November 18, 2024 • 32 mins
The connections between Scott Rothkopf, Director of New York’s Whitney Museum, and I run deep.
When Rose and I wrote the first River Cafe Cookbook in 1994, Scott’s husband, Jonathan Burnham, helped us with our introduction.
Museums and restaurants are about connecting art and people. They welcome people into a space and create something beautiful to see, or cook something delicious for them to eat. This is what my friend Scott and I do every day, and this is what we will talk about today. A deep connection, indeed.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Me+Em
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
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in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevine, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. The connections between Scott Rothkoff, director of
(00:47):
New York's Whitney Museum, and I run very deep. When
Rose and I wrote the first River Cafe cookbook in
nineteen ninety four, Scott's husband Jonathan Burnham helped us with
our introduction. When the Jasper John's retrospective opened at the Whitney, Scott,
who curated the show, took us and our young children
through slowly describing the paintings he loved most and why
(01:12):
museums and restaurants are about connecting art and people. They
welcome audiences Scott's chosen word, into his space and create
something beautiful to see, or we cook something delicious for
them to eat. When I spoke to you yesterday, I said,
what's new, and you said, Ruthie, what's new is that
I had a visit from Barack and Michelle Obama to
(01:36):
see the show that is on right now, which is
called Edges of Aley. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it is really one of the most exciting thing
that's ever happened at the Whitney. The show is just
this extraordinary look into the life and work of the
American choreographer Alvin Ailey, who famously said that he wanted
to chronicle in his art, which was Dan dance the
Black experience, and he does that, but for me, that's
(02:04):
the American experience. There's everything in this work, you know.
He grew up in Rogers, Texas in the South. It
was a sharecropping family, very poor. He lived in la
He danced on Broadway, he danced in movies. He choreographed
the opening night of Studio fifty four. You have the Church,
you have Soul Train, you have Gospel, you have Duke Ellington,
you have the State Department, which funded his journeys around
(02:27):
the world. As you know, one of the great choreographers
of America, beginning in the nineteen sixties, he danced at
the Lynda Johnson White House, and Ailey has never been
subject of a big show like this. And he is,
to my mind, not you know, the greatest black choreographer
or even the greatest choreographer. He's one of the greatest
creative geniesses of the twentieth century in any medium period.
(02:49):
And that's what this show is about. So when the
Obamas came calling on the second or third day that
the show was opened to say could we come for
our anniversary, I thought, sure that we can make happen.
So they got a private visit too, Ruthie. An hour
and fifteen minutes they stayed, and it was so moving
to see that show through their eyes. Was really something
(03:09):
I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, lucky them, yes, lucky to have you and lucky
to take them there. So you've come for.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Freeze, I've come for freeze, tell me. And also I
came for a birthday party of one of Jonathan's old
friends called the Destination Party. It was it wastation. We
were at Castle Howard, which is a very glamorous place
to celebrate a seventieth birthday of a mother and a
thirtieth birthday of her daughter, which ensures that you have
a lot of good looking young people as you get older,
(03:38):
and I, being forty eight, was really upset that I
was seated at the old people's table. Well, I thought,
you know, and you know, like I had this bridge generation. Yeah,
so that was a good you know, having an English
husband means that there are certain things that bring me
to London other than just art fairs and museum openings.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Why don't we read the recipe?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, this is very exciting for me because I don't
think I've actually read a recipe since I met my husband.
He does all the cooking and I do all the eating.
But this is something I really enjoy. I love artichokes,
so I'm delighted to read about spaghetti with artichoke pesto
for six. If we were making it at my home,
we'd probably make it for eight, even if we were
only having six. Comeback, because Jonathan is always panicked, there
(04:18):
won't be enough.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That's a nice quality, so there's always too much.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Exactly six small globe artichokes boiled, one hundred grams of
pine nuts, one garlic clove, two fifty mL of milk,
two tablespoons of parsley leaves, one hundred and fifty grams
of grated pecorino, one hundred and fifty mili liters of
olive oil, four hundred grams of spaghetti. Blend the artichokes,
(04:47):
pine nuts, and garlic to a rough pulp. Add the milk,
parsley and pecorino, and pulse again. Add the olive oil
to the mixture to form a cream, season and put
it into a small pan. Cook the spaghetti until al dente.
Drain and return the pasta to the pan with one
ladleful of hot water, toss, Add the pesto and toss again.
(05:10):
The sauce should be wet and creamy. If necessary, add
more water. Serve with freshly grated pecorino or parmesan.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Oh great, well, do you want to get him. We're
going to bring some over cooking. Get there in the restaurant,
even though you're having lunch. We'll have a taste.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, I didn't have breakfast in anticipation of my lunch,
so there.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Have spaghetti before lunch. So let's talk about growing up
in Dallas. First, the start at the beginning. In the beginning,
tell me about the food as a child in your home.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sure, I was born in Arizona. I was born on
an Air Force base called Luke Air Force Base that
was outside of Phoenix, and my dad was in the
service then. This was in the seventies, and we moved
to Dallas when I was just almost a year old.
So I really did grow up in Dallas and really
was a kind of child of the nineteen eighties. And
thou sisters, No, I have a stepsister who entered my
(05:57):
life when I was twelve.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Let's say, so you were an only child with your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I was, My mom worked, My dad was a doctor.
My mom worked at what was then a New saxophonth
Avenue store selling handbags to you know, these people in
Dallas in the eighties who wanted very glamorous looking bags
covered with rhinestones and things. And she was a good cook.
And when I was really little, in our household we
kept kosher actually, so that was interesting and it was
(06:24):
you know, not that strict. When we went out, we
kind of cheated, but at home it was because it
was no pork, no pork, no shellfish, no milk and meat,
which actually meant I was introduced to all sorts of
funny products like cool whip, which was a kind of
fake whipped cream because you couldn't have whiped cream on
your dessert after a meal that had eaten at things
(06:44):
like that. And she was a good cook. My mom
and her grandfather had been a baker, and her grandmother
the cook at a restaurant in a hotel in the
Catskill Mountains that they know what it was called the Liberty. Yeah,
it no longer exists, that hotel. It was very close
to Gross. It was the sort of less less known
cousin of Gross Singers.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yes, that's where I grew Yeah, I know, so my
years right and you know that area.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Well, the hotel was actually called the Dixie Lake Hotel.
The town was Liberty, New York. That was the nearest
one to it. So she grew up in this world
of hospitality. It was a kosher hotel, and she learned
certain things from from her mother and her grandparents. So
we did have a lot of home cooking. I remember,
especially the Jewish holidays like Passover and restaurant on everyone
coming together around big meals.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Did your mother have a recipe book of her grandparents' recipes?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
You know, she joked that her grandmother and her mother
used to always sabotage all the recipes that they would
give to her, which apparently is not uncommon. They would
accidentally leave out so that she was sort of foiled
and ever being as good a cook as they were.
