Stanley Tucci & Missy Robbins Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. We have a special episode for you today. It's Stanley Tucci and Chef Missy Robbins in conversation. Stanley, who is a favorite of ours here at Cherry Bombe, was in New York for the launch of his brand new line of cookware, Tucci by GreenPan. If you haven't seen the collection, it's beautiful and practical and is available exclusively at Williams Sonoma.
I had to miss Stanley's visit because I was working on our holiday cover in Los Angeles, so I asked Missy to fill in for me. When she's not guest hosting our podcast, Missy is busy as the chef and co-owner of the popular Brooklyn restaurants Lilia and Misi and the brand new MisiPasta, an aperitivo bar and pasta shop in one with great food and a lovely backyard. Stanley and Missy talk about pasta, pans, and of course, Italian cuisine. Also, Missy asks the question all of us want to know the answer to. "Stanley, will you ever open a restaurant?" Stay tuned to find out the answer.
Today's episode is presented by OpenTable. I hope you all have the OpenTable app on your phone. You can book lots of my favorite female-fueled restaurants like Guelaguetza in Los Angeles and Cafe Luxembourg in Manhattan, as well as brand new ones I can't wait to try like Chef Angie Mar's Le B in New York's West Village. This summer, we did a great dinner series with OpenTable called Sit With Us, and Part 2 is coming this fall. We'll be at Chef Camille Becerra's Come As You Are at Ace Hotel Brooklyn on Saturday, November 11th. Stay tuned for more details. And in the meantime, learn more about restaurants near you on opentable.com.
Today's show is also presented by Amaro Nonino. If you've ever tried the cocktail known as the paper plane, you've had Amaro Nonino. This bittersweet herbaceous liqueur is beloved by the world's top mixologist and made by the Nonino family, famous for their award-winning grappa. Here at Cherry Bombe, we have a deep appreciation for family-run companies and female-led brands. Amaro Nonino happens to be both. The Nonino family has been distilling in the Friuli region of Italy for 125 years. In the 1970s, Gianola Nonino revolutionized the grappa category when she helped create the world's first single varietal grappa. Today, the sixth generation of Noninos is leading the way. And sisters, Cristina, Antonella, and Elisabeta reinvented their family recipes to create Amaro Nonino. Enjoy it in Negronis, Manhattans, paper planes, or my favorite, in Amaro spritz. The Nonino women have been leading the way in grappa education and excellent cocktail creations for decades, and they look forward to creating more celebratory moments in the decades to come. You can find Amaro Nonino in the world's best bars and liquor shops, and you can learn more at grappanonino.it.
Now, let's check in with Stanley and Missy.
Missy Robbins:
Hi, Stanley.
Stanley Tucci:
Hi.
Missy Robbins:
It's so awesome to meet you. Huge fan.
Stanley Tucci:
No, thanks.
Missy Robbins:
Really excited to be here.
Stanley Tucci:
Likewise.
Missy Robbins:
I was preparing for this and I was like, "I think he's my Italian long-lost cousin." As I read more and more about your foray in food and how you grew up and your Sunday meals and your everyday meals and your lunches, I was salivating. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it was a great. Listen, my mother's an amazing cook. And growing up, there were so many of the people in our family who had immigrated. They were still alive, obviously, when I was young. So you had the source of this food that was there. Then my mother would take things to another level. Growing up, eating was everything. Food on the table was just some of the best food you'd ever have, and friends would come over to dinner and think like, "Wow, what is that? That's amazing." And then you'd go to their houses and it was awful, just awful food.
And nothing went to waste. Everything that we had for dinner, whatever was leftover, ended up in our lunches the next day. And maybe to change it up, you'd have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a certain day. In the end, I would take three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch but I would bring my lunch in a grocery bag. When you buy groceries, you put them in a big paper bag. That's what I brought my lunch in by the time I was in junior high school and high school because there was so much food.
Missy Robbins:
I was going to say, "How big was your lunch?"
Stanley Tucci:
It was huge. It was huge. I'd have a half a loaf of Italian bread and inside that would be eggplant parmigiana, or there'd be veal cutlet with butter and lettuce, or there'd be a frittata with peppers and potatoes. It was incredible. Or you'd have salami with-
Missy Robbins:
And did you have other friends in school who were eating like this?
