Judd Apatow

You're listening to Ruthy's Table four in partnership with Montclair. I may not know what makes a good comedian, but I do know what makes a good father. And last night, when I met Judd Apatow in the West End production of Cabaret in London, where his daughter Maude is playing the lead role of Sally Bowles, he told me this was the eighth time he'd seen it in three weeks. And if I may not know what makes a good comedian,

Times this weekend too.

So lovely, yeah, why not? So I want to talk to you about cabaret. But for the moment you've just come from the pastry kitchen or the recipe you chose, pistachio ice cream is being made.

I'm Bellatups, I'm the head past chef at the River Cafe, and these are our ice cream machines and they've actually got quite a small drum make like roughly two liters of ice cream. Here is our lovely pistachio base, which is essentially plain custard that has had the pistashia paste stirred through it. We do churn. It makes a delightful noise probably, I mean for this amount, it will take like four or five minutes, like nothing crazy. So you can have a look on the topic. You can see

Thank you very much, pleasure jost.

Lovely to meet you too. I hope you have a lovely meta.

What did you think?

I'm always impressed by people who know how to cook, because as much as I like food, I don't have enough interest in making it because I always feel like there's someone who makes it better, fair enough. So why would I make myself mediocre food? I can go to you and get great food. Like it's been eight hours doing the bad version of what you do.

Well, would you like to start by reading the recipe for the pistachio ice cream?

Okay, this is the pistachio ice cream recipe from the River Cafe. It serves ten or me alone. One thing I learned during the pandemic is it is possible to eat a pint of ice cream, finish it, and then start another one and finish it. Okay, here's what you need.

That's acting for you. That is disciplined. No, it's to do that.

It's like that movie with a Nick cage where he I think it was vampire's kiss and he ate a bug in it like a cockroach in a scene. That's Mod's equivalent.

Yeah, i'd ag a day is quite a lot.

It's a very method. Okay, here we go. Roast the pistachios in a dry frying pan over medium heat. Blend roasted pistachos in a food processor with eighty grams of sugar and mix to a fine paste. Heat the milk and cream to just below boiling. In a bowl. Beat together egg yolks and four hundred grams of sugar. Add warm milk and cream into the egg and sugar. Return this custard mixture to a thick bottomed pan and cook slowly over heated and low heat until it reaches eighty

Or what do we call it in our country? We call it a strainer.

A strainer into a bowl and leave to cool. Cool, then churn in an ice cream machine. You gotta get an ice cream machine.

Oh yeah, I do have one.

No, I don't dangerous so to be for me to own my own ice cream machine and.

Making pints and pipes. So when you are making a movie, okay, you're on the set of forty year Old Virgin, one of my favorites, or Knocked Up? What do you do about food for your.

Crew on a movie? Every day lunch is basically a buffet, and I have trouble not taking too much from any buffet. Yeah, Like, that's one of my issues is like this, you know, fried chicken there, I'm not going to get like one wing. I mean, I'm gonna like it's hard for me not to take full advantage. So when I make movies, for the most part, I don't I can't go to where the food is, like there's usually a tent. I have to just have someone tell me what's there and have

Tired, and you like eating because it makes you feel such up, but you have to go back to work, right, So then so you are careful. I mean, well you don't go to thee But then I mean.

I get weak. So usually about like two thirds through a movie, I lose my will and then by the end I'm just gaining weight and binging. But but for a while, I'll try to control myself. Although when we shot The King of Staten Island, we were shooting in Staten Island. We were there for months, and they got good pizza and Staten Island, so it was pretty hard

What are you writing at the moment?

I'm trying to write a movie right now to shoot next year, which is you know, it's a little bit about like what's happening in the world of comedy at this moment where everyone doesn't know what they can say. So I'm trying to write about people not knowing where the line is.

Do you do you know where the line is?

Well, for me, the line is never that complicated, because I think if your heart's in the right place, people know, and if your point is reasonable and kind, you can get away with all sorts of things. I think people can tell when you're being outrageous with no real point to it, and some people love that, and I think that's fine. I think it's fine for anyone to enjoy anything like It's like music. You might like heavy metal,

Find it be a movie about a comedian.

Not a comedian about a writer. And so I just finished the draft of that. Hopefully I'll get to do that next year.

One of my favorite movies of a long, long time ago was King of Comedy.