But you know, it was a time in Dallas where
there was probably like the kind of inkling of a
dawning food conscience. Or you know, we're about what years
(07:58):
in the eighties, Let's say it's not we didn't go
to farmers markets, nobody had ingredients like that. But I remember,
you know, you could buy basil at the supermarket that
wasn't flaked and dried, or you know, my mother had
this cookbook that reached us from New York City. It
was called the Silver Palette Cookbook, and it was about
it was from this store on the Upper West Side
(08:18):
that sold prepared foods basically in New York and my
mother must have thought that this was incredibly kind of
chic and worldly, and this was sort of before anybody
had heard of Inine Garden, let's say, and the kind
of things that she has you cook. And she would
make recipes from that cookbook, and I remember looking at
it thinking this just must be the most glamorous place
in the world. I always had an obsession with New York,
so it wasn't all old fashioned kosher cooking.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So she would work during the day and chop and
then come home and would you sit down to dinner?
And we did as a family.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
We always pretty much always sat down to dinner.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
My parents divorced when I was nine or ten, and
they had joint custody, so I would go back and forth,
and it kind of meant that whatever night they had me,
they were home. They didn't make other plans because that
was maybe only half the time. And we would eat
my mom, my stepfather, and I and she would often,
you know, grill like a simple chicken breasts I can remember,
(09:12):
like marinated in Italian dressing, which also probably seemed like
an interesting food concept at the time. And my stepmother
also cooked. But my father had a recipe that he
thought that he was famous for. Famous perhaps only to
those who knew him well, called hamburger lemons surprise.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Which part was a surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I don't know, probably the amount of lemons or the
black pepper corns that as a child I used to
have avoid, you know, burning my mouth. And that's the
only thing I can make without a recipe I can make. Yeah,
you can make it too, Ruthie, I bet, I don't
think you want to.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
You ever put it with pasta?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You know you could. You could put it with pasta,
You could put it with anything. You could feed it
to your dog.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Do you think your father was was expressing some form
of love for you.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
In a way? There might have been a bit of that.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I went to Dallas. I was in Dallas, which and
I he was working with Ray Nasher mm hm great
collective course, and we insisted on staying downtown. But this
was in the seventies, maybe late seventies. But we had
some good food, and I was wondering if you did
you go out meals with your parents? We did?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know? We went to Italian or Chinese restaurants in
the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Special occasion.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, well there were special occasions there, you know, there
were And you might know more about this than I did.
But at that time in Dallas there was this kind
of beginning of a kind of Southwestern cuisine, and there
was a chef called Fearing at the Mansion on Turtle
Creature so expensive that had a really well known chef,
and they were bringing together ideas from some Mexican cuisine
(10:46):
and some barbecue and you know, grilling and blackening things
and kind of thinking about the Southwest and some of
the more local cooking traditions and a sort of elevated manner.
So that was a thing. And then there were a
couple of like really old fashioned kind of restaurants I'm
sure that don't exist in hotels like the Adulphus, and
you would go and that's where we stayed, did you there?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You go, that's the hotel we staff. I'd thought of that.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
In forty year I had a restaurant there and it
was called the Pyramid Room, and you could have a sorbet,
you know, intermetso that they would bring out a frozen
swan that I think had like a flashlight inside, so
it was like this glowing ice swan. And you could
have a chocolate souflee there, which is the only time
in my life that I ever had a soup flet
until probably I went to France many years later. So
(11:29):
there were these occasions that you did go out, you know, infrequently,
for these super what seemed like very grand dining experiences.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So going back to the art history, who grew up
always with art and with the I.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Visually grew up just always loving art. It was the
thing that excited me and interested me the most of
anything in the world. And I had friends in Dallas
and the eighties who liked football or American football, I mean,
playing sports. I never had any interest. My father remembers
me picking flowers by the side of the field at
my first soccer game, and I think he realized I
was not going to be one for team sports at
(12:04):
that point. But my mother was interested in art and
she painted little herself, and she really encouraged me. And
I developed an absolute fascination with Frankloyd Wright, the architect,
and he had designed the theater in Dallas where I
took little acting classes and did plays as a kid.
And maybe when I was about nine or ten, right
(12:26):
around the time my parents were getting divorced, actually I
sort of wanted to go see some of these buildings
and my mother, I think, realized that this was something
that she could encourage in me. And we'd plan these
trips and we went to see falling water outside of Pittsburgh,
and we went to Taliessen, and we went to Chicago,
and we went to all these different places, and it
was this kind of wonderful time in the life of
(12:46):
a mother and a son. Well, I was probably at
that point, about eleven to twelve thirteen.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What do you think was it that drew you to
Frank Cloyd?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There was something, you know. I used to study the
floor plants and I could memory all the buildings. I
was absolutely obsessed, and I would ask for volumes of
the catalog Raisina for my birthday. They were very expensive
and they were printed in Japan. I think we'd go
to the Soli store and I had a collection of
Frank would write books, and there was something about the
kind of complexity of the space, and I would get
(13:15):
lost in these floor plans and try to understand how
the rooms fit together. And also the story of him
was kind of grand and he went under the cape
and a beret and you know, thwacked his cane and
made pronouncements. Then at some point. An interest in contemporary
art sort of supplanted the architecture fixation. But what my grandparents,
who were very I was very close to my grandmother,
(13:37):
especially my father's my father's mother. Was it just about
my favorite person in the whole world. I'm even thinking
about her now, I get a little choked up. I
miss her. She always had her face made up and
went to the beauty parlor, and you know, she wore
some jewelry. And her husband was an accountant who had
been born literally in a tenement on Ludlow Street and
(13:57):
went to City College for free, which was a great
opportunity that people had in those years during the depression.
But she really believed in supporting my interest in art,
and she and my grandfather I would I would go
once a year to stay with them in August for
like a week on Delta Airlines as an unaccompanied minor
(14:19):
whatever age. I would yeah, Badge and I would get there,
and I can still picture that that drive from LaGuardia
Airport out to Hicksville, which is of course not a
very attractive drive, but in my mind that was like
people have what's your favorite journey, you know, like they're
going to the Alps, you know, to go ski. My
favorite journey was from LaGuardia to Hicksville, you know, your grandmother. Yeah,
(14:41):
with them in the car. I remember being picked up
and the anticipation of what that week would be. And
they took me to the Whitney Museum many times as
a child when it was on Madison Avenue to look
at Calder Circus.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Will you describe what Calder Circus was?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, Calder Circus is one of the real treasures of
the Whitney's collection, made by Alexander Calder, and he made
sort of for fun, but it became a great artwork,
all these different circus figures that he could, you know,
pull a lever on a kangaroo and you know, it
would walk and move its feet. And it's actually on
view right now in the Whitney Museum in downtown Manhattan,
(15:14):
and I take my son there and he's totally into it.
