Are we? Are we on? Are we a bit forty? Now? It's nice?
Do you want?
Do you guys want to come and sit closer? If I'm closer. When Matthew Freud suggested that I have my debut live podcast, my first call was to Josh Burger, Josh said yes. During his thirty years at Warner Brothers, Josh brought to audiences the greatest movies Harry Potter, A Star Is Born, The Hangover, which I personally loved, and He'll make London a city of moviegoers and movie makers. As chairman of the British Film Institute, he turned it
into something exciting and dynamic. In his spare time, he co produced the Tony Award winning Broadway musical Ain't Too Proud The Life and Times of the Temptations. In his spare spare time, Josh is my brand, and though I'm twenty years ahead of him, for endless reasons, I refer to him as my older brother. It's safe to say that I think I know practically everything there is to know about Josh Berger. But tonight, talking with him with you as an audience about food in his life, I
think and hope that I'll learn more lucky me. So you also might know that Josh if you do listen. He also has a very important role in that he introduces every podcast of River Cafe Table four.
Here we go, this is the job about which I'm proudest, and here goes. Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
How about that?
Yay, thank you for coming me tonight. That is the end of the podcast.
We're done, Let's get okay. So you talk a lot about going to restaurants for pleasure, but in the movie business, a lot of work gets done in restaurants. People do deals in restaurants, They interview people in restaurants. Would you do business over food?
Definitely?
I mean the place where I really learned the art of a sort of a business meal, where they really get it right is Spain. First of all, you go to lunch in Spain at about two or two thirty, and if you get it right and you're doing business with somebody, you'll still be there at five thirty or
six o'clock. And so there's an unwritten rule in Spain when you're at a business lunch, which is you never talk about business until coffee and dessert, and so that means that you'd be sitting there with you know, somebody for two maybe three hours before you have any discussion. And of course you drink a bottle or two of wine before you get there. So needless to say, all of the business you do is fabulous because you are completely weentered by the time you know, dessert gets there.
And I tell you, the best business meetings I've ever had in restaurants always were in Spain for that reason.
It's a very smart idea.
You know, you develop a rapport with somebody, you talk about what you're doing and what matters to you. So by the time you get to the business, it takes fifteen minutes and you kind of sort it out. So and any restaurant where you've got space, you know, just to answer your question, yeah, somewhere where you actually are not on top of other people and the service is that right balance of attentive but basically in the background.
Does taking somebody out to a restaurant tell you about the person you're taking out as well the way they behave in a restaurant design o God?
Yeah, yeah, you can tell everything that matters probably about somebody during a meal in a restaurant. You know how they talk to you, but more importantly, how they talk to the people in the restaurant, and when people are polite to the people serving them, when they're rude, if they're short, if they are looking at you in the eye or not.
I mean, all of those little.
Those little clues are very helpful, especially if you're trying to assess whether or not to work with somebody, to be in business with somebody. It's very revealing, for sure.
I don't know if you know the drill, but the drill is at every guest. And that's how we've really started. The idea of doing a podcast was that we would just do a recipe, just a recipe, every day of the year, and some very bright person said to me, RUTHI maybe we need a little bit more. So the idea of the recipe segued into a story about food in the guest's life. So with Josh, we're going to start with the recipe that you've chosen from the River Cafe cookbooks.
Yes, I will read Banya Kauda with prosecco. These are autumn vegetables, but it's a seasonal dish. It serves six, and you would add the following seven hundred and fifty millilters of prosecco, three garlic cloves peeled, three hun undred grams of Swiss charred, one small pumpkin cut into six pieces, three celery hearts quartered, twelve salted anchovies cleaned and fillted, two hundred and fifty grams on salted butter softened, and
fifty millilters of the best River Cafe olive oil. So you put the prosecco into a saucepan, add the garlic and boil until the prosecco has reduced and the garlic is soft. Remove from the heat and set aside. Then bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil. Blanch the Swiss charred, making sure the stalks are softened before draining. Add the fennel, pumpkin and celery hearts to reduce the heat and simmer for ten minutes or until tender.
To finish the sauce.
Return the saucepan with the reduced prosecco and soften garlic to the heat and add the anchovy filets. Allow them to melt into the mixture. Gently whisk in the softened butter little by little, removing the pan from the heat. After the first addition of butter. When all the butter has been in corp breded, add the olive oil and black pepper, arrange the vegetables on a warm plate, and pour over the sauce and serve immediately.
Yum yum. Yeah. So, of all the recipes that you could have chosen in the books, what made you choose man Katta? Josh Berger?