Stanley Tucci:
No.
Missy Robbins:
Did you grow up in a big Italian community?
Stanley Tucci:
No.
Missy Robbins:
Or was this like you were this anomaly?
Stanley Tucci:
I was an anomaly.
Missy Robbins:
And everyone wanted to be you.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. There were people-
Missy Robbins:
Or they thought it was weird.
Stanley Tucci:
A lot of them thought it was weird and they were like, "How do you eat that much food?" Number one. And second of all, "That's incredible that someone actually makes that for you." They came with standard sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly or a Turkey sandwich or whatever, or they would buy food. A lot of kids bought the lunch at school.
Missy Robbins:
I was the pickiest eater when I was in... Really, it's so weird that I'm a chef because really until college, I was pretty picky. But it was picky in a weird way. So I went to a high school where lunch was included and I was so grossed out by institutional food that I didn't eat for four years at lunch. And then I would come home and eat these giant dinners because I hadn't eaten all day.
Stanley Tucci:
True.
Missy Robbins:
I'm very about texture. I don't like when my... In restaurants, they make staff meal, family meal every day. And sometimes when they're really proud, they'll want to make me a plate and they mix everything on the same plate. And I like to eat the potatoes first.
Stanley Tucci:
Right.
Missy Robbins:
The protein second. Even at Thanksgiving, I'm like that. I'm a very weird eater.
Stanley Tucci:
That's funny. That's funny. How do they react to that?
Missy Robbins:
They're cool. They just want me to eat the food.
Stanley Tucci:
They just want you to be happy.
Missy Robbins:
Yeah, they just want me to be happy.
Stanley Tucci:
But it is interesting that the certain, like you say, particular, when someone is particular. I was not necessarily particular. I'm more particular now than I was then. I was just starving, really, all the time. It was incredibly fast metabolism and I would just eat everything all the time. My sisters were much more specific about what they ate and particular about what they ate.
The thing that was so great about growing up with that is that it becomes a focal point. It becomes a punctuation at the end of a day. And my parents were, my dad was an art teacher. My mom worked in the school too. So as we got older, we would end up coming home later than they would from school because we had afterschool activities and all that sort of stuff. And the table would be set and dinner would be served pretty promptly When you arrived. My dad would be having his scotch. My mom would have a glass of wine or something. And then we sat and ate. Everything that was wonderful and everything that was repressed showed itself at the table. You could feel the tension on a certain night. And then there were those nights where everybody was laughing. Then there were nights where somebody was really grumpy and tired and you had to figure out why.
Missy Robbins:
And was the food always Italian? Did your mom veer?
Stanley Tucci:
No. Yeah, she'd make paella or her version of paella, which I think is just one of the most delicious things I've ever had. Crepes with a bechamel and chicken inside, they were just delicious. I've actually never had them as good as hers.
Missy Robbins:
Really?
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. No, it's just, it was amazing. Again, somebody who could have very easily been a chef.
Missy Robbins:
Did your dad cook?
Stanley Tucci:
He would cook certain dishes, but he was the sous-chef. He would cook pasta aglio olio on a Friday. On a Friday, my mother would not cook, which was almost impossible for her. But we would make meatballs. They would make meatballs and my father would fry them. And then some of them we would eat that night with just butter and bread and a salad. Then the rest of the meatballs were saved and we're put into the ragu that was made on Sunday morning.
Missy Robbins:
So awesome.
Stanley Tucci:
Very early Sunday morning. And then they would sit and cook in that. And then that was your Sunday.
Missy Robbins:
And this is every Sunday?
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, basically every Sunday. Or we would go then to Peekskill where both sets of grandparents live and we would visit them.
Missy Robbins:
And have you carried on the ragu tradition in your family?
Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah. I don't do it every Sunday because my schedule's not... I don't have a normal schedule. Yesterday, here I was in a hotel.
Missy Robbins:
But when you're home and hungry?
