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December 19, 2022 33 mins

A year ago, I used every bit of access and influence to get tickets to Cabaret for one reason only - to see Eddie Redmayne the star of the show. And last week, conquering my enormous fear of being afraid, I watched him in the Good Nurse and was unnerved how beautifully he made a mass murderer not only empathetic, but almost loveable. All of us in The River Café know Eddie as an enthusiastic eater.

On this episode we discuss his life through food but not before we put him to work in the kitchen, fulfilling his life’s dream and making pizzas with our chef, Jessica Filbey.

For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.

On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.

Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. 

Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and Adami's Studios. A year ago, I used every
bit of access and influence to get tickets to Cabaret
for one reason, only to see Eddie Redmain and I
went back two times. I would have liked to have

(00:20):
gone back more. And last week concrete my enormous fear
of being afraid, I watched him The Good Nurse and
was a bit unnerved about just how beautifully he made
a mass murderer not only empathetic but almost lovable. But
I and all of us in the River Cafe really
know Eddie as a great lover of food. Actually I'm

(00:42):
here alone as Eddie is in the kitchen with the
chefs making pizzas a little annoying, as I don't go
around acting in plays and movies. But how could I
possibly mind? Hi, I'm Jess and I'm a chef at
the River Cafe's been here for four and a half years. Uh,
and we're making pizzas on pizza section, so you want
to roll it out quite quite wide. I obviously made

(01:05):
the rookie era to begin with, putting far too much
stuff on top, which is I think a sort of
like day one exactly, all spledges over into sort of
pie rather than so now because it led you on pizza. Great, wow,

(01:33):
thank you so much. Today Eddie and I are here
in the River Cafe about to begin our conversation. Thank
you so much, so nice, so thank you. But how
is it making the pizzas it was? You fulfilled a
childhood dream of mine. I like childhood dreams? Would that be?

(01:55):
I mean it was watching Jefs. As a kid, we
didn't really go to restaurants that much, but it became
a thing when we were sort of I think about
nine ten years old, that the weekends will be playing
sport on a Saturday, and then the evenings we would
go to like Pizza Express, watch pizza's be made, take

(02:15):
them home and watch porrow. That was like sort of
and so but but my parents always said I would
sit there touching onto the marble, kind of watching the process.
Nothing like the pizza I got to make today that
it was extraordinary. You fulfilled my life long. It is
very dramatic. You're absolutely right, and it's but also the

(02:36):
process of watching food being made has always been something
that I've just adored and and so open kitchens. It's theatrical.
Maybe it is that. Maybe it is that. And it's
also kind of organized chaos, you know what I mean,
there's sort of um that the choreography of it, even
just going into the kitchen today and hearing about the

(02:57):
process of the different numbers of fs somewhere they which
a section they're in charge of, and how they arrive
at They're not knowing whether they're going to be on
the wood oven or pieces or I love the ordered
chaos of it. There's also always say and there is
something about the drama of a restaurant that the current

(03:19):
goes up at twelve thirty, you know, and at that
point everybody has to have, you know, um, cleaned the
carpet or grated the cheese or you know, made sure
the olive oil was on the shelf, and that the
men you had been written. And I have never acted
in a play, but I assume that if the actor
doesn't know their lines, or the stage that hasn't been painted,

(03:39):
or the program hasn't been printed, that the show doesn't
go on. And also the feeling of I think I
imagine it's similar in restaurants, but of when we were
doing cabaret, for example, you have your own weird path
of superstitions that we've created over the run of the thing.
That involved for me, because I'm old, having to sort

(04:00):
of roll out a lot in order that your body
doesn't break vocally warm up and all that stuff. But
then also as a group meeting on the circle of
the stage and warming up together since greeting each other,
seeing how that everyone's days have been. And at that
point the space has a kind of fluorescent light on
it's and then we we could hear the audiences coming in,

(04:21):
and then we all shift out and the lights go
down and the space takes on this kind of magical
potency I suppose is that similar so collaborative. But going
back about working and food, I am so intrigued about
whether it actors and if it's a matinee do munch
well generally, what happens with me when I do theater

(04:43):
is I lose weight because you're firing on adrenaline. And
the truth is I can't eat just before a show.
It's too soon. So I try and eat a really
good breakfast. I try and drink a shed load of
water first thing in the morning, which I'm not good
at but recently doing cabaret, my wonderful singing teacher said

