Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
When my good friend duro Olowu calls me, I never know if he's on his way to show his collection in Paris, curate an exhibition in Chicago, visit a wool factory in Tuscany, or just sitting down to have a plate of spaghetti Patarka in the River Cafe. Fajura is a man of many parts, fashion designer, art director, ventor to young entrepreneurs, and a passionate lover of food. Right now we are in my kitchen. I'm wearing one of
his beautiful, bright dresses, and he is grating Patarka. We'll have a talk about everything he is thinking and doing over a long lunch. Then he will tell me he has to go, and as always I will try and persuade my friend to stay with me just a little bit longer. Okay, okay, all right, we are so action. Spaghetti Bataga gota guy so batarga is. I think it's one of the great delicacies of life. Really, you know,
it's identified completely with sardinia. It's the dried row of the mullet of the gray mullet, and there is botarga of tuna, but we always use the botarga of the gray Manalat.
And it's wonderful. And here's how to cook it. Two hundred and fifty grams of spaghetti, three tablespoons of olive oil, two garlic clothes peeled and finely chopped, fifty grams of fresh flat leaf parsley, very family chopped, one dried red chili crumbled, one hundred grams of botaga, coarsely grated juice of one lemon. Those are the ingredients. You cook the pasta in a generous amount of boiling salted water, then
drain thoroughly and return to the saucepan. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a sep fit saucepan and fry the garlic with the parsley and chili for a few seconds. Add to the drained pasta, then stir in most of the botaga, serve immediately with the remaining botago on top or more plus a squeeze of lemon.
How wonderful, Oh, thank you to why botaga.
It's interesting because it's a difficult one. Whenever anyone asks you for a favorite anything, it's always best to think like a child and go for the first thing that comes to your mind, because there's a reason during the lockdown, and every time the lockdown was lifted. One of the greatest things that I got to do with friends was to sneak out the river cafe and thinking about the food.
It was the pizzetta with talagio and time or the botaga, and the botaga had to come up top because it's a very I mean, the pizzetta is difficult to make, but good.
Botaga spaghetti is.
The most difficult thing is I would never try to make it at home, and that's why I always look forward to having.
A river cafe it But have you been to Sardinia.
I went to Sardinia twice, once in my teens and once in the early two thousands.
I loved Sardinia.
You know, you arrive in Santa as Morelda No, and then you just think, okay, we drive inwards, you know, and there you just drive past this wonderful, dry, almost brutal, but beautiful terrain, and every way you stop and eat, you start to feel the essence of this part of Italy that has a history of severe poverty and very harsh conditions. It sort of has that feel. So to me, spaghetti potaga reflects that terrain and the colors and just the coarseness, but delicious coarseness.
I think if you go to Sardinia, but targa is so associated with Sardinia. It is the food of Sardinia, and I don't think I'd ever had it until I went to Sardinny and then you have it everywhere. You have it on salads, you have it in you know, pasta's, you have it on other fish.
And in a way for me eating Botoga that it wasn't the first time I'd had spaghetti bottaga, but it was different. It was a revelation because you really understand how it's so basic in one way, you know, it's row, but at the same time it's not caviat it's row and it's but it's so sort of respected and beautifully treated, and I love that. Of course, I've eaten it in Milana Lodge where go. I also in Peruja, where I
have a factory that makes my network. But I mean, I haven't been to Sardinia for many years, but I have my little sardina at the River cafege.
Yeah, it is it's also I think Sardinia is so wild. It is you can imagine the coast, but then it's so the interior is like the wild West. And what about the food of your country? Tell me about growing up in Lake.