So banya kouda is a dish which I first tried at the River Cafe. I don't like anchovies, and so banyicauda is always something that I wouldn't go near. And then I think I tried it off of somebody's plate, not knowing what it was, and it was just the best vegetable dish I think I had ever eaten. And the anchovies are you know, they just come together with all of the cooked vegetables and they make this beautiful, salty, warm,
fabulous vegetable dish. And it's now my favorite vegetable dish in the world, and I order it every time it's on the menu. And whether it's a summer banyakauda or indeed a winter It is fabulous and I love it, and so it's pretty.
It's very regional. It is very much from the Piedmonte region of Italy. And I think growing up in LA did you ever have a banicouta in Los Angeles?
Well, benicauda means warm bath, you've had a I had warm baths, not that many, but I have to say, I'm not sure that I had anything even close to abanicauda, except for maybe a pizza.
So tell me about growing up in LA. You grew up in Beverly Hills.
I did.
I was born in Los Angeles, California, where I spent my first eighteen years really not leaving at all. And I grew up in the Beverly Hills part of Los Angeles to parents who were in the entertainment business. One was a manager and the other was an agent, and so they worked with actors and directors, and my father in particular worked in the music business and managed a.
Lot of the motown artists.
So I had a strange kind of childhood of a lot of recording sessions and American Bandstand and Soul Train on the weekends. But I grew up in a very entertainment world, which is not surprising because it's a sort of a one industry town, or at least it used to be back in the seventies and eighties when I grew up.
And what about what were your childhood memories of food in both your home or going out to restaurants. What was that like?
Well, I was in lots of restaurants with my father. My parents were divorced. There was no family meal as such. That just wasn't a part of my childhood. And I just kind of remember certain certain things that I ate,
which I kind of loved. And there was a British woman named Sarah, who was my father's girlfriend after my parents split, who made me a belt from Britain, and somehow it seemed so exotic that it was a British bacon medicine tomato sandwich, and it really was the best thing I had ever eaten up until that point.
I was about seven eight years old. I didn't hear what was it? He said, here, here, oh here, here, I agree, there we go. We love it.
And I had it with a root beer, which I don't know if anybody's familiar with that drink, but it was a very very good combination and then from there though, I would say that the thing that I was most involved in eating regularly was breakfast cereal. And I was a real expert on breakfast cereal, and I ate I think everyone that was on the market, because I would make it a point of trying all of them. And there was a time that I could do it like a blind tasting and name every breakfast cereal and I
would eat. I would eat it for breakfast, and I would also eat it at night and even in the daytime. And it's nothing to be proud of, but I am still somewhat addicted to breakfast cereal.
As a child. Would you be expected to buy them the cereals yourself or would your parents or someone in the house. When I would go to them, to a cupboard full of breakfast cereals, you could choose them.
Yeah.
When I would go to the market, I would buy them myself. My mother would buy them, my father would buy them. My father still buys them to you know. When I come to Los Angeles and I stay with him, he still loads up with you know, coco crispies and cocoa pops and lucky charms.
There used to be saying that the box had more nutrition than the cereal.
Very possible.
Another thing I would do is I also read the boxes and I would commit to memory everything that was on the boxes.
This is what I was left to do as a child.
Well, I always think that one of the ni again knowing you really well, that you are an exceptional guest. You are somebody who feels very comfortable in other people's houses. We all as hosts love having you in our house.
And I think that that might come from spending a lot of time in other people's houses as a kid growing up in a nice after school going to did you remember any of the food from Would you choose kind of who you wanted to go to which house because of the food, or would you just go to people's houses.
I would go to people's houses.
I mean I've been, of course, in anticipation of this conversation, I've been trying to remember anything that I could about the food that I would eat in my friend's houses. And I did spend an inordinate amount of time in
other people's houses growing up. My mother worked, my father worked, and so I had a couple of sort of very close friends, and I would spend much time in their place, and I would have dinner there invariably almost every night, and I just can't remember one of the meals, unfortunately, But I do remember. I remember my mother cooked. She really cooked two things that I remember and that I loved and I still love a pot roast and a lasagna and a stuffed cabbage as well the third thing.
And in fact, I called her the other day and I asked her why was the stuff cabbage so good? And she told me because she added brown sugar and sours salt. I don't even know what sour salt is, but sara salt.
Does anybody know what sour salt is? No, I've never heard of it.
No, It's a very obscure recipe, maybe from Eastern Europe or something.
Yeah, and then you were thrust into the world of motown and music and was there food there? Would you go to the equivalent of what music terms as a set or a studio, would there be food there?
Yeah?
