Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
The Food is Love and love is food. For Valentine's Day today, we thought we should dedicate this episode of Ruthie's Table four talking to the chefs, the managers, the waiters, bartenders, gardeners, and some of our previous guests who spoke about the importance of food and celebrating love.
Can I have a second to think about its.
Food is love?
That's a very tricky question. It could be so tailored to any particular individual.
Have you done this to him yet?
He's French.
You can work it out.
Food is love, foody's love.
Wine is love.
Probably a nice bottle of rose Champaigne, that's love.
I think they're very closely linked with food, and because I think the way to a lot of people's heart.
History food is love. It's about protection, it's about generosity and consciousness, memories, memories, memories, and it's also about confidt. We want to give other people comfort, so we feed them, and as times when we need comfort, so we feed ourselves. 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.
You know.
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 vagrant tonic, relax be with the kids. This is what I love to do.
And I really relate to that because you kind of file. There's a method, isn't there, But it's also creative and it's also you're doing it for your kids who 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 old and I still sit there with you know, 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, and I tried to do the same, and Victoria tries to do the same with the kids as well. You know, we want them to be happy, we want them to be healthy.
Do they cook with you?
They do cooking for my wife, straightforward as that, you know, like that's my favorite thing to do, full stop. I have cooked to press many people over the years, with you know, various levels of suc Sometimes I think the message was so deeply embedded in the like you know, lentil broth, that didn't necessarily come across, but you know, eventually it works. And I think it's something that people do say quite often, you know, like, oh, you hear it a lot in the kitchen, you know, put some
love into this. But when you actually put genuine love into making something for someone you love, I think it's it's it's it's elevated.
Love is a secret ingredient to a great dish. I always like to think if I'm cooking for someone, I always try to imagine that and cooking for my girlfriends because then I know I'm going to put extra love into it and you can taste the love every bite, you know. Listen, my favorite meal at the moment is lasagna. Lasagna is a dish made out of love and hard work,
so many different layers. You have to make the beautiful bechamel, you have to make the beautiful sauce, you know, you have to make the beautiful pasta, and everything has to be perfect. So that's my favorite thing.
To do at the moment.
The lasagna.
Sure, do you know what, I don't have gun at the moment. You're breaking my heart reminding me. But hopefully I'll meet someone by then and I have something to cook.
You know, I love cooking.
I'm doing this play here at the moment, and I'm actually living at a friend's house. My kids are spending the summer with their dad and my mom's. But when things are a little bit more normal and we're all living together on under one roof, then it's I'd make them every weekend without fail. I do a Sunday roast on a Sunday. My mom said, actually that one of the funniest memories that she has with me is this
is my emotional connection to roast. In is that when I went traveling around Asia, and I must have been eighteen or nineteen, and I came back and she'd obviously made a roast inner because that's why I said that I wanted to come back for And we sat around the table as a family, and once we'd finished, my sister went, oh, thanks, Mum, that was delicious. Gravy was amazing, and I just burst into tears because I'd forgotten to put gravy or.
You've been way too long. I think. So the rose tradition is something that goes back from your childhood to your to yours and then to your children.
Yeah, but I think even my mom's childhood as well. You know, I think she was sort of raised on roast dinners. I mean, I mean, maybe it's because in my family just the way that things have worked out and my mom being, you know, a single working mother, and that was possibly the one time a week that we all did come together around a table. You know, there wasn't there wasn't much of that. I don't really have memories of sitting around a table as a family,
but I do on Sundays. I think I'm quite good at rose, but I mean there's something like your mum's cooking is there, so I can never quite get that element in there that she seems together.
But I think it's just.
A lot of stock that she says. So it could just be that.
I love to cook.
My dad was a coke I used to watch in the whole time. It's something I do here as well. I just kind of watch people cooking, and that's my favorite thing to do, particularly when you work on the past. I gave a spare moment. I just watch people, and you pick up so many things.
Food and love. Gosh, food is love, isn't it. I mean I cook for my husband every single day, and that is like my way of showing love for him. That's my love language for him.
Food.
His love language is definitely i'd say words of affirmation. Yeah, it's definitely not food. He definitely doesn't cook for me.
I don't really cook.
I think my love language is probably being cooked for eating the food. Food is the way to my art.
Just Yeah, if someone puts in a lot of time and effort to cook a nice meal, I think that says a lot and it's a nice little thank you.
And so do you do that with your children? Do you cook with them?
Idea?