Yeah you like That Jerry Lewis and Robert de Niro and Sandra Bernhard one of my favorite movies. Loved it when it came out, wasn't a big hit. It came out after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, so the whole plot line of kidnapping a celebrity freaked people out a bit and also obsessed fans freak people out at the time. But as the decades have passed, I think people realize it's one of Martin Scoressy's best movies.

I haven't seen it again, I have so many times I'd like to see it.

In fact, it's one of the movies I watch to pay attention to the cinematography and the shot selection because it's very alive, but it's covered in a way that really works for comedy. So seeing how Scorsese shoots humor is really helpful, so I always watch.

It for me. What was interesting about that was the movie was the idea that comedians had to be funny, And you know, is Steve Martin funny? Is Meilbrooks funny? As I think when I did my talk about Mailbrooks, I said something that people we always think about as a man who makes us laugh, but I also think about the man who talks about bankroft and what happened when she died. There is the pressure, as someone who writes about funniness or humor to be funny. Do you feel that people expect you?

I mean, it is a weird pressure to try to be funny in your work all day. It's kind of an unnatural state. You know. Most people don't try to be funny that often. So imagine sitting in office and trying to be funny for ten straight first. I mean, it's you're kind of a weird person to like just be in that gear all the time and looking for it all the time. So it does get a little exhausting to be in that headspace looking at life through

How did it go?

It wasn't in the middle. It wasn't bad enough to be a good story, and it wasn't good enough to not be a triumph. It was just like, that's a big deal.

That's a big deal getting to to I mean again, for the listeners who may live in some other country. That's where was it.

It was a city field in New York and it was the Mets versus Yankees, so it was sold out. There were fifty two thousand people there. Yeah, and was terrifying. And I always joke that the worst part was when they announced me throwing out the first pitch. I didn't really get more than a very small smatter of applause, and I thought, I think I'm more famous than this. I mean I'm from New York, aren't I a beloved son of New York? And I realized that no one cares about me.

It was they just wanted the game to start.

It was like a politician was doing it.

Yeah, maybe they don't do it for anyone. Absolutely, did you grow up in New York?

We lived on Long Island where siast would bury. Area of Long Island. A lot of bagels being eaten there. Yeah, it's a big bagel town. At midnight, you'd go to the bagel place while they were cooking him and get them right out of the oven.

There's nothing like a bagel that's Also, West Coast isn't as good? Is it that New Yorkers always say it's Some people have said it's the water that makes it good. Then we heard that theory that they say the reason you can't have a good bagel outside of New York is the water in New York?

Is that true? You understand how the bread works?

Because also I think that maybe i've had bagels. It's really hard to insult a country's bagels.

When someone has a good bagel.

But we know. But they took me once to the East End to what's that street? Do you know Bricklay Brickday bagels And they're bagels and the British are really really proud of them. So I have got a podcast that I would like to go on and on. So I won't say I think that, but when you have a New York bagel, it makes all the difference, you know, I think that. But I don't know about La bagels. How are they? Theyre pretty much the same.

There's some people who seem to have cracked the code. I don't know, they're bringing some water from New York or maybe the whole water thing is a mess.

That the whole thing is a mess. Yeah, rightly and everybody. So you grew up in Long Island eating bagels and smelling bagels, and what was the food like in your house?

Uh? Not impressive. I can't say my late mother was a master chef. We had a very small rotation of chicken, chicken, cutlet, salmon, sometimes like a pot roast. Our. Vegetable was usually peas and corn. I don't think broccoli got cooked in my house. Yeah, I think I refused to eat a salad till mid twenties.

Yeah, maybe you didn't know, but we didn't grow up on salads.

There wasn't a lot of salads, A lot of Chinese food happening.

There was going out for it.

Going out fair amount of McDonald's happening. But then my parents opened a restaurant.

Oh yeah, so just going back one step, your mother would cook the pot roast of the chicken.

Did she work well? They owned a restaurant.

And then when she was doing the restaurant, you come home and have supper. How many in the family There.

Was five, five of us children. And at some point I think my mom made all the cakes for the restaurant. She started cooking the desserts for it, and I was a dishwasher.

Was a restaurant.

It was called Raisins, and it was like, I don't know what you would call it, American continental. It was like steak, lobster, chicken, parmesan. It was it seemed like some Italian some hamburgers. And I you know, they bring in a big bag of muscles, Give me a brush. I'd have to clean the muscles and pull the hair out of the muscles. What a nightmare. No one, No one's paid enough money to rip hairs off a mussel. I have nightmares about someone going can you do the muscles today?

