Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
Imagine walking into your hotel in Mexico City during a family crisis and finding one hundred to Molly's delivered to your room, then for the following three years receiving concerned texts, uplifting emails, and bouquets of flowers which could hardly get
through the front door. Imagine a friend who makes a lightsaber with your name engraved on it while directing Star Wars with a cast and crew of thousands, and designing a lego digital model of the River Cafe for your birthday, confessing later more challenging than directing a movie, and what movies they are? Brilliant, beautiful movies we wait for and require.
A friend who makes you laugh so much through dinners at your restaurant, the staff look on and wonder, this is jj Abrams, who I am here with today to talk about food and family and friendship. Imagine how happy I am to be with someone I love.
I mean, seriously, I can't follow that at all.
What are you doing?
I got chills four times when you're reading that. I mean, seriously, that's impossible.
It's really possible. You know, it's true every word, so I can imagine.
I thank you.
Okay, We're done.
That was it? That was it. There's nothing better than that. Seriously, we should quit that.
Well we can't because we have to find a recipe? Which one showd you that? Would you carbonaro? Or chocolate cake?
You carbon arts? You kidding me?
Nice room? Did you ever work in Row? Have you ever.
Lived in the first day of shooting on Mission II? Was in Rome?
Was it? How long did you stay?
We were there for a few weeks. It was really fun.
I think it's the most beautiful city in the world.
It's unbelievable. So do you want to just read it?
Yep?
All right? And is it? Is it Penny Regatta?
Yeah?
Okay, I competed in the Penny Regatta once reat is? Seriously, I'm so stupid. Okay, here we go, all right, Penny I like carbonaro? Here we go for us. The two most important ingredients are excellent, free range eggs and panchetta stessa.
This serves six. You start with two hundred grams seven ounces of panchetta cut into match sticks, one tablespoon olive oil, six egg yolks, one hundred and twenty million liters four fluid ounces of double cream, one hundred fifty grams five ounces parmesan freshly grated, two hundred fifty grams nine ounces of penny regatta. Fry the panchetta and the olive oil slowly so that it releases its own fat before becoming crisp. Add some black pepper, Beat the egg yolks with a
cream and season with salt and pepper. Add half the parmesan. Meanwhile, cook the penne in a generous amount of boiling salted water, then drain thoroughly. Combine immediately with the hot panchetta and the oil, and then pour in the cream mixture. Stir to coat each pasta piece. The heat from the pasta will cook the eggs slightly. Finally at the remaining palmesan and surf beautiful.
So what was food like when you were growing up? Did so? Your mother would say cook she was a cook, or she was.
A cook, and she would make you know, traditional like brisket, Jewish sort of food she would, but she would also make you know she made an amazing caesar salad. For some reason her said.
It was fantastic.
I don't know what it was. It was great, and she was always always about what we were eating, and to a point where it was insane, Like I would I we'd be sitting at a lunch that she would have made, and the conversation she wanted to have would be about dinner the next and it'd be like, I'm trying, you know, we're just eating. But weirdly now I do tend to look forward to food in a way that
is probably not right sized, probably vaguely. It's not like an obsession, but it's like it's super important.
And is that at home? Do you think at home with your kids or just now you're thinking about what you're gonna eat.
In general, I think it's food is such a It's something that like, I know this is gonna sound insane, but I literally get sad when I'm like halfway through a meal, so like wait a minute, yeah, it's gonna be oversuit And it's a very and I do think there's probably some strong analogy to life in that that there's something about it that you just feel like, oh no, you know this is you don't want this to go away. She was always concerned that you weren't eating enough while
you were eating. Also, it's interesting because she liked myself. She always talked about herself and felt that she was fat, and she was incredibly not fat.
Yeah, and you're not fat.
But like whatever the body dysmorphia thing, yeah, but like but and yet both she and I like it's not like we then shy away from food. It's the opposite. Like it's like I'm I I love you know. And as a kid when I was young, I definitely was a chubby kid, but I was never like athletic, So I sort of probably conflated that feeling of being chubby as a kid and then not a very good athlete with somehow just being a bit of a fat slot.
But I love food. I member as a kid, I was always you know, I was always making things.
Did you know you cooked as a kid with her by yourself both, Yeah, what would you cook?