Stanley Tucci:
When I'm home, we can. I don't always do a ragu because not everybody will go for it. Do you know what I mean? So we'll try to do... We might do a fish, we might do. But actually I really do love that ceremony of having that ragu and having it. It is my father's family's recipe. It's quite different than the way my grandmother cooked, my mother's mother. And it's delicious.
Missy Robbins:
I love it. You're so involved in the food world right now. We're here today celebrating the launch of your cookware line. It's awesome. I used one of your pans yesterday to make a frittata.
Stanley Tucci:
Thank you.
Missy Robbins:
And that's like-
Stanley Tucci:
And it worked?
Missy Robbins:
It worked awesome. But how did you arrive at this and a show traveling through Italy, and what drives you to do that and what excites you about it?
Stanley Tucci:
What drives me to do it is that I'm just fascinated by food and I'm fascinated by why people eat what they eat and why the world eats what it eats, I guess. And I am fascinated by Italian food. And I had this idea a long time ago about going through Italy, exploring each region through the prism of its food, and touching upon as many aspects of that region as you can, which the history of it, the geography of it, the politics of it, the religion, socioeconomic factors. And because every time I went to Italy, you see how completely different it is from the north to the south. So if you're in Lampedusa where this is 70 miles off the coast of Africa, if you're 70 miles off the coast of Africa, your food is going to be completely different than if you are up in Alto Adige or you're up in Venetia and you're bordering Slovenia and you're bordering Austria, or you're bordering France, you're bordering Switzerland. You're going to have completely different food.
Missy Robbins:
I know. It's amazing. I grew up in New Haven, very Italian American community. To me, Italian food was eggplant parmigiano and all that stuff and big ziti, and that's what I grew up on and I grew up on a lot of it. And it wasn't until I decided to go to Italy. I was about nine years into cooking, and I decided to go to Italy for six months and studied. I didn't really know anything. I didn't know the language. I just knew that I was approaching my thirties and I needed to expand my culinary horizons. And if I didn't do it when I did it, it was lost opportunity.
Stanley Tucci:
Because what were you cooking primarily?
Missy Robbins:
When I started cooking, it was 1993, I was cooking what they called New American. I laugh at this all the time. My first job, Caesar salads, goat cheese, crusted racks of lamb. I worked in a restaurant in DC called 1789, and it was very focused on coastal Maryland seafood. And I never wanted to pigeonhole into a cuisine and I never wanted to cook in France because I was scared. I was scared of French kitchens and I didn't think I'd-
Stanley Tucci:
You were scared of the French.
Missy Robbins:
I was scared of French culture and kitchens. And I was young and I don't think I'd feel that way today. But I really had this affinity for Italian ingredients. And I always, when I was in these kitchens even that weren't focused on Italian food, I was always so excited when the new harvest of olive oil came in to a restaurant or a ricotta got delivered. And I also grew up, even though I grew up in this Jewish home, my parents were kosher. My mom still is, keeps a kosher home, a little less strict than she used to.
Stanley Tucci:
Right.
Missy Robbins:
But I grew up going to markets with her. And because we were kosher, she had to go to the kosher butcher which I think led to going to the fishmonger, going to the Italian cheese store. And I was always fascinated by these ingredients. But it wasn't until I went to Italy where I really started to understand this regional idea and lived in three different regions. I lived in Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, and Friuli.
Stanley Tucci:
That's not so bad.
Missy Robbins:
No, it was awesome. Everyone says, "Well, why do you like Italian cooking?" What it is the culture. You have 20 countries essentially that you get to learn from every day, and the learning is like never over.
Stanley Tucci:
Right.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. The brand new issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine has just launched. The theme is The Future of Food, and video star and cookbook author Sohla El-Waylly is on the cover. You can buy a copy or subscribe at cherrybomb.com or pick up a copy at your favorite bookstore, culinary shop, or magazine stand like Pop Up Grocer in Denver, Colorado, Salt & Sundry in Washington, DC and the Rizzoli Bookstore here in New York City. Cherry Bombe Magazine is lush and gorgeous and packed with features, photos, and recipes. The team and I worked so hard on this issue, we can't wait for you to see it, read it, and spend time with it. Now, back to Stanley and Missy.
Missy Robbins:
What's your favorite region? Do you have one?
