? How many similars my sister?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So, my sister and would sit there and would have
supper together, remembery.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
A typical dinner in your house, would you?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes? We were talk because I'm sure that now that
our kids, we've got two thirteen and eleven, and I
think you're always re remembering, idealizing a version of a
dinner that may have actually only happened twice in your
entire teenage years. But the idea of sitting at the
(10:06):
table eating, And the one thing that is absolutely repeating
is that my parents were endlessly exhausted and frustrated by
my table manners, and that turns out to be hereditary.
So was that painful?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Did they sit at the table and correct you the
whole thing? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's I had a French friend and I said, you
have the most incredible pasture, you sort of say, and
she said, and I said, that's great.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
How did your parents do it?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And she said, I have only terrible memories of my
childhood because every meal I had to sit up straight.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
I ended up with good pasture. But I really don't.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Like sitting down to dinner anymore. But I can't imagine
it was that bad.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It wasn't bad at all. It wasn't bad at all.
It was just sort of like having the radio on,
you know. It was that was the noise. And I
think with my kids it's the same. So.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, and when you left this cocoon of a home
being for and then you were at Cambridge, Yes, and
was that a shark?
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It was incredible shock just I mean, you know, have
you ever just driven up there? In part? I remember
standing in front of the college and it looked like
a palace, you know, it was just an amazing place
and the But I don't associate it with food. I
associate it with architecture and light and trees and obviously
(11:30):
people overwhelming with people and a pub with beer and crisps,
you know, and a lot of hanging about. But I
don't It's funny, actually, I can't think of time in
my life where I think less about food.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I think you're not alone. So you were, you
were writing at that time.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It was ninety two, so it was a weird time. Actually,
people looking for work, you know, coming out of university
wasn't easy, and there was this amaz program to go
and learn Japanese and I learned, I learned Japanese. They
were there was a rather wonderful, eccentric man who'd run
a big Japanese firm who'd set up this scholarship program,
(12:12):
and there were seven of us. We all learned Japanese
for a year at SOAS and then went out to
work in Tokyo for a year. And I was just
absolutely life changing because you'd suddenly seen the world in
a completely different way. The start of it was a
homestay and there was the first experience of food.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Different domestic Japanese food.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I don't I don't. While I was at university, I
did a number of trips which really threw me into
a world of different food. I'd i'd done my first
real piece of journalism. I'd gone into Pakistan and into
southern Afghanistan. I remember eating kind of wobbly white sheet
fat out of a pile of rice and thinking, Okay,
(12:58):
this is different. And then I remember arriving in Japan,
going on this home stay up in Kusher, up in Hokkaido,
and thinking, okay, this is really a different breakfast we
are into for Japanese. So they would they would give
us a thing called NATO, which was a sort of fermented,
very fermented bean, and you'd have it with rice. It
(13:18):
was very sticky, it had a really pungent smell to it,
and front enough, you know, I'm sitting here in your
cheese rooms. It's the equivalent of taking a Japanese person
to the cheese room, the most painful and unfound and welcome,
but for breakfast. But then you sort of, you kind
of nearly got into it, and you sort of were
getting into it to impress your Japanese hosts. But as
soon as you could do anything like toast, you were
(13:40):
back for that. So Japan changed the way.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I ate tell me more about food in Tokyo. So
you were give us a job to work, so I had.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
So what you did is you went to go and
learn Japanese in the morning, and then we were all
placed in a different place of work. I worked in
the office of a politician, the Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan,
a guy called Kato Koichi, And I remember the first
day arriving, and it was one political scandal after another.
I arrived in my office building and there were police
(14:10):
fans outside the office building because one of the kingmakers
of the Japanese political party, the LDP had been found
to have bars of gold in his desk. Draw that
it was. It was that, but I spent a year there.
There was a hierarchy of duties. The most important to
them was probably photocopying and tea. And then sometimes I
(14:35):
pretend that it was really not very hard. It was
pull the boiling water in. But I but I did
go and do things, some of those things you'd expect.
The tea, but food was an incredibly important part of
life in Japan because the days were very, very long.
The office days went often until sort of eleven midnight.
(14:58):
You'd have these late night meetings with Japanese journalists. So
the Chief Cabinet Secretary ran background briefings with in effect,
the Tokyo political reporting teams, and they would come to
his flat, and my job was to serve the tea
and hang up the coats and then just sit and listen.
(15:19):
And it was an absolutely fascinating window on Japanese politics.
