November 9, 2021 • 24 mins
This is a conversation about food between two friends - Ruthie Rogers a chef, and Tracey Emin, an artist. Listen when you have a quiet time - time to hear Tracy convey to Ruthie what it meant to have the Salvation Army cook her and her brother Christmas dinner.
Time to let Tracy explain why the solitude of being an artist makes restaurants crucial, and time to listen to her describe why she is passionate about eating eight apples a day.
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/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Artists coming together in
the restaurant, you know, and the casso drawn on the
table cloth and all that kind of thing. It's really
known throughout history, but it is to do with the
solitary nous of being in the studio and the solitariness
of being an artist, being very much alone. So this
(00:22):
idea of coming together to eat is such a nice thing.
Here we are and unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London,
but I feel warmed, as I always am, by being
with my friend Tracy Emmon. She's a great friend and
a great artist. Tracy, over to you, okay, so I'm
(00:47):
My favorite thing to eat here is the grilled squid
with shred, chili and rocket. Eight medium squid no bigger
than your hand. Six large fresh red chilies, seeded and
very finely chopped, a hundred and fifty meal, extra virgin oil,
(01:08):
two DRAMs of rocket, four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing.
One lemon cut into quarters to make the sauce. Put
the chopped chilies in a bowl and cover with extra
virgin olive oil, season heat a grill until very hot.
(01:29):
Place the squid, including the tentacles, scored side down on
the grill. Season and grill for two minutes. Turn a
squid pieces over. They will immediately curl up and by
which time they will be cooked. Toss the rocket in
the dressing. Arranged two squid bodies with tentacles on each
(01:50):
plate with the rocket. Put a little of the chili
sauce over the squid, and serve with lemon. I'm so
happy that you chose such a class typically representative of
the river cafe recipe, and I was wondering why you
chose squid chilian rocket. When I go to a restaurant,
(02:11):
I always like to choose food that I wouldn't cook myself,
but god, it's so easy to cook, so maybe I
should do it. But then, and also, I'm Mediterranean, so
um squeet is such a Mediterranean food, and I always
have this sort of light in a primal thing that
if I can eat Mediterranean, eat part of my ancestral
(02:35):
food as much as possible, it makes me feel really
good when I eat it, So that's why I chose it.
When you say that you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean.
Because I thought you were a market. Well Margaret is yeah,
Margaret Mediterranean market. And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's
Turkish Cypriot and my great grandfather was from the Sudan
(03:00):
and he was a slave in the Ottoman Empire and
around eighteen, I don't know, about nineteen hundred he was
given his freedom in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're
known as the there's a thing called like the Black Turks,
and they actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire,
and my family on Mediterranean side is from that background,
(03:23):
so um, there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook,
like amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually
grew all our ound. Me and my dad grew all
up all my vegetables on my studio roof back in
the nineties. Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes,
(03:45):
heritage tomatoes, beans, green beans, everything, and then my dad
would cook so and my mom was a terrible cook.
I hate saying it, both it's true. And the kind
of food I grew up on was a kind of
strange mixture of like this sort of really amazing food
that my dad could cook, and this really terrible food
(04:05):
that my mom could cook that I really loved, and
what you loved mother's food, egg and chips. My mom
was completely against me cooking, and when we were cooking
at school, my mom would actually wrote me letters saying,
my daughter will not learn to cook. My daughter is
(04:25):
not going to be a slave to any man. But
the truth was we didn't actually have the money for
the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But even so it
worked out kind of badly and kind of good. I
didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking at school was
pretty awful. And um, I only learned to cook when
I was much older, when I was sort of a
look around eighteen or nineteen, And even now I'm not
(04:49):
a very good cook, but I really like nice food. Yeah,
and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah, that's
so interesting that she she did not want you to
be stuck in the kitchen as a slave or anyone
to cook for her for a man. That's normal, yeah,
but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
(05:12):
it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
not to be a slave to any man. She was.
She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
(05:35):
She's considered the idea of me having children to be
a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
did everything to stop me from being a single mother
and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
favorite Yeah and yeah, she's when I think about it,
(05:55):
she was really not. My mom was very cozy herson,
but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
My mom was brilliant dancer, and when she was sort
of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
(06:16):
a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
her go when you left her? And how old were
you when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
of growing vegetables, and how how old were you. Actually,
my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
My dad left us when we were about seven, and
(06:40):
my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
when we grew up, it was very different from other
people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor.
