ruth rogers transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm host, Kerry Diamond, and we have a great show for you. Another legend has graced us with her presence and it's Ruth Rogers, the chef, owner and co-founder of the amazing River Cafe in London. Ruth was visiting New York City recently and stopped by our studio at Rockefeller Center for a chat. You might not know this, but Ruth is now a podcaster. She has a terrific podcast called River Cafe Table 4 on iHeartRadio, and I'm completely addicted to the show. She interviews one dazzling guest after another, from Michael Caine to Paul McCartney, Glenn Close, the artist, Tracy Emond, even Pete Davidson. Ruth gets them to read a recipe and talk about food moments and memories from their lives. You really must listen. But don't go yet, listen to the show first. Today's episode is sponsored by Keserai Champignon, a 100 year old cheese producer and the maker of Cambozola, a cheese I happen to love very much.
This fine cheese is made with Bavarian Alpine milk and crafted by master cheese makers dedicated to using all natural ingredients and traditional methods to create one of a kind cheeses. Cambozola, a triple cream, soft ripened cheese with delicate notes of blue is truly a cheese like no other. For more intense experience, try Cambozola Black Label, aged longer than Cambozola Classic. This bold and exceptionally creamy cheese was a 2020 best in class winner at the renowned World Championship Cheese Contest. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again, I would like someone to invite me to that contest or make me a judge, even though I am probably not qualified. Anyway, Cambozola is a treasure too good not to share. Visit This Is Fine Cheese for recipes, pairings and more. Don't forget, it's not blue, it's Cambozola. What else? The new issue of Cherry Bombe magazine is here.
We have six different covers for you to choose from. Visit cherrybombe.com for a list of shops that carry our magazine or ask for us at your favorite bookstore or specialty shop like Golden Fig in St. Paul, Bold Fork Books in Washington DC, and Stella's Fine Market in Beacon, New York. It's always awesome to shop local, right? Definitely support your local businesses if you are holiday shopping this weekend. Now, here's my chat with Ruth.
Ruth Rogers, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Ruth Rogers:
Cherry Bombe, thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. Not as happy as I am.
Ruth Rogers:
No, we're both happy.
Kerry Diamond:
We're both happy. Exactly. I mean, not only are you an amazing chef with an amazing restaurant, beautiful cookbooks, you're a podcaster now.
Ruth Rogers:
Out of my comfort zone, always try something new. And it started as a very, very simple idea. About 15 years ago, the actor, Ian McKellen came to our house. We did a charity event and he read Shakespeare and he recited a poem by Orden and he sang a song and he told anecdotes. And the very last thing he did, and I didn't know he was going to do it, was he stood on the stairs and he read a recipe for ribollita. And it was so beautiful to listen to a recipe because we all read recipes because we need to and of course, when we cook, we follow a recipe. But to hear him read was magical. And I thought during lockdown, it would be good to do something in terms of audio. And I thought, well, what we could do is just every day for 365 days a year, read a recipe, just read the recipe. And we talked to various people and it seemed that that was a good, but it was a better idea to segue from the recipe into a conversation about food.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so funny that you say that because I told my team during the pandemic I wanted to launch a whole separate podcast called chef's lullabys and we would have a different chef read a recipe and they hated that idea. They wouldn't let me do it.
Ruth Rogers:
Oh, well, to hear Michael Caine read a recipe for panna cotta or Vice President Al Gore suddenly telling you how to make a tomato soup is good.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, exactly. I think maybe if I had had the same caliber guests that you have, my team would've thought a little differently about my idea. Your show is fantastic. You are a natural podcaster and great conversationalist. And let's talk about these guests because you have just... It's like one mic drop after another every week.
Ruth Rogers:
I think that the criteria that I chose for the guests or asked was that they knew The River Cafe and knew me and there was a connection. I can't say they were my close friends, but they had been to the restaurant. And I think that had I asked Vice President Gore to talk about climate or Paul McCartney to talk about The Beatles or David Beckham to talk about football, they might have said no. But when I said all we're going to talk about is food, about memories, about cooking, about what your family cooked for you growing up, about restaurants, and when I said that would be the conversation they said, yes. They were very kind.
Kerry Diamond:
Who has been the most surprising guests so far?
Ruth Rogers:
Surprising, I don't know. First of all, no one was entitled. Whether they now have success and money, they all grew up, most of them, not all of them, without it or in modest circumstances. And it almost judged their success by food so they recall the first time they could order a great bottle of wine in a restaurant or the first time they actually went to a restaurant or the first time they were able to buy caviar. Michael Caine’s last line is... I ask everyone their comfort food. And when I asked Michael Caine, he said, "Well, it used to be sausage and mash. Now it's caviar." It shows that there is a kind of now I have reached a situation where I can afford to do this. So that was encouraging. The other thing that I became aware of is that for a lot of immigrant families, people who'd come from other countries, the grandmother was more important in terms of their food memory than their mother. And I think that's because that the mother probably tried to adapt to a new culture.