Well, whatever she was making, she would like be doing, you know, all sorts of things. And it was also like La in the seventies, so it was like, you know, like stuffed zucchini thing, just things that were just like very much of that era. She would cook. But the thing that I was most beyond her just being to a fault probably loving. I mean, she was so loving that it was like I remember thinking, I know, it's not as good as you think it is, whatever it
is I've done. But the thing that I really take away the most was that switching up what you do and how you define yourself and who you are is part of living, that not being defined by a label or any one thing. And she was someone who when we moved to Los Angeles and I was only five, we moved from New York. She's early on started being a real estate agent, and then she you know, she was interested in art and started doing classes and became
a painter. But then she was going to be forty, and she thought, you know, she wanted to be a lawyer.
And she was asking around, is it crazy to start law school, you know, when you're thirty, And she asked someone, and I remember their response to her was, you know, in two years going to be forty either way, Yeah, you know, And then she went to law school and graduated top of her class, and then she became a law professor and she was doing that for a while, and then she wanted to go into producing and she did that.
You know, She's just was someone who is constantly creating but also shape shifting.
Would you sit down to dinner?
Yeah?
Every night?
Yeah, we would sit whatever you were doing. We would sit at the table most every night, although obviously at a certain point and it might not be. Frankly, as I say this, I'm sure that if my sister's listening to this, she's probably like laughing and saying, what are you talking about? Every night? You know, my guess is it's probably far less frequently than my memory suggests. But I have, you know, I have a real sense of
and memory of sitting together with the family. But it was also, I have to say, because it was that era, and I think being in Los Angeles in the seventies, there was a bit of like carelessness. And I know that I'm comparing it to some of the more kind of helicopter parenty crap that happens today, which is not healthy at all either. But there was a bit of a kind of benign neglect and maybe not even benign sometimes that would happen with parents, and I certainly feel
like I was safe. I never felt like, oh my god, my parents are like crazy. They were not like druggy nutty out of their minds. You know, but there were in that era, and whether it was like various you know, cults that were around, whether it was like this kind of culture was such a kind of free wheeling, odd sort of place to grow up that I remember seeing a lot of friends whose parents were kind of off
the rails as parents. But I will say that I do have a sense that there were times when I think my sister and I were a little bit on our own too, in terms of like not really being supervised the way you'd think kids should be.
But you came out, you know that. I look at my kids and I you know, when you are a grandparent, you'll see that you kind of it's great having grandchildren. But the really interesting thing is to see the parents as parents, your children as parents. It's very revealing. And I think I look back and you know, Richard and myself, and we certainly were not as attentive as they are.
No, but I'm really sorry, sad, but I do think we were. I do think that you, you know, you're constantly learning lessons. I'm fascinated with what you're talking about because I think there's a there's obviously this sort of seismic shift that happens when what was your primary family shifts into it slightly into a different you know, the not the rear view, but a very different station, and your primary family becomes the family you choose to make.
But then there's another shift that happens again, when then your kids shift and you're suddenly the one that's being shifted. It's not your choice, and you're sort of the and And so I think that we're probably constantly learning about kind of where we stand based on kind of how we define ourselves given the relationships with the people we
love the most. And when you start to see people that you raised that you you know, in some cases, gave birth to and you raised that, you you witness something that sometimes you realize, oh wow, I don't know where the hell they got that or how they know that, but certainly not from me. And the other times you think, oh my god, they actually did absorb that thing that I did not think they were aware of. And it's just fascinating.
You talk about your mother, what about the men in your family? Did they cook? Does your father? He came right up to the past. You remember when you brought your father to the cafe and he was so interested in the food he was with me. I don't know if he was interested in cooking or eating.
But he loves food. He would cook something sometimes it was sort of usually fairly simple stuff. He was a soft boiled egg. That's so, what's it called like when it's like yeah, stf well, which I never in my life will understand. But he loved them. And he had that little like egg cup and he would tap the thing in British.
Because that's how the English they call them soldiers, and you kind of a little and you dip it into a very running egg.
No thank you. So I have no interest. But my dad, I think if you said to him, you could have this giant pile of gold or some eggs. He loves eggs in a way I don't. I don't think it's healthy and not not like unhealthy cholesterol like I think mentally is insane.
He has them all day or just for.
He'll just if you ever want him to say yes to you, say do you want some eggs? Because that's the He'll never say none of that.
I'd love to see him.
I was obsessed for some reason with omelets. I don't know what, why, where that came from. But you know, it looks so easy, but like, once you start getting into it.
How do you make it?
It is deceptively difficult. It really is, well because you think, come on, what egg a pa like? First of all, one of the key things about anomenal I think is just not keeping it on the fire because when I forever, I would just sort of keep the pan there and keep the eggs there, and you have to actually take them off when I think as soon as it start to congeal, and then I don't like flipping it before you fill it. And then you know, I think you want to sort of do it.