Were It's strange we had were very wealthy when we
had that growing up in we were seven and then
(07:01):
my dad lost everything and my dad was married, so
my dad spent three days with his wife, three days
with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
So um, and so when my dad was around, the
cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
(07:25):
My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
my dad was at home, and then when I was older, Um,
(07:45):
I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
that was the first trip to turken Sight for since
I was a baby, and and it was like amazing
m to be with my dad, to be living with
(08:07):
my dad. They're cooking everything, and and my mom was
kind of a bit piste off because all that she'd
done for me. And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm
you know, on my my father's when you started out
by saying you're Mediterranean, and so to actually probably go
and see the Mediterraneans and have the food. But when
we when we were up until we were about six,
(08:30):
we would go to Turkey regularly once a year, and
we spent when we were really tiny, we spent two
periods of six months there. Once when I was about
three or four, and then another time when I was six,
we spent six months there and and all that time
it would have been Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And
we used to drive to Turkey, and this is really cool.
(08:54):
We used to have in the back of the our car.
We had a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs,
you know, with the rapportive seats, and my dad just
with a brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck
a hole through the roof through the you know the bits,
and then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and
(09:15):
then just sat us in the back of the car
bouncing up and we're twins bouncing up and down on
these chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive
to Turkey, and we'd stop on the way all the time,
and my dad would get the calor gas stove out
and fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go
go to fields and take watermelons and things. So it
(09:37):
was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
and it was different and it was different from everybody
else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
my mom working in a hotel as a waitress and
(10:00):
aimper made and so it was like from high to
like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you were
having to cook for yourself. Did you what did you read?
What did you do? There was so my mom was
out a lot most of the time, working leading, and
at weekends as well, she'd be out to three in
the morning, so we were on our own and often
(10:22):
my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever. But my
big thing was just like orange, just orange squash and
just tons of orange squash and sitting up at night
crosier in bed and we and also for example, like Christmas,
Like you said about this, a lot of this podcast
is about people sitting around the table and remembering it. Oh,
(10:43):
there was no sitting around the table for me. It
was sitting and watching the Telly with a tray with
egg and chips. You know, when my mom came home
and Christmas was not Christmas. We didn't have Christmas because
my mom was always working. Our Christmas was like a
week after and kind of cobbled together, but it was
never going to feel the same as the real Christmas.
(11:04):
And one I remember we had Salvation Army one year,
you know, coming around with food and presents because we
didn't have anything. My mom, if she didn't work, we
had nothing. And that is a very different upbringing to
a lot of people I know, And it's not a
thing to feel sorry for. I'm just staying the difference.
(11:25):
And also it's pretty shocking to go from this wealthy
thing of being quite spoiled as well in lots of
ways up until I was seven and then nothing. Do
you remember being hungry? Yeah, and I think my mom
remembers asked, my mom's dead now? But you know, my
mom this, this is one of the most shameful things
(11:47):
that I have to say, But in a way, I'm
sort of proud of her. When that the hotel was
derelict behind, my mom went climbing on the roof and
took lead off the roofs to sell it so as
we had something to eat. And that is on another level,
complete different level. And so much of this is down
to education and so much and it's like the cooking
(12:10):
thing and education and food. There is really better ways
to do this. But when you actually have nothing, and
you're here about these people women shoplifting to get their
babies food, and it seems unimaginable, but it's not when
you've been that poor, that's not. And it's happening now
because we know that it's happening today, and we know that.
(12:33):
You know, when children couldn't get to school because of
the lockdown, they were missing the only meal they had
for the whole day. You know, very many children only
have lunch and that's it. I'm a big supporter of
the Salvation Army or mentioned earlier, and the Salvation Army
will feed sixty thou people a day a day and
(12:54):
it's more now and and all of these support of
food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really really
bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left, when
you left? When did did you? Did you London at thirteen?