The children sometimes rejected their culture and the grandmother brought it with them. And so over and over again, I heard stories about whether it was Bob Iger of Disney talking about his Polish grandmother or David Adjaye talking about his Ghanaian grandmother, or Steve McQueen talking about his grandmother from Trinidad, coming to a different culture and how they were influenced by food.
Kerry Diamond:
Do they ask you for help in choosing the recipe that they read?
Ruth Rogers:
Hardly anyone asks me. Some people did, but most of them were quite determined. Jake Gyllenhaal, who's a really old friend of mine just grabbed tomato sauce first. And it was sweet because he stayed with me for a while and we always used to make tomato sauce on a Sunday night so I felt he deserved to have it. But a lot of people wanted to tomato sauce. That was real of Jake's to get it.
Kerry Diamond:
And explained the name of the podcast.
Ruth Rogers:
River Cafe Table 4, we were trying to think about River Cafe conversations or River Cafe radio, and River Cafe Table 4 was actually thought of by a friend of mine, Matthew Freud, who works with us. And it was a pun on the word four. So there is a table for which is in the window, but it's not the best table in The River Cafe. But it was table for or table four, David Beckham, table for Stella McCartney, table for, Victoria Beckham. So that's how it became table four.
Kerry Diamond:
And I love the art for the podcaster in front of the famous stove.
Ruth Rogers:
Yes. Yeah. The image of me sitting on that wood oven and then it was very nice. A friend of mine called Chris Wilson helped me with that.
Kerry Diamond:
And how have you taken to podcasting? Like I said, you sound like a natural on it.
Ruth Rogers:
Oh, that's really kind of you. I don't think that's true. I had to learn. I said to my stepson, Rogers, my husband's middle son is the producer. So that was one of the real joys of working with him. And I think I learned not to talk over somebody, as simple as that, or not to interrupt, which is I would practice on my friends, a friend called Josh and we speak. We speak all the time. And so I said, okay, tell me about what you did this weekend. And he did, and I didn't interrupt him or talk over him. He'd say, "Ruthie, are you there? Where are you?" I was so silent. And then I remember I asked Jeff Goldblum, asked him three questions, which is a multiple question. I was told you shouldn't ask a multiple question. But then I said, "Oh Jeff, sorry, can we do that again? I asked you a multiple question." He went, "That's fine. That's what conversation is."
So I think you can be too careful of being silent or not laughing or the editors don't like it because they want to edit something else and there are two voices, as you know, they do that. But I've enjoyed it.
Kerry Diamond:
We're lucky to have good editors on the podcast. So when I do talk over somebody, but you also have to learn not to sort of editorialize when the person you're talking to says something, even if it's just like, wow. I have a bad habit of saying wow after everything because we have great guests.
Ruth Rogers:
Exactly, exactly. Talking over. The other thing that I was told by a friend of mine called Kirsty Young, who does Desert Island Discs, and I said, "Okay, I've been thrown in the swimming pool and I don't know how to swim. Just tell me." And she said very basically, which I think I already done is to write out your questions because when they're answering a question, you're always thinking of the next one. And even if you just have something around you, which is a kind of list of questions. And then the other one was, which we also decided quite early on was just to have one question that you ask everyone. And in my case it was, what is your comfort food? Food is about memory and food is love and food is hunger and food is taking care of somebody. How do you take care of yourself with food when you need it? And so everybody ranged from a bowl of cereal to caviar.
Kerry Diamond:
Kirsty Young is one of my favorite. She's one of my radio heroes.
Ruth Rogers:
Me too.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. How's she doing?
Ruth Rogers:
She's good. She's good.
Kerry Diamond:
Good. For the listeners out there, she was the host of Desert Island Discs, the famous BBC show and you did a fantastic interview with her.
Ruth Rogers:
I did. Well, if it was fantastic, it was because of Kirsty, because I think she combines being a great journalist with a radio interviewer. She did her work. She was tough and she was kind and she was inquisitive, and so she was really good.
Kerry Diamond:
I think I heard that before I knew you and before I had even been to The River Cafe, and I had no idea you're American.
Ruth Rogers:
I am, a hundred percent. A hundred miles north of this very city, I grew up. Yeah, in Woodstock.
Kerry Diamond:
So let's start with that. Everybody assumes you're from the UK.
Ruth Rogers:
Oh really? Oh, interesting. Well in the UK-
Kerry Diamond:
Maybe when I say everybody, I mean me.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. No, I think a lot of people in the United States think I'm British, but then the minute I start talking in London, they know that I'm American. Yeah. I don't think I ever had a very strong American accent. I went when I was 19 so I've really grown up there.