The lion, all the different characters, and I'm just reminded.
It's very touching to meet things do come full circle.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The River Cafe Cafe, our all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant, is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, I screamed coops in
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates, Salumi, Misti, mozzarella, briusquetta,
(15:51):
red and yellow peppers, Vitello tonado and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book see you here. Just thinking of
(16:11):
change in your life also in terms of the way
you ate and what you could eat and maybe what
you didn't need or bother eating. You went to college
and you went to Harvard. Was that either an awakening
because of the restaurants that were available in Cambridge or
did you you know?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I mean I ate a lot of you know, bad
dorm food, and I didn't cook and I didn't have
a kitchen then because I lived in a dorm. But
it was obviously a more international context.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Now Dallas has many immigrants from all around the world too,
But we didn't grow up going to those kind of restaurants.
I remember the first time I ate Ethiopian food and
the kind of tang of that bread, or the first time,
you know, I had Vietnamese fa You know, the kind
of thing in Cambridge exactly, and the kind of thing
that people associate with graduate student life and cosapolitan areas.
(16:59):
My taste definitely started awakening to a broader range. Like
in Dallas were going to be the only Asian food
I would have had would have been a certain kind
of Chinese food, and I say certain kind meaning American kind.
But as I got to college, I had, you know,
Japanese food and all these things, and a lot of
it was was cheap, and we would go out with
our friends sometimes venture into Boston.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
After Harvard, you moved to New York.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I moved to New York for a year in an apartment,
in a little apartment in Chelsea, about three blocks from
where I'm living now, which is just to talk about
coming full circle. It was a studio apartment. I did
not have a bed. I had a sofa bed from
Ikia that I rarely opened because that was going to
require too much efforts. I slept sideways on this ikea
(17:41):
sofa bed, and I don't know that you would call
it a kitchen. It was not even a galley kitchen
because it wasn't even enclosed. It was kind of part
of this room essentially the only enclosed part. I don't
know what it's called. It had. It had a stove,
and it had a fridge and had an oven, none
of which will probably ever used. I think if you'd
open my fridge then you might have found, you know,
(18:02):
some tonic and some cocktail olives and some leftovers or
something growing on them.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
So social life was centered around going to all the restaurants.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, we had these teeny tiny apartments and nobody really
entertained at home. And I remember going, I mean speaking
of like being in London to around the corner from
me was the art dealer Gavin Brown, who now was
part of Barbara Gladstone had this really cool gallery and
he had this really cool bar, and he had a
bar called Passerby. Yeah, in the front of the gallery. Yeah,
(18:32):
this social space. So this would have been in my
first year in New York. So let's say its ninteen
ninety nine or something. And I would go to this
bar and I was very aware that everyone in the
room was really cool and really interesting, and I knew
they were I knew who you know. Elizabeth Peyton, Oh
my god, ELIZEB. Peyton's at the bar, and I remember
there was this kind of shorter woman with big curly hair,
(18:53):
who it turned out was Amanda Sharp, the founder of Freeze,
speaking of the Freeze Art Fair. So I kind of thought,
you know, I'm just not ready for New York. I
got to go back to school, and I picked up,
and I went back to Cambridge for graduate school, also
studying art history. And then at some point I was
offered a job of moving to New York to become
a senior editor, and I thought, I better get to
(19:16):
New York in my late twenties, and I was going
to meet artists of my generation, and I was going
to write about them, and I was going to go
to their studios and I was going to drink with them,
and maybe I'd make out with them and we'd go
to bars and we just this was the minute, the
last minute, or I was going to end up at
Harvard and the Faculty Club with the pipe, which could
have happened because I loved I loved the Academy. And
(19:36):
so I picked up, and I moved to New York
and started this job in the art world, which I
never left.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
In New York.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
That was twenty years. Yeah, then I was ready. I
had a business card.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I knew where I'm not ready for New York.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, I was like that. I was ready to not
be that student or that Texas kid anymore. And it
was an incredible journey about four five, six, the aughts
as we call them, meeting so many people.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
So did your aspiration? Did you did hang out with
young artists? Did go to their studios? And you did?
And did you eat?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And some of the friends should check them out?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
The eating again? It was it was funny. I ate
as a guest, as a journalist, as an editor. We
went to the places where the business was of looking
at art, of selling art, and often our hosts were
museums or galleries that celebrated their artists. And we went
to around the world to where art first were. And
(20:35):
I developed a sort of taste for foods in a
very select set of cities that were the stops on
the art world's caravan.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I've always been interested in reading much earlier about to
Cooning and Pollock and the artists that were in New
York and what was it called maxis Kansas City where
they would and the solitary life that they had pain
all day in his studio and then going out at
night to drink and to party and too because it
(21:05):
is solitary.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And I think Gavin's Bar that one passer by mentioned
was a bit of a maxis of its moment, and
you know that it was interesting as a young critic, editor, person,
whatever I was. We my friends and I were interested
in the places that had a kind of patina of
the art world's history. And it's amazing to me now
(21:27):
to think that quite a few of them that we
went to still exist twenty years later. And probably they
were like Indochine, like the Odeon. I mean, these were
places where we had seen pictures of, you know, the
Leo Castelli gallery in the bathroom at Odeon with Andy Warhol,
and you know, we could imagine what it was like
when people went out there. And that was the eighties.
(21:48):
So this was twenty years later, and twenty years later
it's still there.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You were at the Whitney after Art Form, Yes, is
that right?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So I went to work at the Whitney almost exactly
fifteen years ago, two thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And nine on Madison Avenue Museum by Marcel Pryor exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, when I started the museum, first of all,
I was not the director or the chief airs. My
title was one word curator. It got longer as the
time went by, so they had already made the decision
to move downtown and the building was roughly designed by
the time I got there, although in two thousand and
nine when I started, we were really not long after
the wait financial crisis, so there was some concern as
(22:26):
to whether the museum was able to raise the money
to do this project, which which we did.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Did you always knew that you wanted a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
There, Yeah, there was always going to be a restaurant.
I think There've been a number of different ideas that
I've witnessed in the last twenty years in the business,
and probably my thoughts have evolved over that time. Tell
me about museums, well, I mean, the funny thing is
those bad museum restaurants, the cafeterias that big museums do.
(22:55):
I remember going to the one at the Met with
my grandmother in the eighties, and you could get at
a cup of coffee that wasn't too expensive, You could
serve yourself. The quality of the food may not have
been that good, but it was extremely inclusive. And what
I think we came to see was the idea that
museums wanted to kind of up level this food service experience,
and in so doing they became more expensive and more exclusionary.
(23:19):
And I remember thinking, there's something funny about the first
thing somebody sees is a patron eating a forty dollars
piece of fish, and that became a greater disconnect in
I think our minds as we wanted to create more
access to the museum. So we've just relaunched our food service,
and we sort of liked the idea of this. We're
(23:41):
calling it like the flagship of French at bakery, that
a bakery is a place where you can get sandwiches
or a croissant or a cup of coffee, and that
it would not be really fine fine dining, but an
up level museum cafe which is not cheap, but it's
certainly much more affordable than our past restaurant down stairs.
