You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
It may not.
Seem obvious at first, but tennis and cooking have a lot in common. Chefs and tennis players are both rigorous preparation in the kitchen, court side rituals. When the match begins or when the restaurant doors open, both need to be ready, focused and adaptable. Meeting Maria Sharapova at a grand dinner in Milan, I discovered a food lover whose story off the court is as amazing as her performance
on it. In nineteen eighty six, pregnant with Maria and wanting to protect her, her parents fled Belarus, escaping the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A few years later, she and her father moved to Florida with just seven hundred dollars and not a word of English. Every year must be an anniversary for someone like Maria, who hit her first tennis ball age four, was spotted by Martina Navratlova aged six, and became one of only ten women in history to
win a career Grand Slam. But this year is especially special. Maria is celebrating twenty years since winning against Serena Williams becoming at age seventeen a Wimbledon champion. Today, we're here in the River Cafe to celebrate as a businesswoman. She's uniquely creative and inspiring other magical ingredients needed in a
kitchen or a tennis court. We're here together, two women talking about food and memories, with stories to tell, and maybe before we finish, we'll have a celebratory chocolate nemesis with twenty candles.
I genuinely cannot believe that Ruthie Rogers just did an introduction on me.
It's so specially we just kind of love at first sight at that dinner because we were in Milan at the Montclair Dinner.
Yeah, and we just kind of it.
Was a very charming evening. Was his name is dark and moody, a little bit eerie.
Yeah.
And then it was toward the end of dinner, when I think things were wrapping up, I came across even a hallway, maybe the bathroom line.
I think it was. It was in that corner, and then they ever know and that's where we go. But it was it was a lovely it was for Remy Raffiniyes.
Who've gotten to know in the last few years and you as well, And what a charming, very charming man and has done incredible things with Montclair.
Yeah, and that was just a very joyous atmosphere in the room. I thought everybody was there to celebrate him, to celebrate each other over food.
When we talked last week about.
Doing this, I you know, we always start with a recipe, and there's something about hearing someone you know, we've done Nazy Pelosi or al Gore, people who would never think saying, take it tomato and squash it, you know. And so when I asked you what you wanted to cook, you said that you'd like to do a recipe that reminded you.
Reminded me of my grandmother. Yeah, yes, the years that I spent in her kitchen.
You chose the recipe with potato potatoes. Said there was a potato.
Okay, there's a potato.
My mother makes these delicious potato pancakes as a treat. And if it's a holiday or you know, every on my birthday, she usually likes to make potato pancakes. And then Alexander orders a little jar of caviar and that is our that's our ultimate and absolutely sour cream.
Yes, well, these are potatoes lu Cheesi because it comes from well. Luca is a beautiful city in Tuscanes, near Pisa.
Would you like to read the recipe.
Roast potatoes from Luca Potato luchesi. One kilogram of waxy potatoes, one medium red onion, finely sliced careful with your fingers. Six scarlet cloves, peeled and kept whole. Four sprigs of fresh rosemary and sage, and one glass of dry white wine extra virgin olive oil. Let's preheat the oven to two hundred degrees. Peel the potatoes and cut into thick slices. Put into the cold water to wash off excess starch, then drain, pat dry and put in a large mixing bowl.
Add the onion. Onions are my favorite, by the way, Yes show its and onions. Onions with potato is just the best combination. So add the onion, garlic and herbs to the potato bowl and the rest of the ingredients and toss well. Choose a baking tray large enough for the potatoes to be spread out in one later, cover with foil and bake in the oven for twenty five minutes. Remove the foil, then using the back of a large cooking spoon. Break up the potatoes and herbs to make
a rough mash. That's the fun part. Drizzle with olive oil, return to the oven and roast for thirty minutes or until the potatoes are brown and crisp on top and still light and fluffy underneath. Serve cut into slices.
So it's not a take a pancake, but we tried to find the recipe that way.
It sounds delicious, it is. Can you please sign this recipe for me?
With love?
We talk about this quite often about how much we really respect and love women who cook. You know that that cooking is a way of sharing, it's a way of expressing love. But we also have to really respect and admire the women who don't you know.
And that you know, And that's and I do.