(05:06):
that apparently takes the six out of your vocal cords
are the last things that hydrate, and it takes six
hours for the hydration to get through. So sort of
first thing in the morning, you I would sort of
come downstairs and down glasses of water. But then of
course after the show, you're riding on adrenaline and it's
late and you don't um. So on matinee days you

(05:29):
sort of have to force yourself to ease, which is yeah,
and and and normally for me it's something kind of
it's it could be noodles with prawns or something that light,
something that's easy. There's a weird thing about our job,
both in theater and on film that, particularly on film,
I suppose when you because you wake up very early,
you can be up at sort of you know, four

(05:51):
or five or something, and then back late that I
feel like you turn more into a child in the
sense that your body clock like straight to lunch on
a film set, if you quite often you just hit
this total wall of like you eat and then you
can completely pass out because and then you sort of

(06:14):
wake again and you you kind of I suppoth dose
yourself with caffeine in order to sort of then put
you through, But I never feel it when I'm not working,
but that real feeling of straight after lunch you're a
bit like a baby. You sort of go straight to, Yeah,
but learning to to eat and caffeinate yourself. The odd
things about film sets and and theater is the rhythms

(06:37):
of it. You know, you can be you can be
shooting an intense scene on on on a film set
and have done the wide shots, and then they'll call lunch,
and then you'll have your food, You'll have that exhaustion,
and then you straight after lunch, you're coming back into
the most intimate of close ups and you've somehow got

(06:58):
a recap of that energy. And that's pretty so Weirdly,
food and drink does affect all that, and you are
having to kind of give yourself false energies at moments
to push yourself to a to a place that's kind
of I thought it was a very beautiful scene in
The Good Nurse that takes place at the very end

(07:19):
and that dinner where you're clearly going into a place
of eating, a place where you sit down in a
booth and there's the expectation that you're meeting and you're
going to have probably something, you know, a meal that
you're going to have, and then that conversation and it

(07:40):
was very beautiful. I thought that dynamic of the two
of you over a cup of I don't you didn't
have anything? Did you? Food? And then that thing that
also resonates so much is leaving. You know that you
walking out of a restaurant is quite or a diner
or any situation where the expectation of a nice meal

(08:01):
and then that kind of thing of walking out is
pretty pretty tough. There was something about the architecture of
that diner, you know, diner's force you to kind of
sit opposite. There's no that and also the director to
be a slim Holmes an amazing man to set the scene.
It's it's a moment in the film when these two
people who are close friends meet and my character has

(08:26):
been doing horrendous things and this friend knows about it
and is wired. So it's being it's recording the conversation
to try and get evidence, but hasn't given away that
that she knows anything. So it's filled with sort of tension.
And to be asted this these interesting things, for example,
giving these gigantic menus, you know that that that that

(08:49):
that that almost stopped you from being these obstacles to
the scene, like he kept having the woman in charge
of the restaurant come and interrupt the scenes, so adding
the kind of odd rhythms to to a scene that
is that is filled with angles and edges, I suppose.
But now you're right there. The restaurants are extraordinary places
because there, you know, the real man Charles Cullen that

(09:15):
I played. I got the sense that his relationship with
Amy Loughran, it's just Jessica Chain's character was always one
of friendship. But I believe that this was the only
time that he began to think maybe there was something more.
She had invited him on a sort of out of
work date, and so he's got slightly dressed up, and

(09:37):
that that filled that scene. Attention to Restaurants can be
places of first love. They can be places of breakup,
of power negotiations of you know, they are people do
very private things in a very public space. So people
get divorced in restaurants, and now it's affairs and restaurants.
They get fired in restaurants, and you know, you think

(09:59):
of maybe you might want to do that at home,
you know, in the office, and instead there's a safety
net I think of knowing that if you're firing somebody
or announcing an affair. We have had people, you know,
spilled a glass of boy and very rarely or yeah,
the drama. Well, the best one, I think I've said

(10:20):
it before is the man who said he called up
and said that he was going to propose to his girlfriend.
If we've right, will you marry me on the cake?
So we did, of course, we can marry me, you know,
you know it. And halfway through the meal he came
and said, cancel the cake, and so we never knew why,
you know, but it is that's been back. No, I

