July 8, 2024 • 42 mins
Every year must be an anniversary for someone like Maria Sharapova, who hit her first tennis ball at the age of four, was spotted by Martina Navratilova age six, and became one of only ten women in history to win a career Grand Slam when she was 25.
But this year is especially special. Maria is celebrating 20 years since winning against Serena Williams on Centre Court, becoming, at just 17, Wimbledon Champion.
Today we are here at The River Cafe to celebrate - two women talking about food and memories, with stories to tell.
Ruthie’s Table 4 is 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 are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It may not seem obvious at first, but tennis and
cooking have a lot in common. Chefs and tennis players
are both rigorous preparation in the kitchen, court side rituals.
When the match begins or when the restaurant doors open,
both need to be ready, focused and adaptable. Meeting Maria
Sharapova at a grand dinner in Milan, I discovered a
food lover whose story off the court is as amazing
(00:28):
as her performance on it. In nineteen eighty six, pregnant
with Maria and wanting to protect her, her parents fled Belarus,
escaping the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A few years later, she
and her father moved to Florida with just seven hundred
dollars and not a word of English. Every year must
be an anniversary for someone like Maria, who hit her
(00:49):
first tennis ball age four, was spotted by Martina Navratlova
aged six, and became one of only ten women in
history to win a career Grand Slam. But this year
is especially special. Maria is celebrating twenty years since winning
against Serena Williams becoming at age seventeen a Wimbledon champion. Today,
(01:12):
we're here in the River Cafe to celebrate as a businesswoman.
She's uniquely creative and inspiring other magical ingredients needed in
a kitchen or a tennis court. We're here together, two
women talking about food and memories, with stories to tell,
and maybe before we finish, we'll have a celebratory chocolate
nemesis with twenty candles.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I genuinely cannot believe that Ruthie Rogers just did an
introduction on me.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It's so specially we just kind of love at first
sight at that dinner because we were in Milan at
the Montclair Dinner yea, and we just kind of it.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Was a very charming evening. Was his name is dark
and moody, a little bit eerie.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
And then it was toward the end of dinner, when
I think things were wrapping up, I came across even
a hallway, maybe the bathroom line.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think it was. It was in that corner and
then let ever know and that's where we go. But
it was it was a lovely it was for Remy Raffiniyes.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Who've gotten to know in the last few years and
you as well, And what a charming, very charming man
and has done incredible things with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, and that was just a very joyous atmosphere in
the room. I thought everybody was there to celebrate him,
to celebrate each other over food. When we talked last
week about doing this, I you know, we always start
with a recipe, and there's something about hearing someone you know,
we've done Nazy Pelosi or al Gore, people who would
never think saying, take it tomato and squash it, you know.
(02:48):
And so when I asked you what you wanted to cook,
you said that you'd like to do a recipe that
reminded you reminded.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Me of my grandmother. Yeah, yes, the years that I
spent in her kitchen.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You chose the recipe with potato potatoes. Said there was
a potato. Okay, there's a potato.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My mother makes these delicious potato pancakes as a treat.
And if it's a holiday or you know, every on
my birthday, she usually likes to make potato pancakes. And
then Alexander orders a little jar of caviar and that
is our that's our ultimate and absolutely sour cream.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yes, well, These are potatoes lu Cheesi because it comes
from well. Luca is a beautiful city in Tuscanes, near Pisa.
Would you like to read the recipe.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Roast potatoes from Luca Potato luchesi. One kilogram of waxy potatoes,
one medium red onion, finely sliced, careful with your fingers.
Six scarlet cloves, peeled and kept whole. Four sprigs of
fresh rosemary and sage, and one glass of dry white
wine extra virgin olive oil. Let's preheat the oven to
(03:59):
two hundred degrees. Peel the potatoes and cut into thick slices.
Put into the cold water to wash off excess starch,
then drain, pat dry and put in a large mixing bowl.
Add the onion. Onions are my favorite, by the way,
Yes show its and onions. Onions with potato is just
(04:20):
the best combination. So add the onion, garlic and herbs
to the potato bowl and the rest of the ingredients
and toss well. Choose a baking tray large enough for
the potatoes to be spread out in one later, cover
with foil and bake in the oven for twenty five minutes.
Remove the foil, then, using the back of a large
cooking spoon. Break up the potatoes and herbs to make
(04:43):
a rough mash. That's the fun part. Drizzle with olive oil,
return to the oven and roast for thirty minutes or
until the potatoes are brown and crisp on top and
still light and fluffy underneath. Serve cut into slices.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So it's not a take a pancake, but we tried
to find the recipe that way.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It sounds delicious, it is. Can you please sign this
recipe for me?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
With love? We talk about this quite often about how
much we really respect and love women who cook. You
know that that cooking is a way of sharing, it's
a way of expressing love. But we also have to
really respect and admire the women who don't you know,
and that you know, And that's and I do. And
(05:28):
I think that I have a friend whose father would
never let her in the kitchen because he didn't want
her to cook. And I was sort of slightly equated
to learning how to type, that, you know, growing up
in the sort of seventies and thinking, you know, we
were women who were going to work that if we
learned how to type, would be secretaries, yes, and Luckily
my mother forced me to go to typing school. Now
(05:51):
that we all use laptops, you know, knowing how to type.
But there are as women sort of categories that were
thrust into and we're judged whether we're a good mother
by the way we cook or a good wife by
the way we cook. Very much, But now I think
it's it's all suspect. I think everything we're looking at
and we're also looking at men and how they cook
(06:12):
and how they shop, yes, and even cooking as a
form of seduction, you.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Know, I think if some I think if some of
my relatives, I mean my mother, When you ask her
if she enjoys cooking, I think her answer is no,
but she enjoys cooking knowing that somebody will enjoy it. Yeah, right,
so she and when she cooks every the process is meticulous,
like she does it in advance, She does it off
(06:38):
of a recipe. She makes sure that it's very precise.
And I think that also seeing her go through that
process taught me a lot about discipline, because cooking, I mean,
there's different ways to cook. Right. You can just take
ingredients from the refrigerator and just whip it right out.
But her process was very meticulous and in particular, and
the ingredients that she chose based off recipes, and she
(06:59):
wanted to know that if it worked for someone, it
would work for her if she did it well, and
her kitchen is always clean. And I think that's, you know,
that's the energy that she that she taught me to
perform with, is that you have to put everything that
you have. You have to do it with a way
of discipline and time and get it done and know
that you have no regrets in the end.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I agree. I would say that very often about Julia
Child Cookbooks, American cookbook writer, that she did it. It
was so precise. She never said take a ripe tomato,
but she would say take a tomato that's you know,
two inches wide and four inches high and put it
in a dish. It but it was it was like science, right,
and therefore you never had a failure because if you
followed it, you know that, and that gave you the
(07:40):
confidence to then be able to not follow the rules well.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And even if you did fail, I think there's you
would carry a sense of knowing that you you performed
it at your very best, because then you don't you
don't you're not looking back and regretting, which is one
of the worst feelings that you may have in that voice. Yes, yeah,
that says, oh, I didn't prepare enough or I didn't
do that enough. At least when you prepare the very
(08:04):
best that you could that you know, and in my sport,
that was so important as doing you know, we just
briefly discussed it, but doing your homework and going overboard
with your homework so that you know, no matter what result,
because you know, you show up on the day and
things can go wrong. Yeah, you can be as prepared
as you want to be. You know, you can be
as confident as you want to be and as you are,
and you did everything to your best knowledge and ability
(08:26):
and it just doesn't work out. But at least that's
you know, you know, that's life, and that happens. But
you did everything to get to that moment. You did
it one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Gives you resilience as well. I think if you have that,
I love that word. I love it too. I was
saying that. You know, now everybody talks about teaching and
it's very very important their children's self esteem and what
I sometimes think self esteem is overrated. But anyway, it's
that's another cop But I do think resilience if I could,
and I've seen it in this restaurant. I've seen the
(08:56):
times that we've had hard times or different issues, and
they're the one who are just able to not not
to hide it, not to shun it away, but to
take it and then you know, carry on, which is
I think I.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Was so nicely surprised to see how young your stuff is.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
They are, they are, I think they, you know, some
of them. It's interesting. It used to be that in
the kitchen you had chefs who started very very young,
and sometimes academically were challenged, and so they found a
skill that they could do, which is great. Now we
have that and they're you know, questioned. Looking at Adriana,
(09:34):
I think I studied history and got a degree and
then always knew she wanted to cook. It's very performance
led a restaurant, you know, the curtained probably comparison very sport,
but also to theater let go, and it's already and
it's collaborative. I note that if you don't chop the chilis,
(09:55):
the sauce chef doesn't have it to make use sauce
doesn't have the chilies. If you're late for work, it's
very often not the bosses have crossed, but your colleague.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Another alloticed.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Another similarity with sport and particularly in tennis. And then
you know, being working at a restaurant is that when
the curtains close and all the you know, all the
people leave, it's just you and in this very quiet
and eerie place, which if you think about leaving Center
Court and walking back through a tunnel and going into
(10:27):
the locker room where you are, I mean, it's fairly lonely, right,
It's just you and your bag, and you go in
the shower and you know you have some of your
rivals and compatriots in there, but it's just, I don't know,
it's very intimate. And just a few minutes prior to that,
you were in a room that was you know, in
this arena that was full of thousands of screaming fans,
(10:50):
and then it's.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Just you tell me how that relationship was between your
grandmother and her mother and cooking.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
My mother was a very young mom. She she was
when she was nineteen, so she yes, I'm an only child,
and she was still in university at the time, and
so you know her mom between she she had a
job in a local market. Oh, I was like a
local in Sochi, so She which is aware, which is
(11:18):
in the south of Russia. It's on the Black Sea.
