Ruthie's Table 4: Dame Judi Dench

Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and adamized studios.

Name. Judy Dench is not just a national and international treasure, She's an interplanetary treasure if there is life on Mars. They're talking about her most recent performance. Judy is a woman of warmth, a woman of wit. A friend tells a story that when he mentioned to Judy hadn't seen the royal family, Judy replied, tell me when you're coming, and I'll be sure to overact for you. After record this conversation, Judy's having lunch in the river Cafe. We

Goodness on the mains while we've got these beautiful, really sweet grapes at the moment, which passed so well with the grouse.

And there's turbot and sea.

Bears, oh my worm monsfish.

You can have everything. We have had people come and order everything on.

The and did they stay for a month or per a month? Yeah? Yeah, a month? Yeah.

I always say a recipe is half science and half poetry, and so we're going to skip the science and read the poetry. How about that.

Yes, well, I would love to have read a recipe or even given you a recipe, but we'll come to that data. But you are talking to the worst cook in Britain. And I wasn't a sonnet about food, But I just know. This is one poem, but it's Hilaire Belloc, and it's about Henry.

King, Henry King, Henry King.

Here he goes. The chief defect of Henry King was chewing little bits of string. At last he swallowed some that tied itself in ugly knots inside. Physicians of the utmost fame were called at once, But when they came, they answered, as they took their fees, there is no cure for this disease. Henry will very soon be dead. His parents stood about his bed, lamenting his untimely death. When Henry cried with latest breath, Oh, my friends, be warned by me that breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea are

The wretched child. So as he worke of this poem, he was quite a lectural Bellock, wasn't he. He liked to tell everyone what to do, and children how to be polite.

It's rather sad. He was rather grim. I think that Bellock, well, you know.

There's a message, right, don't snack? Is that the message?

Or you might don't snack?

What was it like growing up? We grew up in Yorkshire.

I did. I was born in York. My brothers were born in Lancashire. My mother was from Dublin, my father from Dorset and who went to Dublin. And recently in the last year I found out that my mother's side of the family is Danish and goes back to somebody who worked at Elsino in fact Son and was there when Shakespeare's first company went over there. I was brought

Pets, you know, they all need them.

Put them out, But they all came round to our place. It was a triumph.

And who would cook the food? Would your mother? Would you sit down to family meals?

Yes?

Or how many would you have siblings? Who did?

Two brothers, two brothers older than me? But and we always had the house full of friends. Meals were a great thing. I'm always trying to say. Now, you know, do enjoy sitting down at the table and not looking at the phone if possible?

What was it like the meal time at your house? Was there always a discussion.

And always singing, singing, a lot of singing. My ma playing the piano. My father could recite the whole of more Darthur. My brother Jeff, who was an actor long before me and at Stratford, used to know reams of Shakespeare and it was a kind of I think that was in the family very much before that. People used to be able to I mean I remember sitting on the stairs and hearing friends who were invited around, and somebody singing and playing the piano, and you know, you couldn't miss the arts.

So when you think of your early meals, you think more of the performance.

I think only of family meals round the table, and it was a family thing that you wouldn't miss because that's when you got to actually discuss things and talk about things.

Who would cook?

My mom would, or we had a wonderful person called Sissy.

What did she cook? Because your actually has a very definite regional food.

It was course, it was mostly what you could afford to get. And I remember there was a market in New York, a wonderful market. You'd go around and people would come in and they'd have a chicken in a basket, you know, all prepared for cooking and things. And I mean I could get the rations for five people when I was six. I could easily go and carry the rations which were so minimal for everybody. But I never remember Ruthy being hungry or thinking, gosh, you know, I

And your father didn't go away. He was he was away in the First World War.

He was he was a hero. He got the military Cross and bar he got do you know where he was? He was in Arras and then because of a knee injury that he'd got, he was sent home to have and that way he got he was not at Passiondale was just fantastically well lucky is not really the word.

And so for your father to have been in the war and then come home.

I know, it was an extraordinary thing. And I knew, I knew about his record, but I didn't know it was quite so illustrious, which it was.

And do you think that do you think your parents wanted to be actors or to be singers or part of their nature?

