You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
When people talk about food, they talk about memories, the meals of their childhood, unforgettable parties they went to, comfort eating, and their grandmother's kitchen. Forty four guests have joined me at Table four this season, Chefs, actors, tennis champions, football heroes. As part of the podcast, many have cooked with our
chefs in the River Cafe kitchen. As the season comes to a close, we're sharing some of these conversations with you in this episode Wycliffe, Seawan, Carrie Mulligan, Tom Hollander, and Guy Ritchie. Let's begin with Sarah Jessica Parker, who brought her family to the River Cafe, learned how to make Puntaurel in the kitchen, and join me for a lunchtime event with an invited audience.
Thank you, good cooling here.
So here we are. Did you ever work in a restaurant?
No?
But I say this, knowing how hard it is. I think I would really love to be a server.
Like I really think that.
This summer is and you I was, we were really admiring your service the day because I said to the girls, I was like I'm not sure that I've seen servers move this fast a long time, because Sunday is a very busy day for you guys, right, Like especially was a really busy day and I was saying to somebody and I said, you know, I don't get to come to the River Cafe very often. I don't live in London, and to myself, to Matthew, it's like a very it's
a it's like a special thing. It's like something you earn or maybe you work toward or you pine about, and then you visit it and you're not sure if you made it all up, like is it possible that you joined a sort of cult, like a kind of thinking about it?
Can it be?
And then you come here? My hand got it is? And the kitchen really is. It's extraordinary to watch. It is like a pinball machine, but it's like there's such precision about it. And I love watching the chefs talk to each other quickly and passing or actually come together to speak. I don't know, it's amazing and it's glorious.
We were thrilled to be here, really.
Well, we're thrilled to have you and I. When we first did the completely open kitchen. You will remember after the fire, Richard Ayir, who's a director of theater, came in and I said, Richard, isn't it just like theater watching everyone around? And he said, actually, Ry, it isn't. It's like ballet. And he said, because watching people everybody, you can't shout in an open kitchen. I mean, sometimes raise your voice, but basically you're moving around to speak
to people about if you need to. Usually there's a kind of communication.
And this time I had the ravioli with the spinach and the ricotta and those tiny gorgeous porcini mushrooms that are like a surprise.
They don't talk about that as much.
And we ordered two and I was like, my daughter said, do you think we can order another one?
James said, can we order another one? Which just seems so.
Like gluttonous and decadent and greedy, and and I was like, you know what, yes, And if anybody says anything, I'll just say we'll take it, like I'm sorry that we're being so like like animals about this, but it's a kind of it's good to think of it as this kind of once in a lifetime.
It's just incredible.
One of the things I think that we all, probably everyone in this moom would think about. Was that in Sex and the City and the way you talk about food the joy. So many conversations were over food, and it was the pleasure of food. It was enjoying food as a way of communicating and being together, which we you know, we all feel here that we a restaurant is a place where you share Yeah, you know food you're sitting down at the table or at home with
your children. Yeah, And so how is that working in Sex and the City and doing was that from you?
I always loved food scenes.
I think it initially it was initially in place I think probably from either Candace's original source material or Darren Starr wrote that first coffee shop scene, which I think was just a great meeting place to sort of talk about the themes of the of each episode, like get the headline out, and then each person, those kind of archetypal characters would share points of view, so we knew where where everybody stood, and it allowed for controversial conversation
or titillating conversation. But I will say this that Cynthia Nixon, who is a dear friend of mine and we've been working together since we were little girls.
We've known each other, so we were eleven or ten.
She was a child actor also, and we would all auditioned together. She often got the part. And but we played siblings when I was very young. We played sisters on records. They used to do records of stories, and we played Laura and Mary Ingalls, and then we played siblings of we played children of Vanessa Redgrave in a movie. But Cynthia and I in those coffee shop scenes, we always eat. Yeah, we always eat, and we always need
to like reprop our plate. And then when we finally wrap, they'll always they always said to Cynthia, Me and Cynthia, do you guys want to take it.
To go again today? Yes, we do.