I was born in Siberia while my mother was pregnant
with me. Actually both of my parents are Belarussian. But
during Chernobyl and the explosion, my parents moved to Siberia.
I had some close relatives there and so they found
out that would be a safer place for my mom
to give birth. That so at twenty she gave birth
(11:39):
to me. So we were very young, a very small family,
and we were very close until this day. We remained
that way. My mother has been a huge influence in
my life because so much of what I did was
about sport, but so much of her influence was outside
of the court. Like she of course she was very
involved in making sure I did the right thing in
(11:59):
my career, but most of her influence was making sure
that I did my homework, Was that I studied well,
Was that I immersed myself in a different world that
wasn't connected to sport, that I was curious and interested
and different.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
What did your father do?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
My father had a little construction firms and around the country,
and he was traveling quite a bit, so he you know,
we would actually rarely see him because he was working
full time. As my mom was young and was raising me.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And so you grew up in Sibery.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Grew up in Siberia for the first two years, and
then at two years old, we moved to Sochi.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Why did they choose it?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Sochi was known for a place where a lot of
people from the north of Russia would come to relax
and go on their summer holidays. And they had these
sanatoriums where you'd spend several weeks getting healthy and swimming
in the Sea of doing you know, natural therapies because
a lot of people that worked in oil and coal mining,
(12:58):
you know, they would go to just breathe fresh air.
And it was a very warm city in the summer.
It reminded me very much of Florida.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Actually, the River Cafe cafe, steps away from our restaurant,
is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
chiambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts come in
(13:29):
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book, see you here. The food in
Russia is very regional, but what it had been different
in Belarus to Soshi.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I definitely remember that the tastes of the food being
very different and both you know, my grand no, my
grandmother's food was very flavorful because it had a very
rich profile. You know, there are a lot of stews
and a lot of soups, and you know, within a
borshe I mean there's more than ten ingredients. You had
the beets and the peppers and the meat, and you know,
(14:11):
a few spices and and then I went to the
United States and it was a grilled piece of chicken.
It was a very different experience. And I missed sour cream.
I grew up eating sour cream on everything, and all
of a sudden it was ketchup.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah. I was born in upstate New York in Woodstock,
and my father the real treat wol He would take us,
you know, sort of once a month to New York
and he'd drive and we'd see the ships, and then
we'd see a musical and then we would go to
the Russian tea room.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yes, and that was the tradition of a samovar drinking
tea is such a I mean, anytime I would enter
my grandparents' house, they would have they would cut a
piece of rye, like a big, big rye bread and
they would cut it in many slices. They would put
a thick of butter and then red caviar because that
(15:02):
was the cheaper than black caviar. And it was welcoming
your family was they were so proud, like to see
their granddaughter walk through the door and and their their
children and that was I just I remember this beautiful
plate and presentation is everything.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The china was. They would take out their most beautiful china.
And they didn't have much. I mean they didn't grow
up with a lot of money. They didn't have a
lot of money. But you know when they would sit
at a table, there's everything had a meaning. The food
had a meeting and a purpose, and it was it
was about having a nice time and sharing memories and
laughs and just being a family over food of having conversations.
(15:47):
And I really missed that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, and you create that in your own you try.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
It's it's there's nothing like going to your grandmother's home.
I know, there's really there's really not I also have
a more minimal approach to decoration and the way I
set a table, and it's quite a contrast to thinking of,
you know, arriving at my grandmother's house, where everything is
more oriental and detailed, and there's you know, even even
(16:15):
the way that she serves, and there's just there's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
You went to Miami with your father.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I went there with my father because my mom couldn't
get a visa for the first two years, and it
wasn't planned. It was just difficult to obtain the visa,
and so I spent the first two years, you know,
just eating takeout food. The only thing I remember him
cooking was white rice because he was because he would
(16:46):
wake up super early because my training would be early,
and he would find, you know, random jobs that he
could take, and most of them were on golf courses.
Because he had a construction background. He did a lot
of jobs on golf courses and his work would start
super early. So he would make rice for me while
I was still sleeping in the morning, and he would
leave it in the pan and he would put it
(17:08):
under a pillow, and so when I would wake up,
I would eat this rice as my breakfast on my own.
I would put some milk in it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So you were at seven, though, Yeah, and he was
already trained.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I was already training.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
My father enjoyed the sport. He's not a He's no
brilliant athlete, although he claims to be. I grew up
going to tennis practice with him because he enjoyed the sport.
He played at a leisure level. He played with his friends.
This wasn't so che Yeah, yes, we only moved to
the United States because of tennis. It was very specific
(17:44):
to going to this very famous academy in Florida where
a lot of tennis players went and and it was
mostly because there's a huge facility and you have other
kids your age that you play with, you have some
of the best coaches in the world going there, and
you just don't need to leave, which for an athlete
is incredibly important, just to have a base where you
(18:04):
feel like, I'm just focused on this one craft. I
do it every day, I have no distractions. And it
just happened to be in the middle of nowhere in Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Did they think about feeding children who are athletes in
a certain way or was it.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I honestly just think they cared about making money. Yeah,
maybe that time food wasn't a priority for athletes.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I talked to Savannah Leaf. You know Savannah Leaf, I don't.
She's great. She was an Olympic volleyball player and she's
now a filmmaker and an artist and wonderful. And we
were talking about when and how the awareness of food
and athletic ability forty years ago it was not no
big deal. Yeah, that people didn't.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
They didn't think they told what they would eat prior
to a match or after a match. It just wasn't.
And now players travel with their own chefs because it's
it's become a critical component of an athlete's life, right,
because the difference of number ten in the world to
number one in the world is very small. And so
you know, having you know, having a perspective that's different
(19:09):
to others, you know, or having a game plan that's
smarter than others, right, or treating your body like it's
it's an incredibly important tool, is vital.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
How did you merge the academic with the athletic when
you were a child of seven and they were and
they had it must have been regulated, no, to give
you an academic.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Absolutely, it was something once my my mother arrived, besides
giving me a fresh haircut and changing all my clothes
because she said, what is what is your father buying you?
And cooking home, home cooked meals. She was I remember,
(19:53):
you know, education was was a big part of her contribution.