No, my father there was an amateur group in New York called the Settlement Players. My power and were part of that. Mammy never wanted to act, which she was wonderful seamstress and could make costumes and things like that. And then when it came to the mystery plays the miracle plays, when they were done for the first time, Daddy played and asked the High Priest and we were

You remember the first auditions that would have been what age was your first.

Wee It wasn't really an audition. They just came and said you, you, you, you, and you.

And when did you know that that's what you wanted to do?

What I wanted to do, not ages, not for not until fifty three, because I wanted to be a designer, stage design, stage designer. But I was taken to Stratford by my parents and saw Michael Redgrave in Leah, and I can remember seeing this set which completely changed my idea. During your holidays at school, I had assisted Voit, the designer York rep, painting sets for him, and I only really understood plays by three acts. You know, you design one act and then the curtain would come down. You

When you went on these theatrical journeys with your parents, you went to Stratford, you went to the theater in New York, would you go to a restaurant before or after? Was that part of the evening? Was that part of the experience.

It was partly, but probably. We were always in a rush, always in a rush to get things on time. But there was a restaurant that we used to that used to be the most enormous street to go to outside York, and we used to cycle there.

This would be post war.

This would be that was post war. Yes, but we all had bikes, so that was the greatest. And go to a restaurant simply wonderful. It's called the bider we It was wonderful. It was wonderful food. I mean, not investigated in any way, not in any way.

And so what are the dishes of your childhood that you remember that? Did you have Yorkshire pudding?

We did have. I tell you something. Tell me we used to have at school. I used to try and stay away on a Tuesday because they used to do Yorkshire pudding with treacle. Now even now that's that was really so.

It was a dessert, or they served the treacle Yorkshire pudding with beef.

It's so disgusting that it was always on a Tuesday. And I used to feign illness on a Tuesday, and on about the third or fourth Tuesday, Mama said, this is something about school. This is not to do with illness. And it was the Yorkshire pudding with a tree school that was at my prep school.

But that's food was important to you. Food mattered.

It didn't matter because of course during the war, of course, it was just something to sustain you. And as I say it, because of my power visiting right around in the country, we were just so lucky that we had enough to eat, but so many people didn't know.

I often think that when people are very critical of food in Britain in the fifties or even the sixties, Britain had come out of a war, They came out of rationing, they came out of kitchen gardens where people didn't have food. And to go from that to you know, grand cuisine or to cooking, it seems so unfair to criticize a nation that had suffered food wise to being critical of you know, the way they cooked.

You know.

So I feel it must have been very tough.

Yes, it was. It was just a question of giving you something that filled you, yeah, you know.

Yeah, But also I mean, I love the idea of your mother cooking a goose, or cooking duck, or cooking the food that was getting.

We grew on the vegetables, grew the vegetables in the garden and next door it was the most wonderful pear tree. And my brother and I Jeff, the younger of my two brothers, used to get a rake and rake the pears off the tree into the garden. Yeah, it was quite a lot of peary.

What would you do legal? What would you was illegal? Was it because it wasn't your tree? Okay? There? What would you remember what your mother would cook with the pears? Which is stud them or would you have I.

Think she would, yes, I think she would studio or we just let them, you know.

Yeah, delicious fruit pears, aren't they do? Still like them?

I like pears. I quite like pears. Yeah, I've got a picture of you in the garden actually recently.

What's your garden like? Did you have a garden? I have a beautiful crowd.

Yes, I grew trees, mostly trees. There were lots of different trees. But we have some apples and one of them is a russt, which is very nice. And we have, as I say, these pear trees. We had a wonderful green gage tree, but it came down in a storm.

Yeah, gageous, very very British green cages. So doing the menus, Eliza had a blank sheet of paper. She came in the morning. It's ratter like your house. You go on the fridge, you see what's there, you see what's been ordered. You've sort of also, you know, we're always thinking about what I always think, what would I want to you for lunch today?

You're not coming to my house fridge? And I begged you are.

I was so excited to make this beautiful clam taggerini, which I know Ruthie's is one of Ruthie's favorite pastors. Where we cook the bongolay in advance with garlic and parsi stalks in chili, and then we pick all the clams out of their shells and reduce the white wine and the olive oil and the butter, and then we toss that through fresh handk tagerini, which is one of my favorite things that I've ever had at a.