But start from the beginning. Do you put water in them? Or do you put milk?
Nothing, I'll put in milk sometimes, but we I'm not. I'll usually just do eggs, then some salt. I have very I have very stupid simple like I like a little bit of like sauteed onions in it, and maybe some tomato dice up, but not filling things like I don't like bell peppers and Western omelets and any of that stuff.
That's what I like about brunch in New York because it's they always give you these huge omelets, don't they like spinish and everything.
I'm fascinated watching because it's the truth is like until there was cooking shows and things, and have you seen the Julia Child things? Not yet she cooks an omelet in the very first episode and in a way on live TV, and it's it's very charming. And before they're all the cooking shows. When you go to any kind of whether you're at a hotel or you know, like a buffet, when they would have someone cooking the you know,
I'm always fascinated to watching someone. Yeah they do that, well, who makes anyone who makes like ten thousand omelets a day or whatever? It is like it's fascinating to watch someone and then the way they flip the thing over and you just think, or at least I think, I'm never gonna be able to do Do you flip things like that?
In pan I don't flip. I'm not very good at flipping. But they are the chefs. They flip pastas you know, they know they make the penny and then they go like that. I'm kind of standing.
I know.
It's it's a little bit like watching like an Olympic jumper. It scares the hell out of me. How do they do that?
I know they kind of. I don't even know if it's necessary that I think it's out all the pasta. It is probably I like shaking a pan. I'm quite good like shaky. I like getting potatoes out of the oven, burning my hand, you know, shaky. I always say to the chefs, shake a pad, And.
Have you ever reached into the album without putting a mid on?
Like?
Have you ever reached the other for something without putting a handle mint on them?
Because from the beginning when I because you know, he's never trained, So we rose and I just opened the River Cafe, and so you were never trained to do.
No, I took some don't tell yeah, ruin because okay, So I went.
To cooking school when I was fourteen. No, we just you know, we were family cooks, both of us. She went to live in Italy and my mother in law was Italian and told me to cook. But we started so small. The River Cafe was nothing. It was teeny tiny, and so I would say we learned. Well, we made small movies, didn't you? How did you did you train to be a film.
I didn't, but I just want to. The first movie I directed was Mission Impossible three because Tom Cruise asked me if I wanted to do it, and I you know why did he?
Response was yes, yeah did he just he just knew, uh smart, he knew.
Look, all I know is that is that he he and I got to know each other a little bit, and he had watched some of this TV series I had done called Alias. It was about the spy, so he'd seen I would be interested in doing Mission Possible three. So that was crazy. I started as a writer and then I got into doing TV and then ended up doing doing Mission first. But wait a minute, you were saying.
So I was just saying that I don't shake you man, and I didn't reaching into the thing she used to because to come back with with burns, you know, that was the thing.
I hate that always scares hell.
Say do you would you rather have a cut or a burn? What's worse? You know? I hate burns. I really hate burns. Cuts you can kind of burns are, but a burn is upsetting.
But because that's always what I think when I see people in kitchens working, as you know you do, I'm always the thing that I'm always and it's a bit also talking about my mom. It's a bit like here's the one thing I say. She was always so careful about everything, like she like and wanted us to be so careful. And to see where that came from. Her father, who was Harry Calvin, who was one of my favorite people, and he was an incredible influence on me because he
he worked. He had this electronics company called Calvin Electronics, which is still around, and Calvin Electronics was a place that would he started after the Second War and he was he sold surplus electronics as kits to.
Schools, and he's lessons in how things work exactly.