Left school at thirteen, and I had to go back
to school by law for lost four months from Christmas
(13:19):
till May. Otherwise my mom social services would have been
involved or whatever. And my mom my mom didn't mind
if we didn't go to school. And I was brought
up with absolutely no rules and I guess this might
be slightly the gypsy side and things no rules whatsoever.
We made our own rules up. If I didn't want
to go to school, I didn't go to school. I
don't want to brush my teeth, I didn't want to brush.
I wouldn't have sex, have sex as long as I
(13:40):
was not going to get pregnant. All of these from
the age of about thirteen fourteen, and and not going
to school was because school was so depressing. It was like, oh,
my god, I'll get there and they chat at me,
or this would happen. All that would happen. I wasn't
doing what I wanted to do, So the last few
(14:00):
months when I went back, I just did art for
four months more or less three days a week, and
then left when I was fifteen, and then came to
London the day I could leave school, that the first
of May, I think it was. I just came straight
to London with a bag to David Bowie albums and
some clothes and stare. I stayed in all different places.
(14:24):
I stayed in a school in Warren Street which was
pretty educational, with quite a lot of well known they're
quite well known people now, very successful people lived there,
and I stayed with different friends different floors. Stayed in
a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time. And and
it's a real mystery how I never really got into
(14:46):
trouble or but I was kind of sassy and sort
of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit. So
I learned a lot and I grew up. But I
was always a lot more mature from my age. I
don't know why. I just grew up very quickly. I
had too and but I don't really have such big
regrets over that because it wasn't it wasn't my fault,
(15:08):
it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
in that poverty at that time in London when you
first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
St Martin's in the Royal College of Art whatever, so
(15:30):
it was a good influence in lots of ways. And
I was so hungry and they said, you're hungry tracers.
So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
And then they told me they were cooking dog and
I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
was one of my And when I bring this up
but in a step, when I see any of them,
they always yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
(15:52):
my only real big story about food. I think parvary
parvarty and food youth and food loneliness and food being
the first into world. But you don't know where you're sleeping,
what you're eating, you know, the lack of being taken
care of is would make it. It's true because now
(16:14):
I have this thing that i'll i'll work on, my
war covered, and I have one in France and my
house there and one in London, and my war cover
is just full of like literally, if there was like
a war, I've got enough food to keep me going
in tins and tins of saldines and all kinds of
stuff and everything. And it just gives me a sense
(16:36):
of security. And I really love going shopping for really
nice food and putting it in the fridge and looking
at it, and it makes me feel so safe and
cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long time
to realize that I had to hang up about it.
I think probably only in the last few years that
I realized how much it meant to me to that
(16:57):
food makes you feel secure and come portable. And for
a long time I didn't eat. I used to be
so thin and everything and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
I didn't care about food at all. For years and
years and years. I was very um, sort of not
anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
things as a priority for living. But now now it
(17:18):
really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
with it and food and art and food and creating,
and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
(17:41):
being together with other artists. When you were in art school,
was that something that you sort of where you exposed
to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
There was that hole? What was it like being now?
When I when I was at art school, I worked.
I used to get in wors getting late in the morning,
getting about quarter to eleven, which I was. I went
(18:02):
to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art.
Did painting at the Royal College of Art. When I
was at the Royal College of Art, I get in
about quarter to eleven in the morning, and I'd stayed
at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at the
weekends as well. I had no social life when I
was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
(18:23):
about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
left art school years later when when I m I
think one of the first things I did as soon
as I started having got money was oysters, and I
just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
(18:48):
well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
or something. It was amazing. And um, I used to
just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
what I like, what I don't like. And I think
my my biggest moment was I was on about a
(19:10):
hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
sind youw muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
(19:33):
a house in the south of France? What is what
is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
but yes, it is on the Mediterranean, and I'm on
the top of a hill. On top of a hill,
looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
(19:54):
just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
it is really beautiful. And it's in the middle of
a nate you reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and
it's a sort of twenty five minute drive to the
little town to buy food and everything. So what I
tend to do is do one shop in a week
and that's it. And then I have my war cupboard.