Ri of a cafe.

And we've also got this amazing slow cooked pheasant and partridge sauce which is a ragou that we make with lots of different wildbirds at this time of year, and we put chestnuts and mince panchatta in and that's really wonderful.

Now we're really talking.

We do write our menu every day.

It makes it special and exciting, which is what a restaurant should be and isn't very much.

When you left this Mother's wonderful family of theater and cooking goose and sitting around the table and singing songs and having friends over, it sounds so warm and so inclusive. What was it like when you actually then came to London and food wise? Were you're on a budget? Did you have to cook it out? What did you do?

I've never had never I had to tell you a story that when I was awarded the O B E and my agent at the time had been in Central with me, Julian Belfridge. He came down to lunch and I gave him lamb cutlets. I made an enormous effort. He finished them, and whatever I gave him I can't remember for a dessert. And he sat back and he said, well, I'll tell you something, Judy. He said, you didn't get the ob for cooking. Nothing like having a support of

You eat there? You are going to.

When we were old that when we got well, when we got to central, Oh, it was it was glorious. We used to go to it was somewhere in Kensington High Street. But we used to also go to a restaurant called a Capernina in Soho and that was the greatest treat.

So that was Italian food.

That was Italian field. It was absolutely and it was affordable.

You could do so they're on a student budget.

Just about just about it. But it were nice to be taken there. I must stay. That was an enormous treat.

Do you remember a kind of multicultural restaurants? You remember Indian because a lot of you know, the cheapest food, certainly when I came in the sixties was Greek, Indian, Chinese.

I mean that was a huge treat to be able to eat, you know, to eat Chinese and as say, Italian, and it was a real luxury. And suddenly to be able to go to go or be taken to somewhere and you have the luxury of really the choice of things to have to eat, and you know, I'll never take that for granted.

I don't think were you ever hungry as a student? Did you were the days?

I don't ever remember that.

You probably had a grant to do the days when they know I didn't have a grant.

I lived in QA Queen Alexandra's house, which is right by the Albert Hall where Central was, and so all that was I don't know my phone.

They did, they did. That's good.

Yeah, so we were lucky.

Yeah, and suddenly started getting roles at the National Theater.

I went straight to the VIC. But I mean I've never been I've never been a good cook, or even any cook of any kind. So you I have tried. I have tried. I can do two things. I can make white sauce and I can make gravy. Oh well that's pretty good. I'd say, that's all I can do. But I used to at the VIC. Alec McCowan was at the VIC at the same time as me, and he used to live in the King's Road but three

You were at the old Fake Who are the directors that you?

Oh, Michael Bentley, Michael Bentle at the VIC and Doug his seal and oh it was house in days. I loved it and I despite having had not very good notice Isophilia, which is my first part. I remember Michael Bentel said, he said, we'll just get over these notices. He said, you will get better. And he said, I'll go on employing you and you can play small parts and walk on, but you can stay at the VIC. And you know that that was such. I was so lucky.

Do you remember that very well?

I remember it very well. Indeed, there's set plays were Twelfth Night, mac Beth and Arms and the Man. What was the audience young children, young people at school, and the British Council was the British Council.

And do you remember the culture of food there?

I do?

I do. The food was the.

Food a kind of stew, probably are quite meat based, might well have been which which actually is a question I also like to ask.

Would when you act, when you're in a play, do you eat before?

Do you know after?

You need to tell me about you you're in a play. You might be doing a matinee.

And sometimes think you're lucky for it. Do you get to eat in the play?

I know you have a story about that, but if you're if you might not be eating in the play. So there's a day you're in a play in the West End or at the National or at the Old Vic, and you wake up in the morning and you know you have a matinee and you have an evening performance. Judy Dench, what would you what would your day be like?

In terms of I probably I probably I'd have coffee in the morning or tea. I wouldn't eat very much. I wouldn't eat much before. I'd eat just something before mattering it not much, not lunch, and mostly eat afterwards.

After the evening performance or after the matinee.

After the evening before.

Yeah, that's a very I like going to see a friend of friends I have in the theater and then going out. They always like to go out for dinner afterwards, and there's some joyousness.