Kerry Diamond:
And you had a very fascinating journey. You protested against the Vietnam War back then. Were you raised in a family of liberals? How was your journey when you were younger?
Ruth Rogers:
It was very social and political. My mother was a librarian, my father was a doctor. They had quite a few friends who'd been blacklisted in the late forties, early fifties, I guess in the McCarthy era. They were active in anti-war, anti-nuclear war. They had grown up on the social programs of Roosevelt. And so politics, my father actually went to Spain in the Civil War, but they lived not a very actively political life at all because, as I said, they were head of the school board and very active in the community. But I think we grew up with this sort social responsibility and an awareness of inequality. My father never took us south. I went to Miami, absolutely loved it not long ago. And so I grew up with those politics and if they were politics, it was just a subset set of values and ethics.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you wind up in Europe?
Ruth Rogers:
I was at Bennington College and I really needed a year off or term off. It was time to take off. I'd gone to a small school on a ranch in Colorado. And when I got to Bennington in Vermont, it was time to go somewhere. So I didn't know where. And then my parents had a friend in London and I had a boyfriend who was going to Oxford as a road scholar. So we both took the same boat. We took the SS France and then he went up to Oxford and I went to London, and that was the reason. I was only going to stay for three months. I was actually going back in January, and then I've been there ever since.
Kerry Diamond:
You fell in love?
Ruth Rogers:
Yes, I did fall in love. I fell in love madly. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
And you were never on the chef path. Is it fair to say you're an accidental chef?
Ruth Rogers:
Accidental chef would be, yeah, absolutely accidental. I married a man who had a mother who was a great cook, an Italian cook whose passion was food. He just loved to eat when we lived in Paris. When you looked at our checkbook, every meal was paid for that we ate out. We just ate out all the time. We went to the suburbs, we went to a small restaurant serving couscous. It was a really age discovery for both of us. He'd grown up with great Italian food. His mother was from… And my husband is an architect, Richard Rogers. The building that he's known for with Renzo Piano is the Pompidou Center. So that's why we lived in Paris over market and had a baby in Paris. And we lived there, again, that was accidental. Suddenly we found ourselves living in Paris and commuting back to London a lot because he had three sons who were in London.
Kerry Diamond:
Very controversial building.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. At the time, it was extremely controversial because it was an Italian and a British, both very young who had not really built anything of stature, but it was an open competition and they opened the envelope and they were the winners. And so then they found out who they were and you have to really give credit to the French that they stuck with them when they didn't have to. Phil Johnson was on the jury and he was brave. He insisted that they not have a second winner because very often what you do is you give the first prize to someone and then you find out they're not right. And so you give it to the second prize winner. So they didn't do that. And as soon as it became French, when the building opened and stopped being a building by a British and an Italian, it became French. They were fantastic. But it was a bit of a struggle.
Kerry Diamond:
Was it hard being his partner through that?
Ruth Rogers:
No, it was great.
Kerry Diamond:
Through all the controversy, it was great?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. No. Well, living in Paris, we lived in the [inaudible 00:16:08]. We had a baby. I think for me, it was much easier than it was for him because he and Renzo went to work every day and were battling, battling, battling. And I did work in the office. I had studied graphic design. So I worked coloring the pipes in the back on drawings. And so it was a great time.
Kerry Diamond:
And you learned to love the Parisian food life.
Ruth Rogers:
What I learned, I think in Paris, I learned a lot. I loved living over a market. The idea that you just shopped every day. You went down to the market and you saw what was there and then you decided what to eat. It's something that we still do in The River Cafe. We write the menu every morning and every afternoon, and it depends what is in the fridge, what's in the market. We've ordered very carefully. We're more professional than just going and saying, oh, what's in the fridge. We have 200 people coming for lunch. But it is something that we always start in the market and in the season and then go from there.
Kerry Diamond:
So you go back to London, and tell us how The River Cafe came to be.
Ruth Rogers:
The first thing we did when we finished the Pompidou was to go to LA because it was almost like we had to go away as far as possible from France. And we went to LA UCLA. And that was also an awakening of food because it was probably 1978. There was the farm to the table. There were the markets, there were the vineyards, there was Wolfgang Puck. And we went to Ma Maison and then he was going to open a pizza restaurant and we thought, wow, how can somebody doing incredible classic French restaurant open a pizza place? And that was Spago. And he never looked back. I saw Wolfgang the other day and I was telling Becca that he came into the restaurant and he was great. And I said, "Wolfgang, I want to be like you. I want to have 40 restaurants." And he said, "Ruthie, I want to be like you. I want to have one." It was very sweet.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm not surprised he said that. How long were you in Los Angeles?
Ruth Rogers:
Oh, just six months.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay.