Yes, and you know the food in Nigeria. First of all, I had a Jamaican mother, but my mother learned to cook all the Nigerian food. And I'm Uruba, so we had this household where we had Nigerian food all sorts. It's very meat based, I have to say, at least from the region that I'm from. So we had this real mix. So we'd have Nigerian food, you know, pounded yam, rich vegetable sauces with meat or fishes. But then we'd
also have rice and peas, you know. And my mother would make the best coconut candy and she would bake and she would make rice and peas. We didn't have aki and sulfish so much, but we had jahanny cakes, which they're almost like little buns of our fried They're like little flour buns, but the dough has to be just right and you stick them in the oil and
they quick fry. And usually we'd have them with scrambled eggs on the side, but in Jamaica you have them with aciine sulfish sometimes, but we had this mix.
So your mother came from Jamaica and how old was she when she came.
My parents met here.
My father she came to study nursing on the winter the windwress generation, and my father came to study law and he trained as a barrister.
That's how they met. Had two children.
Here, my oldest brother and sister, and then went back to Nigeria in nineteen fifty nine, so just before independence. So that's how they met and they went back. But you know, my extended family on my mother's side, a lot of them worked on the trains and in car factories here in Darby in London, so you know we would always come on holiday and then we would be staying in central London, but we would visit them. So I also had that sort of incredible experience of being
with my cousins. Some of them were raster and I was completely engulfed in that. Food was an important part of that, but mostly things like Jamaican patties. Whenever we'd have the chance to visit, my older cousin say, come on, let's go for a walk and you'd stop and get the patties. But my parents were very very food with very much.
Was it important to them. Did you sit down for dinner every meal? Every meal? Tell me about the lunches and the dinner as well.
Well, you know, of course in the day when I was in school and I during the day, you know, you go to school, but we all have breakfast and then you know.
What would you have for breakfast?
I mean, funny enough, the big thing with like bacon and eggs, like breakfast bacon and eggs, toast or my mother used to make a great thing. I mean big beans which aren't the best, but they were delicious on brown slices, bread toasted with a thin sort of layer of butter and tomatoes. But you know, the thing is there was this thing of you couldn't we could talk at the table, but you know, if you sat down,
the table was set, everything was set. And my mother always cooked the other thing, which was incredibly rare because you know, my father's this old school that my father cooked amazingly.
Well, I remember you telling me about your father cooking. Tell me what did he cook that?
Well?
He cooked Nigerian food really well, everything the fourie row, which is a sort of particular vegetable that has a bitter taste with different kinds of meat or fish. My father loved fresh fish, he loved catfish, he loved the equivalent of sea bream, you know. And there were always people in the huge market, the special fish ladies who were the queens. But my father loved to cook. And sometimes on Sundays or whatever, he'd say, I'm cooking. And what struck me was my mother was an incredible cook,
really incredible. But when my mother cooked, the kitchen could look like a vombinan fish. And then they'd be a big clean up with my father as he'd be cooking, everything would be washed and put away. Your father was and I watched that. I mean I learned a bit from that.
But do you know where he learned to cook?
I mean, if I take my father, the son of a king, nobody told him. My father taught himself. Yeah, my father taught himself. Nobody told my father to cok and he came from that sort of really. You know, he's very quiet about it, but you know, you know that he you know, this is something that he just felt. He loved and he took pride in He didn't do it often, but he did it, and he loved to cook.
And sometimes he would meet us here on holiday, if we were here, he'd come and he would go on special trips to certain markets where you could get Nigerian ingredients and cook.
There was a comment that you just mentioned that I don't want to that slip and you said your father was the son of a king. I don't think I've ever met anybody. I don't hang around the royal family very much.
No, No, my grandfather is an about, you know, of a certain region. And my father said, mother, I'm saying, is my father or back insurgion. My grandfather was this guy that we just I never really looked at this ray. We just bowed to him all the time. He was a wonderful man and he died in one hundred and something. Very stoic but very wise, tough, but very wise. We used to go up and see him. He would come to Legous with his whole entourage and stay with us.
And what would food be like my mother's food?
He would only eat my mother's food. Really, yeah, which was the biggest compliment considering you know there we would eat what they cooked. We usually used to go for the New Year, so it would go three days before New Year. They'd be cars full of fireworks for the kids in the village and then and then. But I don't really remember the food. It's strange, I think because we were just you know, it's rural, rural, and you know, you go crazy. It's like children just being allowed to run.