Do you think that you're interested in cooking for them? Does come from your own childhood or idea?
Because it was such an unabashed expression of my father's life for us, like there was no denying it. And when someone is so excited about like the seer on their baby back ribs, you know, and like look at this, Look what I did. You know, it's so imbued with love that you can't It's undeniable, and so you learn
it as a love language. I just had this beegind I at a house full of people at our house in Santa Barbara, and I was making all these different breakfasts, and you know, my friends are like, oh my god, we feel so terrible, and I was like, no, you don't understand, Like this is my love language, Like I'm so happy doing this.
A few years ago, I was living in Peru in a van and it was my girlfriend's birthday. She's from Australia and she'd been missing, you know, food from her home, and so I decided I was going to make her sausage rolls, which is easy here but not easy in Peru because you can't get the puff pastry or even the sausage meat like needs to be fresh minced and stuff. So I went around town all day looking for all
of the ingredients. Never made pup paste before, made it myself, but didn't have a rolling pin, so used a little wine bottle, you know, went to the butcher there, and this lady in full peruvium get up is there with a machete, you know, hacking up the meat for me. I didn't even have an oven, so I had a borrow an oven and it was taken forever, took hours, but it was a surprise, so she had no idea what was happening. She just knew that I was cooking up a storm. And it took like two days because
of the pup pastry having to chill. But they were the most amazing sausage drills I've ever had, and I don't think I'll ever beat it. She was blown away, and yeah, she almost cried.
I suppose if you were ever to try and do something romantic or think about, your first thought would always be to use food as the gateway to enhance that situation. And then your memories of a romantic scenario has always been intrinsically linked to food. So I guess that's what it brings up for all of us.
By the way, I fell, I fell in love with my wife over dinner.
Did you tell me about it? That the story.
We had run into one another at an event in New York, and through a variety of complicated circumstances, it took us eighteen months to have the first dinner. Eighteen months, which is extraordinary.
That's a lot of patience.
Yeah, but for both of us. And there I was thinking about this woman that I had met eighteen months ago, trying to figure out where to take her to dinner, and we went to a restaurant called Allison on Dominic. Dominic is the street in downtown New York, which was not only really good food, but quite romantic. And that was our first official date, June thirteenth, nineteen ninety four. We still we celebrate the anniversary of that date more
than we celebrate our wedding anniversary. And I mean, she claims that she knew that night were a good meal at Allison on Dominic. I think I probably did too. It was the beginning of a great romance. And now twenty five years.
Of marriage, is the restaurant still there.
No, the restaurant is not there, but we've carried on a tradition of having dates.
Since then.
I think one of the nicest parts of my life, and there are many, is just being able to go out to dinner alone with my wife. If I know that I'm doing that, I look forward to it all week. It's one of the things I missed the most out of from the pandemic.
So when we reopened after COVID, what I found absolutely incredible. It was this sort of mentality of everyone just wanting to be together and just be so respectful and so happy, and I kind of, oh, what I remember when I think about it is those big coats and blankets and the big scarfs, and everyone was just so happy to sit outside. There were evenings where it was freezing. It was so cold and we were standing outside in our
big jumpers. But there was just something so magical about it about society coming together again after being apart and being in such a times and I just, yeah, I kind of remember the opening. Of course I remember the fears and everything else, but it just felt such a joyous time and everyone was so happy, and yeah, everyone was wearing pig jacket.
That's all I.
Remember, but I remember that's a very it's a very happy memory when we reopen again.
Just in addition to Sylvia's big jackets and people sitting out time being happy. I'll never forget the bride sitting outside on table three oh one in November and it was raining and she was sitting there.
She was just there.
She was like, I'm having my wedding and it was amazing and she and they had a great time. And I also remember one of when we it was the first time when we came back because there were obviously quite a few closures, and every time was like not again. And one of our very regular customer, Cissy Yard, and remember when she first time she came back, she just she stood in the door and she had just stuck tears coming down. She was she just said like, oh, guys,
I'm just so happy to see you. I'm just so happy that you are okay.
It was just so.
Sweet and we were like, oh, it was very emotional.
