Welcome to Rivercafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
My favorite line in this conversation is when Austin Butler refers to his and my relationship as family. Austin arrived here from filming Baz Luhrmann's movie Elvis, playing Elvis himself. London was just out of COVID lockdown and leading an immediate tradition. We decided to have dinner at my home every Sunday night with the same small group of friends. Austin would turn up early and cook with me, and this is what we did every Sunday for thirty nine weeks.
Austin is a brilliant actor, a beautiful singer, a poet, and a true friend. And Austin is my family. So Austin, you and I are here in the River Cafe to talk about food, our memories, travel and a lot more. But maybe we should just start with Australia.
I was in Australia for a year and a half film I was making Elvis with Basil Hrman.
Did he have food on set? Did you sit down to meals?
Yeah? Well we did this thing.
It's I'm realizing it's a very European sort of thing where you have these rolling lunches, which basically means you don't have a lunch break. You eat while you're filming. And I actually kind of like it because it keeps the momentum of filming. And so while we were filming a lot of times it was just I was eating for it was like gasoline was eating for for energy.
I just galloped making the most of this thing black hand.
And then when we wrapped, Bas and I were at his house and there was a small group of us, and it was the night that we wrapped, it was it was the first time that he and I both sort of were able to.
Go, ah, we did it.
You know, we've been working on this for I've been attach for about two and a half years at that point, maybe three years. He'd been doing this for long or five or eight years or something. And we we just we danced until the sun came up. We just yeah, well we had a little group there, but we we just put on vinyl records and we just danced and we ate oysters and.
We just we just lived life.
It was like this feeling of letting our hair down and and then the sun started to come up and uh, and Bas looked out and he lived across the street from the sea, and he said, should we go swim in the ocean right now? And this is the night that we wrapped the film, and so we both we
were like, yeah, let's do it. So we ran across the street and we jumped in the ocean and it's like five in the morning now, and we swam in the ocean, and so the sun's rising and I was gonna not go that night as well, and I said, I said, pass, I can't believe I was gonna go
to sleep tonight. And he started singing nessa dorma and he goes, no sleep tonight, No sleep tonight, and he starts singing this opera and I hadn't really heard that song, and he was telling me the story of the opera and then he said, I'll play it for you when we get back to the shore. And he went back to the shore, and I kind of took a second from myself in the ocean where it's just me. I just watched the sun rise and I sort of processed all that we had done. And you don't know the
final outcome of a film. You hope that you did everything you possibly could, and you gave every bit of your soul, but you don't know how it's going to be received. But at that moment, I just kind of processed all that you had, the work that we had done, and the joy and the love that we put into.
It, and I sort of had that moment.
And then as I sort of slowly walked back to shore, I look at Baz and he's holding a speaker above his head like John Cusack can say anything, and he's playing Nessador, the Pavaroti version, and it's blaring at like five point thirty in the morning now on the beaches of the Gold Coast. It was so magical and cinematic. And then we made breakfast.
What was that we made?
We looked in the refrigerator and thought, okay, what can we make? Because he and I both had been working so hard. And there's this thing about filming where you're there's so many responsibilities that other people end up almost treating you like you're a child. In many areas, they
walk you to the bathroom. You know, if I said i'm when I go to the trailer, they walk me there and to make sure I don't get lost, they treat you like you can't do anything, and they bring you your food, and so you're very spoiled in many ways. But there's something so relieving about that moment when you were finally able to do something for yourself. And so
he and I that was our moment. We opened the refrigerator and we saw that, okay, we got eggs, we got asparagus, we got some spinach there, we got some tomatoes, we got some parmesan cheese.
What can we do? And so we kind of just made this breakfast.
And there's this loaf of bread, and so we cut off bits of this bread and we toasted it and just made this delicious meal. And that's one of the most glorious memories of my life. Was like after we finished this thing that was so terrifying and daunting, and that we gave it everything we could and then then we just sat there and as the morning sun sort of laid down on us and ate that breakfast and it was so glorious.
It's it's about memory, isn't it. It's about the time. And what about Tarantina? He was he interested in food?
Yeah, Yeah, remember one night we were we were doing night shoots and it was about three in the morning. He had this amazing crepe maker come and make crapes and we were eating these amazing crepes and he said, he said, Austin, you know, my thing is I want to give everybody such a good experience on this job that their next job sucks.
And it was such a wonderful thing.
So every every night there would be some new food thing that he would he would organize, so you just
had this thing to look forward to. And and the other thing that he did was after every hundred rolls of film, which I believe it or not, this was the first time I had shot anything on film, because everything since I grew up was on digital essentially with every person that I had worked with, and so that was really special just hearing the sound of the film going through the camera when you're sitting in the car. But everye hundred rolls of film, you'd throw a party
and it would have a theme. So he'd have, you know, Groppo would come out and so everybody and they'd be singing these songs, and or Margarita's would come out and need to have a mariachi band or so every hundred dollars, whether it be ten in the morning or you know, three in the morning.
It was something to look forward to.
I think that does actually give people a kind of commitment to the person you're working for. You know that they're taking care of you, know, they're thinking about you, They're recognizing that you're working hard and that you want to give them something back. It's a lot, doesn't it. Yeah, when you lived by yourself, you once told me that you chose a house in Los Angeles because it had a pizza oven.
Oh that was Yeah.
There's this beautiful house that had belonged to Gary Oldman before and he had built a pizza oven. And I became obsessed with learning how to make the perfect fire and this pizza oven, the specific type of wood and exactly how to lay it. And I got one of those laser temperature gauges so I could make it a thousand degrees and learn how to make the pizza sauce
and the dough and everything. And it was actually Christmas that I made the most pizzas I think, And the first couple kind of came out rough and then and then started to get really into the zone of it.
And it was amazing to me how you how fast. You could cook a pizza.
Yeah, in that heat thirty seconds. For forty five seconds, you can cook a whole pizza.
Yeah.
So I cooked pizzas for my whole family, and such a great experience just getting to feed them and the special thing of all kind of being around the fire.
And we had this table out there and.
It sort of looked like the Secret Garden as well in this backyard. And cooked all these pizzas, and then I started getting into other things.
I thought, what else can I cook it this fire?
And there's a restaurant in la called Pace that is in Laurel Canyon that makes this salmon on a cedar plank, and so I thought, I want to learn how to make that. And so I ended up getting these cedar planks and soaking them in water and putting the salmon on top and seasoning it and sticking it in the.
Wood fire or whatever. It came out so incredibly.
This is something solitary. When I talked to Michael Caine, he said that he'd love to write a book ye back to Garden. And he liked to cook because doing a movie, you are surrounded by hundreds of people surrounded whatever you're doing you just describe being walked to the bathroom or trying to find your trail. There's always someone around. And then he chose three solitary things that you can do on your own. Yea, So it sounds like maybe that cooking was something that you could do without.
Absolutely it makes you feel so.
Sufficient, Yeah, and also giving giving back that you want to feed.
Absolutely, it becomes my love language in a way. I cook so much for the people around me. I'll look into their eyes when they're eating it and try to see if they love it as much as they say they.
Do, and I'll try to figure out ways of making it better.
And it sounds the way you're talking about it like a performance.
Yeah.
Do you think there are parallels between acting or performing or singing and cooking looking into people's eyes and seeing how they are responding to your performance.
Absolutely grilled white peaches with amoretto. Serve six six ripe white peaches, one vanilla pod, two tablespoons cast of sugar, one hundred and twenty milli liters amoretto, preheat of into one hundred and ninety degrees celsius heat a grilled pan until very hot. Cut each peach in half and remove the stone. Place the peach halves cut side down on the hot pan and grill until slightly charred. Remove from the pan and place face up on an oven proof dish.
Slice the vanilla pod odd lengthways and put with the sugar into a mortar pound until the vanilla pod is broken up and combined with the sugar. Scatter the vanilla sugar over the peaches and pour over half of the amaretto. Bake for ten minutes or until the peaches are soft. Add the remaining amaretto, and serve hot or cold with a spoonful of crim fresh.
Thank you.
That sounds delicious.
Austin amaretto and Italian liqueur peaches grilled. Is that anything to do with any food you grew up with in California?
Yeah? So I was born in Anaheim, right near Disneyland, and we used to have these. We used to have trees in the backyard that it wasn't We didn't have peaches, but we had grapefruit trees, and we had an orange tree in the backyard. And so like the smell of fresh fruit. I remember my picking it and us having this fresh fruit, and the kitchen and these lemons and grapefruit, and so that's that's sort of what that made me think.
Of, did your mom? Was she a good cook?
She was a great cook, and especially as the years went on, I remember eating a lot of fish sticks and you know, the things that you'd get in the freezer aisle, and little corn dogs that she would make, because when I was born, she wanted to be a stay at home mom, and she was a dental high genist at the time, and then she ended up starting daycare out of the house, and so she would watch the children of the mothers who taught at the school right right around the corner that I eventually went to
elementary school there, and so so we always had little children in the house, and so she had to make these meals that were really quick and easy. So as a kid, I just remember eating those and tuna fish sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly sand and so nothing really gourmet at all. And then as the years went on, she became vegetarian, and then she became vegan, and then she got really into making special things with portobello mushrooms and bell peppers.
Stuffed with gooscous or other things like that.
So she got a little bit more into it later on, But when I was growing up, it wasn't extremely healthy in the house. It was it was kind of efficient meals.
And she's probably working so hard.
She was working so much.
And I mean there was twelve kids in the house sometimes and yeah, all different ages. And when I was when I started going to elementary school, we lived around the corner from that same school, and I would walk home every lunch and she'd have a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich waiting for me. And we watched this home decorating show called Surprise by Design, and then we would we would come up with things that we were going to do around the house, and so we we'd lay a brick path in the backyard or plant little flowers, that sort of thing. We'd get inspired by this show, and I just remember how excited I was to walk home every day and just eat the sandwich that she made for me, and how specially that was.
That's a beautiful memory. Is that of your mother making something for you and going home for lunch. That's that's Would you have dinner as well? Would you all sit down to dinner or was.
That Well, my parents divorced when I was seven, and a lot of my memories go back to that time because it was when sort of the stability of family split up and my dad moved into this this person that he worked with, and he moved into their garage and they had sort of a converted garage and we had a tiny, little miniature fridge and that was that
was where we kept all our groceries. And we had air mattresses that we slept on and we put them down at night and then we'd put them up and we'd put down a table during the day.
And so it.
Was this one room that was our entire house, and it was just this old garage, and there was a treadmill in the corner that was their old treadmill, and we would we would make food there, and so we shared their kitchen. Better than that, we had sort of just this one room. And I started cooking as a kid because with my dad had he had work and so he would say, hey, I'll pay you two dollars if you'd cook dinner tonight. And so as a way that I could stock up money as a kid was cooking dinner.
And there was three staple.
Things, maybe and one of the main ones that I remember is burritos. We'd make Dennison's chili bean burritos, which this can of beans with some sour cream and cheese, and I haven't eaten one of those in years, but we used to eat that every night. And then a special occasion would be getting a five dollars pizza from
down the road or something like that. So those were that was like the idea of a fancy meal was ordering a pizza out when I was a kid, which I think then years later coming to a place like like your restaurant here, going to French laundry for the first time or something like that was was so felt. I felt so out of my element in a way when I first started going to really nice restaurants, because you know, five dollars sounded like a lot for a meal when I was a kid.
Would you do the shopping or would he order out? Would you?
We would always we'd usually get a costco.
As a kid, yeah and yeah, we'd get food and bulk and then and make meals out of that. And then at a certain point, I think when I moved I moved out when I was seventeen, and I started wanted to learn how to make food and wanted to know how flavors fit together. And I started making some money, and so I started trying restaurants in LA and then I worked in New York for the first time, and that was really eye opening because just getting to try
great little Italian restaurants. And I remember going to Roberta's for the first time, which is this restaurant in Brooklyn. Had a friend of mine who owned all these restaurants in LA. He said, this is the restaurant that made me want to open a restaurant. And so going to Roberta's and and trying there and it feels a lot like here, where you feel like you're home, you know you're entering. I realized I have a lot of instability
in my life. There hasn't been a lot of continuity in many areas of my life since I was young, just because I travel a lot. And even the nature of doing a film or a TV show, you you sort of make a family of the entire crew and then it splits up.
And through therapy, I.
Sort of realized that that was that I was almost like reliving my childhood of my parents getting divorced. For you know, many years of making a family, and then it splits up, and you make a family and it
splits up. And so I'd seek out ways of having stability and consistency and most of that for me while on location, whether I was Vancouver, New Zealand, or Australia, here in London, or wherever I was, I would I would find restaurants that became my second home, and I'd get to the point where I'd go there every day and the staff then knew me and I knew them, and suddenly it felt like there was there was this thing that was separate from my work, that felt like home.
Even if I've woken up with anxiety, or if i feel sad or I feel overwhelmed, I go to a restaurant, I think what you've created here is so beautiful because I feel it here as well. I'll come here with a book and you know, and I get to see you, and I get to read, and I know the people who work here, and that goes even deeper because you and I have a family relationship.
Beyond that, I think I always say that in an irregular world, we do need regular things. And I think even if we have, you know your life, you know the way you describe. It is very moving and very honest and a revelation of who you are. But I think that even if you have a consistency and you have those foundations and you have that life, it's still we seek out. You know. You talk to people about the Sunday lunch, people going home for Sunday lunch, or
Friday night supper or Christmas. The Christmas lunch has to be the same every year. And so food does mean that, doesn't It gives you a sense of stability. And I always wanted a restaurant to feel like home, you know, that is a place. I'm always amazed that people will come to a restaurant even if they've had a really bad day, you know, or something bad has happened.
Sometimes we need it on those days the most, Yeah, that you come.
This morning, I could hardly leave the house. I just felt anxious for some reason. And then I got myself. I just said, you know, I just got to get to the cafe. And once you get there, then suddenly there's life around you and it sort of buzzes and you feel humanity wash over you, and things that are happening outside of your own experience. And then and then you eat delicious food and that really helps.
Did you eat pizzas in Italy when you went on that trip? You tell me that you took a road trip.
Yeah, I had a lot of pizza there.
Where did you start?
We took this.
One of the best trips I've ever taken was this. Spent a month just road tripping through Italy. That was probably four years ago, or was before I was. And we started in Milan, drove from Milan to the coast and went to Porto Fino first, and I'd only ever spent maybe a week in Italy before this, and that was incredible. And then drove down and went to Chinquitere and hiked between the little villages and when through the vineyards there had pasta, Oh my gosh, the best pesta pasta besides yours.
Yea, they can make a better one. I'm not competitive.
It was incredible.
And then drove down through Tuscany, drove to Florence and did that for a couple of days, and drove out to this little bed and breakfast in Tuscany. It was run by this beautiful Italian woman and her husband, and they had two daughters and one of the daughters would play piano in the afternoon and you'd hear it reverberating through the vineyard.
And so it's just us and this family.
And she'd bring for catcha up and you'd eat it around the pool in the afternoon, and then and then at night, her husband would would One night, he caught a wild boar, and so then she made this wild boar and it was just absolutely divine. And one of their daughters was dating a young man who was eighteen years old that he was half Israelian half Italian. And he told me, he said, you know, I am a pilot. And I said, oh, you're a pilot. That's that's fantastic.
And he said and he said, do you know I can fly you if you want me to.
And I said, wow, yeah, I mean that would be cool.
But I thought, I'm not trusting our lives in this eighteen year old kids' hands.
You know.
And then the next night his mom came to dinner. She was in the Israeli Air Force. She said, you know, he's actually a very good pilot. I said, you know what, you only live once. I mean, where can we go? And he said, you know, I can fly you to Elba it's when, and I thought, well, last where Napoleon was exiled, and he could go to that little island and that'd be really cool. And I said, you know what, let's do it. I'll pay for guys, I'll pay for
the plane whatever we need. And so we end up end up getting in the car and he couldn't drive a car, but he could fly a plane.
And so I drive us all it's.
Me and my girlfriend at the time, and him and his girlfriend, and we drive up the floor Lawrence, and we end up getting to the little like separate private area of the airport and we go through security, and then he ends up going to a little garage and by hand pulling out a little four seat or cessna, see you pictured this skinny little Italian. Oh my gosh, he pulls this thing out by hand. I'm thinking, oh my god, what are we doing here. It felt like
riding in a go kart or something. And we get into the plane and go through all the pre flight checks and then we take off and he and then I can't hear him at all. It's static in the headphones, and I see panic over his face. And we're in the air now and we're flying I'm thinking, he's the only person that can land this plane, and there's panic on his face, and I can't hear him, and it's static.
And then I realized that he just couldn't figure out how to switch a certain switch, and so we couldn't hear each other. And once he figured that out, then peace came upon the airplane.
And then he told me it's a.
Very dangerous landing place in Elba because you have to fly in this zig zag shape, and.
So that's that I'm going to God.
We trusted this eighteen and we ended up zigzagging through the mountains of Elba and landing and we got there safely, thankfully, and then we clearly and then we ate Pasta with him and his girlfriend that day for lunch, and they flew back and we stayed and rode around on Vespers and ate pasta all these different beaches on Elba and went to the vineyards that Napoleon used to go to. And then he came back three days later and picked us up on the plane and we flew back to Florence.
And that was it was magic.
So the adventure of travel, the adventure of eating.
It's like over dinner, you create these adventures.
You know, the culture of a country is so taken through its food. And very often, as you know, we meet somebody who comes back from a country and we don't ask what museum they went to or you know, what gallery they saw?
What church?
Will we do? But you know this also tells you so much by the saying, as you've just described the food that they ate and the culture of the dinners, or the shooting a boar or catching a fish, or it's as exciting as getting on a plane crazily, I might say, am I somebody who don't know? You know, it's all about curiosity and exploring and opening ourselves up.
And so if we think about you know, we've talked about food as memory of the food that you've found had sets and traveling and working, and the food that connects us all. I suppose it connects our memories, it connects each other as a sense of excitement. But it's also sex of comfort. What would be the food you would probably go to for comfort.
I've been away from home for a long time, and as well as the fact that my mother's no longer here.
She passed away when I was twenty.
Three, and I almost hadn't put it into conscious thought, but I often will. After a big week or if I'm feeling really overwhelmed, I'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that becomes my thing. I made one the other day and it's just that that comforting sensation. Yeah, so that that's one of my go to comfort foods for sure.
I'll see you for cards on Sunday night, partner, I'll see that. Thank you. To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to shop The Rivercafe dot co dot uk.
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.