(10:41):
don't know who he was. It was just like one
of those I probably wasn't even here that night. All
these things get I have to say, I wish I
had more dramatic stories. There's I've been asked, you know,
but I mean just people. Very often people want to
bring their own food, which is a bit odd. No, yeah, exactly,

(11:08):
bring that, yeah, bring that, choose faster. But sometimes people
will say can I bring somebody gave me a truffle
Kenny grade it and that's fair enough. They want to
bring it or basically you know that's what we were
saying before. Is we just say yess. You know, people
want a surprise, they want the you know, the proposal moment.

(11:28):
They want to get down on their knee, or they
want we've had a surprise party and we've told I
had to see somebody in the restaurant and then take
them into the room. Um. I once trying to help us,
but I tried to hold on her and she could
see it straight on my face, like that's going to
group people behind the story or else you call up

(11:50):
somebody and say, you know it's your partners, so looking
forward to seeing you in Mad says I didn't know
anything about it. No, we love restaurants and we love
that as you say that drama. I'm really pleased that

(12:12):
you've chosen a recipe from the River Cafe book thirty
to read. What is that? The recipe is Rigatoni with
cavalonnero and new olive oil. Serves six one m cavalonnero leaves,
two garlic clothes peeled, two hundred and fifty miles of

(12:34):
extra virgin olive oil, five d crams of rigatoni freshly
grated parmesan. This pastor is the celebration of two ingredients
that arrive at the same moment in the year, cavalonnero
and the first pressed peppery extra virgin olive oil. When
we started the river cafe, cavalon neero was nowhere to

(12:55):
be found, so we brought the seeds back from Italy.
Now you can find it every it, but only by
it after the first frost, and not after the winter months.
Never after the winter months. Remove the stalks from the
cavalon arrow leaves. Now this it's the bit about this
recipe I enjoy the most. Just there's something about the

(13:17):
texture of cavalon nero that is so satisfying. And you
could just tear out the stalks, or you can get
a very sharp knife and just kind of insize down
the middle, and I love. I think that's the part
of cooking that I find therapy if you think it's
the sensations of things anyway. So you have to keep
the leaves whole. You blanch them in a generous amount

(13:39):
of boiling salted water along with the garlic clothes for
five minutes you drain, put the blanche cavalo nero and
the garlic into a food processor and pulse chopped to
a puree. In the last couple of seconds of blending,
pouring about two mills of extra virgin olive oil. This
will make a fairly liquid, dark green pure season well,

(14:02):
cook the attorney in a generous amount of boiling salt
of water, and then drain thoroughly. Put the pastor in
a bowl at the sauce and stir until each piece
is thickly coated. Pour over the remaining extra virgin olive oil,
and serve with parmesan. I chose this recipe because during lockdown,

(14:24):
my wife Hannah is a wonderful gardener and had always
dreamt of having a kitchen garden, and lockdown was one
of those occasions when we could fully commit to it
without the fear of travel and other things. And it
became this amazing thing for because I generally do the
cooking in our house and she would just start bringing
things to me that were ready. This is in Staffordshire

(14:48):
and cavalonero was brought in by the armful and I
have no con and I found this recipe and it
was so simple. So I made vats of the stuff
and frozen and it's lasted us for good. That's good,
you know. I think what's interesting also is that moment

(15:10):
when you actually boiled the garlic with the vegetable, you know,
so or if you were to chop it. But somehow
the fact that's a whole cold garlic, it almost almost
makes it a bit creamy. It doesn't need to do that,
it does and it's um And there's something so odd
about throwing garlic clothes into a kind and you have

(15:30):
to kind of you have to sort of scoop them
up with your maidle. That was so glad that you
chose this recipe. So, going back to the beginning of
the red Main family, did you grow up with a
feeling that food was to be taken seriously or enjoyed
or was it something what? How was a feeling in
your house? I grew up. My mom is a a

(15:54):
wonderful cook. She she learned from her mother and it's
very it was actual. So she had there were three boys.
I have two brothers and an older half brother and
half sister. But it was three of us growing up
at home, and she had a lot on her hands
like we were sort of running circles around and quite

