Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
So I can't see David, I can see you in my mind's I have you right in the center of my mind.
I can see you too, You're in the center of my heart. David Aja is a close friend and a great architect. Everything he does, his buildings, his office, how he works with clients, how he creates a family is done with ethos, social concerns and the highest possible values.
He's in Ghana right now. I am in London, but here we are together.
When you go to Rome, which you in the city, you and I both love, and you go in the spring to restaurants, they serve artichokes in so many different ways. They boil them, they raise them. But the romana are these kind of slow cloped arto jokes. Whole the stem and meet the whole thing.
Killer. I love vegetable, so it's perfect artichokes. A la romana serve six twelve small or six large violetta artichokes with their stalks. Prepare the artichoke, but leave them whole. Scoop out the choke with a teaspoon as each artichoke is prepared. Place in a bowl of cold water with the juice of two lemons for the herbs. Mix together the parsley, mint, crush, garlic, and six tablespoons of olive oil and season well. Drain the artichokes. Press the herb
mixture inside the center of each archer choke. Pour two hundred and fifteen mili liters of olive oil into a saucepan large enough to contain all the artichokes. Put the artichokes stuffed side down, jam together so they stay upright. Scatter any excess herb stuffing over the top. Add water to come to one third of the way up the globes, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat. Cover with a sheet of greasepoop paper, and place the lid on top.
Cook gently for about thirty minutes, or until the water is evaporated and the autichokes have begun to brown at the bottom and are tender. Serve with lemon wedges.
Autochokes are romana. They're the whole artichoke. I like to put them over a sort of high heat so that you get the crispiness on the outside. They almost I always think they're kind of like eating candy because of the caramelized nature the outer leaves. They're quite sweet in a way. And when you go to rome which you and I both love, and you go in the spring to restaurants, they serve autichokes in so many different ways.
They boil them, they braize them. But the Romana are these kind of slow cooked artichokes whole with the stem. They're delicious. Are you vegetarian?
I'm vegetarian with a ten percent pescatarian. If it's really great seafood.
And you don't eat dairy, right.
I don't eat dairy. Yeah, dairy's completely off, David.
I was just thinking that you are in Ghana. I'm in London and I was thinking about the market in Ghana. Are there artichokes? Are there huge amount of vegetables? Is it seafood? Do you go to the market. What's it like?
Yes, you get a lot of fresh produce made by very local producers. Most Genians go to markets still and buy fresh produce every week every day. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. I don't get to go as much as I would love to, but whenever I've been, I've always been sort of thrilled by the kind of variety and the diversity. It's also on the coast, so there's excellent fish here. Even though I'm a vegetarian, I you know, when there's a fresh catch, I'm always tempted. The family's
always tempted. We always get fresh, fresh fish.
Is there one large market or are there lots all over the city.
Or is it there's a main market, which is the city market, but there are lots of small markets all over the city, so there are local sort of little stalls and places that you can get it. But there's a main market called Makala Market in the center of the city, which is the main hive of activity. What are the vegetables that you The vegetables have different shapes and colors, sometimes the same names, but very different shapes
and colors. Yeah, there's a kind of incredible, you know that lovely kind of aroma of markets which you see all over the world. There's a kind of African version of that, which is dense and incredible colors and things like that. Ashley, my wife is obsessed with the markets, so she's always sneaking off to go look at what's new. What's also wonderful about these markets is the way in which you understand the seasonality of produce, which is so
clear here. Foods come in seasons and waves, and you know, you suddenly get something and everybody wants it for the next few months and then it's gone.
And then it's gone. That's something I think.
Something exactly and that is a new thing. You know. London is something where you can get things all the time and you forget about seeonality. Yeah, and that's something we're really enjoying about our crowd that things come and go depending on when they're in season. It's really beautiful.
What's it like there now? Is it warm? Is it bring?
Yes? Yes? Because Ghana is on the equator more or less, we're really always between something like twenty and thirty five degrees At worst, it's like thirty five, but it's never below twenty. You know, twenty. People are wearing jumpers here because they think it's cold, and we're always laughing when they say it's cold, Like, really, it's relative.
How does it feel being there? What does it feel like.
