Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.
Today, my guest is Alfonso Quiron, the Academy Award winning director, writer and producer. Amongst his many masterpieces are Gravity, Roma.
And Harry Potter.
He is a man who combines beauty in film with a passion for telling stories. Alfonso is from Mexico, and ever since the architect Ricardo Legeretta brought us there in nineteen ninety one, our family has returned every year to this stunning country and the people who live there. Alfonso and I share the feeling that our children are the center of our lives, that food is a focus of our days, and Italy is a second home for us both. I admired Alfonso through his movies long before I knew him,
and more and more ever since. Today, as we sit in the garden of the River Cafe and talk together, you will understand.
Why goodbye, says Rutie Alfonso.
When I cook a meal in the River Cafe. When we are serving a meal, what you think about is the action of the dish. But what really we're thinking about is the preparation before. So we start very early in the morning to prepare to think about process. And I found very moving the interview that you did about making a film, and you talked about that, you talked about the lighting, you talked about the black and white photography,
you talked about the cinematography, you talked about process. So process in film, process in food, what do you feel about?
What is your thing about? The relationship?
Exactly the same proces.
But I think it's the same with any creative endeavor, being this a technical endeavor or or an artistic endeavor. I think that everything comes from the concept. You know, first there's a concept, and that concept, interestingly, I think comes out of memories, and those memories in the specific case of I mean that's what food is so amazing, because it combines the two biggest centers of memory, that is taste and smell.
In film, you go through different things.
Tell me about film and.
In the specific case of roma, for instance, the process. I try to focus the process in images, but also in terms of smells and sounds and in terms of Once that you start getting the concept also then you you have to you have to to start landing that process. How lan landing it is like how am I going to make this happen that. I guess that in the in the kitchen, in the when you're cooking is pretty
pretty similar. You have an idea of a recipe, you have idea for a film, you write the screenplay, you write the recipe, so everybody can have the same shared information, because that's something that is so specifically.
It's so similar between between say cooking.
And and cinema that a lot of different processes are involved and a lot of different people are involved in the process. Another element that we have in common is the presentation. Yeah, because one thing is just mixing the ingredients and having the amazing dish, but how you're going to present it?
And that's the last thing. That's that's what I do, or that's what the hedgeh Off us. We stand there and I will not send a plate out to your table. I'm the last person, so the responsibilities. Man, I'm the last person to see a plate before it goes And I guess you're the last person to see your film before it's in the cinema.
And then you not only that, but also you have to do because in a film also is the presentation goes together your film with which image you're going to to use to convey the film, meaning the posters, the traders, all of that stuff off.
Answer, tell me about the food of your childhood. Tell me about growing up in Mexico.
I belong to a middle class family in Mexico City. You know, Mexico, And you know how different is a middle class in Mexico that the European middle class. So the way, tell me, ah, a middle class family in Mexico growing up in the sixties and the seventies, there was still a mentality of making things last. I remember the refrigerator in the kitchen was probably a refrigerator of the fifties. You know that rattle a lot. By the way,
the kitchen was an old kitchen. I mean there was one TV set for the whole home and an old one.
And with the food it was.
So what I'm saying that is that the dichotomy of this is that in one hand, yes, it is that it was less oppolentan what it would be like a European or American families, a middle class families. But at the same time, because of the horrible social structure of Mexico and the disparity any middle class family league uh
has domestic workers. And many of those families, of these middle class families, they have social domestic workers that live in the premises in the in what it was called the servants quarter.
Yeah.
And when you say servants quarter, you're you're thinking, okay, well, yes, a huge house is not not necessarily everything was gen cramped up.
And I have to say that the duty of.
The kitchen it fell in the in the hands of these domestic workers. In my house, there was one person that was born in charge of the kitchen. One another person was in charge of all the other chores around the house. When I my first memory was a very old woman called Benita Uh. I guessed that she was from Misteko origin south of that southern Mexico. I mean Mistako. They extend, they extend between what is Vera Cruz and beneath that.
She was really old. The memory I have of her was just a face filled with wrinkles. And Benita was the was the cook, and she would just pretty much. She was very independent about unless.
There was a special There were special occasions in which, as you we were talking before, it was more about my grandmother giving instruction.
She wouldn't bring the food of her region because Mexico is so original. She cooked the food. If she'd come from Ohaka, would she cook.
That, she would cook, she would cook, cook for Haka.