(16:15):
so hyperactive. And so the food I remember from my
youth was very traditional British food. It was cottage pies,
it was it was also the eighties, it was it
from a region. Did she come from them? She actually
came from Scotland. She grew up in Edinburgh, and so
all those kind of things, like my mom learned from

(16:37):
my grandma, who I who still lives in Edinburgh, is
a hundred and one years old. I remember my grandmom
makes the greatest bacon sandwich. She um, it's streaky bacon
fried to a crisp. Then you use either that the
softest bap that you can find, or the cheapest white

(16:58):
bread but nothing posh about the bread, but and the freshest,
cheapest white bread. And you put the bread once you've
done the bacon. Um, you put the bread onto the
frying pan with all those juices and you just fry
that for a few seconds. That then what you have,
I smother it in Heine's ketchup. I can't. I can't

(17:20):
be dealing with posh ketchup. And then put all the
bacon in and when it goes into your mouth and salty.
So back to your mother, diress? What is we digress?
We could be here for hour, but go back because
I heard you I say something about it was so
my memory of the like when Mom would go, you know,

(17:42):
get really stuck in. It was things like voliv On,
Like I love a chicken volivan and I feel like
Volivon's need of resurgence puff pastry with some creamy sauces
and tarragonny chicken em But the thing about Mom that
was really influential for me is because she had so
much going on, she again was quite a It was

(18:03):
the most punch for the least effort, I suppose. And
so all the recipes that I've learned from her are
they sort of got me through being a student. They
got me through Um yeah, and it's interesting. But it's
certainly why the cavalonera what appealed because I don't have
a huge entertained. Did she make full of for her
She did? She did entertain And again she was like me,

(18:26):
she has to she has to prep everything in advance,
because um, did you get involved? Did she get her
kids to? Yeah? I would. I would always help when
I could, and then do that thing of we lived
in a very tall, very thin house, and I would
do that thing of creeping down sitting on the stairs
listening to her. And again it was the eighties, so
when it was like a proper dinner party, everyone properly

(18:46):
got dressed up. And I remember the glamor of that film,
and you know famously, I'd love the story that your
brother Charlie, who eats in the River Cafe more often
he ate in the River Cafe when Harpark down the Road. Yeah,
he told a very funny story about your father and McDonald's,
would you like to tell Yeah, there's I don't remember

(19:07):
being there that there's apocryphal story about my dad going
to McDonald's and asking for a rare hamburger, which didn't
which did media exactly didn't go down so well. Didn't
go to restaurants we did. We didn't eat other other
than you know, Saturday night before especially, but very occasionally.

(19:30):
I remember once and this was quite seminal moment actually,
when asked, probably about nine or ten, my dad decided
to take his children just before Christmas to have a
roast lunch at the Savoy and it was going to
be a really this was a big glamorous thing, and
I don't know if it was something that his father
had done him. And I remember going into the Savoy

(19:52):
and seeing the glamor and the dance at the theater
of it, I suppose. Anyway, we was sitting there and
we had ordered food, and the soup came and I
was sort of eating it, but I was being sort
of fussy, and eventually my mom and Mom was saying,
you know that this is incredibly indulgent, like we were

(20:13):
in this extraordinary place. Why aren't you eating your soup?
And I sort of said to her, it's too salty.
My mom was like, Dad, we have bought you this
extraordinary place. You know it's it's very dope. Be ridiculous.
Of course it's not too salty. This is one of
the great restaurants. Anyway, Eventually Mom tasted it and she

(20:33):
was like, you're absolutely right, it is too salty. And
so they called over the waiter and the other waiter
had tasted it, and I was like, I'm so so,
and so the chef, the head chef, came out and
he took my older brother James, and I on a tour.
I apologized and said he had been on the phone
or something. When when when he had been seasoning and
he took us on a tour of the kitchens of

(20:54):
the Savoy and it was like I sort of watched
that film Ratta too, you know, it was it was
it was again being low in height and seeing things
being flow made, and it well, I was completely hypnotized
by it. It's like, you know, but also you didn't
turn to your mother say I don't like it, which
a lot of kids might just say I don't like it.
You knew that it was too salty, and you were right.