Now we've been here a couple of years and it's it's still really lovely. We're really enjoying it very much. It's a totally different atmosphere, but it's one that you know, is really very special. Gettian's are very warm, so it's a very kind of social culture that's very much about you know, it takes a village to look after a family. So there's a kind of friendliness that people you know, have care for each other that I really really love. We're still discovering it, you know, Acros the city we
know very well. The country. We're sort of traveling around now to really understand. And it's wonderful to just to go with the kids to you know, my father's ancestral village or my mother's ancestral village and just to see these places for them to see it. Yeah, it's kind of great.
Tell me the story of your family, your parents.
Yeah, So Ghana, you know, a quick set of history. Ghana was you know, colonial outpost. It was one of the first Sub Saharan country to gain independence in the late fifties fifty seven to be exact. And my father was part of a sort of royal family in a sort of a farming village called ad Also and the then Prime minister President and Krumer sort of asked for all the sort of learned characters to go into education and go into government immediately. They were sort of brought
in when the British left. So my father was part of that first wave of moving from the village and coming to the city and you know, working in the various departments and finally getting to be accepted in the diplomatic corps. He met my mother in Akra. She was also kind of came from the village and sort of started working in the city. They met, they fell in love. My father was good at his job, I guess, and was quickly given the position of going on a posting
to East Africa, and that's where we were born. So myself and my brothers were all born in East Africa. I was born in Tanzania, brothers born in Kenya and Uganda, and then we came back to Ghana for a few years. So I had a few years in Ghana and I had wonderful sort of memories of just that time, and it was the sort of childhood memory of you know, my earliest home, you know, growing up with a co coach garden.
What year was that, David, This would.
Have been in the seventies, in the early seventies, And then we moved from there. My father then was reposted to North Africa and the Middle East before we came to England in the late seventies.
Food wise, it sounds very exotic to have had Tantana and in North African food and Ghana before you were sent into the food of England. I think hows childhood memories of food stay with you forever, the food that you go back to and that you love.
Yeah. No, I have a very eclectic sense of water is possible as food and the different varieties, you know. I still love East Indian sort of cuisine with the way in which it's sort of you know, And that was all East Africa. I guess that must have been, you know, the sort of huge influence of the Indian community on East End.
What is that like? Is it very spicy.
Massalas and spicy massalas and doughs and flavored meats and fishes and vegetables. And then there's Ghana which is really root vegetables and soups, really very soup based and fisial meat if you had money. And then North Africa with
its incredible messes and bread, you know. And so I had all that before coming to England and coming into England just when that sort of beginning with the transformation of you know, I sort of remember the Conrade Shop and all these sort of places where you know, food
was suddenly in discovering Italian food in London. That was kind of the moment when it was like, oh my god, you know, and the transformation of Italian food into English food and the sort of love affair that started with that which led me to you when you yes, and you know as my favorite restaurant in London of course.
But did you have home cooking? Did your mother cook, did your father cook? Or do you remember her being in the kitchen?
Yes?
I always think of somebody that really loves food and wants to know what the next meal is going to be. You stayed with us. What are we eating?
Yeah?
What are we having? And so as a child, was your mother was that part of her love and attention to you?
My mother did cook, and we were three boys, and she was very determined that we would from a very early age understand cooking and be in love with it. So I think I remember being like ten eleven and my mother when we came to England, you know, her going all right, now you're going to learn how to make food for yourself. So she's sort of frog marches in the kitchen and just started to really unfold the idea of heat and cooking and doing things and to
feel really comfortable. And she made us watch her do things, so all three of us know how to cook, which was something that she really instilled in us, as in, I don't mean that we're chefs, but in any way, but we're comfortable good cook.
Now you're your food, You're good, you're a good cut.
We know we were comfortable with the sort of you know, frying, boiling, baking sort of things, and that came from her. And you know, I think because we traveled so much, she always made us Ganian food and it was a kind of constant for her. So she always unfolded a kind of weekly menu, actually very rarely varied, but it was a kind of like weekends we had these soups and these things called fufu, and then week with what food is that kind of yam and cassava sort of dumpling.
It's like it tastes like nyoki, but a gigantic nyoki with soups and fishes and meats. Poured on it, and that was the kind of weekend and special. But then in the week you would have things like jeelof which is rice with tomato bays and vegetables and you know, foods in it and vegetables, et cetera. And she'd sort of be very methodical about it. And I used to at some point I used to think, God, can we shift these things? You know? And now like I do
it with my kids. It's something that we do. You do, yeah, and it's really quite beautiful.