I mean I remember I remember going to sets of like those TV shows that I mentioned, which I used to go to on the weekend with my dad and his clients. And I think, frankly TV sets then and even today, and recording sessions in the studio. It's all the same kind of food, you know, It's just it's kind of fast food. It's sandwiches, it's donuts, it's cookies,
nothing particularly good. I mean, I think there's a focus today, at least on a movie set or a TV set, to have some healthier options, because that's sort of the age that we're in. But back then, it was great for a kid because it was just junk food everywhere.
I loved that.
But my godfather was Barry Gordy, the founder of Motown, and so I spent my weekends at his house often, and so on Sundays, sort of late in the day, the sort of dinner that would be served early was Southern fried cooking, which was his background and his heritage.
And in a way, that could be the first.
Cuisine that I understood to be a particular category of American cuisine that I loved.
You know.
It was fried chicken and collared greens and black eyed peas and macaroni and cheese, and I mean it was just all of it was completely delicious. I used to really look forward to that Sunday and that Sunday evening meal, and it was funny because it would be served in these beautiful.
You know, silver servers. But it was, you know, just his very earthy food.
And yeah, black and cod and black and redfish actually is the one that loved black and redfish is it's just sort of a southern, a Southern way of cooking fish, I think from Louisiana and Mississippi, where I don't know how they do it. I mean they blacken this redfish. I mean they really char it. It's very very smoky and kind of the skin is crispy and really tasty and spicy.
Well, we could go to when you went to university. Was that an awakening at any point?
It was.
I left LA and I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was going to Harvard, and it wasn't There wasn't no awakening yet while I was there. You know, I liked school food in high school and in college, you know, this kind of mass produced food. But the awakening happened more when I took a year off of school and I went to live in Italy to work, and I was in Venice and a guy was selling a raw tomato.
I think he was just trying to get rid of the last bits of him he said, here, you know, I'm gonna tell you, you know, a couple of tomatoes for I don't know, a couple of lira or whatever at the time, and it was really hot and I was really thirsty, and so I bit into a tomato of all things, and it was like the greatest thing I had ever tasted in my life.
And I had just gotten to Italy, and so began this a kind of revelation.
About food and about how good food can be in Italy and I was living in I was traveling around, but I was living in Milan, and really the place that I discovered this was in a neighborhood restaurant in Milan near where I lived, and it was just, you know, a lady in the kitchen and her husband was the maitre d This was in nineteen eighty six and the fall of eighty six and the winter of eighty seven, and I just happened upon this place and then I went there three times a week, and I got to
know the family and they taught me about Italian food, and I ate so many different incredible meals and it wasn't you know, some of the famous dishes, but it was just you know, the fish. It's like Ilpeche, you know, theola, like the chicken, the meat, the fish, the vegetables e contorni, you know, and they just serve. You don't even know what you were eating half the time. And it was
just mind blowing. And I was alone a lot of the time, which meant that I could really sort of appreciated, you know, there's no talking, and I was learning Italian as well, so I would speak to these these people and they would explain to me about what I was eating. And I think at that point I realized that this was going to be like a love affair, like for the rest of my life. And I kind of got very enthusiastic about food, no matter what the food was, and I still am.
Two other people I think I talked to talked about Milan, and it was Norman Bloster has said that he had his first risotto in Milan, and up until then he just had rice, you know, and what that meant, you know, just eating your your first risotto. You know, I think Milan is probably a really good place to discover food. Did you ever think about cooking or did you just want to keep eating out?
Well, my roommate Paolo Savignano taught me how to make pasta. And the other thing he taught me what how to do was with vegetables, like raw vegetables, And the one that really made an impression was finocchio fennel, which was just take a I never knew what a fenel was actually, so he pulled this thing out, started cutting it into pieces, and then just olive oil salt on a piece of raw fennel.
It's one of the greatest things in the world.
It's interesting, isn't it, because coming from California, which is the garden of the United States, now you know the artichokes and fennel and tomatoes, and I was that we really now look at California as a place where we get these great vegetables, and yet we kind of probably turned our back on the ingredient. And then it all changed, and now in California the ingredient is so important though, the way they grow vegetables and an apple valley surrounding
you know, Los Angeles, is huge, isn't it. But there still is that thing about that man giving you the ripest tomato in venice exactly.
And actually something I didn't mention when I finished university, I went to live in Paris. That was the first place I worked after school for Warner Brothers. And I had a great friend through my one of my best friends from college, this guy Alex, who was a chef and he was training at Tayvon and so while he was there, every Sunday night, we would have a dinner with all of these friends from school who were living
in Paris at the same time. And every person there was a kind of a core group, and everybody would bring one or two people. So we had these dinner parties every Sunday, and Alex would try out his recipes and the things he was learning. I mean, and actually I have to say that, you know, aside from my year off in Milan where I kind of discovered great ingredients and great food, and then Alex really taught me about buying great, great food that you just reminded me,
you know. I used to go to the market with him off the Rue Dutamp on the Saturday morning and we'd buy just whatever was there that he liked the look of and then we'd go back and he would just throw something together and just make brunch for the two of us, and then Sunday nights we'd have these dinner parties and that was the best food I had ever eaten up until that time.