Stanley Tucci:
I don't know. I don't have a favorite region. I like the north just because I like that landscape and the weather.
Missy Robbins:
But your family's from the same, right?
Stanley Tucci:
My family is from the south, but I hate the heat so I prefer to be up-
Missy Robbins:
Good thing you live among them.
Stanley Tucci:
... in the mountains. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Although nowadays, it doesn't really matter where you live.
Missy Robbins:
True.
Stanley Tucci:
I don't have a favorite region. But what you said about how even though you never stop learning, you can never discover enough. I think that hopefully I'll do more shows in Italy.
Missy Robbins:
By the way, you're doing the exact show. I always say, everyone says, "Well, don't you do TV and why don't you..." Dah, dah, dah. And I was like, "I have one show I want to do, and the only show I want to do is a show that Stanley Tucci is doing." And I said, "I just want to travel around Italy and cook with people. That's it."
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, you totally want to do-
Missy Robbins:
That's the only show.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, I know.
Missy Robbins:
I don't want to stand on a stage and demo how to roll out pasta.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, no, no, no.
Missy Robbins:
I want to do your show.
Stanley Tucci:
Asking you-
Missy Robbins:
So if you ever want a co-host.
Stanley Tucci:
No, I know. No, but we have to do one together then.
Missy Robbins:
I hope so.
Stanley Tucci:
It'd be fun.
Missy Robbins:
I hope. That'd be amazing.
Stanley Tucci:
But the thing is we ended up in Liguria, which was the last show we did in the last bit of the series. And it was fascinating. I had never been to Liguria before, and I just found it incredible. It's this little sort of arc of land that in the mountains basically rise right out of the water. You almost can't find a place that's flat. And I found the food to be incredible. And the history of it.
Missy Robbins:
I think it's one of my favorites.
Stanley Tucci:
Oh my God, it's amazing.
Missy Robbins:
I spent... So I wrote a book called “Pasta” that came out in '21 and traveled in Italy extensively in 2019, just chasing pasta and culture and really trying to understand the difference between north, south, central and going back to places I'd been before and trying to discover new places. Out of all the places, everyone always says like, "Well, what's your favorite region? What's your favorite place in Italy?" And I have the same answer as you. Sometimes it just depends on where I am and I'm just engaged in that place. When I think about where would I want to buy a house or if I was ever going to live in Italy, where would I live, Liguria comes up time and time again because I love Northern Italy also. And I've spent much more time in Northern Italy than Southern. Much, much, much more. But there's something about Liguria that doesn't feel Northern all the time.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, exactly.
Missy Robbins:
Because the food is lighter and you're on the coast. There's just something about it that has this bridge, I think, between Northern and Southern. And I find the food just, I feel like my food that I cook today is really representative of Liguria even though I'm not cooking Ligurian food. It's very herbal. It's much lighter than my food used to be. The landscape and the greenery, and it just, I love it.
Stanley Tucci:
No, the terraced gardens and the terrace olive groves and the arc, incredible, where those olives. The Taggiasca olives are absolutely incredible. The olive oil's amazing. When we were in Portofino, we went to Carlo Cracco's and we were with him where he gets all his veg from this elderly couple who's growing stuff on these terraces and amazing stuff. It's like all organic. They're in their eighties, nineties or whatever they are. And then he made, what is... Is it panzerotti?
Missy Robbins:
Yeah.
Stanley Tucci:
Basically a ravioli stuffed with all the greens, all the herbs, all the blah, blah, blah. And it's just so simple with a walnut sauce.
Missy Robbins:
It's the best.
Stanley Tucci:
And you're just like, "That's the greatest thing I've ever had." And it's nothing.
Missy Robbins:
And what's awesome is that there are 400 versions of that.
Stanley Tucci:
I was just in Umbria and pici is a thing, right, in Umbria?
Missy Robbins:
Yeah.
Stanley Tucci:
Pici with aglione. And so we got some aglione. You cook it down. Aglione is basically a huge garlic, but it doesn't really taste like garlic. It's between it.
Missy Robbins:
I don't know that I've ever had it.
Stanley Tucci:
Okay, this is really interesting.
Missy Robbins:
Tell me.