And even even when it came to high school, I was,
I was a teenager, and she sourced because I traveled
so much as a teenager, she knew I couldn't go
to a you know, a school in Bradenton, Florida. That
we'd have to find a school that I could do online,
and she sourced a place. It wasn't very it wasn't
(20:15):
like a popular school. But I finished high school, you know,
I finished that that part of my academics while I
was traveling and competing and playing at Wimbledon. And she
would when when the school would send all the books,
my mother would cut it in four portions for each
each semester, and she'd put it in a folder and
(20:36):
she would print all the material that I had to
execute and I would travel, you know with these you know,
quarter quarter of books with me you have exams. Did
you have had exams online? Yes? I thought school was
a really healthy distraction for me. Our studying was because
it taught me things that tennis could never teach me. Art. Yeah,
(21:01):
you know, just understanding that there are things outside of
hitting a yellow you know, fluffy ball, or history or
mathematics and numbers, the discipline of you know, coming back
after a match and being in a hotel room in
the middle of nowhere and sitting down in your hotel
room at this little desk and taking out your material
and taking your mind off of the grind of the
(21:23):
tour and practice, you know, and being with my father
all the time and listening, you know, to his advice
on the tennis court. It was an escape for me
to study, and so I really loved the process of it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Did your father always travel with you.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
He traveled with me until I was twenty one, and
then I won my third Grand Slam and then I
wanted to do it on my own. He was still heavily,
very much involved in my career and we speak almost daily.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Were you becoming aware of food? What made you a
better athlete? Depending on what you ate to kind of travel?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Was what you know? Brought out my curiosity and food.
My food choices when I was young were very simple
and only because we didn't have a lot of money.
They were flavorful, you know, once my mother arrived, because
she would make the meals herself, and I just felt
comforted by the fact that, you know, I had someone
at home cooking for me. And when i'd come back
(22:21):
from practice, first thing I would do is you know,
she'd give me this long rope and I had to stretch,
and then I had to hang off a rod just
to loosen my body because there was so much physical exertion.
She didn't know anything about fourhands or back ends, but
she knew that my body was at a young age,
was going through a lot, was going through such intense workouts,
(22:43):
and she just wanted to make sure that I that
I was stretching. Yeah, so this was her ate.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
She also watched.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
She she wasn't interested in a way that she she
thought or studied or how it would have you know,
how I would feel after what would I be energized
by the food. She just wanted to make sure that
I was fed. That was her goal.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, you wrote a rather beautiful sentence which when we
talked about management. I don't know where we found this,
but it said, did you do enough and more to
prepare for your next opponent. You've taken a few days off,
your body's losing that edge, that extra slice of pizza.
Better make up for it with great morning session. And
(23:24):
that is that the metaphor of a pizza, the idea
of a pizza. It's the balance of discipline.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
No, it's a It's a balance of giving yourself a
break in life, but being disciplined and courageous and taking
chances and knowing that life is not all rainbows and
you know, butterflies and great moments, life is hard, and
accepting the fact that it is hard and that you're
(23:53):
going to face, you know, moments of discouragement, of low confidence,
of people having difficult opinions of you. It's part of
the ups and downs, and especially in athletics, especially in
a world where you know you're in journalism, where you're
constantly judged for how you perform, even if you win.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
By the way I suppose you did you go from
the rise in the morning to a different breakfast. Tell
me about your eating regime if you were playing a game.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So eating as an athlete is about keeping things clean.
It's about clean ingredients. It's understanding you know, when does
your body need more protein and when does your body
need more carbs? You know, with are you loading on
you know, more energy? Thirty minutes or an hour before
you go out on court? How long did you play
for it? Did you was your match an hour or
(24:46):
was your match three hours? And to be honest, it's
not even about you can have a set schedule and
you can have an idea of what you're going to
do and how you're going to prepare and what you're
going to eat. But I think what makes the best
teams in the best ap athlete as being able to
pivot based on how things go and reacting on the occasion.
So if you just competed and you know, you thought
(25:08):
you the first round, you thought you were gonna win easy,
but all of a sudden, your opponent had an incredible
day and you end up winning, but it was three
hours long. Your recovery now is completely different than what
you thought would be just in forty five minutes an
hour match. It's all clean, It's just it's more about
the quantity shift of what you were eating prior to
(25:28):
a match. It was very simple those vegetables. Back to
the rice, it was white rice and a clean piece
of chicken. I actually look back at those meals and
I think of them as very lonely because the food
was very lonely, and I've I've grown to love food
so much that it it felt like I wanted better
(25:50):
options because it.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Describes the solitary nests of your career. And so there
are you're playing with canst about it. You've surrounded by people,
But is there a sense of being quite solitary.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I think everybody handles that differently. I think some people
enjoy that they're part of this larger and more than
life energy that's surrounding them in a stadium environment, I
think a very special feeling. But I always performed best
when I was calm within myself. Like of course, this
(26:27):
positivity and then the things that your fans shout when
you're down in a match and the encouragement that you
hear is one of the best feelings in life. But
when you're going through a three hour match inside of yourself,
you need to feel that you are calm and collected,
that you can handle negative comments, that you can handle
(26:47):
positive ones. And unfortunately you have to treat the negative
and the positives almost like they are the same, so
that you don't go through these ranges of emotion during
a match. Right that you're collected, you're you're strong, you're
you're positive. And so when I felt like I was
just that the best version of myself is it didn't
(27:09):
matter what people said during a match, or do.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You hear it?
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Do you hear you hear everything you can. It's hard
to block that. Yeah, I think it goes back to acceptance.
I think acceptance accepting the fact that people will always
have always said this, but people will have different opinions
of you as a player, as a person as whatever
you say and how you say it, people react differently
(27:34):
to it. And and a big part of being an
athlete is, you know, is having to read things about
yourself and accepting that is a big It's something that
I had to learn and I learned it the hard
way from a very young age. When you win Wimbledon
at seventeen years old and people still find tough things
to say about you or your family or criticize you
(27:55):
in any way, it takes time to, you know, to
get comfortable with that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Fact, did you have good friends or do you always
have different circuits and different Yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Was it was really hard to make friends. And at
the core, I was a very tough competitor, and they
could have been the nicest opponent in the world, but
I had to think that they were a terrible human being,
even though they were extremely nice to me. Mentally, I
knew that, you know, it's it's whoever's strongest. It's not
(28:26):
even just who's physically strongest.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Did you when you traveled did were you able to
experience other cultures?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well an athlete, I didn't. I really didn't. I remember
this fondly. Many years ago. I went on a date
with someone and it was one of our first few dates,
and we're talking about the places that we traveled to,
and he said to me, He's like, wow, I mean
they're so you are so lucky. You haven't really visited
(28:55):
the world. I mean, you've you've competed in some of
the biggest, best cities in the world, but you don't
know anything about them really, And you know, there are
places that I hadn't been to, like Venice in Italy,
or even Barcelona, or you know, cities that you'd think
of course, you know it'd be on my list, and
I've visited them several times, but I hadn't and so
(29:19):
and it really opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah,
he was absolutely right, like I, How lucky am I
that I've yet to experience these cities from a different
perspective than I had all these years.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I always just think that I used to be envious
of people who'd never been to Venice because I could
never remember seeing Venice for the first time because I
was young when I went. And then you think, I
just said, Wow, somebody's going to get to this place
as an adult and see this incredible city I had.
I had a kid last summer, I was a Vedics
(29:51):
and a friend of mine bought his six year old child.
We did this huge visit of Vedas. We went everywhere
around Vedice and I said to him, how how Nicholas,
And he said, what do you think of Venice? He said,
not enough canals, He'll never remember.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I went to Venice in December of last year, and
I brought my mom along with me. It was one
of the most magical trips that a mom and a
daughter could take in the chilly nights.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
What month of THEO was December December. Oh, I love
Venice in December.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It was so special. It didn't matter if it was
rain or shine, or wind or cold. It just felt right.
And I think the company helps in the food and
the views. And I think that that's been one of
our best trips that we've done together.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
As we used to go every December, the first weekend
of December, and I remember thinking we did it for
a set to kind of be together for a sad memory.