Did your mother ever cook British food? Machine interested in that.
Once in a while she'd make something. Yeah, I mean she'd make a roast for you know, at Christmas, we had a hybrid, so it was like the sort of you know, we in a family loved pies, so apple pies and things like that would be made by my mum. So there were certain things that were treats from the world that we were in that it was part of the sort of the thing. But you know, we were at school, so we were having school meals and so
she was like, Okay, you're getting English food. I want to make sure that you still understand the food of.
Your Yeah, yeah, do you cook now.
You know, I love I love cooking. I don't get as much chance to cook as I would like to. Ashley, my wife loves to kind of cook, so she wants to lead that I do. On the weekends, I have one day where I cook for the entire family. So I have a Sunday a Sunday sort of meal that I always make. And you know what is it? But you cook, it's just vegetables and a kind of pasta and bits. So I kind of make a kind of a hybrid, but it's really I kind of get market vegetables.
What I do is I kind of I finish off the week whatever's left over, and I kind of make it into this flavored sort of stew pasta thing with other sort of supports.
How do the kids come and cook with you? Do they cook?
Yes? They do. Now. They love coming in and wanting to get involved. And it's always just green vegetables, every green that we can find. So we're looking at peas and cabbage and broccoli, and you know, we're boiling them and we're sort of there's this calenders that are used in Ghana, so we then sort of crushed them in the calendar to make a paste green and then we add flavors to it and stuff. It's become a little thing.
We're trying to think how we met, and I think, well, you could tell the story, but wasn't it I thought it was that Richard was so so impressed and so in all of your work. I don't think he taught you, but you knew him when you were a student or was it after the graduate? Oh?
Yeah, Richard was an icon forever. But he really entered my life sort of directly as a person when I started my career sort of sort of early two thousand and I made this house called the Electra House and that's right, yeah, And it was published in Domus and he saw it and he really loved it and called me to talk to him about it. And that's I think that's where we first met, Ruth. That was around that time, and it's an incredible journey.
We met through architecture and food. That connection has lasted through many years, and it was a period it seemed that you were traveling an enormous amount fabulous places and building buildings everywhere. Do you think about what the food will be like in that city? Does it? Do you start thinking where will I eat.
Yeah, No, I think I've practically designed you know, I literally the food where I go to eat is intimately linked with the places that I'm actually working, and what I like to kind of have there is very important. When I travel, It's not about anything but just having to find places where the food is hard still and that the food reflects something that really gives you a sense of, you know, comfort where you are. It is so important to me. I just detest traveling and eating
generic food. I really like to feel like I've sort of arrived somewhere in that that food is part of the place and I'm sort of engaging in that. Something that's really nice and gonea now is it's all about chefs making food in their homes, especially during this COVID time for just like for just two or three people, and that's been kind of amazing to experience. You just get like half a dozen people invited, and it's in the garden because the weather is so great. It's socially
distanced in the garden. You know, there's a chef called Selassian. She has a kind of pop up Comadounia, and she's doing incredible things with ganny and food, so she's been a kind of whenever she does a real run to go eat. So this idea of like eating in a place where you know, where somebody really you know, I think the best way to describe is that where the food is hard, you know, it's not just product, not
just stuff, like exactly what you do. You've sort of taught the world that Ruthie and I think it's it's going around. I see versions of you in the younger generations all around as they try to really connect with food in a much more powerful way.
I think that is, you know, what does it mean to go to a restaurant? What does it mean to go with your friends? And something we've all missed enormously, certainly when people have come back to the River Cafe having been away for so long, it's quite emotion being in a room with people.
Do that.
Is there a certain restaurant you like or don't like it that you feel comfortable in?
Yeah?
I'm very specific about the kinds of places that I like and don't like.
Yeah, let's go for the positive. What do you like in a restaurant?
I like it to have a certain kind of authenticity, to feel like it's not trying to bamboozle me with effects, but it's confident in itself and it's trying to reflect a little bit of what its culture is.
And what about designing, Because you're in art, you've designed, Yeah, public buildings, restaurants.
Have you designed that you I haven't designed a restaurant yet, but I'm right now designing the restaurant for Princeton Art Museum. That's that's probably the closest I'm getting to my first I have a restaurant. Actually, ironically, do you.
Know what it will be like the restaurant in the museum.