So we really like those scenes, and we very much go back and forth about what you could they'll send the menu in advance now now that we all have the phones and things, and because they want you to order an advance for props to have everything ready and multiple, you know, multiples of it.
So we'll go back and forth. Would you order You're going to order the all or that? So you ordered that and we can share. So the food is the lines.
Are blurred yes, women eating you know, yes was something that we are all thinking about how we combine you know, food, and I think it it's changed.
You find that your daughters are different now in terms of their attitude.
Yeah, I mean I I never was very disciplined about it.
I just wasn't.
I think I'm not really good at like denying myself something. And I think also I was a dancer for so long and running around, so it was I was able to be that way. It's certainly not the same now. But I also just I had girls. It just was so I didn't want them to have a relationship with food that was antagonistic or they felt like this was their enemy and that they were going to have to
sort of like stake out a position with food. So when I was growing up, we weren't allowed sugar in the house, and we were allowed to cookies, and we weren't allowed the chocolate. And of course all we did the minute we moved out was buy Entimate's cakes and cookies, and you know, and I didn't want that. So in our house we have cookies, we have cake, we have everything.
And I think as a result, you kind of have a healthier relationship and my daughters will have the figures they have and hopefully they'll be healthy in their athletes and they enjoy food, and they have different palettes, and you can't make someone like something they don't like or want. And I hope that they I hope that they can maintain their affection for the experience and their delight in taste and find their own ways to have that be healthy for them.
And your son mad for food. It was fantastic to be all three of them are just you know, involved in the food and talking about the food and asking questions about yea on Sunday, I know.
Math Matthew cooks.
We both cook every single day, every day, every single day.
Every day. We probably eat dinner as a family every night.
If I'm shooting or he's going to play, obviously that shifts around. We always have dinner Sunday night, but one of us, if we're home, cooks every single day.
The film director Guy Ritchie loves food and he loves wine and has his own unique way of doing things. When he came to the River Cafe, he didn't go into the kitchen. He set up his own outdoor kitchen in the garden and cooked a steak for our chefs. But that's not the only reason I like guy. He's a childhood friend of my step Sunabe and I've known him for decades. We began this conversation talking about his early food memories growing up with his family in London.
When we moved in, it was an old old fashion.
In theory.
It wasn't a sort of Cottney community, but it was an old fashioned English community there. So this is in sixty They bought that house in Fulham and they were like foodies and boozies then, which is quite early doors.
So you grew up in the house that loved food.
And then my mum was very a cook.
Where did she cook?
My favorite was watercress soup. Really it was quite exotic rabert carriers idea, but she was a very goa cook. I used to like baked eggs and watercrest soup.
And would you sit down to dinner like most nights as a fa who's in your family?
Your brothers and one sister, a sister and a mother, and.
So would you sit down to me with the family supper?
I heard something earlier on that I'm not can't remember which generation we are, but we are still the sort of the I suppose maybe the LA generation that lived more outdoors than we did indoors, so I knew all the other kids in the street, so you were never indoors. You were always out with your mates. And we were on bicycles. I remember used to cycle to quite far Afield and we were on bicycles when we were six. So I went to local school, local, I went to
thirteen school. I went thirteen thirteen. Okay, yeah, local school or no school could cope with no educating local school could cope. And I sort of picked up the reputation that it was because I was naughty, and it wasn't because I was naughty. It was it was just I was remarkably slow in understanding what they were trying to translate, and I had no ability to translate it. So yeah,
very probiscuous for schools. And I went to about five local schools and then gradually, I mean even the one I went to school with ab that was which is subsequently shut down. Most of the schools I went to subsequently because they were all learning disability schools, and they did well. They sort of fumbled around as best they could, and I'm sort of grateful for their efforts. But there was only one person I met that was more dyslexic than me, and that was Abe.
I've been to my kids' schools, you know, whether it was Abe or it was you know, my children, and I remember saying the only I don't care if they learned to read when they're eight or six or ten or twelve or fourteen. What you do never want your child to do is to feel stupid. You know, because I said, those are the people that come into the River Cafe, and they was coming and they say, I don't want to sit here. I don't want that, I don't want this, And I almost want to say, did
you have a hard time in school? You know, because.