Ruth Rogers:
But really, it was an explosion of seeing what can happen in a city, not Paris, Venice, and to be in LA and have such great food, really great food. And then we came back, he had a very strong philosophy about work and an office and people who worked in an office. And we were determined to come back and try and set up more of a community than an office. And we thought about moving out of London and having a place. And then we looked, we knew we just didn't want to be in an industrial space in the middle of London. But we did find these warehouses, John Young, his partner found on a bicycle these warehouses in West London on the river. And it had been a Duckhams oil warehouse where they stored oil drums. And actually they drilled oil, not from the ground, but they were producing it. And the whole thing was for sale, not very much. And so he and the partners bought it and then converted it.
And as it was going to be a community, there was a green space, there was a view of the river. Everyone had a view of the river and it was filled up with other architects, stained window designers, fashion designers. It was really nice. And the one thing that we always wanted was a place to eat. And so we got planning permission for a very tiny little space. It must have been 50 square meters, very, very small. And we asked for applications, let it be known that there was a space. And we went skiing. We went to and we decided we would look through all the applications. And I promise you, I just looked up to Richard. You usually don't remember these things, how something happened. But I looked up and I said, the only thing worse than not having a restaurant would be to have a mediocre one. I'll do it. I remember saying I'll do it.
And it wasn't I'll do it, it was, we did it because the first call I made when I got back was to Rose Gray who I knew had come back from New York, working with McNally's. And I knew she had very little experience, but she helped them do Nell’s because her friend was Nell Campbell. And so I said, what about it? And so we went to look at the space and we said, yeah. And that was that.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did that pop in your head?
Ruth Rogers:
Rose?
Kerry Diamond:
No, no. That you could do it.
Ruth Rogers:
I have no idea. I think I was just in a place where I'd had a baby who was two and the other one was nine or ten. I'd done the graphics, I'd done working with Richard and I'd done all these other... I really was thinking what I would do having been in Paris. And there you go.
Kerry Diamond:
So tell us about the early River Cafe.
Ruth Rogers:
Well, the early cafe was-
Kerry Diamond:
Very different from what we know now.
Ruth Rogers:
We a lot of restrictions and I always say in a way, restrictions give you freedom in some sense if you can work with them. And for us two very inexperienced restaurateurs and chefs, the restrictions were that we could only open at lunchtime. We could only open to the people who worked in the neighborhood and not at weekends, and we'd get very little money. So Richard and I put in $30,000 and we bought lamps from the reject China shop. We bought an old oven. We really worked to try and make it, but it was very beautiful. It was architect designed by Richard and it was a beautiful, small space. And so we opened and we opened, there was Rose and myself. And one day I would make sandwiches and she would make pasta. It was very shared. And we also had to keep it very inexpensive because it was only for the people who worked there. No critic could write about it, which gave us time to kind of figure out what we were doing. And we were ambitious.
I think we always knew that we were going to be a great restaurant. Rose always particularly bristled when people said, oh, did you start as a staff canteen? And she'd say never, never, never. That was not our idea. Our idea was to be a proper restaurant.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, so you said you always knew you were going to have a great restaurant. How did you know?
Ruth Rogers:
Because we had the confidence of people who just didn't know what they were doing. Sometimes you can have this sort of naive confidence and we just were confident that we'd be... We didn't always have that vision in front of us. I think people often ask me, do you think you always knew you'd be, that terrible word, success. And I said, well, and it's still true, I just go to work every day and try and do the best I can to make people want to come to work, to take care of the people who come to work, to cook really good food in a good surrounding and make people feel happier when they left than when they arrived. So if that's success, that's something that I didn't actually have the vision of being either a starred restaurant or have lots of them or be that kind of financial success. It was just to keep working.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm laughing so hard thinking of the confidence of someone who didn't know what they were doing.
Ruth Rogers:
Really stupid.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. I think that describes me many times over.
Ruth Rogers:
It still exists. Yeah. I still have that.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So for folks who haven't been to The River Cafe, tell us what it's like.
Ruth Rogers:
Okay. Well, I'll close my eyes and imagine that you've traveled about 20 minutes if you're in the center of London. You've traveled through Knightsbridge and past Harrods or you've traveled from Hampstead and going south. And you think, am I ever going to get there? Is there not a restaurant that our concierge could have recommended that I could walk to? And then you arrive and there's a yellow gate and somebody will say hello and park your car for you because we have a small car park or the taxi will drop you off. And you see the river. You don't see it immediately, but you see it in the distance. And the sky is very beautiful. You see a garden that's a green space that I described, which is where it was really for the community and a terrace with tables on it. Whether it's winter or summer, we have tables outside. And you walk in and you see colors. You see a blue carpet and you see a yellow reception desk, and it's a lot of stainless steel.