Yeah, it's trying to really the things I said have a certain kind of quality that has a certain sort of openness. Is kind of has its own terrace, so it's open onto a really beautiful terrace that overlooks the grounds. Trying to make it feel not in any way that it's exclusive, but it has a kind of egalitarian quality. But it's really good quality as a kind of quality in the kind of pieces that are around you, the things that you touch, the things that you kind of
got next to. But it also kind of honest the idea of food that it has a certain ritual quality to it as well. I think that that's really lovely in a restaurant that it feels like a ritual, very important social ritual. It's not just totally casual. So it's a kind of fine blend between being you know, somehow serious but not looking too serious.
What's the project you're most excited about right now?
Gosh, we're doing projects. I love what I'm doing. The Studio Museum in Harlem, I think is a very important project for me. The Abu Dhabi Abrahamic Center is a very important one. Building the National Cathedral for Ghana is really like a dream. You know. It makes me remind my father, who passed away five years ago. So being back in his country and building a national monument for this country is a great sort of humbling honor. So there's some of the big highlights right now.
So, David, you've just won the Riba Gold Medal, and I think about how brilliant that is for you, for the people who've worked with you, for the work that you've done. Thank you your speech and what you'll say and who will speak with you. But I'm also thinking about what we're going to eat afterwards when we have the party for you, And so do you have some thoughts about what you'd like to eat. Should we do a menu right now? Do you have your piece of paper and.
Pen ruthy, I would be thrilled if you would design a menu with me.
Okay, well, let's see. We're here. It's in May, isn't it. It's the end of May. So that will be a fantastic talking about the way you were talking about the arrival and the departure of vegetables, and so the arrival of May couldn't be a better season. They'll be beautiful melons, they'll be asparagus, they'll be peas and green beans, and so, in a way, I think we could start out with a long table full of antipasity and vegetables.
We could have.
Asparagus with pramesan cheese and butter, and we could have a zucchini that have been boiled and then marinated with mint, and so we could start with that, which will get us all into a very good mood. And then we could have because I know you love tomato pasta.
Don't you, Yes, I do, one of my favorites.
But then you know, maybe that would be a time, as you said, you save it for special occasions and when it's particularly good. We could have fish, which we could have a whole sea bass baked in salt. We could have we could just decide a few days before within what sea bass or turbot or if possible, wild salmon.
I'm just drooling to my mind is a flame with images.
And then let's see what else. What would you like for dessert?
So I'm blackness in tolerance that you remember it. So it has to be non dairy, if that's possible.
Okay, would you like a sorbet?
Sorbets are always great?
What food do you like?
Oh gosh, it's from lemons to I'm just a sorbet fan. Sounds amazing, sounds amazing.
So we're talking about food. It's memory. It's very moving to hear you say, how many years later, through all the travels and all the work that you have memories of your mother and meal times with your family, but also being in the kitchen and the Ghanian and the Tanzanian and the Northern African food. And now your children
were born in London, but they're living in Ghana. So when you think if we were doing this interview with them in thirty years time, what do you think their memories will be a food.
I think that I would love for them to feel really connected to global cuisine, that they know the kind of the different foods of the world in different parts of the world, in different places, but they also understand a strong part of their heritage, that they understand food from West Africa, from Ghana specifically, and that they're able to bridge those worlds, and that they remember, you know, making food with us in the kitchen here in Ghana
and making amazing dishes and tasting new things and new fruit and new things here that really trigger memories for them about their lives.
There. You are, I don't know how many miles aways from London, it's.
About six thousand miles, so six thousand miles away, and we're talking about what's brought us clothes together in this conversation is food and architecture and family and parents and memories and childhood and our own children.
We give food for love, we give for caring. We eat food together, and we also eat food for comfort. What would you say your comfort food.
Is nothing grand. It goes back to memories of my mother, but it really is. It's soups. It's vegetable soups that my mother used to make I sort of make versions of it myself, and it's funny. Being in the heat here, I would have thought I would not have so many suits, but I've actually become even more of a soup consumer. And then she used to make this wonderful treat, which
in Ghana is called the buff roads. Essentially, it's a doughnut of sort, but you'd make it yourself with a kind of nutmeg and you know, flavor to it, and it's sort of fried deep fried. But it's a lovely treat and it's dangerous. It's a very sweet. Yeah. These are two comfort foods that, yeah, things I love.
And you're my comfort and I love you.
Thank you, David, thank you, love you so much.
I love you too.
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