I would probably say if you were to ask people closest to me, I'm not always the most fun to be with in the kitchen because I was I didn't have my stent in kitchens, you know, and I learned from professionals, and it's a very tough place a kitchen, you know, it requires a particular type of focus and a sense of geography, you know, like knowing all spaces and moving hot things, and I think I might take
it all a bit too seriously. It's a general note for myself, but I think that my sister likes it when I cook for her. My nieces like it when I cook for them. I love cooking for my nieces. I love asking them what it is that everything that they want. That to me is like, what is your favorite? What do you want me to coming over? I'm going to bring you anything that you want. We're going to cook it, you know, and just the satisfaction of that is there's nothing like that too.
I always think if you're trying to loose someone, getting them involved in the process of making something that is very important. So I would kind of like, here we make lovely like ravioli from scratch and and we make
pastor and it's a brilliant skill to learn. So I think I would, you know, have the dough and the filling and everything else like a thought if you're going to do it, ready to go, and then I have my verpasta machine set up at home and and get them involved in the process of you know, making portaloni or different types of pasta shapes and kind of you know, you can show off a little bit and make something together and then cook it together and eat it, and
you put everything together, which I think is quite romantic.
Food is love conjures up for me.
Toplet me some and stick toatalk.
Tell me about your love for chocolate.
My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once when I was a very little girl, my big brother who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream. First, he brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always loved it, and as time has gone by, I've loved it darker and darker and darker.
What about ice cream, because I did read that you have ice cream from breakfast? Or is that an urban myth?
No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient, it's right there, it has long shelf life. I don't have to worry about it. It's right there. And but I have it for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day. I don't have it every day, but I have it often and when I was younger, I used to have it before I went to sleep, a pint device chocolate ice cream. But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate, the less sleep I have.
If I make a Valentine's meal, I would probably make a truffle Taglerini.
I think traffle is amazing.
I would make Taglierini with caviar, Taglierini lightly, you know, tossed with butter and a tiny little bit of lemon and then a massive spoofy of caviar on top, beautiful glassy champagne. Yeah, I love it.
I Well, my instant thought is like a big warm pie. It sounds horrible when I say it like that, but like pies hold a very special place in my heart being from the North, so I just feel like it's a big hug in a plate, big pie.
That's what i'd say.
I'm half Italian, so I think it would definitely be Italian for you. For me, I think probably, like from the expression like labor of love, things that take a long time to like prepare and cook for me like really special because they've taken so much like care to do so, like just a simple baked pumpkin, you have to like peel it, and the preparation of it is really long. So yeah, the longer and the more care into it for me means more love's being put into it.
The meal I most enjoy eating with my pant is toast, so yeah, it can be really anything as long as it's with the person that you love.
As much as I love cooking for other people, I think being cooked for, especially as a chef, is like the nicest thing anyone could do, but everyone always gets like quite nervous. I think cooking for you when you do that as your job, but I literally couldn't care less what anyone gave me. I would honestly just love anything.
Yeah, oh no, this is terrible.
The first thing that came to my mind was a McDonald's. But yeah, I don't know food is love. I don't know if it's a boring answer, but I'd probably just go a bottle of champagne.
I would say freshness, seasonal, comfortable, cozy, and something like that. At a moment in the world, you knowing bananas and you look in nature and just you know, there's last thing is happening, and it feels kind of hopeful that you know, life carries on do you know what I mean.
I'm trying to think I should go for like a typical.
My name is Olivia and I work in the offesting a bit of everything.
Really, I might have sticking on a button.
My name is Stephen Hampson and I'm one of the strum managers.
My name is Christoph the head Somebody.
I'm Kitty and I'm Ruthie's po.
My name is jose Trevelli and I'm the co executive.
Chef of the River Cafe.
My name is Ricky and I'm one of the most charming chefs at the River Cafe.
Tabby, I worked in the shop.
My name is Max. I'm a headwaiter the River Cafe.
Yeah Immager, and I'm shop operations manager.
I would say.
My name is Jackie and I'm a chef.
My name is Sylvia Lezevska and I am reservations manager at the River Cafe. My name is Alex Paidick.
I'm I'm a floor manager River Cafe.
I'm Otto and I'm a chef in the kitchen.
My name is Sophia and I'm a chef at the River Cafe. I am Jess and I'm a chef the River Cafe. My name is Sean Willowen and I am the executive chef at the River Cafe.
Hi.
My name's I'm Rosie and I'm a pastry chef.
HI are called Sassy and I am a cook at the River Cafe.
I'm Sula. I'm marketing an ecoms manager. I'm Hebee, and I am a chef at the River Company.
Hi.
My name is Jamie Vilherner and I'm the gardener at the River Campe.
Happy Valentine's Day.