There's a stainless steel bar. And I hope you see people who make you feel welcome and ask you how you are and hang up your coat and find your table for you. And you see in the distance, it's a long room and you see a very pink wood oven. And in the wood oven, there's a fire and the chefs, you might see the chefs in the distance cooking. We have a completely open kitchen. And so I think you walk into a very unusual space. I think it's a stunning space because it's very democratic as well. There's not a good area or a bad area. I've had people come and say, show me your best table. And I go, well, Richard Rogers, my husband always likes the table next to the kitchen and [inaudible 00:25:07] likes the table next to the bar, and somebody might like the table over the window. And there's no best table and I like that. There's no kind of good section. I think everybody chooses what they like.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned that the menu changes on a regular basis, but you do have some greatest hits.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah, we do. We have, I'd say that the squid, which is a piece of squid that we flatten and then we cross it and we grill it and then it curls up and we put that with the red chili sauce. It's probably been on the menu since that first day in 1987. We did have a menu. When I said that Rose made the pastas and I made the sandwiches. When I look at that menu, it's quite funny because it does have the grilled squid. It has grilled lamb. I think it has two pastas and then it has something like seven desserts. So we obviously like desserts, but-
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, what was an early Ruth Rogers sandwich?
Ruth Rogers:
So we would take a ciabatta loaf and take out the insides. And again, this is 1983 so it wasn't everywhere. And we would have that we grew in the garden and we would have olive oil from Italy and mozzarella and prosciutto. That was kind of one of our sandwiches that we loved to eat.
Kerry Diamond:
Yum. What else is a greatest hit?
Ruth Rogers:
The nemesis. If the nemesis isn't on the menu... Well, it never has not been on the menu, but let's say we ran out of nemesis, people are not happy. It's a chocolate cake, no flour. It's very high ratio of eggs and chocolate. You beat the eggs until they're tripled in volume and they're warm and then you add in the hot chocolate and it's very simple, and the butter.
Kerry Diamond:
What's a pasta classic?
Ruth Rogers:
Well, for me, there's one pasta, which is a classic and that's pasta with tomato. And I think if you ask Italians, they'd say, yes, they can have in Rome, or you can have in Naples, or you could have artichokes ravioli. All those are on the menu and I love them. But when it really comes down to it, pasta with tomato is for me and for all of us the classic.
Kerry Diamond:
Is this the sauce you made with Jake Gyllenhaal?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And others.
Kerry Diamond:
What's the secret to the sauce?
Ruth Rogers:
Well, the secret to the sauce I think is to use really good tomatoes. Start with the basics. So we get tomatoes from in Puglia. There's a jar, there's a tomato and there's a little sprinkle of basil, and that is it. So you don't have those tins, how you have tomato juice. I mean, if you can't get them, you can use those and you just drain them and you wash off the juice and you get rid of all that stuff around it. But I think starting is always with a basic ingredient, which is the tomatoes. I don't slice the garlic very thinly anymore. I use a half or a whole clove of garlic, get that quite brown. And then we add the olive oil, tomatoes and basil and a lot of salt. And then you let it cook for a long time. There have been times when I've had somebody walk in and I have to make it quite quickly, and you can do that too if you have the good tomatoes.
And something I'm not massively advertising, but I do put butter in.
Kerry Diamond:
You do?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah, I do. But it makes a difference and I like tomato sauce with. I like it with an egg pasta, very fine. There's a brand called Cipriani, which is from Harry's Bar. And it really is worth investing in that because it takes two minutes to cook and it's excellent. And then the other hint is to not drain the pasta, that you stand over the boiling water and you put it into a colander and then tip it into the sauce. So you get a little tiny bit of liquid.
Kerry Diamond:
And why don't you slice the garlic anymore?
Ruth Rogers:
I have less of an interest in eating pieces of garlic. I'd rather have the taste of the garlic. And if it cooks for a long time, an hour, it gets softer. You can mash it up, and I just prefer that taste too. And visually, I just like seeing a tomato sauce without bits it. It's just silly probably.
Kerry Diamond:
And I have to ask, I mean, sadly, you lost your partner, Rose.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you carry on? How did you help the staff carry on?
Ruth Rogers:
We were prepared of her death. That was something that we all knew what was going to happen because she had a very serious brain tumor, which she, being Rose, she worked through it. She came in through it and she was very strong and brave. But I think we were prepared, but of course, nothing prepares you for the loss. And I got through it by the support and help of other restaurateurs. If anybody tells you that being in a restaurant is a cutthroat business, I will contradict it immediately because I would be cooking and Giorgio Locatelli would walk in and I'd be cooking, and Nick Jones would call me up and talk about a receptionist that he had that was good and looking for a job. And it was just constant. Jeremy King was just there on a Sunday morning pretending to have run through.