It's I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to challenge you that from the best roses come from the worstman you. Okay, So I think a certain amount of adversity is rather essential. And I don't think it did me much harm being told. You never told you're stupid, It was implicit feel that you were where you were clear, it was clear that you couldn't follow right, and you were clear that kids that weren't that quick were following quicker than you. Could follow,
so you could you knew there was an issue. I would argue though, that that gave me a sort of a myriad of skills that otherwise I would never have developed. And feeling like you were an outside of some description and feeling diminished as a point in the end, I just don't think that did me any harm.
I agree with you about a lot of that. I mean, I agree with self esteem. I used to think self esteem was the most important thing. Now I think maybe not.
It was a paradox that. Yeah, there's a paradox.
Okay, well, going back then thirteen schools, do you remember any of those searteen schools having good food?
Yeah, you'll be surprised what kind of food I can enjoy? Yeah, tell me everything. My mum wasn't fussy, and I've never been fussy. The only thing I couldn't eat was rhubarb, and even that I can eat now, and I was. I'm quite interested and enjoy industrial quantities of food that's
not necessarily to consume. But there's a sort of it takes on certain qualities they used to do, like school, Lasanya, when you're cooking for a few hundred kids, it takes on complex characteristics that are impossible to derive if you're using quality product. So yeah, I liked school food.
Out of thirteen schools, which one did you? Did you do something like graduating from school? Or did you just leave school?
It just left fifteen, and it was anticlimactic sort of. I left and then they said, don't bother coming back?
And did your parents were they? Were they worried about you?
Yes?
Yeah, yes, because I had no qualifications at all. I can barely spell my name, but I was. I mean, I was working by the time I was fifteen, not far from here, actually some Peter Square in amazonhere.
Yeah.
I worked in the Island Records, which I don't know if it's still there, but I worked as a twoboy in records.
Were you living at home? Did your mom still cook for you?
Who?
No?
I left home early door, So I was from fifteen onwards. I was in and out And.
What were you eating? Do you remember?
Ummm no is.
The answer that no be goes. Then it was it was all work from fifteen to now. It's really all been work, although it's been sort of messy periods along that way. I've been working pretty much since I was fifteen. My first love of real food was French and I was tremendously impressed by the layering.
M call layering, you mean the way.
That I felt as though there was every nuance was investigated. There was a place on Pimlico Road that was run by those brothers.
Remember, yeah, it was next to the pot Yeah, but that's when I.
There was a little supermarket. There was next door a little shop and a little French shop, not much bigger than this room. And when I was a van driver, I used to go in there and it was absurdly expensive, but the quality was mind blowing. You've run a career off the quality of your ingredients, Avenue.
I would say that about French food and Italian food. You know that I see nothing I love more than a piece of fish, both blanc and spinach on the bottom. As you say, almost layering the way. But there's something also when you go to Italy and then you have a piece of sea bass and nothing. You know, you just get this bass and maybe, if you're lucky, a bit of salsa verdi or lemon, and so if you're going to have only two ingredients of lemon and a sea bass or sea bass and a bit of wild diregular.
The wild diregua has to be wild, and the sea bass has to be incredibly fit, you know, fresh, because there's no masking of it. You're not looking at the hollandaise or the burnets or the other stuff, you know. So I think we are with the river Cafe definitely is very ingredient based. Yeah, we are.
I went fishing for sea bass this week, actually Portland anyway, So I caught four very healthy bats. We're actually caught fourteen. We returned ten of them. Wet fishing with my ten year old is obsessed and English bass.
We get it is. We get all our fish off the coast. We don't bring any two now or anything in. We once had one of my was we had the we you know, we call it the end of service. So at eleven o'clock at night, we know how much bass we've sold, how much you know turbot we've sold, and we know that the next day we're going to change the menu. So we never have the menu. It just depends what there is in the fridge and what
there is in the sea. And then we got a call from the boat and he said, I we have just reeled in a turbot and it's so big that either the River Cafe takes it or we put it back in the sea.