And I thought if it was a perfect place to go,
because if you went to Rome and it was raining,
you'd think, oh, it's raining. If you go to Venice
and it's ray and it's rainy, it kind of fits
(31:02):
in Melancholia but also joy Magic.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Do you have a favorite restaurant in Venice?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And I like Ilkhovo, which is nice. I like Carampane,
I like Testieri. There are those restaurants, but I have
to say when people ask me my favorite three restaurants
in Venice, I usually say Harry's Bar, Harry's Bar and
Harry's Bar.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The corner table that's magical.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
You can't figure out it's just sitting there and think
it has the room because it has low ceilings, there
are no windows. It's kind of everything should be wrong
with the minute you go in there. I think it's
possibly because it's a bar and you walk straight in.
There's no entrance, so you walk straight in. I think
the tape I've really spent a lot of time with
adalyzing it. I think that the tables are very low,
(31:45):
and so you feel quite, you're not reaching out, you're
trying to and everybody's together in there, and the food
is so good.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
It's so good. It's consistent. Yeah, and consistency in restaurants
is challenging. I'm sure you. Yeah, you come across that
off and they're they're always consistent. In the Bellini, I mean,
you cannot say no to the.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I love, I love a bar. So let's go to her.
Let's go, let's go go somewhere, let's go. It's December, Okay,
it's a day.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It's a day.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We have and I hope we have thousands and thousands
of listeners.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Everybody's we have.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Baby. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would
you please make sure to rape and review the podcast
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o wherever, you
get your podcasts. Thank you so right now you are
(32:51):
working with Monk Laire, I'm working with.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I. During my career, I from a very early age,
I recognized that ten of was so much more than
just a sport. It was a really an opportunity to
create a platform, an opportunity to be curious and to
be picky about the people that I get to work
with and the brands I get to align myself with.
And I would, you know, I would ask to be
(33:18):
and to go in a room where they would do
meetings that you know, where the talent is usually not
involved in. But I felt like, you know, by getting
my nose in there, I learned so much for these
smart people. And I knew that as a woman, tennis
wouldn't last forever, that I would want a family, especially
since I had such a strong, you know, relationship with
(33:38):
my young mom, and I wanted, you know, a child
of my own. And also realistically, you can get injured
any day, and knowing that if that one sport, and
you know, you put all your stones in this one
bucket and you have to find other avenues, right And
I love to work. I love to work hard, and
(33:59):
so I got a chance to meet brilliant people in
the business world, and that led me to my role
at Montclair on the being on the board there and
and continue to learn from I mean from Remo who's
had I mean just significant experience and success in what
he's built and done with With Montclair, I now get
(34:19):
to work with the Aman Hotel group. We're curating wellness
retreats around the world that their properties are first one
is going to be in September at Almonzaou in Greece and.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Greece it's a three on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yes, it's It's a three three, three night program where
I'm bringing in people that I've worked with in the past,
some of my trainers. You know, I look back at
my career, the years of playing, and I had an
exquisite team that would basically set a schedule for me,
Like in the morning, you wake up, you you know,
you measure your your heart rate variation, you go have breakfast,
(34:55):
you go do a warm up, you know, you loosen
up your body, you go train And when I retire,
I realized that I have to make those decisions for myself.
So when I was curating this program, I thought, how
amazing to be able to show up and have this
few days just completely set for you.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Right. So you're working with Aman, you're working with Montclair,
and I'm a mother and your mother. Tell me about
feeding your baby? How does he does he like to eat?
Does he.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I've yet to find find his true talent yet, but
food is I think is one of his passions. That
he loves food. I mean, he says nam nyam is
his favorite phrase. He just walks around the entire day
and just says, niam nam.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
What about tell us we haven't talked about your husband.
Tell us about.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
We're not married yet, but tell me about you.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I called him speak phrase that tell me.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But I'd like I call him my husband because I
feel like he's my husband. But we're not officially married.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
So tell me about food in your lives with him?
Does he love to eat?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
We're big foodies. I mean we just recently on my
birthday we went to the Baths County in Spain and
did an entire trip around food because that was It's
one of our great passions. And when we met, I
feel like so many of our we've come from very
different backgrounds. You know, he grew up in you know,
having a proper education and spending his early years in
(36:15):
the luxury space with LVMH and Kruge Champagne and then
and then moving into the art world, so more of
a polished upbringing. And I came from much more grittier
perspective where sweat and tears, and we we met around
the art world. I enjoy collecting art. It was a
big passion of mine. And he started an online auction
(36:39):
site and a mutual friend put us in touch, and
so conversations started around art and moved into food and
then life, and then all of a sudden, we felt
like we had so much chemistry and connection around what
we've experienced in life, even though they came from completely
different backgrounds and perspectives, and and that's been it's been
(37:00):
nice to share that with our son, you know, our
different cultures, and you know, I always feel like in teamwork,
whether it's your sport or whether it's your career, whether
it's family, if you have you have different ways of
getting to one destination, but if your vision is the
same and aligned, then that's what makes that story really beautiful.
(37:21):
Where do you live like we live in California and
Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Oh that's right, I realize, and you have it. That's right,
because I do remember reading about you love the shopping
for the food my market market.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It's one of our favorite things to do is just
going to a local farmers market, taking our son and
using the stroller as my food basket and trying all
the you know, local ingredients and then going and getting
you know, the fresh fish from the pier and the
fresh oonie. It's really it's one of our favorite things
to do over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And do cook yourselves. Both we do myself.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So Alexander, he loves to cook, but he doesn't like
a lot of help because I think I'm I provide
too many suggestions. It sounds like a marriage, it does exactly.
So when he cooks, he prefers that I just you know,
get a drinker. Just watch him from the sidelines quietly.
(38:16):
And I was so impressed. He We invited another couple
over and he made a Thanksgiving meal all by himself,
pretty much. I did something with the potatoes. I think
I helped him prepare, but he, you know, he looked online.
He looked through a few recipes and he's like, this
is what I'm doing. He got all the groceries. At
the end of it, I was like, this was really good.
I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Entertaining is tough to the performance. You know, you have
people coming and you're going to take.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Get nervous about entertaining because I'm a perfectionist and he's
He's definitely much more comfortable with the concept because he
comes from a larger family and he comes from a
world of inter haining and throwing gatherings together people of
all different walks of life, and so he makes it work.
I just hone in on so many details that I
(39:08):
get a little stressed about the outcome, and I'm so
worried about each guests and you know, and I also,
I know I hate this, but I asked my guests
to take their shoes off because I love you know,
this Japanese sanctuary of a house, and I just I
know there, you know, guests are going to be annoyed.
It's fun. So I'm like, I need to get everyone's slippers.
(39:30):
It's so annoying. I'm annoying the fruits of the vegetables.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I have to get slippers.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, So it's we're a fun combination.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Do you get a restaurants much or do you lessly.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
We don't eat out too much. We eat out a
lot when we travel. I love the curation on Yolo Journal.
I don't know if you're familiar with that site, but
Yolanda Edwards puts together a really beautifully curated list of
I think you've contributed to her Hughes letter, but I
love her selections of places. So we share. We do
(40:04):
a lot of research on where on the city that
we're going to.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
We were talking about before about talking and listening and
one of the questions that we ask everyone is a
food is love. If food is sharing, a food is memories,
if food is your generations from your grandmother to your mother,
to yourself and to your son. It also is comfort.
And I think that I would like to ask you
(40:28):
when you need and I hope you don't need it
very often, but when you want food as comfort to
make you feel better, is there a food that you
would go to for that?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I would go to my mom and I would ask
her to make.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Crepes creps creps, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
And I would ask her to make it with a
local jam, whether it's a strawberry or a cherry, and
I just put a large spoon of the jam onto
the crepe and roll it and eat several of them. Yeah,
that's my comfort food.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'd love that sounds delicious. I'd like to read something
that you wrote before we end this, beautifully written talking
about future, about what we're doing about every day, about
how we live. And you wrote that relentless chase for victories,
though that won't ever diminish no matter what lies ahead.
(41:23):
I will apply the same focus, the same work, ethic,
and all of the lessons I've learned along the way.
