Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.
I'm sitting here in the River Cafe garden with David Beckham. He has just cooked an exquisite tagatelly with fresher rolls, butter and parmesan. It's a bit much, really, as I
don't go around scoring free kicks. I know David has a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues, and certainly a lot of fans, but when he comes to the River Cafe, it's with his family, Victoria and their four children, always sitting at table one, basking and family, love, sharing food and always having his favorite wine, Sassakia.
Thank you, David, You're welcome. Thank you.
You were describing cooking as one of the great pleasures the other night.
It's one of my biggest passions, you know, along with wine. Now. I love to cook and I was in the kitchen the other day cooking for the kids and Victoria was like, can I help? What can I do? And I was like, honestly, sit down, have a vogron tonic, relax, be with the kids. This is what I love to do.
And I really relate to that because you kind of far there's a method, isn't there. But it's also creative, and it's also you're doing it for your kids who you haven't seen all day, and there's the anticipation, and I think that is something why you probably like to cook and I like to cook.
It's just one of the main reasons why I love to cook, because it's why I love lego also, you know, because it relaxes me, you know, and I'm forty seven years older and I'll still sit there with you on my own actually till two, three, four in the morning doing lego because actually it relaxes me. And it's the same cooking for the kids. I love to cook for my parents. I love to cook for my friends. And I think that it's obviously come from, you know, my upbringing.
What was your mother a cook? Cooking?
My mum cooked for me and my sisters every single night, and I had hard working parents, working class parents. When my dad was out from six in the morning till seven in the evening. My mom was a hairdresser and still is a hairdresser. She used to spend her evenings obviously cooking for me and my sisters, and then at about eight or nine, o'clock in the evening. Some old ladies would arrive and she'd be doing their hair too, eleven twelve at night. So yes, my mom used to
cook for us every evening, every Sunday lunch. And my grandma was exactly the same as well. So that's really my childhood with my grandparents. And my granddad was Jewish, so every Saturday when we turn up, my grand would have this most amazing chicken noodle soup with the motsameal dumplings. So I was brought up That's what I was brought up on. And the jelly deals. One of the delights of been from the East End of London was pie mash and jelly deals and liquor. That was what I
was really brought up on. It was the one treat that I used to go with my nan my grandad. We used to go down to Chapel Market. There was the most amazing pie and mash shop there and we used to sit in there, sawdust on the floor, sat on wooden seats and eating our pie mash and jelly deals. What was in the pie Actually, it's just mince meat. It's just mince meat. The pis are the most amazing pastry, and I always get them to turn them upside down on my plate. And then it's a big dollop of mash.
And the mash is literally there's no there's hardly any butter in it. It's just salt and the potatoes. And then the liquor is this most amazing green sauce. It's made with parsley and stewed eels, and then I put some spicy vinegar over the top, with some a little bit of salt and lots of pepper. But the jelly deals are the thing that not many people that I know love the jelly deals. My grand used to like
them stewed. I literally like them in the jellatine. So they come up in slices, so the earls are cut up, and they come in this this plastic pot and I just pour vinegar and pepper on it, and I have it at least once a week. Now.
Many people that I talked to talk about the food of their parents, but the memory of their grandparents is really important to them.
We used to go there every weekend because my dad's parents actually had passed away before we had all grown up, so we always used to spend weekends at my man and grandad's house. So my mom's mom and dad and we used to turn up at their at their flats in London, and the first thing that I would do and I walked through the door in my grand's flat would open, I'd open the fridge and there she'd have
fresh strawberries. Every Saturday morning that we turned up, she'd have fresh strawberries and a big pot of sugar.
It's interesting that you talk about that because my husband, Richard designed house which was a very strong route from the park through the garden, through the courtyard into the house and into a garden. But my route, I always used to say, was from the courtyard into the house and into the fridge. You know, my first stop was always at the fridge because again his mother always had food for us.
Yeah. Well, they had a very They had a very small flat. So as you walk in, literally the toilet was on your left and just slight a foot fervor was the fridge. So you open the fridge and there there was, you know, the most amazing fresh strawberries every Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning. Because my grandfather used to go to work at about eleven o'clock in the morning. So what we'd do is we'd arrive really early, like nine o'clock. My grand would have this thick, freshly cut bread.