Do you want and we took it? How big was it? I can't remember?
Maybe I have no eight kills. 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, ciambella and crostada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coups and River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Salumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto, 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. When Michael Jean came to Table four, he had memories to share and songs to sing, But the moment that stays with me most was this story about his childhood. As a young boy, Wycliffe was left with his grandmother in Haiti while his parents tried to make a new life for the family in America, and then one day an immigration officer came looking for them.
The immigration unit goes to my mama the apartment that they staying in. So while my dad's running, this is a big raid like dayDay about them. Yes, this is in Brooklyn. Now immigration officer gets to my mama apartment. Immigration, open up the door now, man, and my mom is so scared. The immigration officer has a translator with him that speaks French and crayle. So the immigration officer says, I had a knocked on this door for a time.
They ain't open and I know somebody in there. I need you to say it in cray all, in French whatever language that is. Tell them to open that door. And the translator says to my mother and cray all fair softly, man, I was butler translation, do you not
open that door right now? Now? The reason why I say this right is, at the end of the day, people get caught up in these situations, and we the United States of America, like there was a time where we would take keyed to this, and we would take like cause to this, and we would be so sensitive to that, like where we could say, we'll give you a pass because we know what you're doing here. You're not breaking the law. You just had a bad day. And these days do not exist.
No. Also, you know you're making the country better, you know, by coming from another country. And I was just given a prize in America. It asked to be in the academy. I was made a member of this Academy of Arts and Letters. And I wrote the letter and I said, my grandparents came from Russia and I came in nineteen seventeen. You know, they were part of that Ellis Island. I was just thinking, two generations. How you know if your grandparents were here watching you they did your grandparents know
the measure of your success? Did they see?
No?
My grandparents, my grandma knew my musical abilities at a very young age because I would just like make songs up. There was these women in the village every Sunday that would sing these church hymns and I would just get I would just be part of remember one. Yeah, I remember a few of them.
She sat fair, Not do you wan pair?
When Bennie and corner Shop? She shuck fair? Oh what do you want pair? Oh Bennie when Bennie?
Yeah? And more corner Poco Damn the.
Lulja bo Ben Dick Show, Wha.
Wha Poco men, The Louija Bo Ben Dick show Whoa. So that was that was you know, you could just feel it.
But the the the the him is saying we're blessed and we should acknowledge that like basically every day of our life. So again that was some of the I would hear these these these uh, these amazing women like and and then so the heymns would just channel through me.
And after church, would you would that be food? Would that be a meal? Would you go home?
And hence we call it lucky Sunday. You get that lucky Sunday. Everything come out on that Lucky Sunday. But it doesn't happen often. Lucky Sunday happens on Easter.
The meal is big.
The meal is big. The meal is a lot of meat, goat goat goat cooked very interesting. It's called tasu. It's fried traditionally in Haiti. If you see how they cook, they used the chabon charcoal, so it's caught with the charcoal because you know, the food gonna taste different, and then they put the big aluminum pan and so the gold is fried. They would make a uh poisson. The poisson gorsel is the white fish a little saltea like codfish. At times, it.
Sounds like you're saying gross sell large salt, doesn't.
It yeah, yeah, yes, yes so. And in crele the word means big yeah so yeah, and then phonetically yes so because crayle in French at times the words do mean the same thing else.
And so when you your father around and your mother didn't open the door, so were they safe in the United States for you to come?
They were safe. My parents came and got me and my brother. Now they get on the plane. The immigration laws work. They come and get us from Haiti. So me and my brother going to see my parents for the first time. Left for me now yeah. So now I'm like eight nine and now my parents are come in to get me, and I've never seen them. For them, so my grandma gets us dressed, she takes our bags, she brings us to the airport. I ain't never seen
an airport before. So when the airplane is landing, you can imagine what that looks like to me, the UFOE. So the airplane lands, and I'll never forget. My mother had a yellow outfit. She looked like Jackie Yo. She had the glasses on, you know, she looked like Miss America. I was like, yo, that's my mama right there.