But being a middle class family in Mexico, there was a lot of Mexican food, Yes, but there was this kind of uh Spanish tradition, I would, I would think, and a combination of this kind of Spanish and European French tradition completely adapted, I guess you know, it was very syncretic. And when I was a kid, also they were starting to be greater influence from the US, the whole thing of burgers and hogdogs.
I'm picturing your household, your family home, and so you would come home from school, or your father would come home from work, or your mother would come home, and then you would also do you have a large family? Did you have brothers? Yeah?
I had.
I have three siblings, one sister, two brothers, And the household was pretty much the way they describing in the film Roma.
The interesting thing is that it was a combination between which ever.
Food Benita cooked by Because you knew how to cook, she was great, but also my grandmother would come with her big book of recipes that it was one of those ancient books you know. Well, it was not a book, it was a notebook. It was all written, handwritten, probably from her family, her mom or whatever. It was a very old kind of uh notebook, and she would go through the pages and find like the recipe that was
going to be for that day. So that means that those recipes will come from from way before.
It's interesting because yesterday I did a conversation with someone rush To and so there's someone who grew up in Bombay with a book like that in his kitchen from his great grandmother. He said that almost every kitchen you know had the great grandmother or the grandmother's recipes written in hand, you know.
And yeah, well that would have been maybe my great grandmother or the book, and who knows for how far back it would come in. And it was yes, I remember it was I never I was a kid that was not that interested. But what I was amazing was the handwriting because they handwriting look antique. Yeah, and there was stel like in between pages like dry flowers and stuff.
Where is that book? I have no idea to find it.
The recipe that I'm going to read for our Fonso that he chose is or ketti with tomato and ricotta. Three hundred grams or katta, three hundred grams of cherry tomatoes, very ripe, cut in half and squeezed, one garlic cove chopped, fifty grams of grated parmesan, one bunch of fresh basil, a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, and two hundred grams of ricotta. Combine the tomatoes, garlic, season add the olive oil and toss to combine. Let marinate for fifteen
minutes or so. Put the ricotta in a bowl and season with salt and black pepper. Cook the orchetti and boiling salted water until al dente, and then drain gently. Heat the tomato mixture and add the drained orchetti, stirring gently to combine. Finally, stir in the ricotta and the basil leaves and serve with parmesan. So, Alfonso, why did you choose this recipe?
Sounds so simple, is so in many ways so basic, and I think that that makes it so universal.
It is one of those in which it allows every single flavor to come through.
You know.
It's with the tomatoes, particularly the tomatoes that you use.
You feel the soil. It's interesting because food is amazing because you can like simplicity the same way that you can enjoy a dish that takes like fifteen hours to make, you know, and it's a completely different journey. It's a completely different trip. The beauty of dishes like this is how honest and immediately they feel. But by this because of the same reason, nothing can go wrong.
I think that growing up in the United States, the image of Mexican food that we had of Mexican food is being so heavy and so many, so many different dishes on a plate. You know that you would have you go to a Mexican restaurant and then just be very heavy. And then the experience that I had it was really radical to go to Mexico and see there's
incredibly refined. You know, even if it was just rice and beans, there was just or if it was a fish with a bit of chili and chilantra, or if it was tortilla with just herbs and some cheese, it was so delicate. You know, it's robust. But the difference between the interpretation of Mexican food internationally and the reality of eating it in Mexico, for me as a cook was, well.
Yeah, it's totally because you know, of course you have heavy, heavy dishes, I mean, and you you have a lot of that that is like fast food, the equivalent of fast food, A lot of them that you find in.
Stands, like thousands of stands, and you know in the street stands.
That is, they use a lot of corn and dough, corn dough, tortilla massa tortilla and.
Different shapes, and a lot of that is fried.
And and if you think about it, the difference between what would be a soapage, a lupa taco and say what achieve if you ask what are the ingredients pretty much exactly the same. The difference is how that corn dough is prepared a little bit like pasta. Yeah, now that one. Yes, it can be heavy if it's if you limit Mexican food to that, but that's you know, that is just it's like saying Italian food is pizza.
Whenever I go to a city, must is the first thing I do is try and go to a market, because in a way, the market tells you where you are, tells you about the people there, It tells you about the food that's there, the attitude towards the food, and so Mexico for me was full of great markets. Were you did you go to the markets?