I don't know if they were all talking to her, go and take care of Ruthie, but there was that. And I would say, I felt like a kind of single parent with a hundred children. So there was taking care of then and making them feel that their jobs and their restaurant was going to be okay. And I drank a lot of espressos with grappa in it. I'd say just to one of the head waiters, "Go get me an espresso, but put a little bit of grappa." I'm not a drinker at all, but they probably were worried. And I got through it in a corny way to say that the greatest tribute to Rose would be to have a restaurant that she had worked for 27 years to achieve. And so that was important to me and we just kept going. And when you're performing, it is a performance, isn't it? You're performing to the people who work there and you're performing to who people eat there and we did it.
Kerry Diamond:
So talk to me about how things have been through the pandemic.
Ruth Rogers:
Interesting.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you have to shut down the restaurant?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. So I had dinner there with a friend, I remember, who was here from LA and he and I were sitting down and he was somebody who everybody would always stop by and be pleased to say hello to. And I noticed on the third Thursday or Friday night that nobody did, or that they came, we were all nervous. And this has been building up, building up. And then on the Monday, we could just feel that then the people who were working there were feeling nervous. And then one of the parents called me up and the government was doing nothing. The government had no guidelines or they weren't closing any restaurants then. We were very late. And then I think we met together with my team, Charles, Poland, Sean, Owen and Joseph Trivelli, who are my sort of core. We didn't want people working in fear and we didn't want people working with anxiety so we decided to close was the next day and that we would continue to pay people their salary, but we didn't know then we were going to close for a week or two weeks or six months.
We didn't know what it was. We thought it'd be weeks rather or days even, weeks. I said, okay, I'll go out there and tell them. And we called everybody for a meeting and even people who weren't working that day. And I went and Googled how to tell your staff bad news. Don't worry. If you want to find out, you go to Harvard Business School, there you are. They tell you how to give bad news. And the bad news, what you do is you tell them what's going to happen. You tell them what you're going to do and why you're doing it and how it will affect them. It's quite simple. And then at the same time, the same meeting that we decided to close, we decided that we would open a kind of delivery service, which would be simple. It wouldn't be a kind of takeaway, but it would be a choice of two pasta sources. Because we had quite a lot of stock, the pasta, a soup and a dessert, I think, and we called it The River Delivers.
And so we started right away working on that. And some people came in all that week and we had our designers and we did a type phase. It was really fun to do that. And we had so many orders. Suddenly we had 160 orders for the next week. It was really exciting. And on the Sunday, Charles called me up and said, "Ruthie, the chefs are here, but they're anxious." And I said, "Okay." He said, "They're cooking, but they're anxious. There's a feeling of a unease." And on the following day, the Monday, the waiters came in to pack everything. And he said, "The waiters are anxious. They're scared." And I said, "Shut it down." So I always say we're the only successful business to close after one day and we stopped. We just shut it down. Then we started about two weeks later, we had all the stuff that we bought for the delivery, the pastas and everything. And so we just said, okay, we'll sell that stock.
And the one thing we did from the first start was use professionals. So we set up the website. We did that ourselves. My assistant did it, Georgia. But the photography for it, we sent everything to the photographer's house and the design of it was done by our graphic designers. So it looked really good. And then we just did that and then it grew. Grew because our butcher wanted to sell his meat and our fish monger wanted to sell his fish, but it was all that and we still didn't go in to cook. And then a couple months later, I made sort of 30 jars of tomato sauce in my house and then Joseph made pesto in his house and then we started doing it and then we started packing it and then we got a delivery. So it just grew.
Kerry Diamond:
And how was it for you personally? I mean, you have a very rich life outside your restaurant, but the restaurant had been your life for decades.
Ruth Rogers:
It was hard. It was very hard. But having the shop, I sort of found out about myself that in a crisis, I'm active. I just do whatever we do. And I think my team were like that too. Let's do this, let's do that. Let's start a shop, let's have a podcast. It all is just keeping going. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. Staying in your room and closing the door is also fine or going for walks is fine, but that's kind of what I did.
Kerry Diamond:
How is The River Cafe today?
Ruth Rogers:
Busy. Busy, busy, busy.
Kerry Diamond:
Fully open.
Ruth Rogers:
Mm-hmm. We have a very large outside space. So from the minute we opened when lockdown ended in July, we had tables going down to the river. I think then we closed in October and we put up some glass screens that just made you feel safe outside and a bit protected in the winter months in November, December.
Kerry Diamond:
Because you are right on the water.
Ruth Rogers:
Pardon me?
Kerry Diamond:
You are right on the water.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah. So we had very beautiful screens that were designed by Richard's office, [inaudible 00:36:14]. We just noticed that it was emotional. If you ask me what was important in a society or in a city, I'd say hospitals or schools or libraries and I'd put restaurants maybe somewhere down at the bottom. But what I realized is that restaurants are important to a city. That's where people meet spontaneously. It's where you feel taken care of. It's where you've had a bad day, you can just sit there. And people came back. Some people cried. Some people were overwhelmed. I started a newsletter as well. How do we tell people that we're selling and cooking? And so I started that twice a week. I think that meant something to the people who we were connected with. It was, again, a connection. And so people came back and said your newsletter kept me... I was always embarrassed about the newsletter. I still am slightly because it feels like an intrusion, but people can always unsubscribe and we have sort of tripled.