Yeah, So here was a guy who was aware of how certain things radios and TVs and telephones and things worked. So as a young kid, he would take things apart and show me how a phone worked, or how a
TV worked, or why this happened. And then we would do these little projects together where we'd have a little plank of wood and we would put a motor on it, and we would put little brackets to you know, screw it in place, and then a little battery and then a switch and he would show me how the circuit works. And he was always demystifying things and how they work. So that was always something. But he was also apparently like petrified of his grandchildren ever getting hurt. But you
saw how he lived. He was a bit paranoid, and he would have every corner in his house, whether it was a table, a counter, anything, he would take tissue and roll it up and then put like electrical tape on it and everything was padded. So it was a little bit like they ridiculous, like you'd run through the house and everything was padded. So that was kind of where my mom. By the way, one thing about my grandfather,
which was vaguely funny, so his company, Coven Electronics. He had some really cool designs for some of his catalogs and one of them was the circuit that looked like a K and I always sort of loved it. And I loved my grandfather. Now he was a great grandfather, but I know as a father he was a bit tough and my mother's sister and I think that, like my mom would say, I think that he was bipolar. That's interesting, But to me, he was just a great
grandfather And I didn't get any of that. There was a little bit of the you know, anger here and there, but like I never had the issues as yet anyway, So the k design was really cool, and we were doing a little in house the U effects company that we were calling Calvin Optical. So I had this graphic designer who was working on a logo, and I said, oh, why don't we just use the logo that he used to use, which is the case. So she looked at
it and she did some researcher. You came back and she she said to me, oh, this is this is an actual circuit that exists. I'm like, oh, really, yes, and she's like, it's called a bipolar circuit. Now, my mom had passed away at that point, so I couldn't call her to say, you're not going to believe this, but his logo was bipolar anyway. But my mother was always like, you know, nervous about things and how things happened.
And for whatever reason, when I look at a kitchen and see how crazy it is, I feel like it's sort of that kind of like nervousness that she used to have. And I think, dear God, please put an oven mid on, because the idea of reaching into and grabbing a mozzarella marin ara pan bare handed is a nightmare.
Heavy. Yeah, I think that fear. People sometimes say can we come and cook in the kitchen? Or can I spend the day with you in the kitchen, And sometimes it says, but you know, it is a dangerous place. So that's my you know, if you come in a kitchen, you know, and the chef's the way they move and they carry hot pans and they're always saying. And in the River Cafe, you know, we have an open kitchen, so you can't shout, you know, hot behind you or
move or whatever. Everybody's kind of navigating it between between hot plates. And if you are a chef and you leave something hot and you burn one of your colleagues, it's very upsetting.
It.
So the kitchen is you know, but it's a dangerous place. And a film sets a David place, isn't it.
A film set can be really dangerous and in ways
that you cannot predict sometimes. I mean I have friends who have been injured by falling lights or planks of wood or things that you know, and there are all sorts of protections that you know, sort of procedures that are in place, but like a kitchen, yeah, but when you have that many people moving parts, that many people that the lights are incredibly hot, and the there are cables everywhere, and a lot of times, like in the case of the accident that we had, there was, you know,
this hydraulic door that was being triggered by someone and it just went down at the wrong moment in the wrong way, and it luckily didn't kill anyone, but certainly could have.
But talking about restaurant kitchens, what about restaurants? Did your parents take you to restaurants? Was that a kind of abras or you celebrate in a restaurant?
Sure, but you know, growing up again in La like going to the Sizzler was a big deal. What's that the Sizzler? Oh, my god, steak steaksy food salad. It's a chain here American.
I should know that.
You should. No, No, I know what embarrassed.
Davidson talked about that this favorite But what Pete Davison, He's saying that his favorite meal was just.
A couple of noodles?
Was it a couple of noodles?
Yeah?
No, I have been a way too long. But so what was you tell me about Sizzler?
Schizler? Was I mean, look, there were a handful of very seventies and early eighties restaurants that were on at least on the West Coaster in California. One of them was Hamburger Hamlet. Yeah, I know that one, so I would go there. It was good. There was a place in west Would called the Chatham that was like a little sort of fancy I don't know. My mom would take me there. Like there were just there were certain places we would go at the time growing up Westwood,
which is where UCLA is. It was a great area and it was fun and there were just tons of restaurants and great stores. It was an amazing kind of destination which has now changed dramatically and is sadly not what it used to be in you know, hopefully you can recapture some of its former glory. But there were just a ton of places there.
So you read out quite often or very often, but but.
Enough that, like, I have a lot of memories of going to these places and what I would order.
I haven't been to very many commencement addresses, but I did listen to your address's lawrence, and it's something I often quote, because you were talking to these kids who were about to go out into the world, and you were kind of there giving them guidance and advice at
a commencement speech. But what moved me enormously was when you talked about kindness and the value of kindness, and you asked the question, have you ever been in a restaurant where food was served to you and you were with somebody who didn't look up at the waiter and say thank you? And I thought, that is something that I say all the time because I work with waiters and they again so value and so moving to them when somebody says thank you. Why did you say that in a commencement speech.
I don't remember anything I said in that speech, but and I'm so glad you said it, because I was like, what are you quoting?
What do I say?
Oh?
My God, should listen to it. It's wautiful speech.