And I think that is a beautiful marriage of past
and future and present. And so thank you so much
for coming today, Ruthie.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Thank you for having me. We covered a lot. Now
let's go eat.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Let's go eat. Thank you. I think we have a cake.
Don't need to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yay. I love cake.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I love you.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair. I do
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It may not seem obvious at first, but tennis and
cooking have a lot in common. Chefs and tennis players
are both rigorous preparation in the kitchen, court side rituals.
When the match begins or when the restaurant doors open,
both need to be ready, focused and adaptable. Meeting Maria
Sharapova at a grand dinner in Milan, I discovered a
food lover whose story off the court is as amazing
(00:28):
as her performance on it. In nineteen eighty six, pregnant
with Maria and wanting to protect her, her parents fled Belarus,
escaping the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A few years later, she
and her father moved to Florida with just seven hundred
dollars and not a word of English. Every year must
be an anniversary for someone like Maria, who hit her
(00:49):
first tennis ball age four, was spotted by Martina Navratlova
aged six, and became one of only ten women in
history to win a career Grand Slam. But this year
is especially special. Maria is celebrating twenty years since winning
against Serena Williams becoming at age seventeen a Wimbledon champion. Today,
(01:12):
we're here in the River Cafe to celebrate as a businesswoman.
She's uniquely creative and inspiring other magical ingredients needed in
a kitchen or a tennis court. We're here together, two
women talking about food and memories, with stories to tell,
and maybe before we finish, we'll have a celebratory chocolate
nemesis with twenty candles.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I genuinely cannot believe that Ruthie Rogers just did an
introduction on me.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It's so specially we just kind of love at first
sight at that dinner because we were in Milan at
the Montclair Dinner yea, and we just kind of it.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Was a very charming evening. Was his name is dark
and moody, a little bit eerie.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
And then it was toward the end of dinner, when
I think things were wrapping up, I came across even
a hallway, maybe the bathroom line.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think it was. It was in that corner and
then let ever know and that's where we go. But
it was it was a lovely it was for Remy Raffiniyes.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Who've gotten to know in the last few years and
you as well, And what a charming, very charming man
and has done incredible things with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, and that was just a very joyous atmosphere in
the room. I thought everybody was there to celebrate him,
to celebrate each other over food. When we talked last
week about doing this, I you know, we always start
with a recipe, and there's something about hearing someone you know,
we've done Nazy Pelosi or al Gore, people who would
never think saying, take it tomato and squash it, you know.
(02:48):
And so when I asked you what you wanted to cook,
you said that you'd like to do a recipe that
reminded you reminded.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Me of my grandmother. Yeah, yes, the years that I
spent in her kitchen.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You chose the recipe with potato potatoes. Said there was
a potato. Okay, there's a potato.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My mother makes these delicious potato pancakes as a treat.
And if it's a holiday or you know, every on
my birthday, she usually likes to make potato pancakes. And
then Alexander orders a little jar of caviar and that
is our that's our ultimate and absolutely sour cream.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yes, well, These are potatoes lu Cheesi because it comes
from well. Luca is a beautiful city in Tuscanes, near Pisa.
Would you like to read the recipe.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Roast potatoes from Luca Potato luchesi. One kilogram of waxy potatoes,
one medium red onion, finely sliced, careful with your fingers.
Six scarlet cloves, peeled and kept whole. Four sprigs of
fresh rosemary and sage, and one glass of dry white
wine extra virgin olive oil. Let's preheat the oven to
(03:59):
two hundred degrees. Peel the potatoes and cut into thick slices.
Put into the cold water to wash off excess starch,
then drain, pat dry and put in a large mixing bowl.
Add the onion. Onions are my favorite, by the way,
Yes show its and onions. Onions with potato is just
(04:20):
the best combination. So add the onion, garlic and herbs
to the potato bowl and the rest of the ingredients
and toss well. Choose a baking tray large enough for
the potatoes to be spread out in one later, cover
with foil and bake in the oven for twenty five minutes.
Remove the foil, then, using the back of a large
cooking spoon. Break up the potatoes and herbs to make
(04:43):
a rough mash. That's the fun part. Drizzle with olive oil,
return to the oven and roast for thirty minutes or
until the potatoes are brown and crisp on top and
still light and fluffy underneath. Serve cut into slices.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So it's not a take a pancake, but we tried
to find the recipe that way.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It sounds delicious, it is. Can you please sign this
recipe for me?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
With love? We talk about this quite often about how
much we really respect and love women who cook. You
know that that cooking is a way of sharing, it's
a way of expressing love. But we also have to
really respect and admire the women who don't you know,
and that you know, And that's and I do. And
(05:28):
I think that I have a friend whose father would
never let her in the kitchen because he didn't want
her to cook. And I was sort of slightly equated
to learning how to type, that, you know, growing up
in the sort of seventies and thinking, you know, we
were women who were going to work that if we
learned how to type, would be secretaries, yes, and Luckily
my mother forced me to go to typing school. Now
(05:51):
that we all use laptops, you know, knowing how to type.
But there are as women sort of categories that were
thrust into and we're judged whether we're a good mother
by the way we cook or a good wife by
the way we cook. Very much, But now I think
it's it's all suspect. I think everything we're looking at
and we're also looking at men and how they cook
(06:12):
and how they shop, yes, and even cooking as a
form of seduction, you.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Know, I think if some I think if some of
my relatives, I mean my mother, When you ask her
if she enjoys cooking, I think her answer is no,
but she enjoys cooking knowing that somebody will enjoy it. Yeah, right,
so she and when she cooks every the process is meticulous,
like she does it in advance, She does it off
(06:38):
of a recipe. She makes sure that it's very precise.
And I think that also seeing her go through that
process taught me a lot about discipline, because cooking, I mean,
there's different ways to cook. Right. You can just take
ingredients from the refrigerator and just whip it right out.
But her process was very meticulous and in particular, and
the ingredients that she chose based off recipes, and she
(06:59):
wanted to know that if it worked for someone, it
would work for her if she did it well, and
her kitchen is always clean. And I think that's, you know,
that's the energy that she that she taught me to
perform with, is that you have to put everything that
you have. You have to do it with a way
of discipline and time and get it done and know
that you have no regrets in the end.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I agree. I would say that very often about Julia
Child Cookbooks, American cookbook writer, that she did it. It
was so precise. She never said take a ripe tomato,
but she would say take a tomato that's you know,
two inches wide and four inches high and put it
in a dish. It but it was it was like science, right,
and therefore you never had a failure because if you
followed it, you know that, and that gave you the
(07:40):
confidence to then be able to not follow the rules well.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And even if you did fail, I think there's you
would carry a sense of knowing that you you performed
it at your very best, because then you don't you
don't you're not looking back and regretting, which is one
of the worst feelings that you may have in that voice. Yes, yeah,
that says, oh, I didn't prepare enough or I didn't
do that enough. At least when you prepare the very
(08:04):
best that you could that you know, and in my sport,
that was so important as doing you know, we just
briefly discussed it, but doing your homework and going overboard
with your homework so that you know, no matter what result,
because you know, you show up on the day and
things can go wrong. Yeah, you can be as prepared
as you want to be. You know, you can be
as confident as you want to be and as you are,
and you did everything to your best knowledge and ability
(08:26):
and it just doesn't work out. But at least that's
you know, you know, that's life, and that happens. But
you did everything to get to that moment. You did
it one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Gives you resilience as well. I think if you have that,
I love that word. I love it too. I was
saying that. You know, now everybody talks about teaching and
it's very very important their children's self esteem and what
I sometimes think self esteem is overrated. But anyway, it's
that's another cop But I do think resilience if I could,
and I've seen it in this restaurant. I've seen the
(08:56):
times that we've had hard times or different issues, and
they're the one who are just able to not not
to hide it, not to shun it away, but to
take it and then you know, carry on, which is
I think I.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Was so nicely surprised to see how young your stuff is.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
They are, they are, I think they, you know, some
of them. It's interesting. It used to be that in
the kitchen you had chefs who started very very young,
and sometimes academically were challenged, and so they found a
skill that they could do, which is great. Now we
have that and they're you know, questioned. Looking at Adriana,
(09:34):
I think I studied history and got a degree and
then always knew she wanted to cook. It's very performance
led a restaurant, you know, the curtained probably comparison very sport,
but also to theater let go, and it's already and
it's collaborative. I note that if you don't chop the chilis,
(09:55):
the sauce chef doesn't have it to make use sauce
doesn't have the chilies. If you're late for work, it's
very often not the bosses have crossed, but your colleague.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Another alloticed.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Another similarity with sport and particularly in tennis. And then
you know, being working at a restaurant is that when
the curtains close and all the you know, all the
people leave, it's just you and in this very quiet
and eerie place, which if you think about leaving Center
Court and walking back through a tunnel and going into
(10:27):
the locker room where you are, I mean, it's fairly lonely, right,
It's just you and your bag, and you go in
the shower and you know you have some of your
rivals and compatriots in there, but it's just, I don't know,
it's very intimate. And just a few minutes prior to that,
you were in a room that was you know, in
this arena that was full of thousands of screaming fans,
(10:50):
and then it's.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Just you tell me how that relationship was between your
grandmother and her mother and cooking.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
My mother was a very young mom. She she was
when she was nineteen, so she yes, I'm an only child,
and she was still in university at the time, and
so you know her mom between she she had a
job in a local market. Oh, I was like a
local in Sochi, so She which is aware, which is
(11:18):
in the south of Russia. It's on the Black Sea.