Kerry Diamond:
Don't tell them that.
Ruth Rogers:
They can. I always say, it's a bit like a canapé at that party. When people even come near you with that plate, you sort of go, no, and I feel that with the newsletter.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm the person who always takes the canapé.
Ruth Rogers:
You take the canapé? My husband too. He was a definite canapé taker. Yeah. I'm that horrible person that goes, no, thank you. Probably mostly because I just think I'll spill it or I'll drop it or something like that.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Tell me what's next. You have a new book coming soon?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Well, we're going to do more podcasts, which is exciting. I'd say-
Kerry Diamond:
Where in the world do you go guest-wise with this podcast?
Ruth Rogers:
I don't know. Maybe you. Would you like to do one? Tell me, what would your comfort food be? What would your comfort food be?
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh. My comfort food would be, I'll say the first thing that popped in my head, macaroni and cheese.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah. That's good.
Kerry Diamond:
When I was little, we had Kraft macaroni and cheese and it was, I think, the first food my mom let me make on my own for the family. I was one of five kids. I was the oldest.
Ruth Rogers:
So I can interview right now. That's quite something to cook for five.
Kerry Diamond:
See, it's a magical question. I went right back to my child. Look at you.
Ruth Rogers:
It takes you right back. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You're a natural, Ruth.
Ruth Rogers:
Not at all. And then we're going to do a children's book, a kids' cookbook, which is actually not... We've been through all different ways of doing this book and it is pretty eccentric this book because we realized that we wanted to do a book that was respectful to children and every recipe that's in the book is easy, but you could eat it at The River Cafe. And so we chose recipes from our book.
Kerry Diamond:
When will that be out?
Ruth Rogers:
If you ask the editor, it's being published and I would really love to have it out in June. I love publishing books in the summer, but it's a big ask so.
Kerry Diamond:
You might be the only one who likes publishing books in the summer. I feel like in the US, they like spring or holiday.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Well, I would love May or June, if not spring, but I'm not mad on the Christmas rush because you get caught up in that. But we'll see, as soon as we can.
Kerry Diamond:
And then this book endures your gorgeous, gorgeous River Cafe, which I love so much.
Ruth Rogers:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
And I can always find in my bookshelf because your pages are pink.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah. That was a great collaboration between the designers who found the Joseph Albers type face and the photographer, Matthew Donaldson, and all the artists. We sent the menus to various artists who, again, were part of The River Cafe family. And the generosity was amazing to have Bryce Martin do a double page of black dots for squid and for... Well, it started because I'd found an Elsworth Kelly that he'd done for me, that he drew a self portrait in the bathroom, in the mirror. And then I realized I had one from who did a scrolling in the back. And so we asked and we asked Jonah Woods and we asked Peter Doig, and they all said, yes. Very lucky.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a very special cookbook. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone. Even if you're someone who, whether you cook through cookbooks or you just collect cookbooks.
Ruth Rogers:
Oh, thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Okay. We're going to do a little speed round because you're busy, you're in New York. You've got a lot of people to see and things to do.
Ruth Rogers:
No. I have all the time in the world. I'm fine.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. We'll start with the question that you ask everybody that you just ask me, what is your comfort food?
Ruth Rogers:
It would be pasta with tomato sauce.
Kerry Diamond:
The one you described, which sounds absolutely fantastic. What is a song that makes you smile?
Ruth Rogers:
Well, I just saw the musical, Anything Goes. They did it in London, which was divine. And they did that song, the duet called Friendship.
Kerry Diamond:
I do.
Ruth Rogers:
And I loved that.
Kerry Diamond:
For some reason wanted to start doing this when you said Anything Goes. I think my high school might have done that play.
Ruth Rogers:
Probably.
Kerry Diamond:
What is a treasured cookbook in your collection?
Ruth Rogers:
That's a good question. Treasured, I'm not sure, but what's important to me is Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Really? Tell me why?
Ruth Rogers:
Well, it gave me the confidence to cook. It's a bit like science, isn't it? I would say recipe is something cross between scientific formula and poetry. And there's not much poetry in that book, but what Elizabeth would say, take a ripe tomato and throw in the pan. She wouldn't tell you the size of the tomato or the heat of the pan, but she'd say the juiciest ripe tomato you could find that was. And so I think that Julia Child said get a tomato that is one and a half inches wide and the oil comes up quarter of an inch deep. And if you knew that you could make a souffle, would tell you exactly the size of the souffle dish. What it did was you didn't have failure or at least I didn't. If you followed those recipes, three quarters of ounce of whatever, or two thirds of a cup of this, you succeeded.