(20:15):
And my favorite cooking is when I get down and
I've got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
with what I come up with and everything. And and
I just cook for myself there as well, because there's
no there's no restaurants whenywhere to eat near me, and
(20:37):
I love to produce there do you go and you
go around vegetables. I don't know if you if you
do want to talk about this, but we've had quite
a to multuous time, but probably nobody, certainly in this room,
certainly that mean more than you with your illness. And
I think your illness must have affected the way you
(20:58):
eat because it was to do with your digestive system,
isn't it? And so did you did you have to
start eating when you were ill? Or because actually it's
not my digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag.
And and yes, it has affected the way that I
eat because I can't have I still can't couldn't have
(21:19):
I can't have a full bow. I can't be because
it affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely
changed since I was ill, which is quite quite strange.
It's like totally, I mean totally changed. To tell me,
what do you I am vast amounts of fish, vast
(21:42):
amounts of apples, vast amounts of fruit all day long.
I am a lot of which is not supposed to
be good for me. By eat a lot of cold food,
and I don't know why, much more than hot food.
I am a lot more lemon all the time because
they alkaline. I am my diet and it's not conscious
(22:04):
thing either. It's really sub I haven't even tried. I'm
not even thinking about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange.
So you haven't been directed by doctors of what you can.
I eat quite healthily. So they when you're when you're
coming out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they
tell you this, and they tell you that. But I'm
kind of quite forward thinking on good food. So when
(22:27):
I eat something bad, it's because I really want to.
And when you there are so many reasons we eat.
There isn't There are reasons we eat because we're hungry,
or eat because we're in a beautiful place and we
want to celebrate, or we eat because we are feeling
a certain way. We need comfort. If you needed food,
(22:48):
if you needed it for comfort, is there a food
that you might reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples.
I eat probably about six D eight apples a day
a day, apples. I couldn't live without apples. What kind
(23:12):
I like? I've forgotten what they called it. Those pink
ones and they're kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I
absolutely loved them. I washed them, put them on the
bread board, and I get the knife and I don't
cut them equally. I just slice all bits off till
I gets the course. So it's all different shapes. And
maybe I take three of them, and I'm like a
(23:33):
big pile on a very beautiful blue Delf plate. And
then I sit anywhere and just slowly eat three apples
at a time that are all different bits, shapes and pieces,
and it makes me feel so good. That's what we
want you to feel, Drecy, we want you to feel good.
Thank you, Thank you. To visit the online shop of
(24:16):
the River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot
co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production
of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Artists coming together in
the restaurant, you know, and the casso drawn on the
table cloth and all that kind of thing. It's really
known throughout history, but it is to do with the
solitary nous of being in the studio and the solitariness
of being an artist, being very much alone. So this
(00:22):
idea of coming together to eat is such a nice thing.
Here we are and unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London,
but I feel warmed, as I always am, by being
with my friend Tracy Emmon. She's a great friend and
a great artist. Tracy, over to you, okay, so I'm
(00:47):
My favorite thing to eat here is the grilled squid
with shred, chili and rocket. Eight medium squid no bigger
than your hand. Six large fresh red chilies, seeded and
very finely chopped, a hundred and fifty meal, extra virgin oil,
(01:08):
two DRAMs of rocket, four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing.
One lemon cut into quarters to make the sauce. Put
the chopped chilies in a bowl and cover with extra
virgin olive oil, season heat a grill until very hot.
(01:29):
Place the squid, including the tentacles, scored side down on
the grill. Season and grill for two minutes. Turn a
squid pieces over. They will immediately curl up and by
which time they will be cooked. Toss the rocket in
the dressing. Arranged two squid bodies with tentacles on each
(01:50):
plate with the rocket. Put a little of the chili
sauce over the squid, and serve with lemon. I'm so
happy that you chose such a class typically representative of
the river cafe recipe, and I was wondering why you
chose squid chilian rocket. When I go to a restaurant,
(02:11):
I always like to choose food that I wouldn't cook myself,
but god, it's so easy to cook, so maybe I
should do it. But then, and also, I'm Mediterranean, so
um squeet is such a Mediterranean food, and I always
have this sort of light in a primal thing that
if I can eat Mediterranean, eat part of my ancestral
(02:35):
food as much as possible, it makes me feel really
good when I eat it, So that's why I chose it.
When you say that you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean.