Stanley Tucci:
This is really interesting. It grows only in this one area. It's like the Tropea onion. It's like you can't grow Tropea onions any place else except Tropea because of the sand, the soil, the water.
Missy Robbins:
Though a lot of people are growing them here now-
Stanley Tucci:
Right, yeah.
Missy Robbins:
... in the style of-
Stanley Tucci:
In the style.
Missy Robbins:
But it's like-
Stanley Tucci:
It's not the same. It's like-
Missy Robbins:
It's the same as growing a San Marzano here, but it's not a San Marzano-
Stanley Tucci:
But it's not.
Missy Robbins:
... because the soil is-
Stanley Tucci:
Because you don't have volcanic soil, yeah.
Missy Robbins:
Exactly.
Stanley Tucci:
So aglione where aglio, garlic, aglione meaning big garlic because it looks like a big garlic. And each of these heads have four to six or three to six bulbs. So just an exaggerated garlic. When you cut it open, it has almost no smell. It's weird. What you do is you chop it really, really, really fine. So you're mincing this thing. And then you're cooking it very slowly in olive oil, very, very slowly until it gets to the point of emulsifying. You add tomato to it. And the Umbrians have it with pici and it's one of the greatest things you'll ever have.
Missy Robbins:
And it's just that. That's it?
Stanley Tucci:
That's all it is. You can add peperoncino to it, but you also add pecorino or parmigiano. So delicious, I can't tell you. But they're rare. And they're very expensive.
Missy Robbins:
Is it bigger than... You've had elephant garlic here?
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah.
Missy Robbins:
Is it bigger than that?
Stanley Tucci:
No. It's like an elephant garlic. It's like an elephant garlic. But it's-
Missy Robbins:
But not as pungent or even still?
Stanley Tucci:
No, not at all. And when you taste it, it's a cross between an onion and garlic. It has a very unusual, absolutely beautiful taste.
Missy Robbins:
So cool.
Stanley Tucci:
It's so good. So when you're in Italy next, you have to get it.
Missy Robbins:
Yeah, that's the thing. I just learned about a new ingredient that I've never heard of.
Stanley Tucci:
I know, and it's weird. So you tell me-
Missy Robbins:
And I studied in Italy for 20 years now.
Stanley Tucci:
The reason I brought it up is because of the idea of the different regions and that in Umbria, they call them pici, the long, very heavy pasta.
Missy Robbins:
It's funny. There's so many pasta. There's so many shapes like that that it's the same thing. But if you go an hour to your-
Stanley Tucci:
If, yeah.
Missy Robbins:
... north.
Stanley Tucci:
If.
Missy Robbins:
If you go a minute to your north, yeah. It's also town to town.
Stanley Tucci:
Yes.
Missy Robbins:
That's the other thing with these recipes is that they change. Or from household to household next door.
Stanley Tucci:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Missy Robbins:
That's pretty amazing. In your book, I was reading about you call out, when you're talking about regions, you call out three pastas. And I was laughing to myself when I was reading it because two of them are pretty obscure and two of them are pizzoccheri, which I was like, "I can't believe he wrote about this." I have a recipe for it in my book. And when we were researching the book, we went to... There's a consorzio and I don't know if that's where you went to learn how to make it, but there's a consorzio for pizzoccheri.
Stanley Tucci:
No, I didn't know.
Missy Robbins:
And you have to make it according to this very strict recipe. And it's in the middle of nowhere and we drove to the consorzio on this rainy day in this weird hotel. They set up a lesson for us. We spent the day with this guy who's in charge of preserving this recipe, and it's buckwheat pasta with cabbage, potatoes, bitto cheese, and brown butter. And it's awesome.
Stanley Tucci:
And lots of garlic.
Missy Robbins:
And it's awesome. But you can eat two bites of it before you're letting down. And I tried really hard. I was like, "I'm going to lighten this this up for my book and I'm going to..." But it's not a dish you want lightened up because it's so good the way it is. So I ended up with this very rich dish. How did you discover that dish?