And people can come in the neighborhood and take the
(24:03):
bread if you bake up the Whitney home, they can
get a cup of coffee. And I like to think
that the destination is really the art, and the cafe
is a place where you might if you're meeting a
friend to see the Avonne Ali show. You'll come and
have lunch before and then see you get a cup
of coffee after on the way out. But maybe we're
not trying to get in the business of running an
(24:23):
incredible fine dining establishment on our eighth floor of a
beautiful bar with views all of New York and see
the Statue of Liberty in the Empire State Building. We
had artists redesign these spaces, so the artist Deanni Whitehawk
made a wonderful mural and the artist Rashid Johnson did
this incredible sculpture in our downstairs space that's like a
sort of gateway to the museum. Very Whitney that we
would start with the artists designing the space before we
(24:45):
had a restaurant tour or a food concept. I'm not
sure the restaurant tours would agree that that was the
way to go.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
To go into a restaurant that that had been started
with in the art world, rather than the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It started in the art world. There was a moment
where we're like, oh my god, I think we've actually
made the food service impossible with Rashid sculpture, and he
let us do some tweaks so that people could clear
tables or get some access to the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. If somebody asked me my luxury, if I
(25:32):
would say going to a museum when it's closed, and
a real luxury for me was being taken with you
around the Jasper John Show. Does he like to eat? Jasper?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Jasper is actually a very good cook, and he's very
interested in in ingredients and seasonality in his garden. He's
now ninety four years old. I'm doing the math his birthdays.
In May he would have turned ninety four, so he
was born in nineteen thirty. He is a good cook.
And when you go to lunch at his house and Sharon,
(26:02):
which is a very beautiful place to visit. It's an
old stone house in Connecticut, and it has incredible art
in it.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Does he collect or is it mostly his art?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
He collects and is his art and his collection has
the most interesting everything in it has this incredible provenance.
It'll be like this is a Rauschenberg painting that he
was given as a gift when they were you know, boyfriends.
And this is an Andy Warhol you know, sculpture box
that he uses just as an end table and gets
(26:34):
a drink ring on it, and he remembers knowing Andy
and seeing this mint Marilyn in the first time that
Leo Costelli showed one. Or here's a sculpture of John
Chamberlain's that he installed multiple times. But he also collects
older art and as he became you know, had more means.
He bought Picasso and Duga and seys On and you
see and things with incredible provenoance like a Seyson that
(26:57):
Duga owned. You see this greatane of artistic interest fro
I'm like, wow, I'm looking at Jasper John's looking at
a season that I know Degay used to look at
in his living room. And so it's always a treat
for me. The first time I went there. I'll never forget,
you know, the experience of being welcomed into this world
of you know, these incredible artistic objects, but also things
(27:19):
that he finds interesting that are not as famous, like
a George or pot or a Hameda bowl from Japan,
or you know, even a kind of funny, like little
toy that does something that moves. And he used to
have a chef for a while that I knew very well.
And when you eat there, like especially if it's at lunch,
(27:40):
they put out a little buffet, and unlike Jonathan, unlike
our home, there's not a lot of everything. You take
like two little carrots, and you take a little piece
of fish, and you take a little bit of bread
or some kind of soup. He like soup. But everything
feels like sort of perfectly selected and chosen, and you
have quite a few small bites of different things.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Do you thing that reflects his art? Do you think
he'd be paying.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well, you know, it's funny. There's a certain amount of
like a level of consideration and intentionality to it that
nothing will go wasted. He also grew up, you know,
in the depression, and that everything is sort of appreciated
as a kind of complete gesture. Maybe I could see that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And what about home? Now that you have two children
and you have both of you have very important work days,
what's the word of family balance food wise?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I am coming up on having met my husband jon
and Burnham, whom you mentioned on your first book.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh, Yeah, I think you met over food. Did you
meet it on a first date?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
We met over it was drinks. Our first date was
a blind day. We were set up by a mutual friend,
almost exactly ten years ago. We're about a month shy
of having known each other for ten years. And I
would say it was a good of food. I kind
of knew. I got on a plane right after that
date and I thought, I've just met the guy I'm
going to marry.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I remember Rose and I sort of sitting at his desk,
probably on the desk grows stretched out, you know, writing
the introduction to the book. Yeah, and he loved food.
He loves he loves food. So you married a man
who really how does that feel? Having one, I mean partner?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Great? He loves food certainly much more than I do.
And everything is taken care of. And I think his
love of food comes almost from a fear as a
child of privation, which is a weird thing to say
about someone who grew up certainly with means. But I
guess in his household there just wasn't like in my
household growing up. There was always food. There was coffee cake.
You never sat down in a Jewish household like ours,
(29:34):
without your grandparents, without eating, you know, it was just
there was lots and lots of food. And I think
he didn't grow up like that, you know. And he
remembers his father was actually Japanese prisoner of war in
you know, World War two, and thinking about like being
hungry is something that he worried about, even though that's
you know, ridiculous in terms of our financial situation, but
(29:56):
it's just a kind of it's there deep down. He
talks about it, I'm sure, or with a shrink that
you know, the house just always has to have lots
and lots of food, whereas I, as I said, would
have just like an empty fridge. Our fridge is so
full now. And he loves to cook, and he cooks
almost six days a week. And this is a person
who we could come home late from a party and
(30:16):
I would just like scrounge around like a rodent for
a cracker, and he would like put on water to
boil and make pasta. And he cooks all the food
for our children, and there's always delicious, delicious food at home. Interestingly,
he reads cookbooks for pleasure almost every morning with his
coffee while he eats his breakfast.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Do you think he's thinking about because some people do
wake up in the morning and think what am I
going to? Oh?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Definitely, he thinks. I can't wait for bad. I don't
even eat breakfast. I have coffee, you know. He looks
forward to that first meal, and he reads cookbooks the
way people read like newspapers. With his coffee and his toast.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Food is a celebration, communication, it's a sharing. It's also
a comfort. Yes. And so if we were for our
last question, if we were thinking about food for you, Scott,
being something that will give you comfort, is there something
that you might go to when you when you need that.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I mean a dry gen martinie that'll cook.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Is that a comfort?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I'm not a comfort food eater, you know. I hear
these people who say I need cookies or something.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I mean, it's a dry martine is a good as
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I might be more of a comfort drinker than comfort
eat My Jonathan ow he says, you know, like if
he's ordering fresh director when he goes, do you want anything, Darling?