And I think that I have a friend whose father would never let her in the kitchen because he didn't want her to cook. And I was sort of slightly equated to learning how to type, that, you know, growing up in the sort of seventies and thinking, you know, we were women who were going to work that if we learned how to type, we'd be secretaries. Yes, and Luckily my mother forced me to go to typing school.
Now that we all use laptops, you.
Know, knowing how to type, But there are as women sort of categories that were thrust into and we're judged whether we're a good mother by the way we cook or a good wife by the way we cook.
Very much, but now I think it's it's also.
I think everything we're looking at and we're also looking at men and how they cook and how they shop, yes, and even cooking as a form of seduction, you.
Know, I think if some I think if some of my relatives, I mean my mother, when you ask her if she enjoys cooking, I think her answer is no, but she enjoys cooking knowing that somebody will enjoy it. Yeah, right, so she and when she cooks every the process is meticulous, like she does it in advance, She does it off of a recipe. She makes sure that it's very precise. And I think that also seeing her go through that process taught me a lot about discipline, because cooking, I mean,
there's different ways to cook. Right you can just take ingredients from the refrigerator and just whip it right up. But her process was very meticulous and in particular and the ingredients that she chose based off recipes, and she wanted to know that if it worked for someone, it would work for her if she did it well, and her kitchen is always clean. And I think that's, you know, that's the energy that she that she taught me to perform with, is that you have to put everything that
you have. You have to do it with a way of discipline and time and get it done and know that you have no regrets in the end.
I agree.
I would say that very often about Julia Child Cookbooks, American cookbook writer, that she did it.
It was so precise.
She never said, take a ripe tomato, but she would say, take a tomato that's you know, two inches wide and four inches high.
Put it in a dish.
It but it was it was like science, right, and therefore you never had a failure because if you followed it, you know that, and that gave you the confidence to then be able to not follow the rules well.
And even if you did fail, I think there's you would carry a sense of knowing that you you performed it at your very best, because then you don't, you don't you're not looking back and regretting, which is one of the worst feelings that you may have in that voice. Yes, yeah, that says, oh I didn't prepare enough or I didn't
do that enough. At least when you prepare the very best that you could that you know, and in my sport, that was so important as doing you know, we just briefly discussed it, but doing your homework and going overboard with your homework so that you know, no matter what result, because you know, you show up on the day and things can go wrong. Yeah, you can be as prepared
as you want to be. You know, you can be as confident as you want to be and as you are, and you did everything to your best knowledge and ability and it just doesn't work out. But at least that's you know, you know, that's like and that happens, but you did everything to get to that moment. You did it one hundred percent.
Gives you resilience as well. I think if you have that.
I love that word.
I love it too. I was saying that.
You know, now, everybody talks about teaching and it's very very important their children's self esteem and what I sometimes think self esteem is overrated. But anyway, it's that's another cop But I do think resilience if I could, and I've seen it in this restaurant. I've seen the times that we've had hard times or different issues, and they're the one who are just able to not not to hide it, not to shun it away, but to take it and then you know, carry on, which is I think I.
Was so nicely surprised to see how young your stuff is.
They are, they are, I think they, you know, some of them. It's interesting. It used to be that in the kitchen you.
Had chefs who started very very young, and sometimes academically were challenged, and so they found a skill that they could do, which is great. Now we have that and they're you know, questioned. Looking at Adriana, I think I studied history and got a degree and then.
Always knew she wanted to cook.
It's very performance led a restaurant, you know, the curtain so compared probably comparison very sport, but also to theater. Let go, and it's already and it's collaborative. I note that if you don't chop the chilis, the sauce chef doesn't have it to make use sauce doesn't have the chilies. If you're late for work, it's very often not the bosses have crossed, but your colleague.
Yes, another alloticed.
Another similarity with sport and particularly in tennis. And then you know, being working at a restaurant is that when the curtains close and all the you know, all the people leave, it's just you and in this very quiet and eerie place, which if you think about leaving the center court and walking back through a tunnel and going into the locker room where you are, I mean, it's fairly lonely, right, It's just you and your bag, and you go in the shower and you know you have
some of your rivals and compatriots in there, but it's just, I don't know, it's very intimate. And just a few minutes prior to that, you were in a room that was you know, in this arena that was full of thousands of screaming fans, and then it's.
Just you tell me how that relationship was between your grandmother and her mother and cooking.