We'll go check it the way we could have set up pistachio ice cream. We could. Well, we don't do muscles.

Actually, I don't know.

I don't like muscles that much. I like clams, but I'm not a big muscle.

I'm not. I didn't mind peeling the potatoes and give me a fifty pound bag of potatoes. I'm happy to feel them cut them into French fries. Myself. I got no issue with that.

So let's go back to raisins. Your father, he wasn't a chef, so they just did it as a business as a business.

So before that he was he was working in the record business. And well, my grandfather was a jazz producer who produced Charlie Parker and the first Janis Joplin record. His name was Bobby Shadd.

What was the first Janis jop record?

It was called Big Brother in the Holding Company, which is her first album.

My generation. Yeah, and that I can remember the cover of the the Big Brother. Yeah, hold on take a little piece of My Heart right, that's right.

That was on that record that dad produced, that my grandfather did, Your grandfather, it had that song down on me a song of hers. And so my father worked for him when I was a kid for a while, and they had some friends and owned a tennis equipment store, and then they all went into business with this restaurant.

In your local town.

My local town. I remember, well, I was getting four bucks an hour. I was so excited. I started working there at fifteen, and then I became the salad man.

Oh I see, so you were actually right in there.

And then my friend Ron Gardner started. He was on the grill making the steaks and the burghers. How old was he He was probably seventeen. And then at the end of the night, you know, we'd steal a lobster and head home.

Wow. And this went on, but then you'd go to school the next day.

I hope we went to school. But we loved making money, is the truth. You know, to be sixteen seventeen and have a little pocket money was was fun. And we put in a lot of hours, like we really worked there, you know, three or five nights a week, and they so you can go to.

School, come home, eat, do your homework, and then go to the restaurant or not.

Do your homework maybe sometimes sometimes no homework.

Yeah, And did they do that because it was hard to get stuff, or was it that they wanted you there, or was the incentive of having your kid just kept me out of the house and they were out of that Your mom.

Was what did sheep me out of trouble?

What did she do there?

My mom?

Did she cook in the kitchen? Uh?

No, just just at some point she started doing the cakes. I don't know if anyone wanted her to do the cakes. It's also the key. Was it a good Maybe she was forcing the cakes on everyone. I'm not saying she was good at it. I'm just saying she did it well.

Did The question is did the restaurant carry on? Did to have a good?

Lasted a little while and then they sold it to someone Those people couldn't pay the money that they owed, and then they got it back, and then they owned it for a few more years and then they sold it. But it was a really fun part of our childhood. And rumor has it Billy Joel ate there once. I know you have a lot of celebrities here and all the doctor Dre's eating here, but we had one Billy Joel sighting in our whole history of the restaurant.

I used to have seen him.

Do you know I have met Billy Joel a few times?

Did you ever come to my caro?

I may have?

Might say that was the best cake I've ever had.

That's a big thing on Long Island is a Billy Joel. You know you had that song scenes from Italian restaurant and so every Italian restaurant claimed it was written about their place.

I see, but not yours because wasn't Italian.

So it wasn't Italian. Yeah, we thought that our local pizzeria, Christiano's was what he was writing about.

Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, linen, napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures. Class is from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door to the River Cafe in London or online at shopth Rivercafe dot co dot uk. Did you ever sit down for dinner with your parents around the table? Yes, for the restaurant or during the restaurant.

Well, my parents got divorced when I was in middle school, and then I would do a fair amount of cooking for myself, Like I was very excited to learn how to use a walk. Okay, that was a big thing. To cut up steak and broccoli and just pour an enormous amount of Kikuman's soy sauce. And then I thought that was cooking. It was a three ingredients meal.

Yeah, how did you come upon that? I wonder, But I think it was a period when everybody did walks, but for a teenage.

Kid to do that, we thought that was fun. And also I remember on my kitchen island at home as a kid, it was a grill on the kitchen island. So I used to make hamburgers and I really felt like a chef, just like taking my hamburgers every day and then my comfort food. I would come home. All my friends played sports and I didn't, so I would come home by myself and I'd watch like talk shows

You didn't understand the concept of dessert.