Right, Well, that's you're you're hitting something that's very important there, because yeah, I think that unfortunately all of that is changing as well in Mexico because of the arrival of the big supermarkets and the convenience of the big supermarket.
But what I grew up it was I love as a kid going to to to the market. It was an adventure.
I mean it was just going through the stalls and you have all these kind of fruits and vegetables, but also you will go to the mid section of the fish section and they were like chopping all the stuff there.
Yeah.
And it was the mixture of of the sounds, the smells, but other things. The sounds, you know, you've been in a market in Mexico, like most markets, of course, it's just the cacophony of sounds between the people announcing their their produce and the chopping of the of the butcher to some music in the distance.
That's another thing growing up. It was the smells of the bakery. Yeah, and also the most beautiful smell, the smell of the tortillaia.
Tell me about that.
Oh, that's a to do.
As you know, to do the tortillas, you go through a process called mixed mixed a meal.
That is how you grind the corn. And it's a machine.
It's a big machine that grinds the corn into this doll and then the machine actually goes and creates a tortilla.
And so you don't have that rolling out process.
No, you don't have that rolling out And now it's mechanical in most of the cases, there's a whole mechanical sound that comes with it is very metallical and very machine with a lot of squeaking. And the thing is the combination of the sound and the smell that is fantastic. Now I love that, but nothing beats a handmade tortilla.
There was you know, Lauosquivel and she wrote like water for chocolate.
Oh, yes, of course.
Louda used to say that the big difference is that when you were doing the tortilla by hand, you're actually infusing the tortilla with energy.
Yeah. She was saying that.
When you left home and you were on your around, did you first did you cook? Did you start cooking for yourself or did you.
I tried to cook for myself, and I was, Yeah, I was sort of successful, but I you know, I was I was young, and I was completely busy trying to make a living that my priority was elsewhere, and wrongly so, because I think that they would help a lot discovery the kitchen and cooking earlier, and that didn't
happen until later, and not because of me. It's because as my son came to live with me, and it was this whole thing of Okay, I'm not going to be just going and doing I was living in New York at the time, says I'm not going to be just doing takeaways, you know, for my son.
I have his home.
I need to cook for him, So yeah, I would. Then I started spending a long time going through recipe books, and I'm trying to figure out this combination of yes, food that was more kind of international food, if you might, but always having Mexican, Mexican dishes or Mexican ingredients.
And I was in New.
York and you could get at that time some ingredients. Now you can get everything in New York for Mexican food, but then it was a bit more difficult, so you would have to sort out the places and then it's when I start cooking the promise and it's something I haven't haven't solved yet.
What is it that I love cooking but i'm missy.
Oh yeah, that's a problem. And the other thing is I don't know how to manage the time. Yeah, time and miss is the thing. And because there was appearing which I said, you know, I just want to stay here home, and you know, like my kid just moved to New York, I want to be here. So it was pretty much dedicated to that and my life would go into doing menus and where I'm going to cook tomorrow.
When you when you talk about we've talked about food in your in your parents' home and your grandmother's cooking, and in New York you're cooking and pretty ingredients. How the restaurants appeal to you? Do you like eating in a restaurant? Did your parents ever take you to a restaurants in Mexico City?
Yes, that was for me growing up. There was a big treat going to a restaurant. It was a treat because it was expensive, so you would eat at home. I mean the typical thing is, oh, I would like to go at a restaurant and my grandmother and my mom saying we can cook it at home and it's cheaper. You would get mostly Mexican food, where it would be international food or Argentine and steaks or panadas and stuff like that. Once that I start being more independent pretty much.
I lived in restaurants, yes, because also restaurants are not only a place where there's food, is a communion, and in Mexico, you know how it goes. I mean, the thing in Mexico is that comitas or lunchtime.
Is dangerous.
Because you know that you're going to agree with some friends to meet at three pm for lunch, and you sit there and maybe they order a tequila to open up, and then food comes and people eat. The launch extends until six pm, seven pm, and suddenly they're you just staying there and you're asking for some sort of diner.
So food is if it is a connection and it is something very important to our life. So I suppose my last question to you from a very wonderful conversation here as people are starting to eat in the garden, is if you have a comfort food, if there's a food that you go to when not because you're hungry, not because you're celebrating, but because you need comfort. What would that food be?
I think definitely will be Yeah, that would be That would be it.
Well, I look forward to having a case Ida with you.
I would love that.
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River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.