Because I thought you were a market. Well Margaret is yeah,
Margaret Mediterranean market. And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's
Turkish Cypriot and my great grandfather was from the Sudan
(03:00):
and he was a slave in the Ottoman Empire and
around eighteen, I don't know, about nineteen hundred he was
given his freedom in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're
known as the there's a thing called like the Black Turks,
and they actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire,
and my family on Mediterranean side is from that background,
(03:23):
so um, there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook,
like amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually
grew all our ound. Me and my dad grew all
up all my vegetables on my studio roof back in
the nineties. Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes,
(03:45):
heritage tomatoes, beans, green beans, everything, and then my dad
would cook so and my mom was a terrible cook.
I hate saying it, both it's true. And the kind
of food I grew up on was a kind of
strange mixture of like this sort of really amazing food
that my dad could cook, and this really terrible food
(04:05):
that my mom could cook that I really loved, and
what you loved mother's food, egg and chips. My mom
was completely against me cooking, and when we were cooking
at school, my mom would actually wrote me letters saying,
my daughter will not learn to cook. My daughter is
(04:25):
not going to be a slave to any man. But
the truth was we didn't actually have the money for
the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But even so it
worked out kind of badly and kind of good. I
didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking at school was
pretty awful. And um, I only learned to cook when
I was much older, when I was sort of a
look around eighteen or nineteen, And even now I'm not
(04:49):
a very good cook, but I really like nice food. Yeah,
and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah, that's
so interesting that she she did not want you to
be stuck in the kitchen as a slave or anyone
to cook for her for a man. That's normal, yeah,
but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
(05:12):
it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
not to be a slave to any man. She was.
She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
(05:35):
She's considered the idea of me having children to be
a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
did everything to stop me from being a single mother
and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
favorite Yeah and yeah, she's when I think about it,
(05:55):
she was really not. My mom was very cozy herson,
but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
My mom was brilliant dancer, and when she was sort
of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
(06:16):
a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
her go when you left her? And how old were
you when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
of growing vegetables, and how how old were you. Actually,
my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
My dad left us when we were about seven, and
(06:40):
my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
when we grew up, it was very different from other
people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor.
Were It's strange we had were very wealthy when we
had that growing up in we were seven and then
(07:01):
my dad lost everything and my dad was married, so
my dad spent three days with his wife, three days
with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
So um, and so when my dad was around, the
cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
(07:25):
My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
my dad was at home, and then when I was older, Um,
(07:45):
I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
that was the first trip to turken Sight for since
I was a baby, and and it was like amazing
m to be with my dad, to be living with
(08:07):
my dad. They're cooking everything, and and my mom was
kind of a bit piste off because all that she'd
done for me. And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm
you know, on my my father's when you started out
by saying you're Mediterranean, and so to actually probably go
and see the Mediterraneans and have the food. But when
we when we were up until we were about six,
(08:30):
we would go to Turkey regularly once a year, and
we spent when we were really tiny, we spent two
periods of six months there. Once when I was about
three or four, and then another time when I was six,
we spent six months there and and all that time
it would have been Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And
we used to drive to Turkey, and this is really cool.
(08:54):
We used to have in the back of the our car.
We had a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs,
you know, with the rapportive seats, and my dad just
with a brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck
a hole through the roof through the you know the bits,
and then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and
(09:15):
then just sat us in the back of the car
bouncing up and we're twins bouncing up and down on
these chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive
to Turkey, and we'd stop on the way all the time,
and my dad would get the calor gas stove out
and fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go
go to fields and take watermelons and things. So it
(09:37):
was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
and it was different and it was different from everybody
else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
my mom working in a hotel as a waitress and
(10:00):
aimper made and so it was like from high to
like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you were
having to cook for yourself. Did you what did you read?
What did you do? There was so my mom was
out a lot most of the time, working leading, and
at weekends as well, she'd be out to three in
the morning, so we were on our own and often
(10:22):
my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever. But my
big thing was just like orange, just orange squash and
just tons of orange squash and sitting up at night
crosier in bed and we and also for example, like Christmas,
Like you said about this, a lot of this podcast
is about people sitting around the table and remembering it. Oh,
(10:43):
there was no sitting around the table for me. It
was sitting and watching the Telly with a tray with
egg and chips. You know, when my mom came home
and Christmas was not Christmas. We didn't have Christmas because
my mom was always working. Our Christmas was like a
week after and kind of cobbled together, but it was
never going to feel the same as the real Christmas.