So food was really not something that was on my mind. But again, there was a lot of meat and a lot of fish. We didn't eat chicken in the village, and I asked my father. We ate chicken at home. But later he stopped in his sixties, and I said why, and he said, there's this whole story. Basically, chicken saved the village. Hundreds of years ago, the enemies were coming. People ran up through the mountains. I don't know if this is true. It's a fable. They ran off into
the mountains. When they got to the village, they were looking for the people, but all the foot prints leading to where they had escaped to were visible. But when the villagers were leaving, they let loose all the chickens because they didn't want them to be captured, and the chickens ran all over the footprints and scattered them, so they're held in high esteam.
I see the.
Chickens generally, you know, I love chickens.
When I see you in the river cafe, usually come with one person, and you're very engaged, and I think that, how does that work when you're designing? Do you have pins in your mouth? Can you eat or do you do not eat? Or do you do take your team out for meals or do you I.
Don't have a team, which you know, I have to say I have a very very small team, and therefore it's sort of not isolated. I don't make all the things. I have someone who cuts them properly for me. I can do the early things. But sometimes if I'm working really intensely, you look and it's three o'clock and you think, gosh, I haven't had lunch. But then I just save it up for supper, you know, for a really good supper. So I usually, you know, breakfast, I can just have
a coffee and some homemade granola. But lunch, now, yes, I will stop. And especially during lockdown, you know, you make something and sometimes it's Yesterday's faster sauce with fresh faster or a salad. I used to think I didn't have the patience to make really good salads.
But I do.
You need patience to make a good.
Sell, need patience to make food patience.
Yeah, when you cook at help, do you find it relaxing to cook? Do you find it's a way of kind of winding down?
Absolutely, because you do switch off. I mean when you're trying to get the peel off the garlic, things like that. Concentrating tomatoes, like getting the core out is always a chill for me. I've tried focused, but with everything else I do not have. I was really out your eloquently written recipe, but I never know how much of anything to put in.
I just go with my gut.
Do you go with your Yeah? Yeah? And what about Chicago when you were there? Tell me about the show. It involved the city, it involved culture, it involved design and art, and yeah.
Well, you know, the director of Madeline Greenstein asked me if I would do a show of my work, and I thought, I mean, I love what I do, but I just felt, you know, there's more. I have curated art shows, contemporary art shows, and I said I wouldn't do that, but I'll do this, and I said, I'm going to curate because Chicago is an incredible city that has incredible people and the most incredible things in the world.
Very quietly, it's all there. And basically I decided to do a show that shows people in Chicago what they have. So the MCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where I did it. I picked a lot from their collection, but then I asked every major museum there, from the Art Institute, the Terror Foundation into it high Low, if I could borrow works, and everyone says, oh, they'll never allow.
You know, it's very complet They all did, and of course some of the people with the greatest collections, I'd never even seen some of their collections, but all of them opened their doors to me, usually over breakfast, lunch, or dinner, to look at their collection and borrow anything. So really I sort of was left with this encyclopedic from David Hammond's to Margriet to Lynette, to Louis Nevilson
to Michael Armitage, Bryce Marten, you name it. I mean unbelievable mixed with Malix c Dbay mixed with it was all inspiring and it all came together because they were featured out about the size of it and the number of works, But I think it's the same thing with you when you're cooking. The way I approach my curatorial practice with art, which is why I do it, is I don't believe in put things in categories because I always think ingredients go together when they're together, if they're
right for each other. So my approach is it can be the biggest or the most revered artists mixed with people that are as incredible artists but not known. And I don't like the world or use the word outside artists because it's so patronizing. Really, it's almost the way women artists were called women artists in the seventies.
And you put it all.