And I might say just make sure there's some tomic,
you know, But otherwise I'll eat whatever is there. I
enjoy the gesture whatever it is, but luckily I don't
have a lot of opinions about it.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Food does Olivia hunger and I'm quite personally starving. Should
we go eat? Yes?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Absolutely, I'd love to thank you so much
This episode is brought to you by Me and M,
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It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough
to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished
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in its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're
in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand
new flagship store in Marlevine, which opens on the twenty
ninth of October. The connections between Scott Rothkoff, director of
(00:47):
New York's Whitney Museum, and I run very deep. When
Rose and I wrote the first River Cafe cookbook in
nineteen ninety four, Scott's husband Jonathan Burnham helped us with
our introduction. When the Jasper John's retrospective opened at the Whitney, Scott,
who curated the show, took us and our young children
through slowly describing the paintings he loved most and why
(01:12):
museums and restaurants are about connecting art and people. They
welcome audiences Scott's chosen word, into his space and create
something beautiful to see, or we cook something delicious for
them to eat. When I spoke to you yesterday, I said,
what's new, and you said, Ruthie, what's new is that
I had a visit from Barack and Michelle Obama to
(01:36):
see the show that is on right now, which is
called Edges of Aley. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it is really one of the most exciting thing
that's ever happened at the Whitney. The show is just
this extraordinary look into the life and work of the
American choreographer Alvin Ailey, who famously said that he wanted
to chronicle in his art, which was Dan dance the
Black experience, and he does that, but for me, that's
(02:04):
the American experience. There's everything in this work, you know.
He grew up in Rogers, Texas in the South. It
was a sharecropping family, very poor. He lived in la
He danced on Broadway, he danced in movies. He choreographed
the opening night of Studio fifty four. You have the Church,
you have Soul Train, you have Gospel, you have Duke Ellington,
you have the State Department, which funded his journeys around
(02:27):
the world. As you know, one of the great choreographers
of America, beginning in the nineteen sixties, he danced at
the Lynda Johnson White House, and Ailey has never been
subject of a big show like this. And he is,
to my mind, not you know, the greatest black choreographer
or even the greatest choreographer. He's one of the greatest
creative geniesses of the twentieth century in any medium period.
(02:49):
And that's what this show is about. So when the
Obamas came calling on the second or third day that
the show was opened to say could we come for
our anniversary, I thought, sure that we can make happen.
So they got a private visit too, Ruthie. An hour
and fifteen minutes they stayed, and it was so moving
to see that show through their eyes. Was really something
(03:09):
I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, lucky them, yes, lucky to have you and lucky
to take them there. So you've come for.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Freeze, I've come for freeze, tell me. And also I
came for a birthday party of one of Jonathan's old
friends called the Destination Party. It was it wastation. We
were at Castle Howard, which is a very glamorous place
to celebrate a seventieth birthday of a mother and a
thirtieth birthday of her daughter, which ensures that you have
a lot of good looking young people as you get older,
(03:38):
and I, being forty eight, was really upset that I
was seated at the old people's table. Well, I thought,
you know, and you know, like I had this bridge generation. Yeah,
so that was a good you know, having an English
husband means that there are certain things that bring me
to London other than just art fairs and museum openings.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Why don't we read the recipe?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, this is very exciting for me because I don't
think I've actually read a recipe since I met my husband.
He does all the cooking and I do all the eating.
But this is something I really enjoy. I love artichokes,
so I'm delighted to read about spaghetti with artichoke pesto
for six. If we were making it at my home,
we'd probably make it for eight, even if we were
only having six. Comeback, because Jonathan is always panicked, there
(04:18):
won't be enough.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That's a nice quality, so there's always too much.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Exactly six small globe artichokes boiled, one hundred grams of
pine nuts, one garlic clove, two fifty mL of milk,
two tablespoons of parsley leaves, one hundred and fifty grams
of grated pecorino, one hundred and fifty mili liters of
olive oil, four hundred grams of spaghetti. Blend the artichokes,
(04:47):
pine nuts, and garlic to a rough pulp. Add the milk,
parsley and pecorino, and pulse again. Add the olive oil
to the mixture to form a cream, season and put
it into a small pan. Cook the spaghetti until al dente.
Drain and return the pasta to the pan with one
ladleful of hot water, toss, Add the pesto and toss again.
(05:10):
The sauce should be wet and creamy. If necessary, add
more water. Serve with freshly grated pecorino or parmesan.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Oh great, well, do you want to get him. We're
going to bring some over cooking. Get there in the restaurant,
even though you're having lunch. We'll have a taste.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, I didn't have breakfast in anticipation of my lunch,
so there.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Have spaghetti before lunch. So let's talk about growing up
in Dallas. First, the start at the beginning. In the beginning,
tell me about the food as a child in your home.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sure, I was born in Arizona. I was born on
an Air Force base called Luke Air Force Base that
was outside of Phoenix, and my dad was in the
service then. This was in the seventies, and we moved
to Dallas when I was just almost a year old.
So I really did grow up in Dallas and really
was a kind of child of the nineteen eighties. And
thou sisters, No, I have a stepsister who entered my
(05:57):
life when I was twelve.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Let's say, so you were an only child with your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I was, My mom worked, My dad was a doctor.
My mom worked at what was then a New saxophonth
Avenue store selling handbags to you know, these people in
Dallas in the eighties who wanted very glamorous looking bags
covered with rhinestones and things. And she was a good cook.
And when I was really little, in our household we
kept kosher actually, so that was interesting and it was
(06:24):
you know, not that strict. When we went out, we
kind of cheated, but at home it was because it
was no pork, no pork, no shellfish, no milk and meat,
which actually meant I was introduced to all sorts of
funny products like cool whip, which was a kind of
fake whipped cream because you couldn't have whiped cream on
your dessert after a meal that had eaten at things
(06:44):
like that. And she was a good cook. My mom
and her grandfather had been a baker, and her grandmother
the cook at a restaurant in a hotel in the
Catskill Mountains that they know what it was called the Liberty. Yeah,
it no longer exists, that hotel. It was very close
to Gross. It was the sort of less less known
cousin of Gross Singers.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yes, that's where I grew Yeah, I know, so my
years right and you know that area.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Well, the hotel was actually called the Dixie Lake Hotel.
The town was Liberty, New York. That was the nearest
one to it. So she grew up in this world
of hospitality. It was a kosher hotel, and she learned
certain things from from her mother and her grandparents. So
we did have a lot of home cooking. I remember,
especially the Jewish holidays like Passover and restaurant on everyone
coming together around big meals.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Did your mother have a recipe book of her grandparents' recipes?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
You know, she joked that her grandmother and her mother
used to always sabotage all the recipes that they would
give to her, which apparently is not uncommon. They would
accidentally leave out so that she was sort of foiled
and ever being as good a cook as they were.