Stanley Tucci:
I discovered it through... Well, as it turns out, it was in my family's cookbook. And I didn't remember it being in there. It was because it was Johnny Scapin who wrote the book with my parents. This is 20 some years ago. Because he's from the Veneto region and he's a great chef. He knows everything about it. He put it in there. I totally forgot it was in the book. So I discovered it or thought I had discovered it through a restaurant near where I live. The restaurateur is from Lombardy. And he had it. He said, when I first started going to the restaurant, Mr. Andrea Riva is his name, and he said, he goes, "You know, we have..." He does seasonal stuff. He's brilliant. And he says, "I got pizzoccheri." And I was like, "What's that?" He goes, "It's from my region. Try it." I tried it and I was like, "That's like the best. That's what I want in the winter."
Missy Robbins:
Me too.
Stanley Tucci:
That's exactly what I want.
Missy Robbins:
I was talking about last night, sitting by the fire.
Stanley Tucci:
Wine, that.
Missy Robbins:
Wine and that, and that's all you need.
Stanley Tucci:
And I don't need anything else. What I love about it, again, like so many Italian, what I wrote in the book too, it's like so many Italian dishes. It's like five ingredients-ish, four, six, whatever. It has everything you need. It's a one-pot meal. It takes a little while to do it, but it's a one-pot meal. And it's using everything from that area, buckwheat flour as opposed to wheat flour. Cabbage.
Missy Robbins:
I agree with you, though. I make mine 50/50.
Stanley Tucci:
You have to make it 50/50.
Missy Robbins:
I don't know if it's 50/50, but it's basically something like... Straight buckwheat pastas, it's challenging.
Stanley Tucci:
You can't. No, yeah. If you're having soba noodles, that's different.
Missy Robbins:
Different.
Stanley Tucci:
It's different because-
Missy Robbins:
They're absorbing the broth. They're...
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it's totally different. But if you try to just do buckwheat, the thing's just going to fall apart.
Missy Robbins:
It's like cardboard.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, it's like cardboard. It doesn't taste good and it's really hard to manipulate. So adding that 50/50. And I got that 50/50 actually from a restaurant in Lake Como. I asked the guy, I was like... Because I had it there when we were filming in that area, and I said, "This is so delicious. How do you do it?" And he goes, "You have to do it 50/50. Otherwise, it's never going to work."
Missy Robbins:
I do that, some percentage. I make a chickpea pasta that I love, and that came from the town that I lived in Tuscany. I lived in a town called Sansepolcro. And every night, I would go to the teca and they made this chickpea pasta. But if you don't add double zero flour, it's cardboard.
Stanley Tucci:
It's like a farinata, like the flat chickpea thing. It's really hard. When people make it well, I'm always so impressed because I've tried to do it and it just turns into just look, yellow cardboard.
Missy Robbins:
Then you talk about bottarga pasta and I have the biggest love of bottarga. And I have bottarga on one of my pastas at my restaurant Misi and in my new spot MisiPasta that we just opened. It's a pasta shop and we only have one pasta on the menu to eat there. And I was like, "I need to do spaghetti bottarga." It's what I want to eat also. We're selling about a hundred a day.
Stanley Tucci:
What?
Missy Robbins:
I only have one pasta on the menu. So basically every single person... We're open from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Every single table, bar, stool or whatever comes in and almost every single person has that spaghetti. And it's pretty cool. No one's asking me what bottarga is. No one's asking me if they can have it without it, which is unless for babies. And I think it's awesome because I think a lot of people don't really know what it is but they're willing to try it because it's the only pasta on the menu right now.
Stanley Tucci:
Right.
Missy Robbins:
And I loved how you wrote about just slicing bottarga and eating it as a snack. That is my go-to when I'm hungry in the kitchens at the restaurants. I walk in, I slice bottarga, I get a slice of bread, butter, and I put it on and it's like the best chef snack ever.
Stanley Tucci:
Ever. It gives you all the protein you need. Gives you the salt that you've sweat it out. It's just, it's incredible. I had it recently in London at the River Cafe. They made a beautiful pasta with bottarga all over it.
Missy Robbins:
How often did you get to eat at the River Cafe?
Stanley Tucci:
I eat there quite a bit.
Missy Robbins:
I'm jealous.
Stanley Tucci:
Because I can walk across the bridge. I can walk there practically, so yeah.