Together and at the end, I would walk through the gallery about an hour or two before, and it was six huge galleries, you know, filled with work, three hundred works, and there was a calm, and that's how I know it's fine. So yes, I wanted to really show that city because I think a lot of people Borrow, Borrow Borough have the shows that involve works from all over the world, so much planning and finance or whatever, and they have incredible things in their cities. That the public
don't see. And I think, why do people give all this art, you know, these families and people that have donated art to these museums.
It's for the public to see.
But it also sounds like you're a personal relationship with the people that gay And then you had that tiny little sense if we did this in over lunch, dinner, breakfast, because I think that's also interesting how people use or go to a restaurant, and so maybe do you think that made them more relaxed with you or yes?
I think so.
I think you're right, and I think, you know, some people do it with alcohol, and I like a good glass of wine or whatever, but food levels everyone alseo. It disarms certain people. And because people always think, whether it's in the art world, in the fashion world, in the food world, people always think that you're coming into a scenario with a plan. No one just has lunch with each other. Like if somebody calls references, Oh, I was wondering if you like lunch, and I say, oh, yeah,
of course, Oh do you want to know why? And I, well, I didn't think there were why you know, And you're right, I think the great thing about food you can start even talking about business or work. But once the first monscules go into your mouth slightly off, the other thing is really it's almost what you said, projects, deals, breakups, getting together, dangerous liaisons, you know, ideas. I love eating in restaurants on my own, I get great. I love eating in restaurants.
What do you like about it?
Because it's I feel grown up? Yeah, I feel like the movies, you know, and I feel grown up, and I just think, you know, this is a wonderful establishment.
I can just admire it.
I can look around and when you hear the murmurs and no one's looking at you, I mean they are because they're thinking, how come? But really all you can see are people eating. You see the movie, it's like a Brunell movie.
I remember that used to come. I mean, it feels so long ago. Yeah, but I think coming meet me when I'm almost finished work. And so we'd come at the end of the s and sit down, and you'd come in a bit before, and then I would be up and down.
Remember sometimes you'd get up and say, oh, I have to do this, and I'd say no.
Go go. And we watched the restaurant winding down, and every beautiful scene come and talk to you. And do you remember the night that you gave me a coat? And I was waiting and those at the end, and the restaurant was almost empty, and so I just put on this beautiful Durer coat and then everybody was putting it on. The receptionist was putting it on, and everybody. We were all so excited about. And I think that
restaurants are places where you say the unexpected happen. Magic when you create a dress, when you created the skirt that I'm wearing of yours right now, and the process of creating and then it being worn and then it may be lasting for centuries. Maybe not. And food, do you think that there's a kind of relationship. I sometimes think that I make a work of art when I make up a parat art, and maybe it is a slight work of art. It's not like a dua dress,
and then it's eaten and then it's gone. So you're judged by the moment if somebody's paratart is too sweet or it isn't cooked enough. Because fashion is could be defined is temporary, absolutely, but it's in fashion. But do you think there's relationship between food?
I do, But I think what you said about food is very interesting because it's true there's a moment for food, and as soon as it's consumed, it's the memory that remains. But for the maker, who's like the creator of it, that's the only moment they feel they will be judged. I don't like to think of what I do as fashion. I'm a fashion designer, but I'm not interested in fashion. I never have been. I'm interested in the culture of style,
and that's not pompous. That just incorporates everything, you know. But at least with clothes, you really get the chance to see it on different women of different shapes, different ethnicities, different physiques, you know. I mean, it's a very beautiful thing to see. And you see it on people you don't know. Sometimes I'm in New York or even in London or wherever in the world, and I see someone run across the road and I think it's four winter. Yeah,
twenty four winter twelve. You know, that's nice. So I do have this constant reminder of the work in a way that for you you have to keep creating it. You know, it's not it comes and it goes, but it's it's more sustaining routie than I work aout.
Food is life.
Food is life. Clothes a life.
Close a life, but food is life.
Yeah. And do you think that when you talked about food in growing up, because your clothes are a reflection of also, yes, growing up in Africa. Think that your identity as a designer is to do with memory and history as absolutely.