(11:04):
And one I remember we had Salvation Army one year,
you know, coming around with food and presents because we
didn't have anything. My mom, if she didn't work, we
had nothing. And that is a very different upbringing to
a lot of people I know, And it's not a
thing to feel sorry for. I'm just staying the difference.
(11:25):
And also it's pretty shocking to go from this wealthy
thing of being quite spoiled as well in lots of
ways up until I was seven and then nothing. Do
you remember being hungry? Yeah, and I think my mom
remembers asked, my mom's dead now? But you know, my
mom this, this is one of the most shameful things
(11:47):
that I have to say, But in a way, I'm
sort of proud of her. When that the hotel was
derelict behind, my mom went climbing on the roof and
took lead off the roofs to sell it so as
we had something to eat. And that is on another level,
complete different level. And so much of this is down
to education and so much and it's like the cooking
(12:10):
thing and education and food. There is really better ways
to do this. But when you actually have nothing, and
you're here about these people women shoplifting to get their
babies food, and it seems unimaginable, but it's not when
you've been that poor, that's not. And it's happening now
because we know that it's happening today, and we know that.
(12:33):
You know, when children couldn't get to school because of
the lockdown, they were missing the only meal they had
for the whole day. You know, very many children only
have lunch and that's it. I'm a big supporter of
the Salvation Army or mentioned earlier, and the Salvation Army
will feed sixty thou people a day a day and
(12:54):
it's more now and and all of these support of
food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really really
bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left, when
you left? When did did you? Did you London at thirteen?
Left school at thirteen, and I had to go back
to school by law for lost four months from Christmas
(13:19):
till May. Otherwise my mom social services would have been
involved or whatever. And my mom my mom didn't mind
if we didn't go to school. And I was brought
up with absolutely no rules and I guess this might
be slightly the gypsy side and things no rules whatsoever.
We made our own rules up. If I didn't want
to go to school, I didn't go to school. I
don't want to brush my teeth, I didn't want to brush.
I wouldn't have sex, have sex as long as I
(13:40):
was not going to get pregnant. All of these from
the age of about thirteen fourteen, and and not going
to school was because school was so depressing. It was like, oh,
my god, I'll get there and they chat at me,
or this would happen. All that would happen. I wasn't
doing what I wanted to do, So the last few
(14:00):
months when I went back, I just did art for
four months more or less three days a week, and
then left when I was fifteen, and then came to
London the day I could leave school, that the first
of May, I think it was. I just came straight
to London with a bag to David Bowie albums and
some clothes and stare. I stayed in all different places.
(14:24):
I stayed in a school in Warren Street which was
pretty educational, with quite a lot of well known they're
quite well known people now, very successful people lived there,
and I stayed with different friends different floors. Stayed in
a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time. And and
it's a real mystery how I never really got into
(14:46):
trouble or but I was kind of sassy and sort
of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit. So
I learned a lot and I grew up. But I
was always a lot more mature from my age. I
don't know why. I just grew up very quickly. I
had too and but I don't really have such big
regrets over that because it wasn't it wasn't my fault,
(15:08):
it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
in that poverty at that time in London when you
first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
St Martin's in the Royal College of Art whatever, so
(15:30):
it was a good influence in lots of ways. And
I was so hungry and they said, you're hungry tracers.
So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
And then they told me they were cooking dog and
I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
was one of my And when I bring this up
but in a step, when I see any of them,
they always yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
(15:52):
my only real big story about food. I think parvary
parvarty and food youth and food loneliness and food being
the first into world. But you don't know where you're sleeping,
what you're eating, you know, the lack of being taken
care of is would make it. It's true because now
(16:14):
I have this thing that i'll i'll work on, my
war covered, and I have one in France and my
house there and one in London, and my war cover
is just full of like literally, if there was like
a war, I've got enough food to keep me going
in tins and tins of saldines and all kinds of
stuff and everything. And it just gives me a sense
(16:36):
of security. And I really love going shopping for really
nice food and putting it in the fridge and looking
at it, and it makes me feel so safe and
cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long time
to realize that I had to hang up about it.