You're very sweet. But I to that. I would just say part of it is the peeve of it, But it's deeper than that, because anyone who's worked in any kind of service industry, and I, while I was never I did. I was a host at this Mexican restaurant here in LA but I worked it like a you know, an ice cream store, and you know, I'm at different stores growing up and that feeling that you have of of doing well by someone and doing your job and being helpful and getting not even an acknowledgment or a
look or not. And look, I'm sure that this happens all the time to everyone, but it's a different thing when you have the job and you know what it's like to be dehumanized and disregarded, and you know, and and yet that experience for me, and part of it is because I remember as a young kid not being athletic.
The value you have socially as a kid is often connected to sort of how well you play sports or how well what your grades are if you're you know, my grades were never particularly great, and I was never any good at sports, so weirdly I had no I had nothing of value as a kid, and I remember, I remember that feeling of oh, I'm not seen as anything of either note or importance or you know, anything special.
It was just I remember that feeling. And so in a way one of the reasons why in terms of stories like I tend to love underdogs and I'm look, no one is crying for the little white boy who, you know, felt like he couldn't throw a ball. But it's like the fact that you, you know, you grow up in some ways. We all have insecurities and experiences that shape us. And I remember feeling like, you know, growing up, and then in these jobs, it's so easy
to be unseen or overlooked or treated badly. I mean, I think people sometimes go out in order to break people and treat people badly because it makes them feel better, and use people as punching bags. And a waiter is like the prime example of someone who is who is doing you, you know, this sort of beautiful service. And even if the waiters not particularly great, they're still serving you.
They're a server like on that level. To not acknowledge that person and have gratitude for them says so much more about who that person is. So I don't know quite what the context of that comment was, but my guess it was like, don't be a friend with, don't continue to relationship with the person. Treat someone, she said, And the wait is that we have.
You know, you see a lot in a restaurant. You see people crying, You see people coming to a restaurant for very private things in a public space. They get fired, they admit affairs, they get divorced, they get married, they get proposed to, And do you take people to a restaurant? Sometimes? Would you before hiring somebody take them to a restaurant and kind of see before.
They I have. I mean I've had all sorts of meetings like that with people before working on something or committing to something. Sure, But I also I go to restaurants to work all the time.
Like I.
Write most of what I write at restaurants because the energy of the space, the noise of it, what you were just describing, it's like when you're at a restaurant, it's like it modulates between the most extreme dramatic breakup that might be happening at the table, you know, two tables over to that first date between people, to you know, a parent, and like there's everywhere you look there is a window into a drama that is probably its own story.
So the inspiration that comes from just sitting in a restaurant and a coffee shop too, but restaurants are my preference. I just feel like it kind of fuels me in a way that when I'm in a room alone, I can do that too, and I don't mind it, and I'll put headphones on listen to music. They like, but there's something about being in a restaurant that is hugely inspiring and it helps me.
Do you do it now? You still all the rest?
Really all time?
Do you write Longhand on a laptop?
What do you do long hand? When I first start working on something until it starts to become something that is starting to become more congealed and solid like an omelind and then I will go and start to do it on the laptop.
Instead of talking this case that we're going to finish now. But comfort, So if we have food, like your mother to express love or your father to grandfather about fear or hungry, you know, or where in the pandemic and we want to cook, we also go to food for comfort. So if you need comfort, jj Abrams, is there a food that you would go to for comfort? Is there a food.
There isn't?
Really?
Like, I mean, it's funny. I just took my dad to dinner at the Dantana the other night in West Hollywood, and we were talking about how it was such comfort food. And usually comfort food feels like it's got a bit of an Italian like there's something about a pasta that is just so comforting and feels so good, and you know, so there's that kind of thing, and it's usually like I guess it might be like the carby starchy thing
that does it. That's funny because as you were asking, I was like thinking, it's hard to imagine like a food that on some level doesn't provide some kind of like you know, a really great sushi dinner or a wonderful you know, like a great pizza or something that you know, of course there's bad versions of everything, but food in general is just is such a comfort.
You like that ice cream, I know, almond ice cream, you know, the toasted almond ice cream.
There is that a question?
What do you have?
I mean my ordering multiple dishes of it indicate that you might.
Be part of it.
Can be fine, I'm doing it.
I'm claiming it all right?
Oh hi, can you give me a really quick favor.
You're looking for the recipe itself.
See if there's a recipe there for almond ice cream. You're so kind? Do you want to hold on if you find I'm gonna hold on.
The River Cafe lookbook is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.