My mother was a very young mom. She she wasnt when she was nineteen, so she yes, I'm an only child, and she was still in university at the time, and so you know her mom. Between she she had a job in a local market. Oh, I was a local in Sochi, so She which is aware, which is in the south of Russia. It's on the Black Sea. I was born in Siberia while my mother was pregnant with me. Actually both of my parents are Belarussian. But during Chernobyl
and the explosion, my parents moved to Siberia. I had some close relatives there and so they found out that would be a safer place for my mom to give birth. That so at twenty she gave birth to me. So we were very young, a very small family, and we were very close until this day. We remained that way. My mother has been a huge influence in my life because so much of what I did was about sport, but so much of her influence was outside of the court.
Like she of course she was very involved in making sure I did the right thing in my career, but most of her influence was making sure that I did my homework, Was that I studied well, Was that I immersed myself in a different world that wasn't connected to sport, that I was curious and interested and different.
What did your father do?
My father had a little construction firms and around the country, and he was traveling quite a bit, so he you know, we would actually rarely see him because he was working full time. As my mom was young and was raising.
Me, and so you grew up in Sibery.
Grew up in Siberia for the first two years, and then at two years old, we moved to Sochi.
Why did they choose it?
Sochi was known for a place where a lot of people from the north of Russia would come to relax and go on their summer holidays. And they had these sanatoriums where you'd spend several weeks getting healthy and swimming in the sea of doing you know, natural therapies because a lot of people that worked in oil and coal mining, you know, they would go to just breathe fresh air. And it was a very warm city in the summer. It reminded me very much of Florida.
Actually, the River Cafe cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts come in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar. No need to book, see you here. The food in Russia is very regional, but what it had been different in Belarus to Soshi.
I definitely remember that the tastes of the food being very different and both you know, my grand no, my grandmother's food was very flavorful because it had a very rich profile. You know, there are a lot of stews and a lot of soups, and you know, within a borshe I mean there's more than ten ingredients. You had the beets and the peppers and the meat, and you know, a few spices and and then I went to the United States and it was a grilled piece of chicken.
It was a very different experience. And I missed sour cream. I grew up eating sour cream on everything, and all of a sudden it was ketchup.
Yeah.
I was born in upstate New York in Woodstock, and my father the real treat wol He would take us, you know, sort of once a month to New York and he'd drive and we'd see the ships, and then we'd see a musical and then.
We would go to the Russian tea room.
Yes, and that was the tradition of a samovar drinking tea is such a I mean, anytime I would enter my grandparents' house, they would have they would cut a piece of rye, like a big, big rye bread and they would cut it in many slices. They would put a thick of butter and then red caviar because that
was the cheaper than black caviar. And it was welcoming your family was they were so proud, like to see their granddaughter walk through the door and and their their children and that was I just I remember this beautiful plate and presentation is everything. You know. The china was. They would take out their most beautiful china. And they didn't have much. I mean they didn't grow up with a lot of money. They didn't have a lot of money. But you know when they would sit at a table,
there's everything had a meaning. The food had a meeting and a purpose, and it was it was about having a nice time and sharing memories and laughs and just being a family over food of having conversations. And I really missed that.
Yeah, and you create that in your own you try.
It's it's there's nothing like going to your grandmother's home. I know, there's really there's really not I also have a more minimal approach to decoration and the way I set a table, and it's quite a contrast to thinking of, you know, arriving at my grandmother's house, where everything is more oriental and detailed, and there's you know, even even the way that she serves, and there's just there's a lot.
You went to Miami with your father.
I went there with my father because my mom couldn't get a visa for the first two years, and it wasn't planned. It was just difficult to obtain the visa, and so I spent the first two years, you know, just eating takeout food. The only thing I remember him cooking was white rice because he was because he would wake up super early because my training would be early, and he would find, you know, random jobs that he could take, and most of them were on golf courses.
Because he had a construction background. He did a lot of jobs on golf courses and his work would start super early. So he would make rice for me while I was still sleeping in the morning, and he would leave it in the pan and he would put it under a pillow, and so when I would wake up, I would eat this rice as my breakfast on my own. I would put some milk in it.
So you were at seven, though, Yeah, and he was already trained.
I was already training.
How did that happen?