(21:16):
What's interesting is now later in life, I'm some salt addict.
But yeah, yeah, but still I think that and actually
their response it's the same thing I always prefer. You know,
sometimes people write a letter and they'll say, you know,
I my you know, my fish was overcooked on my
pasta was undercooked, And you say, why didn't you tell
us at the time, Because of course you want that feedback.

(21:37):
It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong. It doesn't matter.
You just want them to leave having had the best
meal we could give them. So I think that you
said it, and then it's a nice story. Then he
went to boarding school, didn't you did. I went to well,
I went to school in London, just across from where
we are now until I was thirteen, and it's why

(21:58):
I have whenever I come to the River Cafe, I
have a mixture of like joy mixed with slight PTSD
because it was these tow paths that are right next
to the River Cafe and on the other side that
was where we had to run our cross country every year.
So I've got sort of memories of like freezing little legs,
sort of having to my My little brother was very
clever and sort of feigned asthma in order to get

(22:19):
out of it. But I didn't have the ingenuity for that.
But what was the food? Like boarding school? It wasn't great, um,
it wasn't bad, but it was also where you had
this thing, a sort of tea time where you would
cook yourselves, and that is where I first and because
I didn't love the food at school, I would start
sort of. It was never something adventurous, but you learned

(22:41):
to do something. You had one little hot what's it
called the hot basically, which which you shared between ten students,
and the sort of one pot pasta became a thing
you could just cook there would let but then and
then you would have dinner, and then there would be
dinner afterwards. But if you kind of sustained yourself, then
you perhaps didn't have to and and so it was
just and that the food was your brother actually said

(23:04):
another he said that the British are very good at
the British epper class would be very good in prison
because they've been institutionalized since at very young age, you know,
and so you get what you're taken. Yeah, you have
now it's some yeah. But there were some people that
were I remember, very adventurous. Remember one one person at

(23:26):
Eaton who had come back, had been away for the weekend,
and I was sort of cooking some sort of stirring
pasta and and he just sort of threw a rabbit
on a sort of on a on a frying pan
and cooked himself. Running around was pretty robust. When I

(23:53):
left home, I moved to Borrow and I lived there
for a decade, right by the market. And my mom
did this wonderful thing when I was about twenty three,
I think between two and as a Christmas present, she
bought me this this class, and this amazing woman took
this group of us that there was random people from

(24:16):
different ages and and took us to the market and
introduced us to the the traders and taught us how
to to spot decent produce versus the stuff that was
being flung. And then we went back to her home
and this assembled group of people were taught. We were
talked three or four very simple things that totally changed

(24:41):
the way I remember what they were, aude recipes and attitude, obviously,
like one of them was a olive oil in the pan,
put of cherry tomatoes, salt and lid on, and then fry,
then squashed them once they get thingy. And at the
end you can grace in some cheese if one, but

(25:02):
I never do, and just put in some basil torn
basil at the end, and then you the cherry tomato
skins are so sort of fine that they almost disintegrate.
And I since then have never bought her a tomato
sauce again. But it was also there was a time
when I was about six or seven when my my
mom had mom dad had a a pair this amazing

(25:25):
woman called Arianna, and she came. She came from Italy.
She came and I and from then on she would
when she came went back, a friend would calm and
and so Italian food started kind of infusing my life.
And when I was just between school and university, I
went and traveled and in Italy a bit, and and

(25:46):
we went to stay with her, and I remember being
this moment when it was all of the tomatoes that
have been grown by her family, her extended family, had
all been given to her, and it was that time
of year when she made passata. Basically, I just remember
her in in the kitchen and I was all helping
to kind of grind the tomatoes through and that that
would be bottled off and back and then passed back

(26:07):
out to the family, and that there was something just
generous spirited about it. It's a beautiful thing to watch
and as you say, a process. So if we've sort
of talked about school and food and family and food
and being young and food, and what was it like
when you started your career working and food, you know,

(26:27):
you were acting. I was starting to act and travel
quite a lot, and and travel has been one of
the wonderful elements of what I do, you know, whether
it's to Japan or I spent a lot of time
in Hungary and Budapest, and and then in North Carolina, remember,
and then dan in Louisiana and having grits and crawfish

(26:51):
and and sweet corn and the simplicity of that. And
one of the wonderful things about my job is, particularly
when you're filming, you're even these cities and rather than
basically as a tourist, but you're there to work, but
often the crew are from there, and so you have
this amazing thing of having an introduction to cities that