So you talk about the exposure to Europe. You know about Milan, about France, but you also you have to bring in Spain here, because I know you talk about Spain a lot. You love Spain, You eat Spanish food, cook Spanish fruit. Talk about Spain for a minute.
Yeah, I moved to Madrid and I had been warned, you know, Spain.
People had said to me the food is not that great and it's all basically golden brown and everything's fried, and you know, you're not going to.
Love the food.
And of course everybody who told me that really had just been there for a week on holiday and didn't really know the food. And I have to say it might be the country that I most like eating in because of the variety. In number one, I mean, Spain is a country of a half dozen countries. You know, Galicia and what you eat there versus the Basque country
versus Catalunya versus Castilla, versus Andalucia versus Valencia. I mean, every part of that country has really its own cuisine and they're very distinct really because so many different groups of people have been through that country and have run it. The Moorish influence in Spain, I think has created just great, great variety of food and the fish and the meat, and the sauces and the soups, because I'm obsessed with soups, and I you know, just from Asturias and the favada
and the Lentejas, the lentils of Spain. I still think it might be one of the greatest dishes in the world. I go hunting for it when I get to Spain. I was so wildly happy in that country with every day of my food experiences, and also the idea that you can just walk around town and just walk into a bar and say what's the specialty, and they'll make you like the greatest mushrooms you've ever had.
And then you'll go next door.
And you'll get a tortillespaniola, which is a basically egg and onion and potato omelet that is so unbelievably delicious. And then if you've chuck chort etho in it, it's even better. And you can walk to the to every neighborhood in big Spanish cities and find twenty five different bars that each has a specialty, and I would highly recommend San Sebastian for that because that is huge. San Sebastian is the best city in the world for top us bars because each one, again has a specialty, and
the variety is just mind boggling. You could go there for a week and go to a different place every hour and you wouldn't exhaust it.
And then there's the wine.
The wine in Spain is I think my favorite wine, and please don't tell our hosts in France, but.
Again, the variety of it. Ea, I mean, where to begin.
I Pescaia and I love the you know, the sort of smaller, more humble wines, and the white wines of Galicia, the Albertino and is just fantastic with seafood, and then Chaco Leaf from the Basque country, which the guys when you go into a you go into the bar and then they hold the bottle way that the bottle the leather pouch, and then they hold it up here and then they pour it.
All the way down. It's like acrobatic. It's fabulous.
You are married to Dana Harmon, who is Israeli, and I think that a lot of your conversation with me lately has been about two subjects. One is what it's like to eat in Tel Aviv and Jappa and the way the cultural food of that area has changed so much and what people are cooking there. Would you either of you like to talk about food in Israel right now?
For sure?
I mean, I think it's it's definitely one of the most exciting exciting places to eat in the world. I mean, they just there's something about I don't know, the creativity and the risk king and the ingredients and the fact that many of these chefs come from you know, Argentina, Mexico, Iraq, Iran America, and so that there's just these you know, these really interesting combinations of ingredients and foods and it's
very original and it's unbelievably good. But you know, the truth is, I think it's true in a lot of cities, though, I mean, that's one city where there's a lot of exciting chefs, but you know, London has a similarly exciting collection of chefs that come from all over the world as well, in New York and Los Angeles and Paris, and I mean it's it's probably the most exciting time, you know, in terms of restaurants and creativity. Probably ever with food and food technology as well.
If food is celebration, it's love, it's being together, it's delicious, and food is comfort. To you, Josh Berger, at the end of our conversation, what would be your comfort food?
So my comfort food would probably be bukatini a la mariana.
And I mean, I'm sure you're going to say cereal. Be sure you don't want to say cereal.
You can surprise you.
Oh I never would. I'm sure you're going to say serious.
Well, basically I would have said the spaghetti, you know, tomato pasta, which is our favorite meal always, and that is in fact the right answer. But I was I was listening to you know, over time, I listened to all the podcasts that you do, and everybody says the same thing, and it's just it would be So it's just not interesting at this point to say that. So I thought I'd go with which feels more interesting and actually is even better because it is the best pasta dish I think in the world.
I recommend it comfort or not.
Thank you, Josh, I love you, love you, thank you, Thank you. 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.