My father enjoyed the sport. He's not a He's no brilliant athlete, although he claims to be. I grew up going to tennis practice with him because he enjoyed the sport. He played at a leisure level. He played with his friends. This wasn't so che Yes, yes, we only moved to
the United States because of tennis. It was very specific to going to this very famous academy in Florida where a lot of tennis players went and and it was mostly because there's a huge facility and you have other kids your age that you play with, you have some of the best coaches in the world going there, and you just don't need to leave, which for an athlete is incredibly important, just to have a base where you feel like, I'm just focused on this one craft. I
do it every day, I have no distractions. And it just happened to be in the middle of nowhere in Florida.
Did they think about feeding children who are athletes in a certain way or was it.
I honestly just think they cared about making money.
Yeah, maybe that.
Time food wasn't a priority for athletes.
I talked to Savannah Leaf. She know Savannah Leaf, I don't. She's great.
She was an Olympic volleyball player and she's now a filmmaker and an artist and wonderful. And we were talking about when and how the awareness of food and athletic ability forty years ago it was.
Not no big deal. Yeah, that people didn't.
They didn't think they told what they would eat prior to a match or after a match. It just wasn't. And now players travel with their own chefs because it's it's become a critical component of an athlete's life, right, because the difference of number ten in the world to
number one in the world is very small. And so you know, having you know, having a perspective that's different to others, you know, or having a game plan that's smarter than others, right, or treating your body like it's it's an incredibly important tool, is vital.
How did you merge the academic with the athletic when you were a child of seven and they were and they had it must have been regulated, no, to give you an academic.
Absolutely, it was something once my my mother arrived, besides giving me a fresh haircut and changing all my clothes because she said, what is what is your father buying you? And cooking home, home cooked meals? She was I remember, you know, education was was a big part of her contribution. And even even when it came to high school, I was, I was a teenager, and she sourced because I traveled so much as a teenager, she knew I couldn't go
to a you know, a school in Bradenton, Florida. That we'd have to find a school that I could do online, and she sourced a place. It wasn't very it wasn't like a popular school. But I finished high school, you know, I finished that that part of my academics while I
was traveling and competing and playing at Wimbledon. And she would when when the school would send all the books, my mother would cut it in four portions for each each semester and she'd put it in a folder and she would print all the material that I had to execute and I would travel, you know with these you know, quarter a quarter of books with me.
You have exams.
Did you have had exams online? Yes? I thought school was a really healthy distraction for me. Our studying was
because it taught me things that tennis could never teach me. Art. Yeah, you know, just understanding that there are things outside of hitting a yellow you know, fluffy ball, or history or mathematics and numbers, the discipline of you know, coming back after a match and being in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere and sitting down in your hotel room at this little desk and taking out your material and taking your mind off of the grind of the
tour and practice, you know, and being with my father all the time and listening, you know, to his advice on the tennis court. It was an escape for me to study, and so I really loved the process of it.
Did your father always travel with you.
He traveled with me until I was twenty one, and then I won my third Grand Slam, and then I wanted to do it on my own. He was still heavily, very much involved in my career and we speak almost daily.
Were you becoming aware of food? What made you a better athlete? Depending on what you ate to kind.
Of travel, was what you know brought out my curiosity and food. My food choices when I was young were very simple and only because we didn't have a lot of money. They were flavorful, you know, once my mother arrived, because she would make the meals herself, and I just felt comforted by the fact that, you know, I had
someone at home cooking for me. And when I'd come back from practice, first thing I would do is you know, she'd give me this long rope and I had to stretch, and then I had to hang off a rod just to loosen my body because there was so much physical exertion. She didn't know anything about fourhands or back ends, but she knew that my body was at a young age, was going through a lot, was going through such intense workouts, and she just wanted to make sure that I that
I was stretching. Yeah, so this was her ate.
She also watched.
She wasn't interested in a way that she she thought or studied or how it would have you know, how I would feel after what would I be energized by the food. She just wanted to make sure that I was fed. That was her goal.
Yeah, you wrote a rather beautiful sentence which when we talked about management. I don't know where we found this, but it said, did you do enough and more to prepare for your next opponent. You've taken a few days off, your body's losing that edge, that extra slice of pizza.
Better make up for it with great morning session.
And that is that the metaphor of a pizza, the idea of a pizza.
It's the balance of discipline.