I was born in Siberia while my mother was pregnant
with me. Actually both of my parents are Belarussian. But
during Chernobyl and the explosion, my parents moved to Siberia.
I had some close relatives there and so they found
out that would be a safer place for my mom
to give birth. That so at twenty she gave birth
(11:39):
to me. So we were very young, a very small family,
and we were very close until this day. We remained
that way. My mother has been a huge influence in
my life because so much of what I did was
about sport, but so much of her influence was outside
of the court. Like she of course she was very
involved in making sure I did the right thing in
(11:59):
my career, but most of her influence was making sure
that I did my homework, Was that I studied well,
Was that I immersed myself in a different world that
wasn't connected to sport, that I was curious and interested
and different.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
What did your father do?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
My father had a little construction firms and around the country,
and he was traveling quite a bit, so he you know,
we would actually rarely see him because he was working
full time. As my mom was young and was raising me.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And so you grew up in Sibery.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Grew up in Siberia for the first two years, and
then at two years old, we moved to Sochi.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Why did they choose it?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Sochi was known for a place where a lot of
people from the north of Russia would come to relax
and go on their summer holidays. And they had these
sanatoriums where you'd spend several weeks getting healthy and swimming
in the Sea of doing you know, natural therapies because
a lot of people that worked in oil and coal mining,
(12:58):
you know, they would go to just breathe fresh air.
And it was a very warm city in the summer.
It reminded me very much of Florida.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Actually, the River Cafe cafe, steps away from our restaurant,
is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
chiambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts come in
(13:29):
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book, see you here. The food in
Russia is very regional, but what it had been different
in Belarus to Soshi.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I definitely remember that the tastes of the food being
very different and both you know, my grand no, my
grandmother's food was very flavorful because it had a very
rich profile. You know, there are a lot of stews
and a lot of soups, and you know, within a
borshe I mean there's more than ten ingredients. You had
the beets and the peppers and the meat, and you know,
(14:11):
a few spices and and then I went to the
United States and it was a grilled piece of chicken.
It was a very different experience. And I missed sour cream.
I grew up eating sour cream on everything, and all
of a sudden it was ketchup.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah. I was born in upstate New York in Woodstock,
and my father the real treat wol He would take us,
you know, sort of once a month to New York
and he'd drive and we'd see the ships, and then
we'd see a musical and then we would go to
the Russian tea room.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yes, and that was the tradition of a samovar drinking
tea is such a I mean, anytime I would enter
my grandparents' house, they would have they would cut a
piece of rye, like a big, big rye bread and
they would cut it in many slices. They would put
a thick of butter and then red caviar because that
(15:02):
was the cheaper than black caviar. And it was welcoming
your family was they were so proud, like to see
their granddaughter walk through the door and and their their
children and that was I just I remember this beautiful
plate and presentation is everything.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The china was. They would take out their most beautiful china.
And they didn't have much. I mean they didn't grow
up with a lot of money. They didn't have a
lot of money. But you know when they would sit
at a table, there's everything had a meaning. The food
had a meeting and a purpose, and it was it
was about having a nice time and sharing memories and
laughs and just being a family over food of having conversations.
(15:47):
And I really missed that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, and you create that in your own you try.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
It's it's there's nothing like going to your grandmother's home.
I know, there's really there's really not I also have
a more minimal approach to decoration and the way I
set a table, and it's quite a contrast to thinking of,
you know, arriving at my grandmother's house, where everything is
more oriental and detailed, and there's you know, even even
(16:15):
the way that she serves, and there's just there's a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
You went to Miami with your father.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I went there with my father because my mom couldn't
get a visa for the first two years, and it
wasn't planned. It was just difficult to obtain the visa,
and so I spent the first two years, you know,
just eating takeout food. The only thing I remember him
cooking was white rice because he was because he would
(16:46):
wake up super early because my training would be early,
and he would find, you know, random jobs that he
could take, and most of them were on golf courses.
Because he had a construction background. He did a lot
of jobs on golf courses and his work would start
super early. So he would make rice for me while
I was still sleeping in the morning, and he would
leave it in the pan and he would put it
(17:08):
under a pillow, and so when I would wake up,
I would eat this rice as my breakfast on my own.
I would put some milk in it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So you were at seven, though, Yeah, and he was
already trained.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
I was already training.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
My father enjoyed the sport. He's not a He's no
brilliant athlete, although he claims to be. I grew up
going to tennis practice with him because he enjoyed the sport.
He played at a leisure level. He played with his friends.
This wasn't so che Yeah, yes, we only moved to
the United States because of tennis. It was very specific
(17:44):
to going to this very famous academy in Florida where
a lot of tennis players went and and it was
mostly because there's a huge facility and you have other
kids your age that you play with, you have some
of the best coaches in the world going there, and
you just don't need to leave, which for an athlete
is incredibly important, just to have a base where you
(18:04):
feel like, I'm just focused on this one craft. I
do it every day, I have no distractions. And it
just happened to be in the middle of nowhere in Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Did they think about feeding children who are athletes in
a certain way or was it.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I honestly just think they cared about making money. Yeah,
maybe that time food wasn't a priority for athletes.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I talked to Savannah Leaf. You know Savannah Leaf, I don't.
She's great. She was an Olympic volleyball player and she's
now a filmmaker and an artist and wonderful. And we
were talking about when and how the awareness of food
and athletic ability forty years ago it was not no
big deal. Yeah, that people didn't.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
They didn't think they told what they would eat prior
to a match or after a match. It just wasn't.
And now players travel with their own chefs because it's
it's become a critical component of an athlete's life, right,
because the difference of number ten in the world to
number one in the world is very small. And so
you know, having you know, having a perspective that's different
(19:09):
to others, you know, or having a game plan that's
smarter than others, right, or treating your body like it's
it's an incredibly important tool, is vital.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
How did you merge the academic with the athletic when
you were a child of seven and they were and
they had it must have been regulated, no, to give
you an academic.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Absolutely, it was something once my my mother arrived, besides
giving me a fresh haircut and changing all my clothes
because she said, what is what is your father buying you?
And cooking home, home cooked meals. She was I remember,
(19:53):
you know, education was was a big part of her contribution.