I always say, you don't know where you're going until you know where you've come from, whether it's creatively, sexually, wherever you know, you just don't know. Emotionally. You can't say you're in love unless you've been in love before.
You know.
One of the greatest things that I got from my growing up and my assistance was a cosmopolitan eye. And that's what my parents showed us. Look at everything. You know, we mix Nigerian with everything. You give everything its credence, even though you know where you're from. You know, you respect yourself, but also look at everything. And I'm one
of those children. You know when you were a child, like really young, and you'd be given boxes of toys and left like in the corner, and your parents or whoever was with you would turn around and they would take the toys out and they would expect you to put them back in the box to try and fit them in the little square. Well, I was the kid that always had them rearranged on the outside.
Always range. And that's what you're saying about your cooking, real range.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And this is the other thing I have to say. This is not a sucker, but Ruthie, everyone that works at the River Cafe or has worked as a River Cafe, the one thing they never lose is their love of food. Now that might seem simple, but it's something that they saw and learned at.
The River Cafe.
And you can see, especially when they're very young, you can see them looking for that love while they're working. And I think the love that they're looking for when you teach them how to prepare is what goes on our plate. So when I eat the botaga, it's not just a spaghetti bottaga. It's sort of a plate of love, you know. And by the time the lemon is squeezed on it, it's like a kiss.
I was going to say that if there was a hint about if you make that spaghetti botaga, that last squeeze of lemon juice is crucial, isn't it. It's the one thing that you think, well, because there's so many different ways of making it, and some people do it very very dry. They just put the graded potarga into the spaghetti and we make it quite oily, oily and one. But I think that what you need to do is cut that with that squeeze of lemon a thing.
But it's just the right. That's where the love comes in. You just it's kacina dii mama, you know, but it's really that and I love that. And I'll just say something about the potaga, which is very interesting. It's never I love savory but not salty. Yeah, And it's the perfect thing right where you just want. The portions are also perfect.
You never feel it's too much, not too much.
So that brings me to our very last question of comfort and friendship and love, all the topics we've talked about memories and so if you were thinking about what is your comfort food? If you wanted food is comfort, would you go back to your early days of food, the food your mother made you, or would you think of comfort food as a particular dish or what would be your comfort food?
I think I would think of comfort food as anything, because I'm very open. So I also love Indian food, South Indian food. I love Japanese food. But I think of comfort food as food that somehow seems to have the integrity of the ingredients within it, and people just took the time and the effort to use the best ingredients, not necessarily the most expensive, just the best, and think about everything to do with how it feels a sense of safety that you get when it goes in your mouth.
And I think, instead of picking specific food, I always look for food that reminds me of a place. For instance, of course River Kaffee, for anywhere in Italy. I mean, I love Rome. You know I love Rome. So I'll try and order something with the cheese that I used to eat in Lot. I still do legos. I love jell of rice with fried planting fried plantain. I could that could be my last meal. Okay, it's just andsoft.
What is what is fried planting fried plantain?
Plantain comes from almost the banana family, but it's large, it's full of potassiums it's very good for you when it's boiled. The treat as a child was we would have fried plantain chopped up, fried and then we'd have it with the delicious omelet. My mother used to do that. And fried plantain. I mean sometimes if I'm eating any Nigerian food, like something with rice, I can't quite I don't feel I've eating it well until I have fried plantain.
And that is comfort. I mean that is you know you've described it's comfort. It's memory, it's memories, memories, and then when you are feeling that you need comfort, maybe you also need the memory of when you didn't need comfort.
And I love the fact that I can think of having it with any of your sources, like I'll just have that and a sauce. And it's not about the easiness of it, because it has for me, has to be just so right, sliced in a certain way, slide the sultan and fried in a certain way, and it's easy.
I'll cook it for you.
Let's do it. Thank you, Drew, Thank you.
I love you.
Bie.
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River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,