No, it's a It's a balance of giving yourself a break in life, but being disciplined and courageous and taking chances and knowing that life is not all rainbows and you know, butterflies and great moments, life is hard, and accepting the fact that it is hard and that you're going to face, you know, moments of discouragement, of low confidence,
of people having difficult opinions of you. It's part of the ups and downs, and especially in athletics, especially in a world where you know you're in journalism, where you're constantly judged for how you perform, even if you win.
By the way I suppose you did you go from the rise in the morning to a different breakfast. Tell me about your eating regime if you were playing a game, So.
Eating as an athlete is about keeping things clean. It's about clean ingredients. It's understanding you know, when does your body need more protein and when does your body need more carbs? You know, with are you loading on you know, more energy? Thirty minutes or an hour before you go out on court? How long did you play for it? Did you was your match an hour or was your
match three hours? And to be honest, it's not even about you can have a set schedule and you can have an idea of what you're going to do and how you're going to prepare and what you're going to eat. But I think what makes the best teams in the best ap athlete as being able to pivot based on
how things go and reacting on the occasion. So if you just competed and you know, you thought you was the first round, you thought you were gonna win easy, but all of a sudden, your opponent had an incredible day and you end up winning, but it was three hours long. Your recovery now is completely different than what you thought would be just in forty five minutes an hour match. It's all clean, It's just it's more about the quantity shift of what you were eating prior to
a match. It was very simple those vegetables. Back to the rice, it was white rice and a clean piece of chicken. I actually look back at those meals and I think of them as very lonely because the food was very lonely, and I've I've grown to love food so much that it it felt like I wanted better options.
It describes the solitary nests of your career and so there are you're playing with canst about it. You've surrounded by people, But is there a sense of being quite solitary.
I think everybody handles that differently. I think some people enjoy that they're part of this larger and more than life energy that's surrounding them in a stadium environment, I think a very special feeling. But I always performed best when I was calm within myself. Like of course, this positivity and then the things that your fans shout when you're down in a match and the encouragement that you
hear is one of the best feelings in life. But when you're going through a three hour match inside of yourself, you need to feel that you are calm and collected, that you can handle negative comments, that you can handle positive ones. And unfortunately you have to treat the negative and the positives almost like they are the same, so that you don't go through these ranges of emotion during a match. Right that you're collected, you're you're strong, you're
you're positive. And so when I felt like I was just that the best version of myself is it didn't matter what people said during.
A match, or do you hear it?
Do you hear you hear everything? It's hard to block that. Yeah, I think it goes back to acceptance. I think accepting the fact that people will always have always said this, but people will have different opinions of you as a player, as a person, as whatever you say and how you
say it, people react differently to it. And and a big part of being an athlete is, you know, is having to read things about yourself and accepting that is a big It's something that I had to learn and I learned it the hard way from a very young age. When you win Wimbledon at seventeen years old and people still find tough things to say about you or your family or criticize you in any way, it takes time to, you know, to get comfortable with that fact.
Did you have good friends or do you always have different circuits and different Yeah, it was.
It was really hard to make friends. And at the core, I was a very tough competitor and they could have been the nicest opponent in the world, but I had to think that they were a terrible human being, even though they were extremely nice to me. Mentally, I knew that, you know, it's it's whoever's strongest. It's not even just who's physically strongest.
Did you when you traveled, did were you able to experience other cultures?
Well, an athlete, I didn't, I really didn't. I remember this fondly. Many years ago. I went on a date with someone and it was one of our first few dates, and we're talking about the places that we traveled to, and he said to me, He's like, wow, I mean they're so you are so lucky. You haven't really visited
the world. I mean, you've you've competed in some of the biggest, best cities in the world, but you don't know anything about them really, And you know, there are places that I hadn't been to, like Venice in Italy, or even Barcelona, or you know, cities that you'd think of course, you know it'd be on my list and I've visited them several times, but I hadn't and so and it really opened my eyes to the fact that, yeah, he was absolutely right, like I, How lucky am I
that I've yet to experience these cities from a different perspective than I had all these years.
I always just think that I used to be envious of people who'd never been to Venice because I could never remember seeing Venice for the first time because I was young when I went. And then you think, I just say, Wow, somebody's going to get to this place as an adult and see.
This incredible city I had.