And then occasionally I would be asked to write a
short speech in English, which felt very grand.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So it's an immersion, isn't it. It's a complete immersion.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It's an emersion, and also it was a very strong
food and drinking culture in the office. Well, so the
day would end and then us know, what would happen
was that we'd leave the office at about eight and
we would then all get taken out to eat and drink.
You know, the boss either takebisan or USN would take
(15:55):
you out, and we'd be taken either to Chinese restaurants
or Japanese restaurants, and depending who was there. And it's
such a culture of eating out. You know. Actually, I
think in the year that I was there, I was
probably invited into someone else's home to eat once, but
you'd be invited out to eat all the time. And
(16:15):
you'd eat in these incredible places, and that's where you
discovered everything. And you'd see these sushi places that fullgoul
you know, that kind of fish the supposedly so it's
a puffer fish, and it's famously poisonous if you cut
it up wrong, but if you cut it up right,
it's very delicate. All of these incredible treats, but then
also an enormous amount of drinking beer and Missleworry Witten
(16:39):
whisky and water, all of that, and that was a
whole lifestyle. I was twenty two. They couldn't believe it.
And then you would sort of kind of wheel home,
you know, because even after the thing finished, you then
go for a few drinks, and then you'd stop at
home on the way home for a bowl of ramen
miso ramen. That was the sort of thing that more
(17:01):
or less kept you from getting a cold and did
a little bit to help you out with a hangover
the next.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
By that time, it would time, and then you'd be
in the office.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Not that eight thirty. Yeah, yeah, I mean in the office,
you know, in charge of the photocopying machine. So I
don't think it was going to.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Get I don't quite believe that. But so that you're right,
I'm not I was in charge.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I sell you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
But did you travel all of chapas regional food with
the food in the north different from the food in
the south, And did you go.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
To the mountains killing Yeah, so in the north it
was up in the island, it was it was much
more of those kind of soups and noodles. But I
then came back from Japan, I got a job at
the ft That was the sort of nineteen ninety four
ninety six, I went to China, and that was essentially
(17:55):
three years and a bit of just eating. And then
that was my only job, finding off working in restaurant.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Come to think of it, you worked in a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I worked in the village restaurant in Shanghai. I did.
It was a very interesting thing, thinking back on China
then and China now. The chef in a village restaurant,
or the owner of the village restaurant. I went to
her restaurant. She is wonderful and warm and welcoming, and
I said, how does it work? And she took me
into the kitchen at the back, and there was this
(18:25):
amazing chef kind of just drumming these huge blades, these
huge chopping knives, and I thought, I would love to
learn how to do that, how just to get those
wrists moving at that speed. And so they had me
in and I learned to cook. One thing. I learned
to cook snake soup. I mean when I say I
worked in a restaurant, I worked in a restaurant. I
worked in a restaurant for I would like say, six hours,
(18:46):
but they would probably say forty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
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(19:15):
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Speaker 3 (19:22):
Now do you think food and journalism and food and writing?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
And food is a revelation to both the culture you're in,
the city you're in, the government that you're in. It
tells you know, the culture of a country is told
by the food and the way it's prepared and the
way it's.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Even going to a market.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
I always say to people and they go to Venice,
they say where should I go first? Should I go
to the academy or as I go to a market,
go to the rialito and see whether they shout, or
whether they serve, or whether they wrap it up or
whether they're don't.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
You think, oh my God, tell me so. My nephew
Alpha is a chef and he's just got a job
going to work in Japan. He flies into Tokyo and
he had the jobs front off. He's going to be
a pizza chef, head chef in a restaurant making pizza
in the Japanese mountains. He's got one day in Tokyo.
(20:21):
I thought, there's only one thing to go and see
ski gee the fish market. Yeah, and that's the place
you would want to you'd want to go, I mean,
and I think you're right. Markets are the place. But
in China, China and Italy in that sense are the same.
The conversation is food and the way in which you
(20:44):
you know that. I'm going to spare your listeners my
terrible Chinese. But it's the very fact that the greeting
in Chinese was always have you eaten?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Really?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
That was your hello. And the interesting thing was that
regional food you talked about all the time, all the time,
every way you went to you know, what was what
you ate in Shinyang was different from what you ate
in Kunming, what you ate in Shanghai was obviously totally
different from Beijing, and it meant something incredibly important. And
today if you meet anyone from any of those places
(21:18):
and you talk about those foods. I mean, and it
was also I think I think true about politics, and
I think I think it's more true than we think
about the way we conceive of our society and our
politics too. I went to a talk by Chimamundan Goziadice,
(21:39):
the Nigerian author, but she said something incredible at the
end of this talk at the Royal Academy, which was
and there was a whole talk about the origins of
being a writer, but her very last line, Ruthie was
and remember, dignity is always as important as food. And
(21:59):
I thought to myself, if you were to try and
distill a great philosophy around politics, I would probably go
for dignity is always as important as food, and food
is always as important as dignity. But it's quite a
just distillation of everything.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But you were in Afghanistan, You're going to ask two opposite.
When you're in Afghanistan and Pakistan and you were working
as a report, did you have a fearful of food?
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Were you hungry? Do you have days?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah? Yeah, But that's I mean, that was that that
happened occasionally, But I wasn't No, I wasn't fearful.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Were you ever in a zone where people were food denied?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yes, I've been in places and that and that is
there northern Pakistan, there were huge refugee camps were there.
I mean actually as a reporter in many places, and
I think that that I remember traveling up through southern
Africa and then flying from there to France, and I
(23:07):
find that, as everyone does, incredibly difficult. You just can't
make sense of it. You know, I remember going to
Gaza the first time. You know that all of those things,
it's really you know, there's nothing you can say about
it that doesn't sound either kind of glob or simplistic,
(23:28):
but it's it's really hard to make sense of and
live with. And in China, I think that's the curious thing.
So when I was in China and at mid nineties,
that whole experience of the Great Leap Forward and the
famine and hungry ghosts that was within touching distance. People
(23:52):
had memories of that and it had affected their families
and their and their parents. And so the period that
I lived in China was this just incredible explosion of
excitement and optimism and food. You know, in Shanghai, restaurants
were opening all the time. People were going out in
a way that they never had and obviously now that
(24:13):
then became commonplace. But living in a country, when it
takes off and the experience people have around food and
the joy and pleasure of eating and meals together, it's
an amazing thing to win us.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And what about the opposite, When you went to Washington.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
And then you were thrust into the world of American food,
does that stay with you, that experience of when were
you in Washington.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I was in Washington in the early two thousands, so
I was in Washington just after nine to eleven, through
Bush the Bush Kerry election and into two thousand and five.
When I think of food in the States, I think
of food almost everywhere but Washington. So I think of
kind of meatloaf in New Hampshire or going down into
(24:57):
you know, Gumbo and Louisiana, these things that are real.
But again, the US in that sense is quite a
lot like China. It also has foods that it's really
proud of Washington food, those sort of steaks in the
Capitol Grill, and that sense, I mean that there was
a particular restaurant called the Capitol Grill. It was dark
and it was furnished like it was a set from
our Hollywood movie about Washington restaurant, and you know, people
(25:22):
lobbying and being lobbied. It's not a very it's not
a very romantic restaurant scene. Mexico, Oh my god, Mexico City.
Do you remember that restaurant? We went to Contromar count tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
We spent those one of the We sat there.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
For hours, hours and hours. Now, that is one of
the great restaurant cultures in the world. That you go there.
I agree Friday afternoon, arrived two, maybe three, possibly even
four o'clock in the afternoon and have lunch from four
till nine. I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
I love the Mexico say.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I love the way the Mexicans have a very late
breakfast and they have lunch at four and then they
have an apple for dinner.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
And they're all finished at about and they finished at
And also think what's interesting there was when I was there,
they also don't ask you what you do. Like the
culture of lunch. If there's a whole culture, like the
way you talk to people, and it's so it's much
less transactional and much more social.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
The River Cafe Winter you said, Lunch is now running
from Monday to Thursday, reserve a booking a www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. So Tortoise,
I would like to talk because do you feel that
with starting this vision it's a bit like starting a
(26:45):
family or building a home that you had an idea
of how you wanted people to eat or to have
time to eat.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
To have time to eat is really key and I
think being honest about caring about food. So if there's
an all night election coming up, we talk a lot
about what are we going to eat? Yeah, you know,
the whole idea of taught us was how would you
get away from this torrent of news and information and
(27:13):
stop and think and try and make sense of what
was happening in the world. And the best way you
were going to do that was to have a conversation.
And as we said, some of the best conversations are
around a table, and the best thing to have on
the table is food. And so we're very interested in
food as a way of bringing people together, and sometimes
it's been really deliberate. So you know, recently we were
(27:35):
trying to get a better understanding of what's really happening
in Iran and to try to bring a whole group
of people, and we're really lucky. You know, a brilliant
Persian chef came and cooked a whole night. It was
absolutely incredible. Tell me, it was just actually fine enough.