But you know, it was a time in Dallas where
there was probably like the kind of inkling of a
dawning food conscience. Or you know, we're about what years
(07:58):
in the eighties, Let's say it's not we didn't go
to farmers markets, nobody had ingredients like that. But I remember,
you know, you could buy basil at the supermarket that
wasn't flaked and dried, or you know, my mother had
this cookbook that reached us from New York City. It
was called the Silver Palette Cookbook, and it was about
it was from this store on the Upper West Side
(08:18):
that sold prepared foods basically in New York and my
mother must have thought that this was incredibly kind of
chic and worldly, and this was sort of before anybody
had heard of Inine Garden, let's say, and the kind
of things that she has you cook. And she would
make recipes from that cookbook, and I remember looking at
it thinking this just must be the most glamorous place
in the world. I always had an obsession with New York,
so it wasn't all old fashioned kosher cooking.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So she would work during the day and chop and
then come home and would you sit down to dinner?
And we did as a family.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
We always pretty much always sat down to dinner.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
My parents divorced when I was nine or ten, and
they had joint custody, so I would go back and forth,
and it kind of meant that whatever night they had me,
they were home. They didn't make other plans because that
was maybe only half the time. And we would eat
my mom, my stepfather, and I and she would often,
you know, grill like a simple chicken breasts I can remember,
(09:12):
like marinated in Italian dressing, which also probably seemed like
an interesting food concept at the time. And my stepmother
also cooked. But my father had a recipe that he
thought that he was famous for. Famous perhaps only to
those who knew him well, called hamburger lemons surprise.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Which part was a surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
I don't know, probably the amount of lemons or the
black pepper corns that as a child I used to
have avoid, you know, burning my mouth. And that's the
only thing I can make without a recipe I can make. Yeah,
you can make it too, Ruthie, I bet, I don't
think you want to.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
You ever put it with pasta?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You know you could. You could put it with pasta,
You could put it with anything. You could feed it
to your dog.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Do you think your father was was expressing some form
of love for you.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
In a way? There might have been a bit of that.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I went to Dallas. I was in Dallas, which and
I he was working with Ray Nasher mm hm great
collective course, and we insisted on staying downtown. But this
was in the seventies, maybe late seventies. But we had
some good food, and I was wondering if you did
you go out meals with your parents? We did?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know? We went to Italian or Chinese restaurants in
the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Special occasion.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, well there were special occasions there, you know, there
were And you might know more about this than I did.
But at that time in Dallas there was this kind
of beginning of a kind of Southwestern cuisine, and there
was a chef called Fearing at the Mansion on Turtle
Creature so expensive that had a really well known chef,
and they were bringing together ideas from some Mexican cuisine
(10:46):
and some barbecue and you know, grilling and blackening things
and kind of thinking about the Southwest and some of
the more local cooking traditions and a sort of elevated manner.
So that was a thing. And then there were a
couple of like really old fashioned kind of restaurants I'm
sure that don't exist in hotels like the Adulphus, and
you would go and that's where we stayed, did you there?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
You go, that's the hotel we staff. I'd thought of that.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
In forty year I had a restaurant there and it
was called the Pyramid Room, and you could have a sorbet,
you know, intermetso that they would bring out a frozen
swan that I think had like a flashlight inside, so
it was like this glowing ice swan. And you could
have a chocolate souflee there, which is the only time
in my life that I ever had a soup flet
until probably I went to France many years later. So
(11:29):
there were these occasions that you did go out, you know, infrequently,
for these super what seemed like very grand dining experiences.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So going back to the art history, who grew up
always with art and with the I.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Visually grew up just always loving art. It was the
thing that excited me and interested me the most of
anything in the world. And I had friends in Dallas
and the eighties who liked football or American football, I mean,
playing sports. I never had any interest. My father remembers
me picking flowers by the side of the field at
my first soccer game, and I think he realized I
was not going to be one for team sports at
(12:04):
that point. But my mother was interested in art and
she painted little herself, and she really encouraged me. And
I developed an absolute fascination with Frankloyd Wright, the architect,
and he had designed the theater in Dallas where I
took little acting classes and did plays as a kid.
And maybe when I was about nine or ten, right
(12:26):
around the time my parents were getting divorced, actually I
sort of wanted to go see some of these buildings
and my mother, I think, realized that this was something
that she could encourage in me. And we'd plan these
trips and we went to see falling water outside of Pittsburgh,
and we went to Taliessen, and we went to Chicago,
and we went to all these different places, and it
was this kind of wonderful time in the life of
(12:46):
a mother and a son. Well, I was probably at
that point, about eleven to twelve thirteen.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
What do you think was it that drew you to
Frank Cloyd?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There was something, you know. I used to study the
floor plants and I could memory all the buildings. I
was absolutely obsessed, and I would ask for volumes of
the catalog Raisina for my birthday. They were very expensive
and they were printed in Japan. I think we'd go
to the Soli store and I had a collection of
Frank would write books, and there was something about the
kind of complexity of the space, and I would get
(13:15):
lost in these floor plans and try to understand how
the rooms fit together. And also the story of him
was kind of grand and he went under the cape
and a beret and you know, thwacked his cane and
made pronouncements. Then at some point. An interest in contemporary
art sort of supplanted the architecture fixation. But what my grandparents,
who were very I was very close to my grandmother,
(13:37):
especially my father's my father's mother. Was it just about
my favorite person in the whole world. I'm even thinking
about her now, I get a little choked up. I
miss her. She always had her face made up and
went to the beauty parlor, and you know, she wore
some jewelry. And her husband was an accountant who had
been born literally in a tenement on Ludlow Street and
(13:57):
went to City College for free, which was a great
opportunity that people had in those years during the depression.
But she really believed in supporting my interest in art,
and she and my grandfather I would I would go
once a year to stay with them in August for
like a week on Delta Airlines as an unaccompanied minor
(14:19):
whatever age. I would yeah, Badge and I would get there,
and I can still picture that that drive from LaGuardia
Airport out to Hicksville, which is of course not a
very attractive drive, but in my mind that was like
people have what's your favorite journey, you know, like they're
going to the Alps, you know, to go ski. My
favorite journey was from LaGuardia to Hicksville, you know, your grandmother. Yeah,
(14:41):
with them in the car. I remember being picked up
and the anticipation of what that week would be. And
they took me to the Whitney Museum many times as
a child when it was on Madison Avenue to look
at Calder Circus.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Will you describe what Calder Circus was?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, Calder Circus is one of the real treasures of
the Whitney's collection, made by Alexander Calder, and he made
sort of for fun, but it became a great artwork,
all these different circus figures that he could, you know,
pull a lever on a kangaroo and you know, it
would walk and move its feet. And it's actually on
view right now in the Whitney Museum in downtown Manhattan,
(15:14):
and I take my son there and he's totally into it.
The lion, all the different characters, and I'm just reminded.