I had a kid last summer, I was a Vedics and a friend of mine bought his six year old child. We did this huge visit of Vedas. We went everywhere around Vedice and I said to him, how how Nicholas, And he said, what do you think of Venice? He said, not enough canals, He'll never remember.
I went to Venice in December of last year, and I brought my mom along with me. It was one of the most magical trips that a mom and a daughter could take in the chilly nights.
What month of theo was December December. Oh, I love Venice in December.
It was so special. It didn't matter if it was rain or shine or wind or cold. It just felt right. And I think the company helps in the food and the views. And I think that that's been one of our best trips that we've done together.
As we used to go every December, the first weekend of December, and I remember thinking we did it for a sat to kind of be together for a sad memory. And I thought if it was a perfect place to go, because if you went to Rome and it was raining, you'd think, oh, it's raining. If you go to Venice and it's ray and it's rainy, it kind of fits in Melancholia but also joy Magic.
Do you have a favorite restaurant in Venice?
And I like Ilkhovo, which is nice. I like Carampane, I like Testieri. There are those restaurants, but I have to say when people ask me my favorite three restaurants in Venice, I usually say Harry's Bar, Harry's Bar and Harry's Bar.
The corner table that's magical.
You can't figure out it's just sitting there and think it has the room because it has low ceilings there are no windows. It's kind of everything should be wrong the minute you go in there. I think it's possibly because it's a bar and you walk straight in. There's no entrance, so you walk straight in. I think the tape I've really spent a lot of time with analyzing it.
I think that the tables.
Are very low, and so you feel quite, you're not reaching out, you're trying to and everybody's together in there, and the food is so.
Good, it's so good. It's consistent. Yeah, and consistency in restaurants is challenging. I'm sure you. Yeah, you come across that off and they're they're always consistent. In the Bellini, I mean, you cannot say no to the.
I love I love a bar. So let's go to head, let's go, let's go, go commer, let's go. It's December, Okay, it's a day.
It's a day we have and I hope we have thousands and thousands of listeners.
Everybody's we have. Baby.
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make sure to rape and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you.
So right now you are working with Monk Laire.
I'm working with.
I.
During my career, I from a very early age I recognized that ten of was so much more than just a sport. It was a really an opportunity to create a platform, an opportunity to be curious and to be picky about the people that I get to work with and the brands I get to align myself with. And I would, you know, I would ask to be and to go in a room where they would do meetings that you know, where the talent is usually not involved in.
But I felt like, you know, by getting my nose in there, I learned so much for these smart people. And I knew that as a woman tennis wouldn't last forever, that I would want a family, especially since I had such a strong, you know, relationship with my young mom, and I wanted, you know, a child of my own.
And also realistically, you can get injured any day, and knowing that if that one sport, and you know, you put all your stones in this one bucket and you have to find other avenues, right And I love to work.
I love to work hard, and so I got a chance to meet brilliant people in the business world, and that led me to my role at Montclair on the being on the board there and and continue to learn from I mean from Remo who's had I mean just significant experience and success in what he's built and done with With Montclair, I now get to work with the Aman Hotel Group. We're curating wellness retreats around the world that their properties are first one is going to be in September at Almonzaou in Greece.
And Greece it's a three on the mainland.
Yes, it's It's a three three, three night program where I'm bringing in people that I've worked with in the past, some of my trainers. You know, I look back at my career, the years of playing, and I had an exquisite team that would basically set a schedule for me, Like in the morning, you wake up, you you know, you measure your your heart rate variation, you go have breakfast, you go do a warm up, you know, you loosen
up your body, you go train. And when I retire, I realized that I have to make those decisions for myself. So when I was curating this program, I thought, how amazing to be able to show up and have this few days just completely set for you.
Right, So you're working with Aman, you're working with Montclair.
And I'm a mother and your mother.
Tell me about feeding your baby? How does he does he like to eat?
Does he.
I've yet to find find his true talent yet, but food is I think is one of his passions. That he loves food. I mean, he says nam nyam is his favorite phrase. He just walks around the entire day and just says, nam nam.
What about tell us we haven't talked about your husband, tell us about.
We're not married yet, but tell me about you.
I called him speak phrase that tell me?
But I'd like I call him my husband because I feel like he's my husband, but we're not officially married.
So tell me about food in your lives with him? Does he love to eat?