It was Someone had said to me, look, no one
really covers Iran, which is true. There's a context, there's
(27:56):
there's Iran coverage because it's very difficult. It's very difficult
post anyone to Tehran. I tried for a long time
at the BBC. But also if you think about it,
if you think about what's going on in terms of
human rights and the politics of Iran, actually the focus
and the attention paid is minimal. So someone said, let's
(28:18):
have a conversation about Iran. Let's bring together a whole
bunch of journalists and commentators and people with points of view.
And then she said, rather wonderfully, wouldn't this be much
better over a really good Persian dinner? And of course
it was. And I think there's something interesting, Ruthie, about
news and polarization and food, because I think there's a
(28:40):
sense among some people that the world is more polarized
than it really is. I think there's a willingness of
people to hear each other more than we sometimes acknowledge,
but you have to bring them together in the right
way first, and there are certain things, I would say,
food and music that can really do that. And once
(29:03):
you've got together around the food and the music, the
argument about the ideas can be as deep and divided,
but it's warmer and more human, and so that's part
of the spirit of it.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, if we're thinking about news, James, and we're here
to talk about food and family and food and memories
and food and work, but we're also here to talk
about food and news. And one of the most exciting
things that has happened here for me personally as your friend,
and also as a reader of newspapers, as somebody who
(29:35):
cares and can't put them down and wants more to read,
is the idea that you are going to have a
newspaper the Observer, which is all part of our history.
Like a lot of food, it's part of our history
and it's also the future.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Well, here I'm just witnessing great writers and thinkers and
photographers and lovers of food at work. The Observer is
the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. Founded in seventeen ninety one,
it's had some of the greatest people ever walked through
its door. Rachel bar was the first female editor of
(30:11):
the National newspaper in the eighteen nineties. It sort of
called out the Versailles Treaty as being a problem waiting
to happen. George Orwell had it as it was his paper.
He called it the Enemy of Nonsense. David Astor was
this inspiring editor of it who used to say that
journalism is too important and too fun to be left
(30:32):
a journalist to brought a whole group of people in.
But if you ask people what they love about The Observer,
it's food. The reality is that it had whether it
was Jane Grigson or Katherine Whitehorn, but for the better
part of thirty years. I think the best writer on
(30:54):
food and recipes Nigel Slater, and not just the way
he writes, because he really writes about food or the
recipes he creates. And you must know him well, Ruthie.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
I do. I respect him and I like him.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
He's extraordinary anyway. The Observer cares as much about art
and food as it does about politics in the world,
and there are very few. And I remember when I
started out at the time someone said to me, remember
in the nineteen sixties, Harold Wilson wasn't the story. The
Beatles the story. And if you go back over time
(31:30):
and you look at the front pages of every paper,
they all led with Harold Wilson. And what I love
about The Observer is this sense that, no, no, we
realize that where people are arts and food as much,
if not more than politics and ideas in the world.
And so the hope is that you can take something
that has for a long time just been a newspaper,
(31:51):
just in print with its journalism sitting on the website
of The Guardian, and create something that genuinely has a
life of its own, and you bring the Observer food.
It's got less wonderful magazine, the Observer Food monthly, but
you bring it to life digitally, you bring it to
life in a bunch of live events, and more people
and a new generation of people get to have that
(32:14):
love and respect for the culture of food that I
think has been at the heart of The Observer.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah, we excited about that.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I'm excited about it too. I'm actually even you.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Know why it's exciting as well.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
It's a successible but it changes, you know, you have
a column that you look to what's new in food,
what's happening in food, what's somebody cooking and food?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
What ingredients are coming in today?
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Which ones are you saying goodbye to the politics of
food the.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Way we grow it.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
There's so much, so much time, and you know, without
having to buy a book, as.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You say, it's a way into culture, a way really
into economics. That's why I think that Chimamanda line really
sat with me. Because so many newsrooms know what they're
against right, they're driven by a kind of anger or fear.
If you can have one that knows what it's for,
dignity is always as important as food, and food is
(33:08):
always as important as dignity. You know what you're about
and you get up every day and go, well, these
are the things we're seeking out.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Going for food as comfort if you need and as
I say, I hope you don't need comfort. You don't
need a life you need it. But I have a
pair of socks. Talked about my socks that James Harding
brought to me. They are definitely giving me the good.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
They're really good.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
If we're going to go and join through and have
lunch and have some comfort, here, is there a food
that when you do need comfort that you will turn to.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
You can go parently one or parody two. Here. Parently
one is chicken soup.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
That's a good one, and.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
The other is spaghetti bolonnaise, and either of those every day,
all day long. But my comfort treat is Cituanese food
mar putauf on a good bowl of white rice and
a cold beer. That is a happy place.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Let's go do that.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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