She'd make the most amazing sandwich. I'd sit and watch like the football on a Saturday morning before my grand had left, and then he'd go to work and then go and watch Spurs play. He was in the print, so he was in the print, and he worked up until he was eighty eighty one eighty two, he still went to work. And yeah, he's an amazing man. And he was a Tottenham fan. So he used to go
and watch Tottenham in the afternoons. And that's where my gran and my mom used to take me down to Chapel Market and we used to go and have piemash.
How old would you have been?
Oh my god. We went there from as long as I can remember, I mean two three years old and up until up until they passed away.
So there's your mother. That's interesting that she worked all day and she cooked for you at night, so you sat at the table and then worked again. Would she have done a weekly shop or would you stop at the market or how would she do all that?
Do you think I mean she'd do. She'd probably do a weekly shop shop, I'd say, But you know, my mom, like I said, she'd drop us to school in the mornings. Then you know, you do hairdressing throughout the day, pick us up from school, bring us home, cook us, you know, whatever we were going to eat that evening, which was either she used to make the most amazing gammon and chips, which again it's one of those things that I still
have now. It was amazing gammon, fried egg, pineapple from a tin, coleslaw and chips, and it was one of my favorite meals and she still cooks that for me now. So yeah, that was one of the things that I used to love.
When you left home and you were no longer had your mother to cook, but you also you had such a love for food and an understanding of the connection of food and the importance of sitting at the table. What was that like when you left that?
I was actually quite excited because I left home when I was fifteen years old to move up to Manchester when I was fifteen, and then I was in lodgings.
So I was in lodgings for about four years and then I bought my first house and actually I was quite excited about it, because, in all honesty, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my mum, you know, helping her with the dinners, and then when she would do her hair dressing in the evenings, I used to make the cups of tea and bring the biscuits or the cake for all my mum's ladies that she was doing their hair. So I used to love
that kind of thing. So get in my own house having to cook for myself, actually, I was very excited about.
Did you entertain what did you cook for?
I would entertain I'd have a few friends around, you know. I did like to go out for dinner, but my favorite evenings were and still are, you know, cooking for the kids, cooking for friends, you know, and especially when I have when I have like a lot of time, you know. Pretty recently, I was in isolation actually for
five days because I've just been to Italy. So I came back and on one of the last days, Victoria's parents had a party and I couldn't actually go to it, so everyone was out of the house, and I actually secretly loved it. So I literally had two most amazing cuts of meat and one was a t bone and I had some English wagou. I poured one glass of the most amazing red wine that I treated myself too, because I was on my own, feeling sorry for myself,
looking forward to watching the football in the afternoon. On my own, I set the barbecue up, and I think there's nothing better than when you have time to get everything right you have, you know, I had a nice tomato and onion or shot salad, and I literally had the meat and a glass of wine, and it was the most amazing meal that I'd had for a long time. So those are my perfect afternoons. Even it was actually quite thick. I don't like to brag, but absolute perfection,
that's your idea of perfect. Well, I've been watching Chef's Table that morning and it gave me the idea of obviously doing you know, the barbecue in the afternoon. So I've been watching the butcher. There was a there's an Italian butcher on the chef's table. So I put it on the grill, cooked it for six or seven minutes either side, and it was quite a thick piece, a bit of salt, bit of pepper, and I like I
like my meat. I like it rare medium, a push, but rare, more rare, and it was it came out perfect, and it was only me in the house, so I ate it.
I like it when it's when if it's thick enough, then you can get it really black on the outside. So there's that contrast.
You think of the the So that's what it was like that day. So that was the perfect day. And I had a bottle of Italian massetto, so I had Cora vand it and poured a cup of glasses for myself.
Tell me, we've been talking about food, what do you feel about wine?
You know, I'm at the end of the dawn from the East end of London, so really I only saw my mom and dad drinking either you know, blue nuana or lambriusco, and that was as good as it really got.
So then when me and Victoria actually first started dating, we used to go to this restaurant in the Midland Hotel in Manchester called the French Restaurant, and it was very fancy and we used to go in there and we used to sit in the corner and we used to order the most expensive bottle of champagne and the most expensive bottle of wine, not knowing what we were drinking. We were just wanting to have a nice night out and know that we were drinking something great, even though
we had no idea what we were drinking. And I think that was my first introduction into tasting a grape wine. One of the first things, remember, I want to say, it was either a sixty two or sixty seven Lautour, And that was my first introduction into tasting something that I thought was great. Even though I had no idea whether it was great or not, I knew that I was tasting something special. So at that point, obviously I was still, you know, a professional player, so I never
really I was never a big drinker. I used to have a glass of wine or you know, every now and again, but I never really drank throughout my career. But then I really started loving wine when we first moved to la and we used to go to Napa Valley a lot, and I used to sit with people like Bill Harlan or An Colgan, and I think that there's nothing better than actually sitting at a table with someone that knows what they're talking about and what they're drinking,
and what they're smelling and what they're tasting annoyingly. Victoria is very good on that. It is annoying.