I enjoyed the interaction between the grilled cheese and the chocolate cake. And so we did a show called Freaks and Geeks, and as a sequence of that, I was going to ask about this. So Bill was one of my favorite characters. I'm not sure. So that's true that that is based on your upbringing. That was based on

I was using the grilled cheese sandwich, more in the cake, in the grilled cheese, and that was your recipe. How did you make a grilled cheese so much?

It was it was not fancy, it was wonderbread. It was pure wonderbread, Fleischmann's margarine, American cheese, but American like but like Kraft America already slice that right then, even right now, I'm like, is that the best food in the world? Like, I don't know if any food tops it. I'm going to eat at your restaurant today and I could try and.

Make your grilled cheese sandwich. Right I have challenging finding the craft cheese and the wonder because Wonderbread still exists.

It still exists.

It's amazing that they called you know what it is. We used to take a package of Wonderbread, which was sliced white bread, and if you put, like put your weight and squeezed it, it would squeeze it too. You know, something that was about a foot tall to would go into about half an inch because it was all air. It was just air. You could just kind of squeeze it, right.

Only My wife pointed out when I met her in my mid to late twenties, that everything I ate was unhealthy and disgusting. She also pointed that out, like why are you eating wonderbread? You know, there's like good bread out there, there's good cheese out there, there's good butter out there. But first, on my first date with Leslie, I made her chicken parmesan and spaghetti with rag goo

It's funny because I talked to bob Byker and he can remember exactly what he cooked. I thank you for the first date with his wife Willow. I did think about maybe doing a guide to emotional eating. You know, so what do you eat or cook when you're depressed? When you want us to do? Somebody what you read her cook you? Because eating is not just hunger. It's emotion, isn't it.

Yeah, there's a Deepak Chopra book. I think it's called What's Eating You? Or Why are You Eating? And it's about emotional eating because way too much of my eating is reward eating or sedating myself because I love to be stuffed. I love to be stuffed, so all the blood goes to my stomach and I am half conscious. I enjoy that.

What do you do about that? Just that makes you sort of wanted.

To It's just like it's like being stoned, but on eight pieces of pizza. What's better than that? Well? I'm not that fit thin. I'm riding two hundred right now. Two hundred is my line. If I go above two hundred, I know we're in trouble. I should be at like one eight.

Will you ever overweight?

Like?

Really?

Over? What? I think the worst I got I almost got to two ten in the early pandemic era, and then I started walking several hours every day. And then I went vegetarian for a couple of years. And do you think it helped a bit? Because I think I eat bad things with the meat. Is that just the meat, it's what you put on it? Or shame eating? A

Did your mother noticed that she.

Was busy eating an entire box of chip wich ice cream sandwiches alone?

When you then started? You went out to us sate? And so what was the food like? There was that different from I got it?

Well, I had no money, so I got a job making burritos in the cafeteria of US. That's how I paid for my beer. And when I look back at what I ate, it's amazing. I'm alive. Why because I think we just went and had like Tommy's cheeseburgers at night. And I don't even think I thought then. I don't even think I understood what nutrition was. I never once thought you would eat for energy for health. Food was always for fun. When I was a kid, we were like,

So USC and making burritos and eating.

Badly and studying what studying cinema and writing? You know, then that was the I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a stand up comedian, but I couldn't think of a major at college.

I don't teach that in college.

Well they do now, my friend Wayne Vetterman teaches it at USC, but they didn't then. So I just thought, well, what's kind of like comedy? I guess movies and writing. But I wasn't dreaming of making movies. I just wanted to be like Jane Lenno or Jerry Seinfeld. I didn't care about movies, and so I was great at school. Then later when I got some opportunities to write movies, I realized, wait a second, I think I learned how to do this at school.

Did you learn at school?

I think I know how to do this.

Education does have a point.

Yeah, maybe it bubbled back up, and it doesn't mean I knew how to do it well. But I think maybe I had some irrational belief that I could. So I had some confidence from going to school, but it was completely unearned. But it did get me to sit my ass in a chair and write, yeah, because I thought, oh, I guess I could maybe do this solitary.

Or did you go to the famous writer's rooms? Where did you start?

Where did I start writing?

Yeah?

Well I did stand up and then slowly my friends started getting work. So Adam Sandler was on Saturday Night Live, so we don't try to help him write sketches, And then as he did better, you know, we would help out on movies and different capacities. And I was writing sketches with Jim Carrey for a Living Color. I wasn't a writer on the show, but I would just help him.