You know what I'm saying.
My dad had the long bed looking like he moses. You know, he comes and they come and they hold me and my brother in that hog. I could still feel that hog.
I hadn't seen you for how long I haven't seen us?
Since we were born?
Did they continue cooking the food of Haiti? In Brooklyn?
My mama had a thing you only can eat in the house. I didn't even know what it was like to go to a fast food restaurant. A lot of what was cooked in Brooklyn was something called ligan. Ligan, Yes, ligan is similar to a gumbo, right, but all in vegetables, so eggplants, water cress, this was like part of it. Also a lot of yam, sweet potatoes and this is natural. A lot of fish in the morning. It was very,
very important that you had breakfast. My father, who was also an amazing cook, he used to cook liver for iron, right, so again like it would be all, but he would like cook the liver with egg whites.
They dipped the liver in the.
Yeah, they beat the batter, yeah, And they batter the liver so it's very it's not rough, so everything is very tender. So we naturally grew up in an environment where the food wasn't processed like they literally, Oh you know what, she used to do chicken, So from the chicken. She would always go to the butcher, like they would not if the meat wasn't from the butcher, they would there's no such thing about she go to the supermarket and get chicken. So everything is from the butcher. And
it was called pool gee. And I gotta tell you, just thinking about that chicken right now and how they seasoned it and cooked it was pretty amazing.
Did you ever go in the kitchen and cook with your mom?
My mother? She was like, you gotta be real successful. I said, why because she said every time we cook, and all you do is you come in the kitchen and sing, and you sing, and you stay here and you wait. So you the first one with the first meal out right. My mom when she would cook rice, she would had me work with the seasons with her. There's a seasoning called Maggie. You've ever heard of it?
I think I have.
It's like amazing because it's like a mixed season and it was something like she can't. It literally works in everything, like literally is like a little cube, yes, yeah, yeah, like a yellow okay.
Yeah, it's like it's like a cube of vegetables.
And they put Maggie in.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
So that was one of the things. She was like, give me the two Maggie's so the rice game is crazy, and Haiti and and and then the the the kitchen. So she'd be like, okay, put this amount of water right in the pot. And she put the water. She says, okay, put this amount of oil right. And one of the things she used to have me you do was wash the rice. Cleaning was very very important to her how
she actually cooked the food. So I'd be like, but the rice is already in the park just but no, she says, you got to put the rice in the water.
Got it.
So literally for five minutes she has me cleaning this rice out. And I remember, like now I would sit back and watch the water boil. And while the water was boiling, I was singing my mother's favorite French song, Jacques Bell, which.
One my l.
Says, quite and Mary unfaithful and faithful? Did it sting?
Did it?
I have a version of it?
Yeah, if you go, yes, that's right. Yeah, Now you got to hear they clap version.
So you sang it in Creole, No.
I sang it in English. But I put the hip hop to it. I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, I put the hipness to it. I put that sauce, you know, I put the maggi in it.
Did you live in an enclave of Haitian culture?
So we we grew up in Marlborough projects, one of the roughest projects in Coney Island in Brooklyn. So yeah, so I we got there from Haiti. We grew up in Coney Island. As far as me and my brother was concerned. We came from a hut and so we're in the building. So we were rich. We like the Jeffersons. We moved on up on the east side.
Did you what was schooler?
We went to school in Brooklyn. But this is what was amazing about Coney Island. We lived in this big project, one of the most dangerous projects. But when we go on the roof, we could see the entire amusement park in the beach in Coney Island. And then so we was like living on up because me and my brother was like, this is amazing. So literally we could go from the projects and then like walk to the beach, which was pretty amazing and the reason why we identified
with the beach again. In Haiti and a village, we played in the cemetery, so our Walt Disney and our playground was this big cemetery. So and I had we watched the transformation go from the cemetery to this amazing amusement park. Again, what that did for us was, you know, we are in the land of opportunity, and we was like, there's nothing now that's going to set us back. So the Eagle gave us that opportunity. America has given us this opportunity. And I don't say that just for me.