It's very touching to meet things do come full circle.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The River Cafe Cafe, our all day space and just
steps away from the restaurant, is now open in the
morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from
our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, I screamed coops in
River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates, Salumi, Misti, mozzarella, briusquetta,
(15:51):
red and yellow peppers, Vitello tonado and more. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book see you here. Just thinking of
(16:11):
change in your life also in terms of the way
you ate and what you could eat and maybe what
you didn't need or bother eating. You went to college
and you went to Harvard. Was that either an awakening
because of the restaurants that were available in Cambridge or
did you you know?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I mean I ate a lot of you know, bad
dorm food, and I didn't cook and I didn't have
a kitchen then because I lived in a dorm. But
it was obviously a more international context.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Now Dallas has many immigrants from all around the world too,
But we didn't grow up going to those kind of restaurants.
I remember the first time I ate Ethiopian food and
the kind of tang of that bread, or the first time,
you know, I had Vietnamese fa You know, the kind
of thing in Cambridge exactly, and the kind of thing
that people associate with graduate student life and cosapolitan areas.
(16:59):
My taste definitely started awakening to a broader range. Like
in Dallas were going to be the only Asian food
I would have had would have been a certain kind
of Chinese food, and I say certain kind meaning American kind.
But as I got to college, I had, you know,
Japanese food and all these things, and a lot of
it was was cheap, and we would go out with
our friends sometimes venture into Boston.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
After Harvard, you moved to New York.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I moved to New York for a year in an apartment,
in a little apartment in Chelsea, about three blocks from
where I'm living now, which is just to talk about
coming full circle. It was a studio apartment. I did
not have a bed. I had a sofa bed from
Ikia that I rarely opened because that was going to
require too much efforts. I slept sideways on this ikea
(17:41):
sofa bed, and I don't know that you would call
it a kitchen. It was not even a galley kitchen
because it wasn't even enclosed. It was kind of part
of this room essentially the only enclosed part. I don't
know what it's called. It had. It had a stove,
and it had a fridge and had an oven, none
of which will probably ever used. I think if you'd
open my fridge then you might have found, you know,
(18:02):
some tonic and some cocktail olives and some leftovers or
something growing on them.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
So social life was centered around going to all the restaurants.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, we had these teeny tiny apartments and nobody really
entertained at home. And I remember going, I mean speaking
of like being in London to around the corner from
me was the art dealer Gavin Brown, who now was
part of Barbara Gladstone had this really cool gallery and
he had this really cool bar, and he had a
bar called Passerby. Yeah, in the front of the gallery. Yeah,
(18:32):
this social space. So this would have been in my
first year in New York. So let's say its ninteen
ninety nine or something. And I would go to this
bar and I was very aware that everyone in the
room was really cool and really interesting, and I knew
they were I knew who you know. Elizabeth Peyton, Oh
my god, ELIZEB. Peyton's at the bar, and I remember
there was this kind of shorter woman with big curly hair,
(18:53):
who it turned out was Amanda Sharp, the founder of Freeze,
speaking of the Freeze Art Fair. So I kind of thought,
you know, I'm just not ready for New York. I
got to go back to school, and I picked up,
and I went back to Cambridge for graduate school, also
studying art history. And then at some point I was
offered a job of moving to New York to become
a senior editor, and I thought, I better get to
(19:16):
New York in my late twenties, and I was going
to meet artists of my generation, and I was going
to write about them, and I was going to go
to their studios and I was going to drink with them,
and maybe I'd make out with them and we'd go
to bars and we just this was the minute, the
last minute, or I was going to end up at
Harvard and the Faculty Club with the pipe, which could
have happened because I loved I loved the Academy. And
(19:36):
so I picked up, and I moved to New York
and started this job in the art world, which I
never left.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
In New York.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
That was twenty years. Yeah, then I was ready. I
had a business card.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I knew where I'm not ready for New York.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, I was like that. I was ready to not
be that student or that Texas kid anymore. And it
was an incredible journey about four five, six, the aughts
as we call them, meeting so many people.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
So did your aspiration? Did you did hang out with
young artists? Did go to their studios? And you did?
And did you eat?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And some of the friends should check them out?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
The eating again? It was it was funny. I ate
as a guest, as a journalist, as an editor. We
went to the places where the business was of looking
at art, of selling art, and often our hosts were
museums or galleries that celebrated their artists. And we went
to around the world to where art first were. And
(20:35):
I developed a sort of taste for foods in a
very select set of cities that were the stops on
the art world's caravan.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I've always been interested in reading much earlier about to
Cooning and Pollock and the artists that were in New
York and what was it called maxis Kansas City where
they would and the solitary life that they had pain
all day in his studio and then going out at
night to drink and to party and too because it
(21:05):
is solitary.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
And I think Gavin's Bar that one passer by mentioned
was a bit of a maxis of its moment, and
you know that it was interesting as a young critic, editor, person,
whatever I was. We my friends and I were interested
in the places that had a kind of patina of
the art world's history. And it's amazing to me now
(21:27):
to think that quite a few of them that we
went to still exist twenty years later. And probably they
were like Indochine, like the Odeon. I mean, these were
places where we had seen pictures of, you know, the
Leo Castelli gallery in the bathroom at Odeon with Andy Warhol,
and you know, we could imagine what it was like
when people went out there. And that was the eighties.
(21:48):
So this was twenty years later, and twenty years later
it's still there.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
You were at the Whitney after Art Form, Yes, is
that right?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
So I went to work at the Whitney almost exactly
fifteen years ago, two thousand.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And nine on Madison Avenue Museum by Marcel Pryor exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, when I started the museum, first of all,
I was not the director or the chief airs. My
title was one word curator. It got longer as the
time went by, so they had already made the decision
to move downtown and the building was roughly designed by
the time I got there, although in two thousand and
nine when I started, we were really not long after
the wait financial crisis, so there was some concern as
(22:26):
to whether the museum was able to raise the money
to do this project, which which we did.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Did you always knew that you wanted a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
There, Yeah, there was always going to be a restaurant.
I think There've been a number of different ideas that
I've witnessed in the last twenty years in the business,
and probably my thoughts have evolved over that time. Tell
me about museums, well, I mean, the funny thing is
those bad museum restaurants, the cafeterias that big museums do.
(22:55):
I remember going to the one at the Met with
my grandmother in the eighties, and you could get at
a cup of coffee that wasn't too expensive, You could
serve yourself. The quality of the food may not have
been that good, but it was extremely inclusive. And what
I think we came to see was the idea that
museums wanted to kind of up level this food service experience,
and in so doing they became more expensive and more exclusionary.
(23:19):
And I remember thinking, there's something funny about the first
thing somebody sees is a patron eating a forty dollars
piece of fish, and that became a greater disconnect in
I think our minds as we wanted to create more
access to the museum. So we've just relaunched our food service,
and we sort of liked the idea of this. We're
(23:41):
calling it like the flagship of French at bakery, that
a bakery is a place where you can get sandwiches
or a croissant or a cup of coffee, and that
it would not be really fine fine dining, but an
up level museum cafe which is not cheap, but it's
certainly much more affordable than our past restaurant down stairs.