See what I once said, I told all the stuff. I was really really excited because Foreign Secretary John Kerrey was coming in to dinner at the River Cafe and I, this is going to be a really important night. At the end of the night, I said, what's up you don't seem really excited, And they said, well, we thought it was Jim car They.

Preferred Jim carry to John Carey. I think we all still do you all still do There's no moment where someone's like, oh, man, I preferred John Carey to Jim.

Carrey, but to Jim Carrey. Did you work on SNL?

I never could get a job there, So I was helping out comedians with their act. They used to write jokes for Roseanne bar and people like that. And then I met Ben Still and we created a sketch show called The Ben Stiller Show, and that was my first TV job. And then that you stayed in LA.

I just stayed in LA and you were in your twenties.

Was in my twenties doing stand up at night.

Were were earning the money for that just by the work.

My rent was very low. I got a very crappy apartment with Adam Sandler, and I mean the rent was so low it was like we weren't stressed to pay the rent because it was just a few hundred dollars. And so I was writing jokes for people and working at the American version of Comic Relief.

Oh really, what was it?

What was the version. It was for the homeless in the United States. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and Whoopie Goldberg hosted it every year for a long time, and that was my first job. So between writing some jokes, doing stand up, and working in comic relief, those three things was enough for me to pay my rent. Oh my god, I found a receipt the other day. So when Adam Sandler got Saturday Night Live, he just left and he left everything at the apartment, including his wallet

Would you still make cheese sandwiches?

Yes, I was still heavy in the rotation, but for the most part, I mean, you know, there was a real Hamburger World. There was a place called Jerry's Deli in the valley and we would eat there all the time and have their Matza ball soup. And that place was, you know, right on Ventura Boulevard by Cold Water Canyon. It's not there anymore, sadly, but a lot of our

If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. So where'd you live?

We live in Los Angeles, Yeah, and we spent some time in New York as well and in LA kind of hard to find the great restaurants in LA. I can't say I'm happy about because where we live in Brentwood, there's so much traffic at two o'clock. You can't go east where all the good restaurants, and so you're just stuck in your house because there's like an hour traffic to move a mile.

And I went to a place called I was in LA last week and I went to place called The Grill.

The Grill is I really liked it in Beverly Hills, excellent show business lunch spots for the.

Girl coming from England and being in LA because people always want to take you to the best French restaurant or Italian restaurant. Actually we want to eat American food. Yeah, And that was the kind of I don't want if they had a grilled cheese sandwich there. Where can you get a really good grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant.

I've rarely gotten a great grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant, but that could be because they don't have the wonderbread and the craft cheese.

Is there any place you can walk to?

No, it's not walking. We like it here because we could walk everywhere and there's an amazing restaurant every like eighty feet. And people don't like when you pop by in La if you just show up at their house, They're like, why are you in my house here? You know, in New York, it's a a little easy. Although I did get to spend time with our friend mel Brooks recently, I know.

Tell me about that.

Well, I like to visit my friend Norman Lear, who just turned one hundred and one, one hundred and one. So I said to Norman, let's let's hang out with mel because I'm always looking for any excuse to just be around mel Brooks. And then he said, Mel's gonna come over next week. And then I came over and it was mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke were there.

Did it make you feel incredibly young?

Like, well, sometimes when you hang out with people, they treat you like years old as them. Oh I see, you know, so just by hanging out with them, they assume you're one hundred.

So let's just go through that. Mel's ninety seven.

Mell's ninety seven, Dick Van Dyke is ninety seven, okay, then Norman's one on one that's two hundred ninety five years, and then you add mine in three point fifty. It was just a hangout session for fun. It was, you know, a lot of talk of World War Two. Let me just say, when you sit with three gentlemen who fought in World War two, the Battle of they're going to tell you about it, whether you like it or not, You're going to get deep into World War two talk.

So normally it was in World War Two he.

Went on bombing missions. He did fifty missions. Norman Lair and he said, no one lives past twenty five missions. So he did a lot of He survived a lot of a lot of missions. And mel Brooks said that he part of his job was he was in the Army Corps of Engineers, so they would build little bridges so that the vehicles could get over bodies of water and stuff like that. But he also had to defuse bombs. If you can imagine mel Brooks defusing your bomb.

Maybe.