I say that for many of my friends, my peers that ended up being super successful.
While many people visit hotels or work in hotels, Carrie Mulligan's experience is more unique. She grew up in hotels. When Carrie joined Maybe we talked about food and films. Her performance is Felicia Bernstein in Maestro and her very unusual childhood.
My father was a hotel manager for Continental for my whole childhood until I was sort of eighteen, so we I was born. I think we were at the Brittannia when I was born. My dad was running the Brittannia hotel, and then in London, yeah and then they yeah, yeah, yeah, so there and then the Mayfair. And then we moved to Germany to Hanover and Dustledorf and he ran hotels there, and then we moved back to London. He ran I
can't remember in the hotel. He then was at the Churchill in Portman Square, so he moved around those and he also ran hotels in Vienna and Frankfurt.
Yeah did you but you actually lived in the hotel.
We lived in the hotel till I was eight.
Were you were a bit like Elowise? Do you remember that book? Alowis? Did you ever know that growing up in the plaza? Would you run around the hotels? Yeah? Fine?
What was that like?
Living in a hotel?
It was amazing. I mean it was you know, it's kind of all we knew. But I look back and I think, oh wow, that was kind of an extraordinary
way to grow up. And my brother and I were certainly we know, we would sort of roll around with the the maids, you know, going into people's rooms after they checked out and sort of you know, I remember sort of sitting in the basket with all the sheets, you know, with my hands holding on, rolling around the corridor and you know, sitting on with my whole body wrap around a hoover, you know, going up and down the hallways.
We were ordering room service. Did you have we had?
It was like that, you know, they'll have a they'll have a little I mean in the place at the hotels. And we lived in the sort of an apartment in the top floor for the manager. So we lived in a yeah, Mum talks about I mean, we had our own little mini kitchen and stuff, but it was more Yeah, we didn't do room service, but we did have our
linen change. The only thing I remember about the kitchen because we were, you know, nowhere near the kitchen that was not And I was saying earlier, my dad, you know, I think briefly worked in kitchens on his way. He worked his way up from kind of collect in glasses in a restaurant to being the manager. Yeah, and he so whenever he cooks, generally I exit the building because
it's just not what is it like? He just likes things ordered and the way that they and you know, for us to sort of come in and sort of casually start munching on something. His heart was not part of it, so that yeah, it's but my memory of one of my birthday parties when I was little was at the hotel in Disseldorf, and you know, the pastry chef made a bunch of dough. We were all making little dollies out of dough, and then they took them off and cooked them in the kitchen and brought them back.
And the birthday cakes, you know, when we lived in hotels were always you know, those very elaborate kind of I feel like they always had liquor in them.
They always had like a.
Bit of booze in it, properly kiddie birthday and they had like very beautiful writing in icing and all that kind of stuff. There was always such a sense of occasion in hotels. It's always like there's a big display for Christmas or there's a big you know. It was like there was always some sort of sense of there's a sort of event happening. But I always felt, really
I like being nomadic. I don't mind, you know, I like being in hotel tells I'm not someone who I don't need to bring you know, some people sort of need to bring stuff with them to make wherever.
They feel like home. Carries with her.
Do you know the only time I ate lunch here was with Tracy Ty.
She described, you know that she I think she's ever ordered room service. She would always, you know, I'd go out and find something and take her food on the plane or take an object. And as you say, I love hotels so much that I actually don't like when I'm upgraded to a suite because it reminds me too much of home. Yeah, yeah, I like the confines of a hotel them. You can find everything, you know, where
your boocket as you know where everything is. I always thought that maybe I'd be one of those women who age, you know, Richard would be a stay at Clarages for the rest of, you know, our days. I had said to him, if we saw our house, how many nights do you think we'd get in Clarges. He's like, probably six. And do you think there was a performance that you had to behave in a certain way with strangers?
I think so.
Yeah, yeah, we had you know, we met people who were staying at the hotel sometimes and there was a real kind of day. It felt like being a bit of a like a diplomat stater or something. You know, someone would come and stay at the hotel and you would greet them.