(27:13):
that means you can get quite quickly, sort of slightly
beneath the surface and get told where where the sort
of great places are. And it was then I suppose
that my sort of food tastes started expanding. If you
knew you were going to be filming in Venice or Budapes,
would you start thinking about restaurants before you went? Would
you ask? I'm not good at that, but I know

(27:35):
many actors that are the greatest of those is Jeremy Strong,
Jeremy wonderful actor and absolute passionate foodie. And it was
great when we were making the Trial of Chicago seven.
Wherever we were, I would just get a sort of
email from him saying, right, I've got a table at

(27:57):
this place that was on chef's table. Your film. We
shot a bit in Chicago and then actually in New Jersey,
but we were based in New York. We've had a
lot of conversations people who say, mostly the directors were
just like, really not to stop for lunch because it
just stops the flow of the filming, of the acting,
and then actors saying that actually the food on set

(28:20):
could be terrible. You feel about working and eating. It
shifts and it changes. I mean definitely. When I was
starting on British sets, there's this thing craft Service, which
in the UK is a couple of sort of slightly
MOLDI digestive biscuits and uh, you know, some instant coffee.

(28:40):
And I remember when I did my first film in America,
which was being directed by Roberts Nero and was a
big budget that movie. I love that, but it was
a big shock to me because suddenly you arrived and
on the streets of Brooklyn it was like it was
like Borrow Market had these sort of gigantic piles of

(29:02):
bagels and and well, I think it's also an American thing.
And of course I was completely seduced as my children remained.
They came to the set of The of the Goodness
and not quite sure what it is I do, but
as far as they can see, I just work at
a sweet shot. And something about Jessica. Jessica Chess was

(29:24):
saying recently what sort of tips had she learned from
about being an actor, and one of them was that
al Pacino had said that careers get ended at the
craft service table people who becomes too obsessed with the
ground age. Um. But my greatest onset food was I
made a film many years ago called Savage Grace with

(29:46):
Julianne Moore, and we shot it all in in Barcelona,
and even though it was set in kind of London
and New York and Cadecats, it was a sort of
low budget movie and Barcelona was passing for all of
these things. But the span Ish cruise were just wonderful lunch.
You support her out and that put a table up
with a kind of umbrella, and that it would be

(30:06):
just the most exquisite dispatch in little cups for everyone
just to sort of start, and then it felt like
you were living. I mean, I think there was even
wine on the table, wasn't it um, which I think
would probably have aided my performance. So I always think,
you know, investing in good food for the people who
work for you or that you work with is so

(30:27):
important because we all work better, we all are better
when we have good food. So I think that your
mother is coming any minute, you do not want to
keep her waiting. We always say that, you know, we've
discussed you know, food and childhood, and food in school,
and food and acting. I also say that food is comfort.

(30:48):
If you needed food for comfort, is there something you
would turn to? Can it be quite specific? Can be
all you know? Bolosia, can be anything you want. So
there was a restaurant in France, in a village called
Grimo that was an Italian restaurant called Las Spaghetta. Um
I'm not sure it's there anymore, but I went there

(31:10):
as a child, and um, they did it a starter
called which was well. For years, I've been trying to
work out how the heck they make it, and everyone
does their version of mozzarelen so that sort of thing.
But but I think it was done with the cheapest mozzarella,

(31:33):
you know that that really sort of plastic stuff with
bread crumbs, and it just a very simple, uh fried
and then it was and you could. You had to
eat it quickly before it got before it and it
it remains my comfort. And my brother, my brother James
partickl my old brother James and I would go and
we would order it for starter, for main court. It

(31:58):
was and so and we tried to ask how they
made it, and they would never tell us. That makes
me very very happy that point I said, you were
a food lover. I did, and we love you. Thank
you so much. Today. Where is that? Let's go make

(32:18):
another one I'd never tasted. The River Cafe Look Book
is now available in bookshops and online. It has over
one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned
photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy

(32:39):
to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics
that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River
Cafe Look Book Recipes for Cooks of all ages. Ruthie's
Table four is a production of I Heart Radio and
Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the

(33:03):
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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Host

Ruth Rogers

Ruth Rogers

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