Dick and Dick van Dyke. I forgot exactly what he did. But he also got pulled into performing because I think when people showed they were good performers, they really need people to entertain the troops so that they wouldn't get crazy, because without entertainment they're in trouble.

Yeah, did they glamorize war?

Did you say? No, No, not at all. I asked mel Brooks in my interview. I said, when you were diffusing bombs, did you think you were going to blow up? And he said every day, every day. But I interviewed him for the Atlantic magazine and I wanted to do an interview where we just talked more about life and not so much about work and comedy and just what he had learned over his many years because he's the greatest.

What did you glean from it?

Well? You know, his philosophies are very simple. It's just like be nice and I could I like that? You know, that's you know, my religion is you know, very Dolly Lama ask It's just kindness. My religion is kindness, and I think it shows in your work.

So we haven't talked about is your family and cooking and what happens in your household. I assume you're not going out for McDonald's and.

No, McDonald's killed all fast food, all fast food.

So yeah, that's your secret. But what about food in your house? How do you feed you? How many children do you have?

Oh, well, two daughters. Iris is twenty and mad is twenty five, and how do we feed them? Is the question?

Growing up? Did you sit down for dinner most nights? Were you away most nights?

No?

We sat down and ate and went out to eat and in La, in La, and I think, I think you know they've grown up. They they're healthy. I think we did Okay. We didn't feed them the way I would have fed them. I would have fed them badly. Leslie was like, let's not do that. And so there was the house was pretty healthy. He was in a house field of like cookies and stuff, although we were eating our fine ice cream at night. But other than that,

What does she cook?

Well, she can kind of cook anything from a cookbook if she wants to. And so it's just she gets in little jags where like she's cooking for a period and then other jags where that's slows down.

Do you have friends over, do you entertain or do you go you entertained?

Well? Will we cook for other people? Occasionally? Not that office, but you go out and then we do go out. We go out to eat too much. And there's not that many great restaurants.

You're saying you have to dry.

But every once in a while I'll try to cook and I'll go, wow, that worked. Yeah, but I always think i'd rather lay down than put the time in.

Okay, that's fair enough. I have respect for people who don't cook.

It requires patience. Fine, it's meditative not to cook. To cook, Oh, I think.

So, I think there is something that whenever I used to come back from work and people say, I'll just sit down and relax, and actually I found it more relaxing to kind of make a result of just see the process and to go sully and all that kind of it.

Shows good mental health because most people they don't like being alone or alone in their head. You know, you'll go, oh, I want to take a walk for two hours, like, but then I'm with me. And I think cooking is like that. So I feel like when I like myself more than I'm going to go want a cooking binge. And then because I'll be comfortable in the quiet.

Yeah, and then when you want you're feeling fine, you can go for a walk exactly.

Yeah.

What's Iris doing now?

What is Iris doing now? She was going to also screenwriting and directing school at usc.

So all four of you in this family are.

She's been working. She just worked on a film acting. And you know, we shot a movie out here called The Bubble during the pandemic. So in the middle of the pandemic, no one was really making anything because it all seemed kind of dangerous, and so he said to Netflix, like, I think I could find a way to make something safely. So we made a movie called The Bubble about a group of actors in a hotel trying to complete a

So have you moved to England? Is going to be going to be with us for a lot.

I like to spent a lot more time here.

Yeah, are you here now just to stay or no return ticket? Just good? You know that's good.

I'm just hanging out here and joy.

So if we're going to wind up, I will ask you one more time now that we've talked about the girl cheese and the ice cream and the pop tarts. But you mentioned comfort food for but is there one special food?

Well, I mean I'm a sucker for a good eight ounce burger, Okay, for sure. When you find the place, it's got the fresh French fries and the great burger. There's a place called Lunetta all day in West Hollywood near my office, and I think it's the best burger I've ever had. I have to I have to try to trick myself in into not remembering it's there. Oh okay, or I'll just do it all the time. So in my head, I just like lied to myself, like I place closed just what I'm ordered every day.

Well, maybe if I come to La we'll go and have a burger. Yes, Thanks about Jed, Thank you, Thanks, thank you for listening to Ruthie's table for in partnership with Montclair.

Ruthie's Table four is produced by Otome Studios for iHeartRadio. It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky. This episode was edited by Julia Johnson a mixed by Nigel Appleton.

Our executive producers are Fay Stewart and Zad Rogers. Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator is Bella Selini.

Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe for your help in making this episode