I think probably only in the last few years that
I realized how much it meant to me to that
(16:57):
food makes you feel secure and come portable. And for
a long time I didn't eat. I used to be
so thin and everything and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
I didn't care about food at all. For years and
years and years. I was very um, sort of not
anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
things as a priority for living. But now now it
(17:18):
really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
with it and food and art and food and creating,
and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
(17:41):
being together with other artists. When you were in art school,
was that something that you sort of where you exposed
to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
There was that hole? What was it like being now?
When I when I was at art school, I worked.
I used to get in wors getting late in the morning,
getting about quarter to eleven, which I was. I went
(18:02):
to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art.
Did painting at the Royal College of Art. When I
was at the Royal College of Art, I get in
about quarter to eleven in the morning, and I'd stayed
at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at the
weekends as well. I had no social life when I
was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
(18:23):
about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
left art school years later when when I m I
think one of the first things I did as soon
as I started having got money was oysters, and I
just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
(18:48):
well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
or something. It was amazing. And um, I used to
just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
what I like, what I don't like. And I think
my my biggest moment was I was on about a
(19:10):
hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
sind youw muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
(19:33):
a house in the south of France? What is what
is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
but yes, it is on the Mediterranean, and I'm on
the top of a hill. On top of a hill,
looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
(19:54):
just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
it is really beautiful. And it's in the middle of
a nate you reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and
it's a sort of twenty five minute drive to the
little town to buy food and everything. So what I
tend to do is do one shop in a week
and that's it. And then I have my war cupboard.
(20:15):
And my favorite cooking is when I get down and
I've got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
with what I come up with and everything. And and
I just cook for myself there as well, because there's
no there's no restaurants whenywhere to eat near me, and
(20:37):
I love to produce there do you go and you
go around vegetables. I don't know if you if you
do want to talk about this, but we've had quite
a to multuous time, but probably nobody, certainly in this room,
certainly that mean more than you with your illness. And
I think your illness must have affected the way you
(20:58):
eat because it was to do with your digestive system,
isn't it? And so did you did you have to
start eating when you were ill? Or because actually it's
not my digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag.
And and yes, it has affected the way that I
eat because I can't have I still can't couldn't have
(21:19):
I can't have a full bow. I can't be because
it affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely
changed since I was ill, which is quite quite strange.
It's like totally, I mean totally changed. To tell me,
what do you I am vast amounts of fish, vast
(21:42):
amounts of apples, vast amounts of fruit all day long.
I am a lot of which is not supposed to
be good for me. By eat a lot of cold food,
and I don't know why, much more than hot food.
I am a lot more lemon all the time because
they alkaline. I am my diet and it's not conscious
(22:04):
thing either. It's really sub I haven't even tried. I'm
not even thinking about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange.
So you haven't been directed by doctors of what you can.
I eat quite healthily. So they when you're when you're
coming out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they
tell you this, and they tell you that. But I'm
kind of quite forward thinking on good food. So when
(22:27):
I eat something bad, it's because I really want to.
And when you there are so many reasons we eat.
There isn't There are reasons we eat because we're hungry,
or eat because we're in a beautiful place and we
want to celebrate, or we eat because we are feeling
a certain way. We need comfort. If you needed food,
(22:48):
if you needed it for comfort, is there a food
that you might reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples.
I eat probably about six D eight apples a day
a day, apples. I couldn't live without apples. What kind
(23:12):
I like? I've forgotten what they called it. Those pink
ones and they're kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I
absolutely loved them. I washed them, put them on the
bread board, and I get the knife and I don't
cut them equally. I just slice all bits off till
I gets the course. So it's all different shapes. And
maybe I take three of them, and I'm like a
(23:33):
big pile on a very beautiful blue Delf plate. And
then I sit anywhere and just slowly eat three apples
at a time that are all different bits, shapes and pieces,
and it makes me feel so good. That's what we
want you to feel, Drecy, we want you to feel good.
Thank you, Thank you. To visit the online shop of
(24:16):
the River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot
co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production
of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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