And even even when it came to high school, I was,
I was a teenager, and she sourced because I traveled
so much as a teenager, she knew I couldn't go
to a you know, a school in Bradenton, Florida. That
we'd have to find a school that I could do online,
and she sourced a place. It wasn't very it wasn't
(20:15):
like a popular school. But I finished high school, you know,
I finished that that part of my academics while I
was traveling and competing and playing at Wimbledon. And she
would when when the school would send all the books,
my mother would cut it in four portions for each
each semester, and she'd put it in a folder and
(20:36):
she would print all the material that I had to
execute and I would travel, you know with these you know,
quarter quarter of books with me you have exams. Did
you have had exams online? Yes? I thought school was
a really healthy distraction for me. Our studying was because
it taught me things that tennis could never teach me. Art. Yeah,
(21:01):
you know, just understanding that there are things outside of
hitting a yellow you know, fluffy ball, or history or
mathematics and numbers, the discipline of you know, coming back
after a match and being in a hotel room in
the middle of nowhere and sitting down in your hotel
room at this little desk and taking out your material
and taking your mind off of the grind of the
(21:23):
tour and practice, you know, and being with my father
all the time and listening, you know, to his advice
on the tennis court. It was an escape for me
to study, and so I really loved the process of it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Did your father always travel with you.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
He traveled with me until I was twenty one, and
then I won my third Grand Slam and then I
wanted to do it on my own. He was still heavily,
very much involved in my career and we speak almost daily.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Were you becoming aware of food? What made you a
better athlete? Depending on what you ate to kind of travel?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Was what you know? Brought out my curiosity and food.
My food choices when I was young were very simple
and only because we didn't have a lot of money.
They were flavorful, you know, once my mother arrived, because
she would make the meals herself, and I just felt
comforted by the fact that, you know, I had someone
at home cooking for me. And when i'd come back
(22:21):
from practice, first thing I would do is you know,
she'd give me this long rope and I had to stretch,
and then I had to hang off a rod just
to loosen my body because there was so much physical exertion.
She didn't know anything about fourhands or back ends, but
she knew that my body was at a young age,
was going through a lot, was going through such intense workouts,
(22:43):
and she just wanted to make sure that I that
I was stretching. Yeah, so this was her ate.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
She also watched.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
She she wasn't interested in a way that she she
thought or studied or how it would have you know,
how I would feel after what would I be energized
by the food. She just wanted to make sure that
I was fed. That was her goal.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, you wrote a rather beautiful sentence which when we
talked about management. I don't know where we found this,
but it said, did you do enough and more to
prepare for your next opponent. You've taken a few days off,
your body's losing that edge, that extra slice of pizza.
Better make up for it with great morning session. And
(23:24):
that is that the metaphor of a pizza, the idea
of a pizza. It's the balance of discipline.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
No, it's a It's a balance of giving yourself a
break in life, but being disciplined and courageous and taking
chances and knowing that life is not all rainbows and
you know, butterflies and great moments, life is hard, and
accepting the fact that it is hard and that you're
(23:53):
going to face, you know, moments of discouragement, of low confidence,
of people having difficult opinions of you. It's part of
the ups and downs, and especially in athletics, especially in
a world where you know you're in journalism, where you're
constantly judged for how you perform, even if you win.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
By the way I suppose you did you go from
the rise in the morning to a different breakfast. Tell
me about your eating regime if you were playing a game.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So eating as an athlete is about keeping things clean.
It's about clean ingredients. It's understanding you know, when does
your body need more protein and when does your body
need more carbs? You know, with are you loading on
you know, more energy? Thirty minutes or an hour before
you go out on court? How long did you play
for it? Did you was your match an hour or
(24:46):
was your match three hours? And to be honest, it's
not even about you can have a set schedule and
you can have an idea of what you're going to
do and how you're going to prepare and what you're
going to eat. But I think what makes the best
teams in the best ap athlete as being able to
pivot based on how things go and reacting on the occasion.
So if you just competed and you know, you thought
(25:08):
you the first round, you thought you were gonna win easy,
but all of a sudden, your opponent had an incredible
day and you end up winning, but it was three
hours long. Your recovery now is completely different than what
you thought would be just in forty five minutes an
hour match. It's all clean, It's just it's more about
the quantity shift of what you were eating prior to
(25:28):
a match. It was very simple those vegetables. Back to
the rice, it was white rice and a clean piece
of chicken. I actually look back at those meals and
I think of them as very lonely because the food
was very lonely, and I've I've grown to love food
so much that it it felt like I wanted better
(25:50):
options because it.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Describes the solitary nests of your career. And so there
are you're playing with canst about it. You've surrounded by people,
But is there a sense of being quite solitary.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I think everybody handles that differently. I think some people
enjoy that they're part of this larger and more than
life energy that's surrounding them in a stadium environment, I
think a very special feeling. But I always performed best
when I was calm within myself. Like of course, this
(26:27):
positivity and then the things that your fans shout when
you're down in a match and the encouragement that you
hear is one of the best feelings in life. But
when you're going through a three hour match inside of yourself,
you need to feel that you are calm and collected,
that you can handle negative comments, that you can handle
(26:47):
positive ones. And unfortunately you have to treat the negative
and the positives almost like they are the same, so
that you don't go through these ranges of emotion during
a match. Right that you're collected, you're you're strong, you're
you're positive. And so when I felt like I was
just that the best version of myself is it didn't
(27:09):
matter what people said during a match, or do.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
You hear it?
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Do you hear you hear everything you can. It's hard
to block that. Yeah, I think it goes back to acceptance.
I think acceptance accepting the fact that people will always
have always said this, but people will have different opinions
of you as a player, as a person as whatever
you say and how you say it, people react differently
(27:34):
to it. And and a big part of being an
athlete is, you know, is having to read things about
yourself and accepting that is a big It's something that
I had to learn and I learned it the hard
way from a very young age. When you win Wimbledon
at seventeen years old and people still find tough things
to say about you or your family or criticize you
(27:55):
in any way, it takes time to, you know, to
get comfortable with that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Fact, did you have good friends or do you always
have different circuits and different Yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Was it was really hard to make friends. And at
the core, I was a very tough competitor, and they
could have been the nicest opponent in the world, but
I had to think that they were a terrible human being,
even though they were extremely nice to me. Mentally, I
knew that, you know, it's it's whoever's strongest. It's not
(28:26):
even just who's physically strongest.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Did you when you traveled did were you able to
experience other cultures?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well an athlete, I didn't. I really didn't. I remember
this fondly. Many years ago. I went on a date
with someone and it was one of our first few dates,
and we're talking about the places that we traveled to,
and he said to me, He's like, wow, I mean
they're so you are so lucky. You haven't really visited
(28:55):
the world. I mean, you've you've competed in some of
the biggest, best cities in the world, but you don't
know anything about them really, And you know, there are
places that I hadn't been to, like Venice in Italy,
or even Barcelona, or you know, cities that you'd think
of course, you know it'd be on my list, and
I've visited them several times, but I hadn't and so
(29:19):
and it really opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah,
he was absolutely right, like I, How lucky am I
that I've yet to experience these cities from a different
perspective than I had all these years.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I always just think that I used to be envious
of people who'd never been to Venice because I could
never remember seeing Venice for the first time because I
was young when I went. And then you think, I
just said, Wow, somebody's going to get to this place
as an adult and see this incredible city I had.
I had a kid last summer, I was a Vedics
(29:51):
and a friend of mine bought his six year old child.
We did this huge visit of Vedas. We went everywhere
around Vedice and I said to him, how how Nicholas,
And he said, what do you think of Venice? He said,
not enough canals, He'll never remember.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I went to Venice in December of last year, and
I brought my mom along with me. It was one
of the most magical trips that a mom and a
daughter could take in the chilly nights.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
What month of THEO was December December. Oh, I love
Venice in December.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It was so special. It didn't matter if it was
rain or shine, or wind or cold. It just felt right.
And I think the company helps in the food and
the views. And I think that that's been one of
our best trips that we've done together.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
As we used to go every December, the first weekend
of December, and I remember thinking we did it for
a set to kind of be together for a sad memory.
