While she is an award winning chef, co founder of a Michelin starred restaurant, author of thirteen cookbooks, a native New Yorker, has a podcast where she talks with the likes of Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, Mel Brooks, Martha Stewart, Francis Ford Coppola, Markcarney, Bob Eiger, Johnny Ive whose comfort food, by the way.
Is peet okay.
I like that you would have known. She has also, full disclosure, talked with Michael Bloomberg, of course, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. She has talked with many, many folks. All of it comes together in a great book. It's also comes together like a great meal with amazing company. Her new book is entitled Table four at the River Cafe, which, as we understand, is a highly coveted physical table located
near the restaurant's open kitchen. Here to tell us about it and more is Ruthie Rogers, co founder of The River Cafe in London, host of her podcast, Ruthie's Table Four. She joins us from London. We are so delighted to have you. We know it's a little bit later there
in London, congratulations on the new book. We were thinking about where should we begin and if you had to pick one single thing, Ruthie, as to where you are today, why you got there, your restaurant, iconic, well known in London, award winning, you've got now a five year old podcast. What might that thing be?
I think that you know, from the very beginning, we started with the values of a restaurant. What is a restaurant? Why do people go to restaurants? What do you look for in a restaurant? And I was just downstairs just now, and I see that the way people are greeted, the way people have made to feel welcome. Of course, the food. We changed the menu for every meal. We write a
menu we rather like you do at home. We see what is fresh, what we have we've bought the day before, and what, of course always what is in season in the Italian market. So I think every day is a different day. We have great people working here who we you know, the whole kitchen is open, and so there's a kind of way that we all work together. And I think, you know, we want, really people to come to your restaurant and leave. I always say quite simply happier than when they arrived.
So tell us about for people who haven't been to the restaurant, the coveted table four.
Well, you know what, Michael Caine always used to sit at table four. But then you know, when Nancy Pelosi came in, we set at table one, and there might be a table who prefers somebody who prefers table ten, which is nearer to the entrance. Table four is slightly also a pun on the word four, so it's a table number, but it also is a table for Michael Bloomberg, a table four any of the other people who are
in the book. Because what we wanted to do during when we had to stop the restaurant because of the pandemic, we wanted a way to reach the people who ate in the restaurant. How could we reach them. We thought about reading a recipe every day, and then that segued into the story. Because when you think about when we talk to people through the lens of food about their memories, it's very thoughtful. If it brings back if I asked you, did your mother cooke? Did your father cook? Did you
go to restaurants? It brings up other stories.
I love that aspect. Being from a large family, food was a big part. My mom loved to cook, and you know, especially around holidays, birthdays, a relative in town. She would cook and make sure there was things for everybody who liked, you know, even if she had to do like five different vegetables to make sure everybody was happy. But we would sit Ruthie at that table for hours, and I feel like that's where you're coming from now.
The best things happen around a table, I think very well. And the sad things happened around a table. But I think it is around a table that we all meet. It doesn't matter. We could have a sandwich around the table or a drink around the table, but there is
something of that conversation. And when when I you know, when we interviewed Elton John and David Furnish, the woman who worked for his chief of staff is said she'd worked with and heard so many interviews over twenty five years, but it was only when Elton started talking about potting peas with his grandmother or how they tried, you know, the people who goose food, you know, to seduce, to impress,
to give joy, to share. It's you know, and I'm also you know, I made a lot of women who don't cook or men who don't cook, and that's fine. It's not about the cooking. It's about somehow being together.
Well, let's talk about the podcast a little bit in the way that these interviews have come together in this new book. As Carol mentioned a host of names, these are not your favorites. These are just some of the interviews that the publisher picked.
We should know make it clear because so many brilliant people are not in the book, but they'll be in volume two.
Well, what is the connection between the podcast and the restaurant and the way that you try to bring what you bring to life in a restaurant to an audio format that you invite people to sort of be at the table with you.
I think there are two things. I think a friend of mine came into the restaurant the other day and he said, you know, oh, I don't you know, I'm having trouble with one of my children. I'm not sure that I can join this crowd. Look at this room, Ruthie. There are so many people at this table, looking so happy and celebrating. And I said, you know, if you want at every table in this restaurant. Everyone has a story.
Everyone has a story. It could be a happy story that daughter might have graduated, or they could have been fired that day, or their mother might be sick, or you know, there's so many stories that people have, and I think what I wanted to do is talk to people and have their stories told. As I say, through the lens of food and you discover we have different section. We have the chapter of food is Family and so we have the McCartney family, we have the Beckham family.
We have the Mary Russell and Matthew Rice. We have and that's families. We have the art Food is Art and we have I see emmen and we have Johnny Ive who's a designer. We have the political artist politics. We have as you said, Mark Carney. And it's not about famous people. It's not about celebrities. It's about people who have stories that we all want to know about, you know. And so I think it's quite democratic.
Yeah, it is, it is, and the approach is really fun to kind of go through. I want to ask you, though, I think your first podcast was September. Back in September of twenty twenty one, Jake Dyllen Hall, was it Jake, And if so, why how did that come to be in white Jake being the first.
Well, we never thought, we never. Jake is a really good friend. I've known him for a long time, and I said, would you do this with me? Because I don't really know what I'm doing, but we're going to try and do this podcast. And it really came from my husband and I used to give evenings one every year in which an actor or a singer or a writer would would perform in the living room of our house and we would give the money to, you know,
the charitable cause we believed in. And one night we had Ian McKellen, and you know, he told an anecdote, he sang a song, he recounted something that happened to him in the theater, He did a sonnet of Shakespeare. But the last thing he did was to get one of our cookbooks, for the first cookbook and read a recipe for a soup. And you know always say a recipe is half science and half poetry, right, and the
recipe is actually there's something rather beautiful about listening. So I said to Jake, helped me out here, and so he did one and the first one, I think, and it was Wes Anderson, who's another good friend and one.
Listen, Ruthie, we have to jump and go ten seconds. What's your comfort food?
My comfort food would be real quick sauce.
Ah, A good one. Ruthie, thank you so much. We've been looking forward to catching up with you. Ruthie Rogers, co founder of The River Cafe in London, her podcast Ruthie's Table for her new book, Table four at The River Cafe