Is dinner after It is wonderful as long as you don't have a match the next day. Do you know? That's tricky, But I'm in the luxury of doing do shows and knowing you're going out to dinner afterwards. Yeah, it's just glorious.

And then other nights you would just go home and crash or did was there a kind.

Of home and crash? Probably? Probably?

I always say that there's sort of links between the theater of a restaurant and the theater of the theater. You know that we have a kind of curtain up at a certain time, and then there's the performance, and then there's after the performance. And if I do an evening I can sometimes do a night where the curtain

Do you think it's terribly similar? It's very very similar. And some of the nights when you want it to go well, I don't know whether this applies to well, it never applies to your restaurant does definitely not when I've ever been here. But you know, it's the night that it doesn't go.

Yeah, you don't know why?

Do you know?

Sometimes have the same script, you can, you know, the same the same actors, the same set.

And there's no explanation for why. It's all that's the excitement of it.

In two thousand and eight, the living room in our home was transformed into a magical space, not by painting the walls a different color or hanging a work of art, but solely due to Dame Judy Dench walking in for two hours. She captivated one hundred people telling stories, singing songs, reciting Shakespeare, all in her unmistakable voice and beautiful demeanor. We were all there to raise funds for the North Wall and Outreach Arts Lab project close to Judy's heart.

I had to walk downstairs, remember I had to come upstairs and say okay, and then Richard Ire had to come upstairs, and I thought, I have Judy chepstairs, who's performed in front of thousands of people in the nation.

And then and then you came down and there were you know, a hundred people who were only there to see you, maybe even fewer, maybe eighty or sixty, and it was quite overwhelming. And remember that.

I do remember walking down the stairs and George Fenton playing the pian George Fenton. I can't remember what I sang.

Okay, well I found the invitation and the title of the evening was These Foolish Things, Yes, And I was wondering if you're saying that, I think you know that song I do and.

The lipstreak these remind me of you. But I sang something else and I can't remember because I remember sing it a lot of box with George.

I did you yeah, yeah, And we did some singing with Richard Aire. Do you remember used to sing And one night we got a piano and we sang around the piano and it was so it's something. It's one of the great things to do in.

Life, isn't it, well, singing around a piano.

Yeah, should we do that? We should really really love Let's do it. I have a piano in my house.

I love it.

We have a night and have something delicious, organize really lovely. What is the play when you said you had to cook on you had on stage?

Do you know when the paycock? Oh, it's wonderful play case another play but where I had to cook for Norman rod Away. She cooks a sausage for him to eat and half while people who say, you know he's eating that sausage and it's not cooked. It's simply there isn't time for her to cook that sausage.

So you actually put a raw sausage in a frying pan?

Yes, oh, yes, so then we pre cooked the sausage. Well we're cheating a bit here, Yeah.

Is that the only play where you've actually cooked on?

Probably?

We've talked about theater, What about film sets? What about Bond?

Sent Me Anywhere? Kept me in a little room at the back. And I once said to Barbara and Michael, I said, you know, you go to such glamorous places, and all I am, I'm in that office at the back all the time. So the next time, the next film we made, I can't remember which one it was, we were at Stowe's school and they gave me a trailer my makeup and everything, which had Innsbruck written across the side. And Barbara said to me, you can never

I remember there was.

I did eight of them because Specter I just did a morning which was just me giving him the message on the television or on his machine, so I can't remember which one it was.

What about did you ever do you ever remember being on a set where you ate, Well.

They gave you something, but you don't kind of go in a way feel like it. You know, afterwards, it's quite a different.

Directors don't like stopping for lunch. If you talk to people who have made independent movies or small movies, theyways say that stopping for lunch stops the kind of process.

And you know, even in the mind of any kind of rehearsal, it's not. The treaty is to know you're going in the evening something that's the greatest treat to look forward to. You know.

The question that I ask everyone is the food is what we eat to sustain ourselves, and food is what we cook when we want to impress someone or share. It's also something we find comfort in food. And so name Judy Dench, what is your comfort food?

Comfort food mashed potato and some really good gravy, onion, gravy and mashed potato. I quite like down.

Thank you, It's been a wonderful time with you, and now we'll go have some lunch in the River Cafe.

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