Missy Robbins:
One of my biggest inspirations in my cooking is that, and that came from the cookbooks originally. I hadn't eaten there until many years into my career, but the cookbooks were pretty important to me. And when I didn't know a lot about Italian food, so I put three other cookbooks in my store besides my own. And their 30-year anniversary cookbook is one of them because it really inspired me and influenced me.
Stanley Tucci:
And Ruth who's still there and is amazing and has become a friend of ours, I just absolutely love her. She's just one of the nicest people ever. She's so fascinating. But they changed the way people in London and in England at. They're one of those people like Fergus Henderson who changed the people eat. Or often-
Missy Robbins:
I'm embarrassed to say I have never been to St. John.
Stanley Tucci:
Well, you have to go because my son is a chef there now.
Missy Robbins:
No way. Really? Your son's a chef, really?
Stanley Tucci:
Yes.
Missy Robbins:
Ah, I didn't know that.
Stanley Tucci:
He just graduated from Leith's in London and he was offered two jobs. One at the River Cafe and one at St. John.
Missy Robbins:
I'm sure at some point in his life, he'll do both.
Stanley Tucci:
He will.
Missy Robbins:
That's awesome.
Stanley Tucci:
And he said, "No, I really want to work at St. John." He turned down a job at the River Cafe. I really admired that.
Missy Robbins:
That leads me to my last question for you. Do you have aspirations to ever own a restaurant? You're so in this now.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, I would like to.
Missy Robbins:
Now I know that you have a son that's a chef, my guess is probably that's down the road something that'll happen.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah. Well, there was recently something that came up where someone said, "Would you open this restaurant?" It was in a hotel and it was a big space. And I was like, "I don't know if I want to do that." And I knew there was this chef that I wanted to use and it was too big. Do you know what I mean? It was too much. But would I like to do it? Yes. Would I like to do something incredibly small? Yes, that's what I want. The menu changes every day, you have a few staples, and then you get a really simple, very few wines. And I'm not a-
Missy Robbins:
And would you actually be there cooking?
Stanley Tucci:
No, no.
Missy Robbins:
Just...
Stanley Tucci:
No, I'm not a chef. You know I'm not a chef. I love to cook, but I would maybe go in and cook something.
Missy Robbins:
But now you have a son who can...
Stanley Tucci:
I know, I know.
Missy Robbins:
... make the vision happen. That's awesome.
Stanley Tucci:
That would completely destroy the relationship.
Missy Robbins:
That... Yeah.
Stanley Tucci:
But no, I'd like to have something really small, intimate, brown paper on the thing. Like an osteria.
Missy Robbins:
I'm coming to that restaurant.
Stanley Tucci:
Okay.
Missy Robbins:
I'm coming to that restaurant. Well, thank you and congratulations again on everything that you're doing-
Stanley Tucci:
Thanks.
Missy Robbins:
... and the pots and pans.
Stanley Tucci:
Thank you.
Missy Robbins:
And the wooden tools look amazing.
Stanley Tucci:
Yeah, they're going to look great.
Missy Robbins:
I want to know a little bit more about the risotto spoon. I've been cooking for 30 years and I've never seen a spoon like that. So I don't know if you have some magic secret, but I'm curious to learn more about that.
Stanley Tucci:
I don't. I don't, really.
Missy Robbins:
Cool.
Stanley Tucci:
No.
Missy Robbins:
Well, thank you. And I hope we get to cook together someday.
Stanley Tucci:
You know I would love that. Thank you so much.
Missy Robbins:
Oh yeah, my pleasure.
Stanley Tucci:
Thanks.
Missy Robbins:
Thank you.
Stanley Tucci:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Stanley and Missy for a fun chat. I'm guessing this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. If you two do wind up cooking together, call me. I will do the dishes. And I'll be very careful when I wash the special Tucci collection pots and pans. I promise. Thank you to OpenTable and Amaro Nonino. Don't forget, the new issue of Cherry Bombe is now available. If you love food, women doing amazing things, and print magazines, you need some Cherry Bombe in your life. Visit cherrybombe.com to order or for a stockist near you. This episode was recorded by Eric Shepperd. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.