You know, what was German food like? Do you have a memory of it or did you.
Yeah, lots of quite meat, meat based food. I mean we you know, we were amongst kind of lots of bricks as well. So but we spent We were amazingly lucky. We got to go skiing in Austria in our holidays and things, we you know, spent lots of We had lots of Asia Kaza, spetzel and you know venus ntzel and delicious like warm brothy things to be able to warm up. But yeah, I think we you know, because
it was also an international hotel. It was you know, it wasn't we were if I was eating stuff from it wasn't necessarily German cuisine or anything.
I usually asked people about their families and growing up, and restaurants were restaurants, But in your case, I often asked if restaurants were a special occasion, which was the touth In my family, we went out to restaurants for somebody's birthday and somebody's anniversary or something great had happened, and you'd celebrate a restaurant. Here we see people just coming out for dinner with their kids all the time, and maybe it was just more for you. That was that something that was just.
I suppose that I don't really remember going to restaurants at all. I don't remember going to nice, you know, white tabletop restaurants.
Ever.
With my we would go to there was a pizza place in Dussledorf that we would go to, but like really a hole on the wall kind of pizza place, and that was sort of a treat that we would
go there. I don't think we went to I remember what for the Millennium my dad was running the Intercontinental in Vienna, and there was a big Millennium meal there and I was fourteen and fourteen fifteen, I think, yeah, fourteen, and my best friend came with me and we bought dresses, you know, for millennium and we sat and it was a proper white tablecloth, seven course meal thing, and that
was that was a big, big deal. So I don't think we did necessarily, although when I was when we moved home and we were living in you know, Buckinghamshire. We used to go if there was anything to celebrate, we'd go to Mister Poone's the Chinese restaurant and go and have big Chinese and we did that kind.
Of for years.
Your parents cook for you, yeah, I mean Mum's always you know, she couldn't turn her hand to anything. She was never a sort of passionate cook, I think because Dad was the cook. So if there was meals that were cooked, it would be Dad, you know. And Mum, my grandmother was a was a wonderful bay loved baking.
Yeah.
So where did she live?
So she was my mother's Welsh So she was in Carmarthenshire. So and every time I went to her for any kind of length of time, we were just bake and bacon, baked, oh well everything. Welsh cakes, famously delicious Welsh cakes.
Welshcakes, that's don't tell Sean, I asked you this because I've lived in this country.
For well.
If you weren't it.
But they're like their little mini sort of flat cake with raisins in and like a scone, yeah, like a sort of flatter scone. But she'd make amazing Welsh cakes, a cherry almond cake, a delicious cherry almond cake that just got better the longer you left it in the tin.
You know.
It was that kind of thing.
When Tom Hollander came to Table for here, just finished filming the series Feud, Capoti Versus the Swans. The Swans were Babe Paley, Slim Keith, and the other wealthy socialites who world nineteen sixties Manhattan. Tom played Truman Capoti, their unlikely friend and writer host of The Black and White Ball. We could talk about Capoti and women in food because those women, there are a lot of so many scenes in restaurants. Right, they went to lunch every day.
You're right, But I wonder if they skinny? Was the their job?
Right?
Yeah?
They drank. I think they drank and smoked. They drank and smoked and sort of died young. Yeah. Perhaps they were celebrating being in the inn crowd and being at the table, the best table in the best restaurant. And yes, they were restraining themselves. He couldn't stop, he couldn't control his appetite. And he loved cooking. He loved his own kitchen. Yeah.
So in the South was yes, yes, and the Black and White Ball they served his You know, the black and White ball, that sort of apotheos The black and White ball was a ball at Truman Capoti threw in.