Actually she has she can say this wine tastes of cigarette smoke. Yes, and that's exactly what.
She can say. And I'm like, yeah, it really does. And I'm like, I don't taste that, but no, but annoyingly, she's very good at that, and she'll never admit it. She'll always say, well, David's the expert. Then then you know, all of a sudden she'll come out with all that smell that tastes a little bit smoky, and you know, so, yeah, but you know, I love wine.
Does it matter to you if you order a wine that you might not be happy?
You know what I have? How does it make me feel? Actually? I think it can make or break an evening in my opinion. I really do think it does. Even though you know that you're going to get great food in the restaurant wherever you are. For me, if I have picked the wrong wine, wrong glass of wine, or the wrong bottle of wine, I wouldn't say it ruins my evening, but yeah, it does ruin my evening. And I get quite emotional about food and wine, you know, when I'm
eating something great. I want everyone to try it, you know, And that's unfortunately I'm married to someone that has eaten the same thing for the last twenty five years since since I've met Victoria. She only eats you know, grilled fish, steam, vegetables. She will very rarely deviate away from there. The only time that she's ever probably shared something that's been on my plate was actually when she was pregnant with Harber do you remember, And it was the most amazing thing.
It was one of my favorite evenings. I can't remember what it was, but I know that she's not eating it since. To be honest, I've been so lucky because in a way, when I left Manchester and I had to leave Manchester United, I was obviously devastated at the time, but it's really really educated me in living in different countries, eating different foods, trying different things. And when I was playing in Italy for eleven months, i was on loan at AC Milan, so i'd train in the morning and
in the afternoon. I decided to take a culinary course in Italian cuisine and I absolutely loved it. So I did that lesson or as I had a few private lessons and then it was in a class, but everybody was very focused on what they were all doing, so they weren't even bothered that I was. Obviously at the time, it's a big deal to be playing for an Italian team. So I did the culinary course because my kid's favorite food is Italian. So I wanted to perfect making the
perfect ragu. I wanted to perfect doing the perfect risotto. I always had it in my head that doing a risotto. Making a risotto was difficult. Actually it turns out not to be that difficult. So why did they teach you about making Obviously the stock is really most important, and literally you're stood there for twenty minutes kind of making sure that you're keeping an eye and everything that's not going too dry, that it's not going it's not got
too much liquid in it. And then obviously the ending is the part where everything comes together with the parmesan, you know. So that I just loved that time because I got to perfect the perfect well, I think it's the perfect ragu, making fresh pasta from scratch, and obviously the risotto. So that was one of the things that I loved about living in Italy, you know, And it's the one thing that I love about Italians and the Italian food and the culture because for a start, it's
all about family. It's all about food and the wine, of course, but whether you go into a small cafe on the side of the street or you're in the middle of Tuscany with an old Italian mama making the most amazing pasta, everything that I ate and I have always eaten in Italy has always been astonishing.
Everything I would say when you say that it's family, I always tell the story that I was once in a room in a house with Richard with his family in Tuscany, and I heard this huge argument going on downstairs in Italian and I thought, oh, no, you know what's going on. So I kind of made my way downstairs and there were two sisters and they were in the kitchen and they were having this unbelievable argument about whether or not with a papa pomodoro, which is a
bread soup of just bread and tomatoes. One wanted to add a bit of water at the end and the other one didn't. And you know, so it's not even village to village, family to family, region to region. It can be sister to sister. You know that there's the right way to do it, and they care so.
Much, so much, and even when they're not arguing, it sounds like they're arguing. They're so passionate about it.
I hope we'll cook together more. And they loved having you in the kitchen.
Kitchen that well, Thank you, David, wonderful, Thank you for having me. You're welcome, Love you too.
In the next episode, you can hear David cooking Apasta in the River Cafe kitchen. Then we'll continue our conversation about football, family and food. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go to shop Therivercafe 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.