And I think a lot of it to do with wanting to cook is feeling you can succeed. You can do it because it's a performance. The fear of actually making something for a guest. I still get it. Imagine being me and having to cook for people. It's always like, are they going to be disappointed? Are they going to have expectations? And somehow if you can get through that, then you can experiment. You can do it. It's like education. It's like knowing grammar before you do free verse.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you feel like that in the restaurant still?
Ruth Rogers:
No. Because it's so collaborative.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, just at home.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. It's a bit at home. If I have somebody really, really, really that I need to impress about what a good cook I am, I make tomato sauce. I just give them the simplest food we have, tomato and some steamed vegetables or artichokes or something like that.
Kerry Diamond:
I have this image of you from back then, so counterculture that I'm surprised you like Julia Child.
Ruth Rogers:
Interesting. Yeah. A little girl from Woodstock, New York, and I just loved that. Yeah. I loved it. Loved those books.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your favorite kitchen and tool?
Ruth Rogers:
Tongs.
Kerry Diamond:
Footwear of choice in the kitchen?
Ruth Rogers:
Footwear? I don't wear clogs. I wear sneakers.
Kerry Diamond:
You do?
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Last pantry purchase.
Ruth Rogers:
Last pantry purchase. What did I buy before I left? Salted anchovies.
Kerry Diamond:
What's the oldest thing in your fridge?
Ruth Rogers:
Oldest. Oh, I'd love that line. Do you remember that line, there was a movie called The Odd Couple, and he opens up the fridge, Walter Matthau, and he looks it and he says, "This is either very old cheese or very new meat."
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh.
Ruth Rogers:
I might have some old cheese. I don't have very old stuff. I'd love to say I have a really fantastic bottle of wine in my fridge that is old, but my son once took me to, he went to the American School and he made me go to the neighbor's house to see what a good mother's fridge looked like because I always have quite an empty fridge and then fill it as whatever we're going to eat. So there you go.
Kerry Diamond:
Dream travel destination.
Ruth Rogers:
Home. I love going home. Yeah, wherever I am. I'm always happy to explore. Actually, I will answer it in a serious way, which is I love Mexico. I'm very drawn to South America and Central America rather than the east. I'm not a voyager to India to Thailand or Vietnam. I love South America, and I lived in Mexico for four months and that was life changing.
Kerry Diamond:
What has been on your list here in New York? Any places you've had to hit, restaurants?
Ruth Rogers:
Restaurant-wise, I've just arrived and so I would ask you where I should go because I'm a bit lost in New York in terms of restaurants. There's so many good ones and so many new ones.
Kerry Diamond:
And so much change.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
That's tough. Okay. Last question, and I kind of told you what it is already. If you had to be up on a desert island with one food celebrity.
Ruth Rogers:
I couldn't possibly answer that question. There are too many, too many good friends. So do you want to go?
Kerry Diamond:
No, you have to answer it. Tell us who-
Ruth Rogers:
I said, do you want to go with me to the-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, do I want to go with you? No, I don't count. Yes. Well, actually I would love to go with you, but I'm going to force you to answer someone else. You know so many fun people.
Ruth Rogers:
Yeah, I do. But I'd say probably all my children are great cooks. I have to say they're really, really... They're four sons and they are great cooks. So anyone of them.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Even though they're not famous food people, I'll let you bring them.
Ruth Rogers:
My husband was on Desert Island Discs and he was asked, the last question is, what's your luxury item?
Kerry Diamond:
Your one luxury item, right? You can bring the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare and one luxury item.
Ruth Rogers:
One luxury item. And his luxury item was me. And so Sue Lawley, who did at the time said, "You can't take her." And he said, "Well, then I'm not going." And they cut on that. So it was sweet. So I did it when I did mine, same thing.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that. I love that. Well, I love that and I love you.
Ruth Rogers:
I love you. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
I can't thank you enough for coming on this. I know everyone wants to see you when you're in New York.
Ruth Rogers:
Not really. No, this is very nice. No, no, no. It's really lovely.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm so honored.
Ruth Rogers:
Thank you. Great.
Kerry Diamond:
And happy holidays.
Ruth Rogers:
And to you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Ruth Rogers for joining us. Check out Ruth's show, River Cafe Table 4, wherever you get your podcasts, and visit rivercafe.co.uk for Ruth's newsletter, the ones she wants you to unsubscribe from, The River Cafe online shop and more. Thank you to Cambozola for supporting this episode. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe magazine. If you enjoyed the show, check out our other episodes with legends like Madhur Jaffrey and Alice Waters, and visit cherrybombe.com and sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss a single episode. Radio Cherry Bombe is recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Thank you to our engineer, Hasan Moore, and to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.