And people can come in the neighborhood and take the
(24:03):
bread if you bake up the Whitney home, they can
get a cup of coffee. And I like to think
that the destination is really the art, and the cafe
is a place where you might if you're meeting a
friend to see the Avonne Ali show. You'll come and
have lunch before and then see you get a cup
of coffee after on the way out. But maybe we're
not trying to get in the business of running an
(24:23):
incredible fine dining establishment on our eighth floor of a
beautiful bar with views all of New York and see
the Statue of Liberty in the Empire State Building. We
had artists redesign these spaces, so the artist Deanni Whitehawk
made a wonderful mural and the artist Rashid Johnson did
this incredible sculpture in our downstairs space that's like a
sort of gateway to the museum. Very Whitney that we
would start with the artists designing the space before we
(24:45):
had a restaurant tour or a food concept. I'm not
sure the restaurant tours would agree that that was the
way to go.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
To go into a restaurant that that had been started
with in the art world, rather than the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
It started in the art world. There was a moment
where we're like, oh my god, I think we've actually
made the food service impossible with Rashid sculpture, and he
let us do some tweaks so that people could clear
tables or get some access to the bar.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you. If somebody asked me my luxury, if I
(25:32):
would say going to a museum when it's closed, and
a real luxury for me was being taken with you
around the Jasper John Show. Does he like to eat? Jasper?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Jasper is actually a very good cook, and he's very
interested in in ingredients and seasonality in his garden. He's
now ninety four years old. I'm doing the math his birthdays.
In May he would have turned ninety four, so he
was born in nineteen thirty. He is a good cook.
And when you go to lunch at his house and Sharon,
(26:02):
which is a very beautiful place to visit. It's an
old stone house in Connecticut, and it has incredible art
in it.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Does he collect or is it mostly his art?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
He collects and is his art and his collection has
the most interesting everything in it has this incredible provenance.
It'll be like this is a Rauschenberg painting that he
was given as a gift when they were you know, boyfriends.
And this is an Andy Warhol you know, sculpture box
that he uses just as an end table and gets
(26:34):
a drink ring on it, and he remembers knowing Andy
and seeing this mint Marilyn in the first time that
Leo Costelli showed one. Or here's a sculpture of John
Chamberlain's that he installed multiple times. But he also collects
older art and as he became you know, had more means.
He bought Picasso and Duga and seys On and you
see and things with incredible provenoance like a Seyson that
(26:57):
Duga owned. You see this greatane of artistic interest fro
I'm like, wow, I'm looking at Jasper John's looking at
a season that I know Degay used to look at
in his living room. And so it's always a treat
for me. The first time I went there. I'll never forget,
you know, the experience of being welcomed into this world
of you know, these incredible artistic objects, but also things
(27:19):
that he finds interesting that are not as famous, like
a George or pot or a Hameda bowl from Japan,
or you know, even a kind of funny, like little
toy that does something that moves. And he used to
have a chef for a while that I knew very well.
And when you eat there, like especially if it's at lunch,
(27:40):
they put out a little buffet, and unlike Jonathan, unlike
our home, there's not a lot of everything. You take
like two little carrots, and you take a little piece
of fish, and you take a little bit of bread
or some kind of soup. He like soup. But everything
feels like sort of perfectly selected and chosen, and you
have quite a few small bites of different things.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Do you thing that reflects his art? Do you think
he'd be paying.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Well, you know, it's funny. There's a certain amount of
like a level of consideration and intentionality to it that
nothing will go wasted. He also grew up, you know,
in the depression, and that everything is sort of appreciated
as a kind of complete gesture. Maybe I could see that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And what about home? Now that you have two children
and you have both of you have very important work days,
what's the word of family balance food wise?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I am coming up on having met my husband jon
and Burnham, whom you mentioned on your first book.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh, Yeah, I think you met over food. Did you
meet it on a first date?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
We met over it was drinks. Our first date was
a blind day. We were set up by a mutual friend,
almost exactly ten years ago. We're about a month shy
of having known each other for ten years. And I
would say it was a good of food. I kind
of knew. I got on a plane right after that
date and I thought, I've just met the guy I'm
going to marry.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I remember Rose and I sort of sitting at his desk,
probably on the desk grows stretched out, you know, writing
the introduction to the book. Yeah, and he loved food.
He loves he loves food. So you married a man
who really how does that feel? Having one, I mean partner?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Great? He loves food certainly much more than I do.
And everything is taken care of. And I think his
love of food comes almost from a fear as a
child of privation, which is a weird thing to say
about someone who grew up certainly with means. But I
guess in his household there just wasn't like in my
household growing up. There was always food. There was coffee cake.
You never sat down in a Jewish household like ours,
(29:34):
without your grandparents, without eating, you know, it was just
there was lots and lots of food. And I think
he didn't grow up like that, you know. And he
remembers his father was actually Japanese prisoner of war in
you know, World War two, and thinking about like being
hungry is something that he worried about, even though that's
you know, ridiculous in terms of our financial situation, but
(29:56):
it's just a kind of it's there deep down. He
talks about it, I'm sure, or with a shrink that
you know, the house just always has to have lots
and lots of food, whereas I, as I said, would
have just like an empty fridge. Our fridge is so
full now. And he loves to cook, and he cooks
almost six days a week. And this is a person
who we could come home late from a party and
(30:16):
I would just like scrounge around like a rodent for
a cracker, and he would like put on water to
boil and make pasta. And he cooks all the food
for our children, and there's always delicious, delicious food at home. Interestingly,
he reads cookbooks for pleasure almost every morning with his
coffee while he eats his breakfast.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Do you think he's thinking about because some people do
wake up in the morning and think what am I
going to? Oh?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Definitely, he thinks. I can't wait for bad. I don't
even eat breakfast. I have coffee, you know. He looks
forward to that first meal, and he reads cookbooks the
way people read like newspapers. With his coffee and his toast.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Food is a celebration, communication, it's a sharing. It's also
a comfort. Yes. And so if we were for our
last question, if we were thinking about food for you, Scott,
being something that will give you comfort, is there something
that you might go to when you when you need that.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I mean a dry gen martinie that'll cook.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Is that a comfort?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I'm not a comfort food eater, you know. I hear
these people who say I need cookies or something.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I mean, it's a dry martine is a good as
you know.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
I might be more of a comfort drinker than comfort
eat My Jonathan ow he says, you know, like if
he's ordering fresh director when he goes, do you want anything, Darling?
And I might say just make sure there's some tomic,
you know, But otherwise I'll eat whatever is there. I
enjoy the gesture whatever it is, but luckily I don't
have a lot of opinions about it.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Food does Olivia hunger and I'm quite personally starving. Should
we go eat? Yes?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Absolutely, I'd love to thank you so much
Host
Ruth Rogers
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