We're big foodies. I mean we just recently on my birthday we went to the Baths County in Spain and did an entire trip around food because that was It's one of our great passions. And when we met, I feel like so many of our we've come from very
different backgrounds. You know, he grew up in you know, having a proper education and spending his early years in the luxury space with LVMH and Kruge Champagne and then and then moving into the art world, so more of a polished upbringing, and I came from much more grittier perspective where sweat and tears, and we we met around the art world. I enjoy collecting art. It was a
big passion of mine. And he started an online auction site and a mutual friend put us in touch, and so conversations started around art and moved into food and then life, and then all of a sudden, we felt like we had so much chemistry and connection around what we've experienced in life, even though they came from completely different backgrounds and perspectives, and and that's been it's been nice to share that with our son, you know, our
different cultures and you know, I always feel like in teamwork, whether it's your sport or whether it's your career, whether it's family, if you have you have different ways of getting to one destination. But if your vision is the same and aligned, then that's what makes that story really beautiful. Where do you live like we live in California and Santa Barbara.
Oh, that's right, I realize and you have it.
That's right, because I do remember reading about you love the shopping for the food my market market.
It's one of our favorite things to do is just going to a local farmers market, taking our son and using the stroller as my food basket and trying all the you know, local ingredients and then going and getting you know, the fresh fish from the pier and the fresh oonie. It's really it's one of our favorite things to do over the weekend.
And do cook yourselves. Both we do myself.
So Alexander, he loves to cook, but he doesn't like a lot of help because I think I'm I provide too many suggestions. It sounds like a marriage, it does exactly. So when he cooks, he prefers that I just you know, get a drinker. Just watch him from the sidelines quietly. And I was so impressed. He We invited another couple over and he made a Thanksgiving meal all by himself, pretty much. I did something with the potatoes. I think I helped him prepare, but he, you know, he looked online.
He looked through a few recipes and he's like, this is what I'm doing. He got all the groceries, not at the end of it, I was like, this was really good. I'm so proud of you.
Entertaining is tough to the performance. You know, you have people coming and you're going to take.
Get nervous about entertaining because I'm a perfectionist and he's He's definitely much more comfortable with the concept because he comes from a larger family and he comes from a world of inter haining and throwing gatherings together people of all different walks of life, and so he makes it work.
I just hone in on so many details that I get a little stressed about the outcome, and I'm so worried about each guests and you know, and I also, I know I hate this, but I asked my guests to take their shoes off because I love you know, this Japanese sanctuary of a house, and I just I know there, you know, guests are going to be annoyed. It's fun. So I'm like, I need to get everyone's slippers. It's so annoying. I'm annoying the fruits of the vegetables.
I have to get slippers. Yeah, So it's we're a fun combination.
Do you get a restaurants much or do you lessly.
We don't eat out too much. We eat out a lot when we travel. I love the curation on Yolo Journal. I don't know if you're familiar with that site, but Yolanda Edwards puts together a really beautifully curated list of I think you've contributed to her Hughes letter, but I love her selections of places. So we share. We do a lot of research on where on the city that we're going to.
We were talking about before about talking and listening, and one of the questions that we ask everyone is a food is love, If food is sharing, a food is memories, if food is your generations from your grandmother to your mother, to yourself and to your son.
It also is comfort.
And I think that I would like to ask you when you need and I hope you don't need it very often, but when you want food as comfort to make you feel better, is there a food that you would go to for that.
I would go to my mom and I would ask her to make crepes creps craps, Yeah, and I would ask her to make it with a local jam, whether it's a strawberry or a cherry, and I just put a large spoon of the jam onto the crepe and roll it and eat several of them. Yeah, that's my comfort food.
I'd love that sounds delicious.
I'd like to read something that you wrote before we end this, beautifully written talking about future, about what we're doing about every day, about how we live. And you wrote that relentless chase for victories, though that won't ever diminish no matter what lies ahead. I will apply the same focus, the same work ethic, and all of the lessons I've learned along the way. And I think that is a beautiful marriage of past and future and present.
And so thank you so much for coming today, Ruthie.
Thank you for having me.
We covered a lot.
Now let's go eat.
Let's go eat. Thank you. I think we have a cake. Don't need to celebrate.
Yay. I love cake.
I love you.
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair