Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
Today we're here at the can Lion Festival and its fopped the River Cafe Kitchen for a galley on the most beautiful boat in the harbor, which I'm happy to say is safely tied up. Bob Pittman is a captain sort of, as he is of so many great things. He created MTV, which changed the way we listened to music, and most recently, iHeartMedia, which changed the way we listen to everything else. Bob believes in stories. He's often said
that everyone has one great story to tell. The first time we met, he told me some about growing up in Mississippi, the food his family cooked, and from an early age, his almost illegal passion for being a pilot. He spoke movingly and proudly about his father's brave commitment as an anti segregationist. In our short and recent friendship, I've learned from many about his generosity, his faith in new talent, and guess what else, his rigorous passion for
producing Cassa Dragons tequila definitely my favorite. In the two years I've known him, I've heard nothing but admiration and love from everyone I've spoken to. I understand why. So you made this lemon ice cream, and I wonder whether you'd like to read the recipe.
Of course, I'd like to read the roceperes I like it because the headline says Bob Pittman lemon ice cream, the only time I've ever my name associated with it with food. I like that. So the ingredients are finely grated zest of one and juice of three lemons makes sense, a cup of sugar, a half teaspoon of sea salt, two cups of double cream. It serves six, and you put it in a bowl. Mix in the lemon, zest and juice, sugar and salt with a spoon slowly, I'm
sure slowly is important. Add the cream carefully, mixing with a spoon, and it will immediately thicken. You didn't put this is really simple stuff. This is absolutely my kind of recipe. You then put the ice cream mixture in the freezer and freeze it for two hours. It hardens up and then you have magic Try it.
Okay, So the thing about this ice cream is that you don't have to churn it.
By the way, as a kid growing up in Mississippi. My grandmother had a churn and would make ice cream. And I loved the ice cream. I hated churning it. This was before the days of electric stuff. This is you turn it and turn it. When it got really hard, I call my older brother over. You turn it some and then we'd sort of put it away and we'd have the ice cream.
So tell me about the churner. So we had the ice in the.
Like a wooden tub, and it had a ice in it, and you put this metal container down that would hook onto the crank on top, put kosher salt all over, a big salt, just covered the ice with that, and you churn and churn and churn until it hardened up.
And that was your grandmother, my grandmother. Did your mother then discover that you could actually put a plug in and today.
That and we were probably too poor to buy one, even if there was one for sale. But it was perfect with my grandmother, who, by the way, at the same time was making crab gumbo that we'd been catching the crabs all day. She was from the Orleans and
had this spectacular gumbo recipe. Start cooking about nine. We'd throw the crabs in about five, the ice cream you'd be ready about then she'd put the towel over, take the thing off, packet with ice while we ate the gumbo, and then we could have the ice cream for dessert.
This is just because a lot of people I talked to really talk about their grandmothers as much as their mother. So you started out by talking about your grandmother. So why don't we go back to that about growing up with your grandmother cooking for you. She lived in your house.
No, No, we just visited my grandmother often. They had a little house on a little bay in Mississippi called Bay Saint Louis called it the Camp, and we'd go visit them at the camp. And when we went there, my grandmother was a proper Cajun cook, and we had all that fabulous Southern and Cajun stuff. My mother was from northern Mississippi, originally a farm girl, so hers was
more hardy, like you know, crowder peas butter beans. Crowder pea is sort of like a black eyep a little firmer and sort of dark all over it supposed to one speck of darkness. And my brother and I, every time my mother would go visit her family and come back home. She'd bring with her bushels of peas and butterbeans, and my brother and I hated it because we had to shell them all so that she can then freeze
them for the winter. That's you know, as a kid, you don't want to sit around doing that stuff.
So we're only in a distance of how many miles between northern and.
Southern Mississippi, I should probably five hour drive.
Yeah, and yet the cooking was so different.
Very different, very different. When you were down near Louisiana, it was very spicy. When you're in the middle of Mississippi and up north it's very bland by the time you get to the top of the state. And by the way, all through the state there's barbecue which has a red sauce but is very sweet, and you just sort of slow cook the stuff on steamers and so it just sort of melts and then you slather that stuff on until it really turns to candy, put in
that smoker and just let it go and go. And it was yeah, up north, but on the south it was more fried food. We gig for flounders. You go out with a white lantern and you'd look for them in the water and you gig them and then you pull them up in the flounders like it's a stick with a nail on the end of it that just stick them so you can get them and you pick them up from that they sort of burrow into the sand. But there are flatfish like a soul. So we do that.
But my again, my parents and my grandmother, you put them in cornmeal, although everything's putting cornmeal, and you're throw in the deep fryer and you have this spectacular fried fish. Everything's fried. I had an uncle who said, I like him anyway, you fix it as long as you fry at last. So I think that was a great indication of Southern cooking.
And do you think that black culture also contributed to this. I know that's something going on right now about the black community feeling that a lot of the Cajun cooking or the cooking of the South amidst their culture. Do you think that or do well?
I think the Southern cooking and the Black culture were completely intertwined. I mean it was sort of all of one. And I spent time in Chicago and I love the South Side of Chicago. Soul cooking is the cooking out I grew up with and always share that affection for My other favorite is fried okra, where you cut the okra up, have a cast iron skillet, get the really hot, roll around in some corn meal and throw it in there and by the time it comes out it's crispy. I like a popcorn.
You said something about being too poor to afford a churner, perhaps for the ice cream. Tell me about life in the Pittman household.
I grew up. I didn't know we were port My dad was very well educated. He had his undergrad from University of Southern Mississippi, had a graduate school at Emory in Atlanta. My mother was a college graduate, which is also unusual for two parents at that era. And the family really valued smarts. My dad was a Methodist minister, so the church gave us a house and give us a very nice house. So we had a nice house as if we have a lot of money, and they
would let you. They would let the ministers join the country club. So even though they had no money, they didn't have to pay. But we could go to the country club as if we have money. And so we had a decent lifestyle but little money. And but you know, in those days, you didn't miss it and you didn't know and all that wasn't flaunted on TV.
And what was it? What was Yeah? How many are you?
I had one brother, and I had a magical upbringing that I didn't realize how magical it was till I became an adult. I never in my life saw my parents. My parents have disagreements, They go, well, I don't know if I agree with that, Well, I don't know, why do you think that? And they would go through it. In our household, you couldn't say hate. We never hated anybody. We didn't hate anything. So that was sort of the
dirty word of the house. And when my mom passed away, one of my cousins said, you know, the worst thing I ever heard your mother say about somebody was I wonder why they want to be that way. So that was her way of saying, that's not her favorite person. But everything was met with sort of an understanding and a gentility which I truly appreciate. My brother and I often talk about we definitely won the parent lottery, and
you know, oh, yes we'd have money. We didn't have a lot of things, but I'll trade all that for what we had.
Did you and your brother aren't you?
Of course there were kids. And by the way, I wish I could say I didn't argue in my household, because I don't have that. I don't know what. I don't know how my parents managed to pull that off, and I think I didn't appreciate it until I became an adult.
This reminds me of when I talked to Valerie Biden, who's President biden sister, and she said she was brought up in a household of Irish Catholics in Delaware where there was no argument. You just were not allowed to argue with your brothers or your sisters. That in the house, it was that you were you know, you defended each other. And I wonder about that because you just see that as so much of our life. I don't know about your children, but disagreement is okay. You know, it is
okay to disagree, It's okay to take your position. But it's something very beautiful as well about the idea that somehow there was peace and you were in the house.
Also a difference between arguing and personalizing something. It's one thing to debate it. I believe that you believe that, and will I don't know why you believe that. Let's figure out as opposed to you're bad, you're an idiot, you don't care, you're evil, and you know, if you avoid personalizing it, I think you go so far because you can continue the conversation.
Bettlheim said a great thing I remember as young parent. He said that you don't ever say to a child you are something. You say you are behaving. So you don't say you are selfish. You say you are behaving in a selfish way, you know, and that makes apparently.
A selfish act, and then you usually say, but I know that's not you. There's also in a hopeful tone to the child.
So what we aspired to, there's a great coatoon in the New Yorker which your mother says, I'm going to get very angry at you in a very quiet and controlled way, which is also maybe not that. But back to the food. So you said your mother worked.
My mother worked as a school teacher for some of my childhood and then was stayed at home mom after that, and so she would cook and cooked and ate at home. Right. Usually it was a somewhat like meal coume in eggs, piece of meat, piece of fish, some peas, beans, rice and uh, sort of these wholesome eating and they would probably could be fried stuff. But we also eat stuff like squirrel.
Would squirrel like I've never eaten squirrel.
Well, squirrel. I always think it. You know, people say something tastes like chicken. I always think something tastes like squirrel. Squirrels my reference meat. I'm kidding, but it is, uh, but it you know, it's a it's a much leaner meat than anything you probably get that's domesticated. But I always liked squirrel of.
This, like, would you hunt them? Would you go to the squirrel No?
No, you know, I can't buy them at the grocery store. But either I'd hunt them or somebody would bring some squirrel by because they've been squirrel hunting and uh. And occasionally people bring by dove or quail and eat that as well. Yeah, quail and venison. Yeah, it was always somebody would get a deer every winter, and then the butcher it and everybody have some venison for the winner venison sausage.
I grew up in upstate New York, and I still have memories of the deer on the front of the car. Even the deer being brought back from the hunting, you know, and then you watch Bambi and could never take it right.
Well, you get the wild boars. They didn't look so nice.
Yeah, did your parents ever take you to a restaurant?
We did, but there were not great restaurants. And bo Cava Mississippi Holiday and on Sunday was probably the best restaurant in town. There were catfish cabins which were great. So you go out there on the river and you'd eat the filet of catfish and hush puppies and French fries and are a corn meal that's fried, No, that's corn dog with a hot dog in it. But think of that without the hot dog in it, Yeah, and without the stick, and you're getting pretty close to a
hush puppy. So there were things like that. There's sort of specialty places, but there were no in my day. There was no fine dining, and if there was, my family would know about it.
Yeah. Talking about your father and segregation, can you tell me about that. Presumably when you went to restaurants they were segregated. It was your school segregated.
When I started school in Mississippi in nineteen fifty nine, it was completely segregated. There were white schools and black schools. There were colored only for water fountains and bathrooms, and white onlies completely separate. In the twelve years I went to school, everything happened, and by my senior year in high school, my graduating class was about fifty to fifty white black. So it all happened in my school years. And there were people like my dad who were very
supportive of change and working hard for it. There were people who were absolute racist and didn't want it, and then there was a group of people in between that knew it was the right thing, but they just they wanted to come slowly. I was talking to Jesse Jackson once, and Jesse was saying that the biggest problem they had in the civil rights movement were not the racists, because they could sort of deal with them. It was the people who wanted to go slow. And that's sort of
human nature, I'm sure. So there was not bad people. They weren't terrible people. They just they were liked want things to change, and so I think you had to sort of overcome that inertia. You didn't necessarily have to convince them not to be racist. You had to commence them to go ahead and make the changes and make them more dramatically than you expected to be. Initially, in Mississippi to break through segregation, they did freedom of choice, so you could choose which school you wanted.
To go to.
So we have maybe ten black kids at our school and maybe ten white kids at the black school. Hardly integrated. And it wasn't until the federal government basically said, look, you're going to have to bust kids or do whatever, but you're gonna have to mix the schools based on sort of the racial population of the area. And that's when the big change came.
I mean, we're getting into another discussion, but that is the role of the federal government, wasn't it was saying, you know, we do you change hearts and minds first and then bring an integration or do you say we're doing this and you're going to have to change.
I think, you know, and by the way, I don't think there was any looking back any other way. Probably would have been better to do it sooner, you know. I look at all these years. I was on Instagram with one of my friends, the people I went to school with who was black, and my senior year they closed down the black high school, merged it with the white high school, turned the black school into the middle school, and sort of moved everything into that building. And I
was asking, I said, what did feel like? And he said I felt unwelcome? And I thought that was the interesting feeling about. You know, here are these kids that are forced to go somewhere new, into a new situation and not feeling like everybody's going, hey, welcome, let me show you around. So I think it's you know, been a struggle from that, but I think there are, you know, many people making great progress, and there's some people still resisting progress.
And while you were growing up in this house and the food, you also started working, as I said when you told me the other night, at a kind of almost illegal age. I would have thought it was even fourteen or fifteen.
I had actually worked. Even when I was in the fifth grade. I got a job sweeping up a department store in town after the store closed. I'm sure that was illegal, But when I was fifteen, I needed the job to pay for flying lessons, and the only job I could find I just.
Stopped flying lessons. Todaye fifteen you.
Can solo at sixteen. So I wanted to get the money when I was fifteen, so that at sixteen I could start my flying career. And I tried to get a job bagging groceries, actually at to Pigley Wiggily, which was a very good paying job because they tipped you to bring the bags out to the car. And the jobs, as you imagine, we're all full. I tried to get a job at a men's clothing store, which everyone hung
out at after school. And I had no jobs. And I walked in this radio station and asked a man named Bill Jones who owned the radio station, if I could have a job. And he said, do you get in trouble? Not really, you get good grades. Yeah, I get good grades. He goes, come in this room. He took me in a little studio. He had a real, real tape recorder. He turned it on record. He tore some wire to copy off these teletype machines he used to print the news constantly, and he said, read this.
I read it. He listened to tape and goes, that's good enough. Go to New Orleans and get your third class radio telephone operator's license, which means I could then control the transmitter. And so I went away to New Orleans got it and that began my radio at age age fifteen making a dollar I think it was probably a dollar sixty five an hour minimum wage.
Wow. Do you remember anything to do with food and you're ate garbage? Yeah?
I mean I was a very skinny kid. So I heard in my ear always eat, you need to eat more. We got to faten you up. So I would eat bags of potato, chips and candy and everything, so anything I wanted to eat, and just had a ravenous appetite for chunk.
Yeah. And did that last?
Well, it lasted until I started gaining weight and go, well, wait a minute, that's not a good idea.
And when you left home, did you go to university?
I went to college in Jackson, Mississippi. I was on the radio. I kept getting better and better jobs, and I had a job I worked in the afternoons in Brookhaven. On Sunday, I drove to Jackson and was on Sunday morning on the one o two point nine stereo rock and Jackson where we went. And that was a tasty track from Doctor John the Night Tripper. And before that you heard the doors and it was you imagine great radio. You would imagine people sitting in some you know, smoke
field filled room. And then I got a job on the top forty station in town, which was the Pop station, and I did night times there. So at the college here in today, went there and I got completely bitten by the radio bug and decided this is going to be my career. Maybe as simple as because there were restlines ringing all the time, and there were girls in the other end of the request line. I mean, mom, you know a teenage boy and they go, hello, I'd like to meet you, and you go, what you're asking
me to meet me? So I got buried. This was nineteen seventy one seventy two. In nineteen seventy two, I sent away all these air checks, which are tapes of your radio shows, all these radio stations all over the country trying to get a job, and I got hired in Milwaukee. This eighteen year old kid. I've never been north of Tennessee, and I remember driving up. I loaded up my car, I drove up, spent the night in Saint Louis, and then I drove the rest of away
the next day. And when I saw that Chicago skyline, I went, oh my god, what is that I've never seen anything like it. And I said one day, One day, I'm going to work in Chicago. And I went to Milwaukee, and the competitor in Milwaukee had a sister station in Detroit, and they hired me to go to Detroit to do tenant night till two in the morning. At that time, Detroit was the fifth largest city in the country. And I go, oh my god, I'm in absolutely the big time. Now.
They didn't pay me any money, but I'm in the big time. So at age twenty, I went to Chicago NBC in Chicago and I'm the program director and I'm doing the afternoon show on the radio station. And I did the FM station there and then they sent me to New York to WNBC when I was twenty three.
Those were very heady political times, late sixties, early seventies. Detroit was burning.
Sixties and the sixties. I came there not much after that. The country was in turmoil, Nixon resigning, you know, everything, the draft. I escaped the draft because I have one eye. So I was four f so I was never going in. Yeah, but I lost an eye as a child, my right eye lost an eye as a child in a horseback riding accident, so I was not going to be drafted. But I also had a They had a lottery for my age group, and I happened to get a good
number for the lottery. Said the lottery numbers completely wasted on me, so the draft. But the draft was there every And by the way, I still had a draft card because too they get called up and get classified as four F you have to have the draft card. But that was going on. And remember we had the the oil embargo, so we had to wait days to get our gasoline. And it was just an inflation went wild and the economy went terrible and through the seventies.
So I lived through all that. I didn't know what I was looking at. By the way, I'd never driven in snow until I got to Detroit and someone took me to a parking lot one day and taught me how to drive in snow. But I learned a lot. Did you do something bad?
Going back to the food when you left is being cooked for by your mother, being shopped for, buying your mother, having wild squirrels, and then you were on your own. Did you just forget about the food that you've grown up with and grab what you could, and did you have an apartment where cook did you have a girlfriend who cooked for you? Did you have a domestic life, because you haven't described any domestic life.
I was completely a fiend for working, and I was so ambitious that I wanted to put all my efforts into working. I would eat whatever I could. I'd eat stuff out of a can. I felt it was like a college student eating. But when I went to Milwaukee back then, the regional foods and that's the first time I ever saw a submarine sam which I go, what the hell is that thing? So I discovered submarine sandwiches. I think I ate my first pizza in Detroit and
you like it? Yeah, I liked it. It was not what I expected, and I probably got to I went to Pittsburgh in Chicago, I think I was Chicago before ever he ate an artichoke, and I.
Remember the first time I ate an artichoke. I was at Harvard at a party and somebody passed around. I literally didn't know how to eat it. I didn't know what it was that you took the leaf off, you know that that was something that.
Was A girlfriend introduced me to the artichoke, and she had to explain to me as if I'm some simpleton how I would eat it. And I thought, wow, this is so advanced. I can't wait to go back to Mississippi and tell him about an ARTI choke.
When you were at home, Was it a big event for your family?
Whenever I would come home, the cast iron skill was out. My mother always made fried okre because she knew it was my favorite, and we would probably have some fried catfish, which was also mine. And for year I'm a pilot, and for years I would stop if I was doing a trip and going anywhere near Memphis, or I would
stop in Memphis. I would have called my cousins before get one of them to bring me some catfish and some barbecue to the plane and get some fuel there and take off, and so I eat the Rendezvous or Corky's barbecue for years there in the fried catfish vallets.
What do you like about flying?
You know, that's a really good question. I was in the fifth grade in Mississippi. My dad had a friend who had an airplane two seater, and he took me up in that plane, and I remember that sensation of like you're going up in elevator, but you don't come down. You just keep going. And I looked down in the sense of control. And my grandfather worked for a man in picking You in Mississippi who had a big lumber
mill and plant. My grandfather ran it for him, and he had a plane, and my dad's cousin, my grandfather's, was the pilot for it. So when I would go to picking You, and my grandfather would let me go out and crawl all over the plane and hang out with these planes. And I was just eating up with airplanes.
No idea why, but it's just something about flying. And over the years always found that I'd get in that cockpit and whatever I'm thinking about goes away, and I think about flying and I look down at the ground. On cross country, I stop at these places to get fuel. I try and stop. I used to try and stop anymore, but used to stop in all these little towns. So I had planes that didn't go very far before we
needed more fuel. And I would often borrow a crew car, and while they're refueling the plane, I'd go into town and go to a restaurant, buy something, look around.
You find out the food of the place.
I can still remember I went to stop the North Carolina once and went into town ordered some barbecue and they brought me out this meat with like vinegar on it, and I go, I'm sorry, I ordered barbecue, and they go, this is barbecue. I go, boy, I don't know what this stuff is. Well to me, it was to them that was perfect barbecue. Where was it in North Carolina?
And I actually a friend I met years ago. I met him at a mutual friend introduced this in a barbecue restaurant and we start banning a little bit, and I go, he's from North Carolina. Go, you know, I don't know what that stuff is you have, but that's not barbecue. So I threw down the gauntlet. And so he organized a party that summer and invited all of his friends from the South to bring the barbecue from
their home state. And it was such a great and he did it for a couple of years, which great fun. And you know, you realize South Carolina has this mustard based barbecue. Texas has barbecue that looks like Mississippi. It's red barbecue, nothing sweet about it. And then you get very chilly Chile and then you get up to Missouri or somewhere like that, and it is barbecue, but it's not pork. It's beef, and everywhere else is pork barbecue. So what's your favorite Mississippi?
Of course question, because I remember I also talked to Al Gore and he talked a lot about the barbecue in Tennessee.
Actually, at that party, the first party, his daughter came with her husband, and I was going to get my barbecue from Corky's in Memphis, and they got Corky's, so I couldn't do that, and so I had to get my cousin, who his partner was one of these barbecuers, like Championship Barbecue where they take the rig out on the weekends and they'd do with the barbecue vessel, and so he made some and they flew it up and I had I won the award for the best barbecue,
but I totally cheated. This guy's like a blue ribbon barbecuer, and we pulled this stuff out and so it was that's my connection to Al's barbecue as well.
Do you think it's very male barbecuing? I always wonder whether it's it gives men an excuse to cook.
I think I think grilling in the South was sort of a male activity that they would hang out around the grill outside and do it. I think it's changed a lot. I don't think it's quite that way anymore.
And then did you have a family quite early on? Did you have children?
And I was twenty nine when I had my first child, son?
Where was that? What city?
New York?
Yeah? And was that also work obsessed? So that you did you think about food?
Then I'm really still work obsessed. I tell people work is my golf. I quite enjoyed. It's like the most interesting puzzle you could possibly play a game and love playing it. And I often described to my kids. I read somewhere don't go home and complain about your work to your kids, because they'll say, if you hate it that much, why are you doing that instead of being
with me? So you should actually be honest and say I really enjoy my work and then say, okay, well I understand why you do that instead of be with me. And so with that in mind, I used to tell my kid, you know, this is like the greatest video game in the world. In the morning, I can't wait to get them and start playing it. At the end of the day, I don't quite want to put it away, but.
Did you eat when you work? Do you still stop?
I have a terrible habit. Then when I start thinking and we start like okay, let's get in the room, let's start white boarding, I have to eat. I don't know what's the fuel in my brain. It's very bad for me because what I want to eat. And it was for years. They had a joke about how many bags of potato chips could I eat in an hour? And if there were cookies, I would eat. Everyone say oh everybody wants cookies. I would eat all the cookies.
I would leave none for anyone else in a meeting and walking And now I try and modulate that with vegetables and something that's going to be good for me or some nuts.
Were you too young for that kind of madmen to Martini lunch?
I was just on the tail end of that. When I came to New York. In the media business, people drank every day at lunch and they had a bar in their office. And so if you came to someone's office, say hey, can I get you a drink? Let's talk about this, and I'll take a vodka. And people are like soust and there were people you would never ask for a decision after lunch, you'd avoid them, or there were people you always wait until after lunch to ask
them for a decision. The people who were like, oh yeah, that's great, go ahead and do that. Those were the people you ask after lunch, and the others that got cranky to stay away from them, ask them before they go to lunch.
So you did go out for working lunches.
Oh yes. In New York he did, and back at twenty one Club across I was at the Warner Communications for many years, which was a Rockefeller Center. Before that was at NBC, which was also Rockefeller Center, and I would go over to twenty one Club. We also had a Warner by the time I rose up to be a high enough executive, we had a corporate dining room and that was a great luxury and something you don't
see today. I mean, there would be hoppers on the wall and the chef would cook you anything you wanted, and it was sort of extravagant meals. And I'd say, you know, I don't have time to go up there. Instead of ordering a sandwich, the chef would come down to my office and go, what would you like me to make for you to I haven't got it. So and so and so I could do this and this and this, say I'll take that.
Henry Cravis, you know Henry Sure, he had a fantastic food. I was always so impressed with the food that he did in London. Well, I had one of the chefs in the River Cafe went to work for him. That anybody could have their choice. You could order a steak, or you could order a lobster. You could, and that the idea of actually feeding well the people who worked for you was an obligation and actually good for business because you gave people.
In those days, it was the senior executives. It was a very limited perk. When I went to America Online, where I was president of America Online for a while, we had in our campus in Dulles, Virginia, we had a cafeteria and everybody got to eat there, and we provided food that seemed much more egalitarian and much fairer. And maybe the food wasn't quite as nice, but it was there as affordable. People didn't have to go off campus to go find a place to eat or bring their food in a bag.
Richard, my husband always had a place for people to eat in his office. You know that there was a place where you could, you know, work on a drawing for a building and then go down and have lunch with the person that you were talking about it with, or you would meet. And Michael Bloomberg does that very seriously in his offices of actually providing free food.
He was almost a pioneer of doing that at the level of which he did it. And you know, it's interesting because it changes today because you can get delivery like you never could before. I'm one of those people that if I'm in the office, I don't want to go out because I don't want to disrupt the work, and somebody just sort of slides a plate in front of me. If I'm meeting with someone, they'll ask them what would you like? And today in New York we
order from great restaurants. Yeah, say whatever you want, we'll order for you.
Tell that to me. I'm a restaurant. I have a restaurant. I don't want to hear these stories.
But it was by the way. I don't know what the profit margin is, but probably not bad because there's no overhead except to getting the food to me. The ones I think are tougher. Whoever, those people are who are delivering? It can't possible been making any money?
And what about your family children? As your parents sat down with you every night for dinner, did you do that with your children or you were working? Now?
Well, I just found I don't know whether it's the busy New York life or whether it was our family, but I found everybody so wanted to eat when they wanted to eat, and sort of indulge that. And if I went out eat, I was going out at nine o'clock, not at their timetable. So I would sit with kids when they were eating in the afternoon for their dinner.
And I think as they got older, they wanted to do this or that, and they wanted to do with the friends, and so it was not at all what the meal was for me.
Are they interested in food? There? Kids? Are they cooking?
My oldest son's a really good cook and very interested in food, knows a lot about it, has great knife skills and cooking skills, and knows how to do it. My daughter was always a great baker and enjoyed baking stuff. I was off sugar for about three years and for my sixtieth birthday, my daughter said, Daddy, if I make you a cake, Will you eat a piece? And I go sure. I ate that piece of cake and it
triggered me and I eat ice cream that night. I eat the cookies, I eat everything, and I'm ten years later, I'm still not able to get off sugar for any more than a month or so. And my middle son is it doesn't like to eat, so it's like for him eating the chore.
Can we have a moment on the tequila?
Sure?
Okay, So tell me how that story started.
Well, I had a house in San Miguelde Ende in Mexico, wonderful old you know, school World Heritage site up in the mountains north of Mexico City and the big ax Pat population, and there was a bootleg tequila in town that all the expats loved because it was so smooth. Most tequila has sort of that Wentz factor where you'd need some salt or lime making your face grimace, and this had none of that. It was smooth. It was like a great whiskey. And my son came to visit.
He was working in Vegas at the time. He brought his buddy who ran a nightclub in Vegas, and we drank this stuff one night and this stuff came in a plastic jug, and his friend said. The next morning, he goes, you know, mister quitment, I sell Christal in my club for a thousand dollars a bottle, so I could get ten thousand dollars a jug for this. And I think, wow, there's a business idea. I'm just doing investing,
then not really working that hard. I go back to New York a month or so later, and I sort of still thinking about it and sort of think, who do I know in this spirit's business? And the dance was really no one. Six months later I met a party in Brooklyn, meet this interesting Mexican lady, chatting for a while, and somewhere in the conversation I says, so what do you do for a living? She goes, I run Jose Quevo and North America. It's fate. Quit your job,
come be my partner. Have a great idea. And she was sort of wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I mean, leaving a good career was tough for her. And about two months later I finally commenced her she should do it. I'm thinking, naively, we'll just take this illegal stuff and make it legal and import it she calls me and said, by by bad news, said, I put that tequila through a test and guess what is not tequila? They mixed to aurguardiante and other stuff with it. So it's not
nothing we can do with. But I have an idea, which she always does, because she's one of those people that there's never a problem. Just this problem and solution go together, and I go to Mexico. A couple of weeks later, she is convinced the master tequila maker of Mexico to come out of retirement to do one more tequila. And he takes this bootleg stuff and he go, there's a process I've always wanted to try on tequila. I'm certain I can make this out of one hundred percent
of gobby, which makes it tequila. And so they I gave him some money for a lab. About nine months later, they came back with about six variations, and over the two day period, we drank them all and picked one. And that became consider going a shoven, which is our signature.
And you picked the one that you thought.
Was sort of the smooth, This had the most flavor. What makes Costa Dragonas so special is the way we make it. We preserve the flavor of the agabi. A lot of what you taste in tequila is that's sort of harsh taste and it's sort of the flavor has been burned out of the agabi, and in considragonas if you just smell it, you'll pick up pear notes, pepper, citrus, vanilla, and so the secret of it is preserving that flavor. And it's been great fun.
Does it tempt you to do something else? Like wine? Would you want to buy it? No?
If I had known how hard it is, I probably wouldn't have done this. What started as a lark wound up being, you know, a major project. But it's turned out well.
And SOA we had it the other night at the River Cafe. I think tequila. Having lived in Mexico for four months, I really got used to having tequila with food, and not just Mexican food. I think it. You know, it's just a drink that you can drink through, do you yeah?
Absolutely?
So. You have houses all over, whether it's Jamaica or Mexico or New York and Miami, and what is when you go to those different places? Are you affected by the food as well? In Jamaica, do you crave something that will be remind you of Jamaica.
I think when you go to a place, the food's a very important part of it. When I go to Jamaica, crave jerk. You can't get enough at Aqi saltfish for breakfast. There are unique foods there. And when I go to La There it's interesting. There is I live very near in Venice, Arawan, which is you know, probably what the most expensive grocery store was crazy, But it's fun and so we sort of play with the food there. Go to Malibu. It's mostly seafood that we have there, and
you know, fresh farm vegetables. Miami has got everything now an interesting sort of food capital. New York, of course is New York. What do you want? And it's there? And I'm building a house in Portugal. That's sort of discovering the Portuguese cuisine.
Yeah, do you have chefs in each No?
No, no, I don't you just go Yeah, Casey, we'll hire somebody to come in and cook. But part of the funest cooking ourselves or going out to the restaurant.
And if food is a sense of discovery, it's also comfort. My last question to you on this boat on our time together. Is if you were saying that you needed food, not to alleviate hunger or to remind you of a memory, but you needed comfort. Is there a food that you would turn to?
Ice cream? Ice cream, ice cream, cookies, yea chocolate, okay? And if they're poisoned to me, I just have to keep them away. If I have them in the refrigerator, I'll say, I'm not going to have any and then I'll go through the refrigerator, literally look at the freezer and walk away, and then I'll get closer to it and then I'll open it up and look at it. I'm trying to resist that open it up. Then I'll go, I'll have one spoonful and then suddenly I've eaten the
entire container of ice cream. And I'm absolutely, like, you know, addict kind of behavior with those comfort foods, and none other foods are like take it or leave it. But those are the ones that really get me. And by the way, and I guess when you say you know it's the comfort food, it's the ones that make me hate myself for eating them because it's so good and so delicious and feels so good and so addictive.
It looks to me like you look pretty well, you talk beautifully. You're my new friend, and I would go for it.
Oh, I love it. Thank you, You've given me great permission.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, and thank you for great dinner.
We had a great many more.
The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production
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