And I thought if it was a perfect place to go,
because if you went to Rome and it was raining,
you'd think, oh, it's raining. If you go to Venice
and it's ray and it's rainy, it kind of fits
(31:02):
in Melancholia but also joy Magic.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Do you have a favorite restaurant in Venice?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And I like Ilkhovo, which is nice. I like Carampane,
I like Testieri. There are those restaurants, but I have
to say when people ask me my favorite three restaurants
in Venice, I usually say Harry's Bar, Harry's Bar and
Harry's Bar.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
The corner table that's magical.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
You can't figure out it's just sitting there and think
it has the room because it has low ceilings, there
are no windows. It's kind of everything should be wrong
with the minute you go in there. I think it's
possibly because it's a bar and you walk straight in.
There's no entrance, so you walk straight in. I think
the tape I've really spent a lot of time with
adalyzing it. I think that the tables are very low,
(31:45):
and so you feel quite, you're not reaching out, you're
trying to and everybody's together in there, and the food
is so good.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
It's so good. It's consistent. Yeah, and consistency in restaurants
is challenging. I'm sure you. Yeah, you come across that
off and they're they're always consistent. In the Bellini, I mean,
you cannot say no to the.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I love, I love a bar. So let's go to her.
Let's go, let's go go somewhere, let's go. It's December, Okay,
it's a day.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
It's a day.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We have and I hope we have thousands and thousands
of listeners.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Everybody's we have.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Baby. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would
you please make sure to rape and review the podcast
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o wherever, you
get your podcasts. Thank you so right now you are
(32:51):
working with Monk Laire, I'm working with.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I. During my career, I from a very early age,
I recognized that ten of was so much more than
just a sport. It was a really an opportunity to
create a platform, an opportunity to be curious and to
be picky about the people that I get to work
with and the brands I get to align myself with.
And I would, you know, I would ask to be
(33:18):
and to go in a room where they would do
meetings that you know, where the talent is usually not
involved in. But I felt like, you know, by getting
my nose in there, I learned so much for these
smart people. And I knew that as a woman, tennis
wouldn't last forever, that I would want a family, especially
since I had such a strong, you know, relationship with
(33:38):
my young mom, and I wanted, you know, a child
of my own. And also realistically, you can get injured
any day, and knowing that if that one sport, and
you know, you put all your stones in this one
bucket and you have to find other avenues, right And
I love to work. I love to work hard, and
(33:59):
so I got a chance to meet brilliant people in
the business world, and that led me to my role
at Montclair on the being on the board there and
and continue to learn from I mean from Remo who's
had I mean just significant experience and success in what
he's built and done with With Montclair, I now get
(34:19):
to work with the Aman Hotel group. We're curating wellness
retreats around the world that their properties are first one
is going to be in September at Almonzaou in Greece and.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Greece it's a three on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yes, it's It's a three three, three night program where
I'm bringing in people that I've worked with in the past,
some of my trainers. You know, I look back at
my career, the years of playing, and I had an
exquisite team that would basically set a schedule for me,
Like in the morning, you wake up, you you know,
you measure your your heart rate variation, you go have breakfast,
(34:55):
you go do a warm up, you know, you loosen
up your body, you go train And when I retire,
I realized that I have to make those decisions for myself.
So when I was curating this program, I thought, how
amazing to be able to show up and have this
few days just completely set for you.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Right. So you're working with Aman, you're working with Montclair,
and I'm a mother and your mother. Tell me about
feeding your baby? How does he does he like to eat?
Does he.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I've yet to find find his true talent yet, but
food is I think is one of his passions. That
he loves food. I mean, he says nam nyam is
his favorite phrase. He just walks around the entire day
and just says, niam nam.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
What about tell us we haven't talked about your husband.
Tell us about.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
We're not married yet, but tell me about you.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I called him speak phrase that tell me.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But I'd like I call him my husband because I
feel like he's my husband. But we're not officially married.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
So tell me about food in your lives with him?
Does he love to eat?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
We're big foodies. I mean we just recently on my
birthday we went to the Baths County in Spain and
did an entire trip around food because that was It's
one of our great passions. And when we met, I
feel like so many of our we've come from very
different backgrounds. You know, he grew up in you know,
having a proper education and spending his early years in
(36:15):
the luxury space with LVMH and Kruge Champagne and then
and then moving into the art world, so more of
a polished upbringing. And I came from much more grittier
perspective where sweat and tears, and we we met around
the art world. I enjoy collecting art. It was a
big passion of mine. And he started an online auction
(36:39):
site and a mutual friend put us in touch, and
so conversations started around art and moved into food and
then life, and then all of a sudden, we felt
like we had so much chemistry and connection around what
we've experienced in life, even though they came from completely
different backgrounds and perspectives, and and that's been it's been
(37:00):
nice to share that with our son, you know, our
different cultures, and you know, I always feel like in teamwork,
whether it's your sport or whether it's your career, whether
it's family, if you have you have different ways of
getting to one destination, but if your vision is the
same and aligned, then that's what makes that story really beautiful.
(37:21):
Where do you live like we live in California and
Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Oh that's right, I realize, and you have it. That's right,
because I do remember reading about you love the shopping
for the food my market market.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It's one of our favorite things to do is just
going to a local farmers market, taking our son and
using the stroller as my food basket and trying all
the you know, local ingredients and then going and getting
you know, the fresh fish from the pier and the
fresh oonie. It's really it's one of our favorite things
to do over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
And do cook yourselves. Both we do myself.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So Alexander, he loves to cook, but he doesn't like
a lot of help because I think I'm I provide
too many suggestions. It sounds like a marriage, it does exactly.
So when he cooks, he prefers that I just you know,
get a drinker. Just watch him from the sidelines quietly.
(38:16):
And I was so impressed. He We invited another couple
over and he made a Thanksgiving meal all by himself,
pretty much. I did something with the potatoes. I think
I helped him prepare, but he, you know, he looked online.
He looked through a few recipes and he's like, this
is what I'm doing. He got all the groceries. At
the end of it, I was like, this was really good.
I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Entertaining is tough to the performance. You know, you have
people coming and you're going to take.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Get nervous about entertaining because I'm a perfectionist and he's
He's definitely much more comfortable with the concept because he
comes from a larger family and he comes from a
world of inter haining and throwing gatherings together people of
all different walks of life, and so he makes it work.
I just hone in on so many details that I
(39:08):
get a little stressed about the outcome, and I'm so
worried about each guests and you know, and I also,
I know I hate this, but I asked my guests
to take their shoes off because I love you know,
this Japanese sanctuary of a house, and I just I
know there, you know, guests are going to be annoyed.
It's fun. So I'm like, I need to get everyone's slippers.
(39:30):
It's so annoying. I'm annoying the fruits of the vegetables.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I have to get slippers.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, So it's we're a fun combination.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Do you get a restaurants much or do you lessly.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
We don't eat out too much. We eat out a
lot when we travel. I love the curation on Yolo Journal.
I don't know if you're familiar with that site, but
Yolanda Edwards puts together a really beautifully curated list of
I think you've contributed to her Hughes letter, but I
love her selections of places. So we share. We do
(40:04):
a lot of research on where on the city that
we're going to.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
We were talking about before about talking and listening and
one of the questions that we ask everyone is a
food is love. If food is sharing, a food is memories,
if food is your generations from your grandmother to your mother,
to yourself and to your son. It also is comfort.
And I think that I would like to ask you
(40:28):
when you need and I hope you don't need it
very often, but when you want food as comfort to
make you feel better, is there a food that you
would go to for that?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I would go to my mom and I would ask
her to make.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Crepes creps creps, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
And I would ask her to make it with a
local jam, whether it's a strawberry or a cherry, and
I just put a large spoon of the jam onto
the crepe and roll it and eat several of them. Yeah,
that's my comfort food.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'd love that sounds delicious. I'd like to read something
that you wrote before we end this, beautifully written talking
about future, about what we're doing about every day, about
how we live. And you wrote that relentless chase for victories,
though that won't ever diminish no matter what lies ahead.
(41:23):
I will apply the same focus, the same work, ethic,
and all of the lessons I've learned along the way.
And I think that is a beautiful marriage of past
and future and present. And so thank you so much
for coming today, Ruthie.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Thank you for having me. We covered a lot. Now
let's go eat.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Let's go eat. Thank you. I think we have a cake.
Don't need to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yay. I love cake.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I love you.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair. I do
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