I can't remember when, the very early sixties, on the back of In Cold Blood, which had made him hugely famous, and his obsession with sort of high society and his own celebrity came together in one glorious moment, and he created the guest list to beat all guest lists that have ever existed, so much so that people knew about him were fighting to get on it. And aristocrats flew from Europe. All the film stars, you know, Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow, the Aniellies, the probably Mick Jagger, we can
ask him. They all turned up to the plaza and he he gave them corn beef hash, which he remember fondly from Monroeville, Alabama, where he'd grown up. But they they all complained about the budget of the catering, that it was very small. For him, it was about getting them in. They were the decoration, They were the they were the party, their their dresses, their masks. But there
was nothing there. There were some balloons and some some some rather dodgy food that neither wanted, and I think the party ended relatively early, and a whole bunch of them.
Went gambling, what was it like filming that scene?
Did you do it?
They recreated it in the place and Zach Posen had done the dressers for the ladies. It was amazing.
Did he eat?
He did cooking. Yeah. He was addictive and compulsive, so he goes up and down. You see, we in our version we pretty much do fat Troomen because I couldn't in a TV schedule go up and down as much as I needed to, So we went with Ryan Murphy said you need to you need to put on some weight. So I did, which was very enjoyable. And then it's marvelous in the moment. And then and I started to find it hard to put my socks on, and I got breathless doing sensible things I thought of easy, usual,
I mean, ordinary things. That was that was distressing. So and also I'm a bit old to be messing around
with my weight like that. And furthermore, I've I have a little bit of a compulsion to overeat myself and have spent all of my most of my professional life slightly going slightly slightly up in between jobs and then having a diet before a job, and going up and going down, and going up and going down, and trying to stay disciplined, trying to be like my father who weighs himself every day and if he ever goes over
eleven stone, he he has a look at breakfast. He says, I were I know whether I can have a heavy or light retters, depending on what the scales are on every day? Does that which sounds like, you know, one of the Swans with its level of obsession, But he's he's eighty eight and still going strong.
You're saying before that putting it on was one thing, but you haven't told us about how you take it off.
So I went to a clinic. About half of it came off in an Austrian clinic, and then I went and did the play in which I was playing someone who needed to actually be a bit heavier than me, so I took patriots playing Berezovsky, who was quite portly. So I kept it on for that and that worked, and then I only I only got it off about three months ago, with the fear of doing the American
press junk it. But I I do have a tendency to I love eating, but I also eat my feelings, you know, which which people do, and if you do it too much, it's it's not good for you. So I tried to do other things with my feelings.
Yeah, a friend of mine I was at a dinner recently where they were talking about a zempec yes, yes, and they were saying that, and it was kind of interesting to her. She said, really, what it's done for me. It's taken the noise of food away. It's taken all that noise. Should I shouldn't? I? How much? When? And actually I understand that a lot, But I also think it's a kind of noise we do want in our life as well. We like the noise of food, don't we.
We liked the kind of thought of going to bed at night and thinking what am I going to have tomorrow for lunch or then?
And actually it's the noise of being alive, isn't it. It's the desire, then, the fulfillment of the desire, the creative process, the gathering of ingredients, the construction, the destruction, the kind of leering up afterwards, everything from the preparation to the end of it. It's all and it's a sort of I mean, you could I could become pretentious if I'd say, but you know, it's a cycle of life, isn't it. But yet, but to be at war with food,
which you can be, is not good. And I have, I do have a sense of that because being you know, an actor, where you become inevitably obsessed with your appearance, you know, it has an a tendency to make you think, I mustn't need, I mustn't deed, I mustn't eat, so I'm beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It's never really made any difference. I met her. I met her an actor once in Italy who'd long retired. He'd been a famous sixties heart throw. He said, I had to retire because I was sick
of being thin and I wanted to eat. And he lived in the Italian hills near Cordona, and he loved food and he ate it. And he's probably no longer with us, but he was living the life of a you know, a bonne viver. And I did sometimes think I'll get to a certain age and then I'll give up trying to not be fat, and then I'll I'll just become a fat actor. Because fat actors they never stopped working. They're always there's always Rumber, a fat actor
and everything. Anyway, I can't do that wells right, well exactly, or the dear Richard Griffiths or you know you sort of think they're they're loved. But I don't want to do that because I want to I now need to live as long as I can.
For sure if we're certainly shad because you have a son.
I do thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table for in partnership with Montclair
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